Dr. Augustine Fou's Online Scrapbook

Thursday, September 11, 2008

What Laws Should Govern Computing Clouds?

Source: http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/OmMalik/~3/389087904/

Google this Friday will host for lobbyists, congressional aides and journalists in the Washington D.C. area a talk about cloud computing at which it will release a new Pew Internet and American Life survey of consumer attitudes toward the cloud. Google has obviously launched these D.C.-area talks as a way to help educate regulators and lawmakers about white spaces, online privacy and other topics near and dear to its interests.

Still, I am curious to hear what the Pew survey says consumers think of the cloud. I would have guessed they don’t think much about it all, unless it’s bringing rain. I’m also curious as to what Google thinks regulators should focus on when it comes to running pools of virtualized servers. Bandwidth improvements and ensuring Network Neutrality are one obvious issue for cloud purveyors, other regulation that should be talked about is how laws and regulations govern the physical location of certain data. Indeed, one interesting side note to Google’s patent for running data centers on the high seas is the lack of jurisdiction in international waters.

On the consumer side, a fair issue to consider is how consumer content stored in such clouds can be used. Witness the kerfuffle over Google’s terms of service regarding Chrome, which tried to claim the right to use any content uploaded or displayed via the browser. But when storing files and data in a cloud, ownership and usage rights are essential, as are clear policies that lay out how such content might be accessed, tracked and monitored. Another issue is whether or not such data could ever truly be deleted from clouds, as former Facebook users had discovered. Not all of these issues require regulation, but it’s worth educating lawmakers about them in advance of more services being offered via the cloud.

image courtesy of Google

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Cool Visualization Shows World's Spending On Electronics By Country (We Spend A Lot) [Fun With Data]

Source: http://feeds.gawker.com/~r/gizmodo/full/~3/388789342/cool-visualization-shows-worlds-spending-on-electronics-by-country-we-spend-a-lot

Here we see ol' Mercator, if country sizes were drawn according to the amount of discretionary income spent on electronics by its citizens. As the world's largest economy, the US being the biggest blob here at $162 billion for 2007 is not that surprising. But what might be surprising is Japan, who spends more on recreation than clothing, household items and electronics combined—pretty interesting for such a style- and gadget-conscious nation. Also note central Europe's electronics spending, which is clearly becoming a force to be reckoned with if IFA in Berlin was any indication. Head over to the NYTimes for more playing with this cool little flash data visualization with other categories of spending. [NYTimes via Boing Boing]

Ubuntu 9.04 Jaunty Jackalope Will Have "Blindingly Quick" Boot Times, Float on the Cloud [Ubuntu]

Source: http://feeds.gawker.com/~r/gizmodo/full/~3/388880876/ubuntu-904-jaunty-jackalope-will-have-blindingly-quick-boot-times-float-on-the-cloud

If you rock Ubuntu, you've probably already got your engines revved for the more immediately imminent Intrepid Ibex 8.10 release next month. But that's not stopping Canonical—Ubuntu's main developer—from jibber-jabbering about Jaunty Jackalope, the next major Ubuntu release, which is due in April. Ubuntu 9.04's code name stems from its focus on zip-zoominess, with a goal of making "booting or resuming Ubuntu blindingly quick" and a "blurring of web services and desktop applications." So it'll be a fast hybrid, just like an, uh, real jackalope.

While it's not entirely certain how Jaunty will float on the cloud, Bits notes that Canonical CEO Mark Shuttleworth says they're after "weblications." Either way, it's surely not coincidental that Jaunty's two major goals—a light, snappy OS with serious web app/cloud computing integration—converge to accelerate the death of the traditional Microsoft-dominated desktop. We'll know how well it succeeds in just a few months. [Ars Technica]

Red Confirms DSLR, Says It's Bigger "Revolution" Than Red One [Red]

Source: http://feeds.gawker.com/~r/gizmodo/full/~3/388906551/red-confirms-dslr-says-its-bigger-revolution-than-red-one

Red, makers of the famous Red One camera, have confirmed their upcoming DSLR while dropping breadcrumbs of specs for us to gobble up. First things first, don't call it at SLR—it's a "replacement for DSLRs" going internally by the name DSMC (Digital Still and Motion Camera). And if we're reading between the lines correctly, they're teasing that the camera will feature video content above hi def.

