Net neutrality is about fair and equal access to information free of undue influence by governments and corporations regardless of race, creed, colour, economic status, etc. Wikipedia also puts it as follows, “Network neutrality is a principle proposed for user access networks participating in the Internet that advocates no restrictions by Internet Service Providers and governments on content, sites, platforms, on the kinds of equipment that may be attached, and no restrictions on the modes of communication allowed.” 

The issue has never been about the prioritization of TCP/IP services. In fact, voice over IP (VOIP), is generally given higher priority in most networking applications due to the requirement that data needs to be transmitted in “real-time” compared to other services. For example, if an image on a web page fails to load due to a transmission error, the router simply calls for that piece of information over again and if it takes an extra 300ms (milliseconds) for that to happen then its really no big loss. Further, if the image arrives out of sync with the rest of the web page it again is no big loss as the image is simply rendered at the point in time all the information becomes available. However the same type of delay on a VOIP call doesn’t work because all the data has to be streamed in a very specific order in order to be understood.

It would be like trying listen to a conversation to all words where the are randomly mixed.

See? – Doesn’t fly. So VOIP phone calls are given higher priority than data and for very good reason. In fact the same logic can and does apply to other types of applications and in general there is consensus as to which pieces of Internet traffic should be allocated to the fast lanes compared to slower lanes. The fact that this is controlled more by the hardware applications on each end of the transmission line is also of major benefit because it means the ISPs are not really in control of this but rather it is a function of specific types of data and the industry standards by which that type of data is agreed to be streamed at.

One of the core problems however is this idea of bandwidth throttling, which is controlled at the ISP level. Bandwidth throttling is a process whereby the ISP can control how much data, what types of data, and how fast that data is transmitted through their network. So while the industry may agree that VOIP traffic should be given priority over other types of traffic, an ISP can elect to “throttle back” the speed, or in some cases to block that type of traffic altogether.

Now this is really where net neutrality people really get their backs up. The expectation by people connected to the Internet is that if you are paying for a high-speed connection to the Internet (say 6 Mb/s download and 1 Mb/s upload), then there should be no restrictions on what you put on either end of that connection. Further if you are paying for a given amount of bandwidth (50 Gb/mth) then so long as you are under your cap again there should be no restrictions. Herein comes the rub. If everyone were to max out their connections all the time then essentially it would overload the network of most ISPs. While we sign contracts saying this is what we are suppose to be getting, quite often an ISP will either cut back or cancel an account that is actually using the connection to its maximum potential all the time. This is because ISPs rarely build capacity in accordance to what they are contracted to provide, but rather to what the aggregate usage is across all users of the system. That could be in some cases as low as 20% of the total contracted service levels.

Since an ISP is under no obligation to identify how large their network is, rather than put in more capacity, an ISP may elect to use other mechanisms first to address the increase usage of their system before purchasing more capacity.

Bandwidth throttling is one way to do this. In principle, what it allows an ISP to do is to narrow the amount of traffic going to each customer during peak periods so that, while you may not get your maximum allowable bandwidth, at least what bandwidth you do get will be stable and less error prone. All well and good. However a number of ISPs are using this same technology to restrict certain types of traffic all the time. Bit torrents for example where people have the opportunity to download large files (movies, music, etc) over an extended period of time. P2P file sharing is another.

ISPs are making these decisions not out of any real necessity to control bandwidth but rather are essentially “taxing” those services, which have both legitimate and illegitimate purposes, in order to upsell their services or to develop additional revenue streams for something that should be ”neutral” access.

The situation becomes worse when you add in the fact that content on the Internet is also being policed to the point where people do not have the right to choose what content they access. Anyone from Canada knows, for example, that Hulu is not accessible and yet it is a free service to anyone connect to an IP address based in the US. Similar thing with some content provided by the BBC.

The problem with this type of policing is that it is the slippery slope of creating classes of people who have or don’t have access to specific information and services. People that support net neutrality argue that information in any form should be accessible and that governments and ISPs should not have the right to tell us what we can or cannot see based on geography, economic status or any other type of profiling mechanisms. It is a form of censorship which no longer has a role in a world where one can go from Toronto to London in 6-8 hours. It is a means of trying to establish boarders where none should exist.

