Dave Ballard » Internet

Time Warner Usage Caps

dave — Mon, 13 Apr 2009 23:30:51 +0000

Time Warner will soon be introducing usage caps for all of its customers in the Rochester area, as well as other areas where they have no competition, this summer. This means that you will now be paying by the amount of information you are downloading and not by the bandwidth you have available to you.

I am not alone when I say that this is a perfect example of corporate greed. Time Warner claims that we will all save money by this, but I think this can’t be further from the truth. Rather than debate this issue, I would like to just focus on the innovation aspect of the usage caps.

Back in the mid 1990’s, we started to see pictures showing up on websites. This was because modems were getting faster and there was more bandwidth available to pull down the additional information needed to draw the graphics. Since then we have moved from a mostly text based Internet to a media rich environment with flash animations and high definition video clips. This is all thanks to the bandwidth of services such as Time Warner RoadRunner.

If a usage cap is imposed on users, we could see websites revert back to text based sites with minimal graphics. If I’m using the Internet to read the news or even research what colleges are out there, and I have to pay a usage cap, I’m going to stick with those sites that have no graphics or animation on them to ensure I don’t go over my cap.

This could very simply result in a loss of innovation on the Internet. Consumers may start demanding sites to be developed with only text based information and to remove all of the graphics and video. We could even see a new version of web browsers that block this information from being downloaded to prevent you from going over your caps. This could decrease the new innovative technologies out there such as high quality video cameras that consumers could use to upload high quality family videos to share with friends and family.

If Time Warner imposes a usage cap, I’ll either switch to Frontier DSL or I will stop playing online games, stop signing into things like Facebook and Secondlife and even stop watching video highlights of Sabres games where they actually win for once. Even worse, I’ll probably have to start coming into work at all hours of the night to review server logs, perform maintenance and help students with their assignments over services such as Adobe Connect because that will very quickly take me over my cap. Forget the idea of me ever teaching an online class from home.

So what can we do to try and stop this. A great place to start is with StoptheCap.com as it has an enormous amount of information on this topic including information about what we, the consumer, can do to try and fight Time Warner on this. Another way is to write your local congressman or senator to support the The Massa Broadband Internet Fairness Act which is aimed directly at stopping this type of monopolistic practice.

Either way, it is important to make your voice be heard. Don’t sit on the sidelines and let Time Warner take away your ability to communicate without restrictions with the rest of the world.

In closing, I’d like to remind anyone reading this that these views are my own and are in no way affiliated with the E. Philip Saunders College of Business (SCB) or with the Rochester Institute of Technology (RIT). If you have issues with my comments, please address them to me and not to SCB and RIT.

Thank you.

E-mail: Plain Text vs HTML

dave — Mon, 07 Jan 2008 22:53:51 +0000

When it comes to the age old question of which is better, plain text or HTML e-mail, I’d have to say plain text is the way to go. It is just way too easy for someone to craft an e-mail that looks authentic, but underneath it really isn’t. I personally think the best approach is to always view your e-mails as plain text. Only when you know it is a safe e-mail, then convert it to HTML. This gives you the chance to review to the message to see if it is not safe or has something hidden in it. Things to look for are images that come from major websites that you know are safe, but the Click Here link goes somewhere else or links that go to a site that is just numbers. These are good indications that the email is most likely a phishing attempt to steal your information.

With Microsoft predicting more phishing and e-mail scams in 2008 (source: http://www.securityfocus.com/brief/656), one has to wonder as to why anyone would want to view their e-mails in HTML format by default.

Your thoughts?

Will e-mail survive the next generation?

dave — Thu, 06 Dec 2007 02:49:46 +0000

E-mail has been around since 1965 and is today one of the cornerstones of electronic communication, but will it survive the next generation of computer users? The reason I ask this is because I recently had a discussion with other systems administrators at RIT in regards to our students using services such as Facebook, mySpace and even Instant Messaging (IM) instead of e-mail. Some students go as far as to never check their e-mail. Because of this new trend, does RIT need to rethink how electronic communication is distributed to our students? Most likely this won’t be the case for some time simply because e-mail is so easy to use and provides an excellent record of communications between faculty and students.

E-mail is so vital to the day-to-day operations of virtually every university and corporation that I can’t imagine a shift away from it as a primary means of electronic communication; however, Xerox said the same thing about the mouse and graphical operating systems when it came to desktop computing. Perhaps some day we may see a shift in technology, but I would think that as students move out into the work force, they will start using e-mail more and using services like Facebook, mySpace and IM less.

What are your thoughts on using services like Facebook, mySpace and/or IM to replace e-mail?

Mozilla vs. Sys Admins

dave — Wed, 16 May 2007 04:45:22 +0000

Ever since Firefox was first released, I’ve been a fan. I think that the browser has done great over the years and has defiantly given Microsoft a reason to improve Internet Explorer. While I love Firefox as a user, I’ll admit that I have never liked it from the perspective of a Systems Administrator. The application is always providing challenges in its deployment to remote systems. Once you think you’ve got it figured out, the developers seem to throw something into the mix that messes things up. Up until recently, I was willing to look past this. But now something new, at least new to me, has came up that has just made think that the developers at Mozilla are purposely trying to make Systems Administrator’s lives miserable.

File versioning. Mozilla doesn’t seem to understand the concept. Take version 1.5.0.11. If you look very closely at firefox.exe when you install 1.5.0.11, you will see that the actual version of the file is 1.8.20070.31202. Okay, this isn’t that big of a deal. At least not until you look at 2.0.0.3. Firefox.exe for 2.0.0.3 is 1.8.20070.30919. Look closely at those numbers. Firefox 2.0.0.3 actually has a lower version number than Firefox 1.5.0.11. So when you develop a script that says to install Firefox 2.0.0.3 if the version is less than 1.8.20070.30919, it won’t upgrade 1.5.0.11. What was Mozilla thinking?

The only think I can think of is that Firefox 2.0.0.3 may have been released prior to 1.5.0.11 and the version numbers are meant to track the releases over time. But with this methodology, it makes it much more difficult for administrators to automate the upgrade of Firefox. Especially from 1.5.0.11 to 2.0.0.3. Now yes, there are ways to script around this. That’s not the point. I just personally think, and I’m sure a lot of Systems Administrators will agree with me, that a file version should be larger for a newer version of software. Or in the case of 1.5.x and 2.0.x, make them distinguishable by doing something like 1.8.x for 1.5.x and 1.9.x for 2.0.x. What do you think?