Selling Wheels

Google just announced Measurement Lab (or M-Lab for short).

M-Lab provides tools to aid network diagnostic on the ISP level.

For example, we can use the tools to check if the ISP is blocking or throttling BitTorrent traffic.

While it is no secret which ISP is doing that in Singapore, there’s another tool called DiffProbe that will allow us to find out if the ISP is purposedly trying to throttle or shuffle certain kinds of traffic to a slower pipes while allowing others to be on the faster pipe.

ISP needs to be more transparent about what they are blocking, throttling and even shuffling. ISP is always on the lookout for new revenue stream. And I won’t be surprised that there will be such practices, particularly allowing paying customers to gain access to the faster pipes.

I hope it won’t happen and I am not sure what will be IDA’s stand on this or the ISP/telcos stand on this.

But, if it does happens, rest assured that the consumers will have an array of tools to prove things and try to influence the decisions.

Given the current economic conditions, it is hard for one to plan beyond the next 1-2 years. But, if we are to take time and just step aside and ponder for a moment, it does not take a lot to think further and understand the change around us. It is only at such times that we are able to recognise opportunities.

The Next 100 Years, is the latest book by George Freidman of Stratfor.

It is interesting to note what are some of his forecast. Taken from a review on Amazon, his forecasts:

• Russia emergence as an aggressive hegemonic power;
• China’s influence in international affairs due to traditional social and economic imbalances;
• Rise of American in the second half of the century.
• Border conflicts bewteen US and Mexico

This book, even before it release, is already among the Best Seller on Amazon.

There aren’t that many authors who can write on geopolitical issues well. George Freidman is one of them that I will like to follow.

You can get your copy of the book at Amazon

If you are new to Vista like myself, one of the irritation will be to deal with permission issues with files in Program Files.

After installing Zend Core in the Program Files folder (which is the default setting), I find that I cannot create folders inside ‘htdocs’.

Apparently, Vista has some new protective feature that tries to be smart and disallowed changes to stuffs under the Program Files directory.

The easy way to solve this is just to uninstall Zend Core, Apache or whatever programs that encounter this issue and install it in a folder outside of it.

You can choose a separate drive eg. D:\ or even in your user directory.

Vista, in my opinion, is one version that provides no little benefit to the users. Not really worth the upgrade unless it comes with a new machine.

And even if it comes with a new machine, be prepared for a culture shock. Things that can be done in XP may not hold true with this version.

To many of us, Cisco is a networking company.

However, all these is about to change as they just launch EOS, an appliance that allows users to interact with social networks.

This product offering aims to allow media companies to easily reach out and gather feedback from their consumers in social networks.

A very good sign that CISCO is moving beyond selling network appliances and offering alternative services to YouTube and in a way, maybe, challenging Apple in this area.

More information about this is reported at WSJ

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB123128575997659063.html?mod=googlenews_wsj

Many thanks to Olivier and Peter for putting in the efforts to translate the book to English.

The book is now available via Lulu.com

http://www.lulu.com/content/5382304

If you are interested to find out why I still have high hopes for REBOL, read the book and find out for yourself why REBOL makes things easier.

I will be ordering a paperback for myself.