Look at it this way – Cable companies may have a monopoly in specific markets that they don’t want Hulu or the BBC intruding on by offering free services across the Internet. However there is nothing illegal about me travelling to the UK or the US and watching non-Canadian TV while I’m there. In fact there is nothing being broadcast, for the most part, that is illegal or morally reprehensible about any of this content nor is it against the law in Canada. So if technically I’m legally entitled to view this material, and if the copyright owners want to provide this material free of charge, then why should I not be allowed access in Canada?

The answer is I should be allowed. If the cable companies up here cannot provide services I want then I should be free to access those services wherever they exist in the world if they are being streamed to the world wide web without restriction by the copyright holders. However that choice isn’t mine. I have no input into that choice. I have no reprentation as to influcing future choices of this type. And the same goes for people around the world. It doesn’t matter wether you are in Canada, US, UK, or the EU – the ability to influence these choices is completely out of your control.

Which is why the principle of net neutrality is so critically important. It establishes the world wide right to freedom of thought and freedom of expression regardless of the media used to convey those ideals. There is nothing more basic that being able to have freedom over where your thoughts and ideas may take you independent of any government or corporate entity and ensures that such freedoms are free of undue taxation or limitation without representation. It is as fundamental a right as breathing. When there is no mechanism available to provide representation to people to influence outcomes associated with fundamental human freedoms, then it is contingent on everyone to establish an open systems approach least we abdicate our rights as individuals to a series of fractured dictatorships for which we will have no recourse when it really matters. (okay you can inhale now)

No one is really losing sleep over not being able to access Hulu or slow bit torrents. It is what the implications of these restrictions mean as a culture which should keep you up at night.

- Kevin Feenan

So who is lying? M and Philip can’t both be right. If M was correct in 2009 then after all these cuts Second Life is definitely in a very solid financial picture at this point in time. It also means that a lot of these cuts to staff and programs were not necessary. If Philip is right however and we are in a good financial position now (compared to then) then we, as a community, were lied to in 2009 which begs the question what else is Linden Lab not telling people.

For example, in the last week Linden Lab has dropped the bomb of closing down the SL Teen Grid in the middle of the school year. 3 days later they just sent an email with 24 hours notice to all community gateway owners that they are shutting down the community gateway program effective immediately.  In both case no substitution was offered for the replacement of the existing service.  In fact the closure of the teen grid, which isn’t that surprising, in the middle of the school year showed remarkable insensitivity to the teachers and educators which have been working all spring and summer to prepare their curriculum only to have the core of that program yanked with 2 weeks to prepare substitute course materials.

I’m sorry as this is not going to be PC BUT —- how dumb do you have to be to think that yanking the teen grid in the middle of the school year is a good idea. (notice that isn’t a question) And we don’t even deal with the teen grid at Rockcliffe. Even I’m mad about this not because it impacts us but because it is a symptom of what Linden Lab has been doing all year long.  That is, making unilateral decisions that impact a very broad community without community input. And driving customers away as a result.

From a strategy stand point this is very bad. One of Second Life’s core assets is the user community. While a good brand can get away with the occasional hit to their reputation, establishing a pattern of behaviour that clearly shows a move away from being customer-centric to being investor-centric is a sure fire way to erode that brand loyalty to the point where any competitive product will drive masses of people away from your core product lines.

Fortunately for Linden Lab there is no such product currently on the market however there are several in development which will be in power positions within the next two years if the Lab doesn’t stop shooting themselves in the foot, stem the bleeding, and start repairing relationships. By the time they are ready to do that it may be too late as OpenSim, Blue Mars, Unity3D and others may have caught up with Second Life at which point it will be game over.

Personally I was really hoping that Philip’s re-introduction as CEO was going to be a sign that calmer heads are ready to prevail. But in continuing these 1980’s MBA-style draconian tactics without involving the community has simply served to erode whatever linguistic capital he had to trade in stepping back up to the plate. In fact, this is exactly the type of thing he should be divorcing himself from as every subsequent announcement of this type drives his personal image away from being the poster boy for 3D collaborative environments.

Anyone new that is brought in to repair all this damage being done is going to have their job cut out for them over the first 2 years of their mandate. Philip was someone who could have repaired that damage in less than half that time and instead he’s just being set-up to look like every other high-paid executive out there which is good for being put in-front of a group of investors but extremely bad if it results in him losing all his identity capital with the customer base supporting Second Life and where it potentially can go. As any business owner can tell you, it’s easy to spend an investor’s money on a business – getting and keeping a loyal customer base is hard and it’s even more difficult if you start with a culture that is ready and willing to walk for a comparable value proposition.

