Technology
We fear what we do not understand. Thats a phrase that has been widely used and I think it is appropriate for what I am about to write. Mark Cuban the owner of the Dallas Mavericks has said on his blog that P2P traffic is bad. It should be banned and we should use things like Google Video for all our needs. Later he re-tracked his statement on banning P2P, but we should limit P2P traffic. Both these statements really have no merit in todays age. P2P is something that needs to be embraced. I am not simply talking about pirating, but all forms of P2P. Distributing Linux, artists torrenting their music so they can be discovered, putting up clips of home movies to share with the family. P2P needs to be embraced. There are multiple reasons why. Why should I not be able to control my line that I paid 50+ dollars for? Why should I get my traffic limited or throttled depending on what I am doing? We are suppose to be considered an industrialized country, but yet we are such incredible low speeds compared to many parts of the world. My friend from France said he can get a 100Mb connection. Same goes for Japan, Korean and many other countries. I pay for my horrible connect where I have very few choices, if any to pick from. I am forced to use it and I should be in control of what I paid for. Another thing is why should we have 1 or 2 companies monopolizing our traffic? P2P is meant for digital distribution. Meaning many people can share and thus increasing speeds. Imagine if a million people hit 1 site at one time to download a 1Gb file. That server would be overloaded and speeds would be slow. Now imagine the same server serving 1000 people different pieces of that 1Gb file and then those 1000 people share it with more people and that trend continues. A lot faster.
But this whole P2P thing isn’t even the biggest deal to me. My biggest concerns at the moment are companies not willing to adapt and net neutrality. These are the 2 biggest issues for me at the moment. Companies need to learn to adapt to the situation. What I am getting at is the MPAA and RIAA. Instead of following their broken business model, why not adapt and create a new strategy. Instead of suing dead people and 12 year old kids, try adapting to the new way of music distribution. Stop trying to strike fear into people lives. Stop wasting tax money and do something more important. Quit the lobbying for politicians to create new laws where they are making universities obligated to stop piracy and if that does not happen, their funding will be stopped. Stop ruining this country and the lives of our future.
Next is net neutrality. Please do not regulate the internet. When this happens this will be one of the biggest downfalls for our country. When ISPs start charging for what we visit and how often we visit. The worst thing I can see happening is you would pay 40 dollars a month for internet access, but you are only allowed to visit google sites and msn sites. If you want to go to epsn.com too bad your shit out of luck and have to buy that package. This will really piss me off.
I’ve been thinking about it recently, if our country does not adapt and fit technology into our lives, we will perish. I was hoping that my generation would take control of the government, but I don’t think we can wait that long anymore. What I really want is to get people with experience in technology into Congress. I don’t want our Congressmen/woman to say things like ‘the Internet is made up of a series of tubes’. P
/rant