It is an open avenue for any competitive company, like Unity3D, to walk in and pander to the existing client base to say “we care – they don’t”. And people will believe them even if the value proposition isn’t as robust as what Linden Lab can offer simply because the pattern of behaviour established over the last 8 months by Linden Lab has been screaming “we don’t care about you and to prove it we are about to cut another relationship or product or service that is important to the community without offering something better in exchange other than empty promises”.

People are short sighted. In general, long term means “next week” en mass when it comes to decision making and every hole that Linden Lab leaves in their tactical plan is one more hole that leaves their customer based feeling unhappy and unfulfilled. Short of firing their strategists, the Lab should at this point develop a dedicated PAID community strategy group under NDA to knock some sense into them before the community at large just decides that enough is enough and better to move to OpenSim. They may not get everything they want but at least they don’t have to worry about the Lab cutting them off at the knees without compassion, consultation, due warning, and alternative solutions.

Don’t get me wrong – I’m still dedicated to building Rockcliffe up and Second Life is a very large part of that strategic and tactical plan. But that only goes so far. If the Lab continues to alienate the user base all the way to Blue Mars and back then there is no point in staying with a sinking ship. We are nowhere close to that point right now but for the sake of the community I am really hoping that this is the end of the bone-headed manoeuvres that have done nothing but erode Linden Lab’s brand identity and services over the past year.

Somehow I doubt it though. Who knew they had so many shoes.

What the BP Executive Lamar McKay should have done was establish the framework which would lead towards greater accountability in the field (no pun intended) for the future. That being that each of these organizations, and more, each potentially has some measure of responsibility in what was probably a preventable accident.

The problem is one where there is no direct line of accountability within complex systems. Very large projects require that a large number of autonomous activities each perform at peak efficiency. Essentially the assumption is that failures in one system will not cascade across other systems for which there is no proper oversight and management. Add to this the Bush Administrations to push for energy independence at a rate which likely has exceeded the ability of government oversight groups to effectively monitor and control, and companies which are trying to both recoup from financial losses due to the financial market’s meltdown and increase profitability on their balance sheets.

A single point of failure in a project which is suppose to have multiple levels of oversight essentially means a cascade failure among all the parties involved that share responsibility to various degrees. Halliburton for example cannot renege on their responsibilities for capping the well if they are supposed to be experts in this field. If the removal of the mud prior to insertion of a cement plug is not something they do on a regular basis then someone from Halliburton should have been aware of the safety concerns and halted the procedure when a non-standard technique was about to be employed.

I’m not suggesting that this was or was not the direct cause of the explosion and sinking of the oil rig. Rather what I am suggesting is that this type of behaviour where unsafe practices are not identified and corrected because “that is not my job” or “that is someone else’s responsibility” is representative of the type of systemic issues that plague large projects.

Problems like this are often far too easy to recognize but are stopped mid-stream in the escalation process because eventually the communication of these issues hit the ‘pay-grade ceiling” – that is, the attitude that nothing can be done because the decision to take corrective action is “above my pay-grade”. Similarly, when there is a lack of communication across multiple organizations each having responsibility for a specific aspect of a project, communication can also be stopped because “that is not our area of responsibility”. There is an expectation that an individual’s span-of-control goes only so far and when safety or other concerns branch beyond that perceived span-of-control then they are forced through peer pressure to not make waves and let people do their jobs.

Unfortunately, for a number of projects that type of attitude isn’t good enough. In part because no one wants to be the outcast for saying that the “sky is falling”. In part because those people whose job it is will in general take exception to other people poking their noses into their job.  We can look to a number of instances such as the multiple NASA space flight failures, Chernobyl, Seveso, and Bhopal. Time and time again what we find is that even though it may be the actions of a few which have cause the actual catastrophe, it is the social culture which surrounds those individuals which leads to the pattern of behaviours that make such catastrophes inevitable.

So what should the Chairman and President of BP America said to the congressional hearing?

Every day around the world BP is engaged in hundreds of thousands of decisions related to the quality and safety of their global operations. Influencing those decisions are hundreds of thousands of other voices including local, federal, and regional government agencies, global business partners, environmental groups, and non-governmental organizations. And underlying all of those voices are thousands of risks and circumstances which cannot be anticipated, predicted, or mitigated.

The exploration for oil is one of the riskiest ventures that humans can for reach and accomplish. Companies like BP are expected to take every conceivable precaution but the bottom line is that no industry can uniquely provide a 100% iron clad guarantee that ever possible situation will be controlled to the point where failure is impossible. It just doesn’t happen as much as we would like it to.

So long as our culture has a thirst for petroleum, humans will continue to do stupid things like stick a hair thin straw into that 8000 mile wide orange we call the Earth and hope to heck nothing goes wrong.

What needs to happen is the culture from Government to BP and its partners need to be looked at to identify why the culture allowed safe practices to be compromised. Then engage in changes to the system which both support the culture through education, technology, and policy. And then it needs to be made into best practice around the globe with all organizations engaged in similar activities.

You can’t do that however in an environment in which is focused on assigning blame to the few organizations that are in the best position to be leaders of that change. Are they at fault – sure – but now that we’ve just invested $30 Billion dollars or more in their education why would we deliberately put them out of business and in so doing create a culture in which the rest of the players in this industry drive their bad practices further underground.

We need these practices out in the open in order to fix them and we need solid leadership to drive that point home to all the other competitors in the field that the status quo isn’t good enough anymore. It’s not going to be a quick fix. But if handled correctly by all parties it could prove the stimulus for substantive change in the industry towards better accountability and safety while the need for petroleum is still a major factor in the economies of the world.

How far does my dislike what they’ve done in Office 2007 go? Let’s just say that having the programmers that thought up this ass-backwards ”productivity improvement” drawn, quartered, and used as fish bait is a good starting point. The dreaded GST introduced in Canada has nothing compared with the agony that businesses, governments, and others are going to experience in switching mindsets from 2003 to 2007.

Not withstanding, and since I’m not one to really surcome to those types of down right nasty thoughts (okay maybe this once). I FINALLY found something that came out of Redman that actually helps make sense of this all.

If you are a previous power user of MS Office 2003 or earlier and are now working with 2007 you absolutely have to bookmark these links:

• http://tinyurl.com/MSExcelRibbon2007
• http://tinyurl.com/AccessRibbon2007
• http://tinyurl.com/WordRibbon2007
• http://tinyurl.com/OutlookRibbon2007
• http://tinyurl.com/PPTRibbon2007

They are interactive guides that will show you exactly how messed up the relationship is between where you use to find things in MS Office 2003 products and where they simply threw darts at a dart board to figure out where they were going to move them all to in MS Office 2007.

Don’t get me wrong on this, if you are just starting out in MS Office and 2007 is your first cut at working with the product, the whole ribbon concept probably kicks-ass. But why they couldn’t have made this switch in stages rather than deliberately trying to throw every business and organization in the known MS Universe into chaos is beyond me. There was simply no reason to make this large a leap, this quickly.

Take for example, Martha Stewart (no really please). In 2004 while Madoff was bilking investors out of billions of dollars, here is Martha being dragged as a symbol for the SEC’s new mandate to go out there and crack down on those people that really were flagrant of the law by developing personal relationships with their brokers. And I’m sure that the millions of dollars that the SEC spend in prosecuting Mrs Stewart was truly justified compared to the $41K tax write off have she benefited by considering her total net worth.

What bothers me about these two scenarios is that it, along with other examples, shows a pattern of behaviour of the most senior levels of the SEC to only be working on those cases which are either high profile or as keeps the SEC’s name out of the papers. When cracks in the SEC’s ability to effectively regulate the equity markets do appear we see this rash of people “more willing now to give information”.

It has been well documented in the media that the SEC didn’t need these people to come forward, they were always there to begin with. Rather, what they needed was to prioritize the information they have been receiving better. I would suggest that the resulting perception is one where the SEC is doing as little as possible on the hopes that they are perceived as doing their jobs and while continuing to mismanage the public trust.

Maybe its time for the SEC to be dismantled, replaced, and new financial rules to be established.

The problem I have is that in protecting the public trust one of the key core competencies you have to be absolutely rock solid on is the proactive adjudication and assessment of risk. While this is not an easy thing to do in practice, the SEC does not seem capable of accomplishing this without the appearance of being in bed with those, such as Madoff, that they are suppose to be regulating. There appears to be this fear that in regulating those who have large established investment networks, investigating breaches of trust could do as much harm or worse than as if the risk were real.

This is a very fine line as a wrongly placed investigation which turns up nothing could very well bankrupt an otherwise healthy investment vehicle. At the same time, as the steward of that public trust you can’t be so timid of launching an investigation as to allow serious violations to go unchecked. 

For example, publicly traded companies that are formed by foreign nationals for the intent and purposes of going bankrupt. This scheme works as follows. You establish a company with a ‘reasonable’ track record and some good possibilities of future sales contracts (like in China for example). The SEC doesn’t verify proof of sales or contracts in 100% of the cases of filings so chances are no one is going to audit the books. You have a number of small investment accounts help drive up the price of the stock encouraging others to buy in. At a predetermined price the principles pull out their monies leaving the small investors holding a company that is worthless. As the sales contracts disappears and the price goes down, the principles short the stock, and hence increase their gains even further without so much as batting an eye. By the end of the scheme the principles have covered their shorts sells – write off the balance – and fold the company having fleeced a large number of small investors of their savings.

Now the existing SEC regulations in place are suppose to prevent this type of thing from happening. And yet I’ve seen this happen on at least two occasions with the SEC doing nothing about it despite having been given fair warning that it does occur. 

There are likely hundreds of other schemes out there which are deliberately aimed at taking advantageof the small investor’s imperfect knowledge of the markets. Certainly investment brokers and their select clients talk in advance about news which isn’t public knowledge. You wouldn’t see such a dramatic rise or fall in some stocks prior to public news releases if their weren’t. And this doesn’t account for the millions of informal chats between employees with privileged knowledge and their friends and associates who, of course, are more than willing to pass a good tip along to others they know.

While the system isn’t perfect the investment community which has a stake in those equity markets under the SEC’s mandate to regulate I feel deserve better than to simply watch the SEC run after whatever ’shiny’ happens to be making the front page of the news. I would hope that the SEC starts to show some leadership by disclosing how else they are protecting the public interest because chasing after the flavour of the day simply cannot continue to cut it anymore.

At the 2009 International Consumer Electronics Show, Steve Ballmer announced the latest and greatest Windows 7 which “will make PCs faster and easier to use”.

This got me to thinking (always a bad sign) that, the propaganda around an operating system being “faster, easier, more reliable” notwithstanding, we really have sort of hit the limit of the current user interface. Are there improvements that can be made? Sure. However every ‘innovation’ seems to be a play on the same theme where software companies are simply conducting refinements of the product – the addition of bells and whistles so to speak – rather than actually making things easier.

The MS ribbon introduced into all MS 2007 products for example is the most hideous non-user friendly piece of ergonometry that has even been invented. How this ever got put into production I will likely never know but considering the cost of having to retrain everyone on the face of the planet who uses MS products because they won’t be able to find anything after upgrading is a cost that I think most businesses will start cursing MS over once they discover exactly how messed up it is.

Regardless – I digress. So here is the thing: Really, the next stage of operating systems is not about making them necessarily faster but rather to make the user interface more intuitive and ergonomic. To that end, products such as Second Life I could very easily see as being the next real stage of development of the operating system such that your desktop becomes a virtual world. Second Life already has been extremely innovative by incorporating a number of applications into a 3d space and making them accessible. The next step would be to integrate something like Second Life with the operating system.

So here is a potential vision: You as an avatar would be able to use a gaming interface, or possibly something like a Wii controller, to manipulate your virtual office area. This is your private space which may simply be a room or could be an entire island from which to explore. Similar to how you invite others over for dinner, you could have the option to invite people over to your “pad” or similarly go to their personal desktop for social interactions. This might include watching videos, music, working on an application together, any number of things. As a group you could then go out to other virtual worlds, take a class, role playing games, etc..

This is likely going to be the next big innovation in operating systems. The question is – who is going to go there first.

Personally I think it would be it would a stunning achievement if Linden Lab and Nintendo’s Wii were to do a trial to see what the impacts are for working with different interfaces in a 3D environment. IBM is already working with Linden Lab to seamlessly transfer avatar agents from one virtual world to another. So the idea isn’t really all that far fetched and could be a reality within the next 5 years.

Now that is innovation.