While (insert code name) is not a replacement for Epic or Scarlet, it is strategically targeted at the DSLR space. As Nikon and Canon release their 720P and 1080P, respectively, DSLRs with video capture... RED has a more advanced view of the future.

My personal reading on this is that the company is aiming for 4K capture. They also dropped this other tidbit, in case you aren't excited enough:

I won't comment on any specifics until the 1st of the year. But "revolution" applies more to this than the RED ONE did to cinema.

They'll hear from us January 1st. [Red User via Engadget]

Giz Explains: Why HD Video Downloads Aren't Very High Def [Giz Explains]

Source: http://feeds.gawker.com/~r/gizmodo/full/~3/388906550/giz-explains-why-hd-video-downloads-arent-very-high-def

Yesterday Apple introduced HD TV downloads to the iTunes store, meaning you can watch Peter be super emo on Heroes at a crispy 720p resolution. That's a higher resolution than DVD, and technically, yup, that's HD. There's a catch though. Like every other video download service touting HD videos, it's all actually lower quality than DVD.

It's all about bitrate: How much data is packed into a file, described as bits per second. Generally speaking, a higher bitrate translates into higher quality audio and video, though quality can also be affected by codec—the encoding and compression technique that was used to make and read the file—so bitrate is not an absolute mark of quality, but it's still a very good indicator.

You're probably most familiar with this bitrate business when it comes to ripping your CDs. When you shove a CD into your computer, your ripping program will ask what format you want and what bitrate you want. A song ripped at a higher bitrate will sound better, with more presence and detail, but it does take up more space.

The same principle applies with video, though it's actually a bigger deal, because it's easier to see quality differences in video than it is to hear differences in audio. The bits make a huge difference when you get into fast moving stuff like sports or action movies—to be frank, they'll look like splattered, smeared shit in highly compressed low-bitrate vids. This chart below, expertly crafted by George Ou at ZDNet provides a solid starting point for comparison, with average bitrates of most digital video available.

As you can see, regular DVD runs at about 6-8 megabits per second. High-def iTunes content, despite having a higher resolution, is half that, a mere 4Mbps. Vudu's current HD movies is also about 4Mbps, if you've got the pipes. Xbox Live Marketplace has the highest bitrate—and indeed, often gets props for its quality—at close to 6.8Mbps. On the other hand, standard-def movies on the Netflix Roku box max out at around 2.2Mbps—and are often delivered in lower qualities because of bandwidth constraints. iTunes standard def TV shows run around 1.5Mbps. Now, consider that Blu-ray is a mean 40Mbps and you see that the definition of "HD" is suddenly remarkably vague.

That's a pissload of numbers. What does that mean?

This comparison test we ran in February pretty much shows you what's wrong: No matter how awesome MPEG-4 compression—or whatever the codec of the month is—gets, it can't work miracles when it's missing bits. It's why Vudu, for instance, is testing out a new closer-to-real-HD service—that they've revealed to us has three times the bitrate of any other download service on the market, meaning it should be close to 20Mbps—that will take hours to deliver to your home. But even then, the notion that it would truly rival Blu-ray is totally laughable.

It's not just download services giving you this watered-down so-called "HD lite", either. Comcast was busted cramming three HD channels into the space of two, resulting in crappy looking HDTV, and the satellite guys adding a million HD channels a year aren't much better.

Now that you understand what makes or breaks an HD picture—the amount of data— it's probably no surprise to you that the major reason everyone is peddling subpar HD is bandwidth. HD content is pipe-bustingly huge—a standard-def Battlestar Galactica file on iTunes is 520MB and takes about 15 minutes to download via a strong cable connection. The 720p HD download is 1.4GB and takes 40 minutes or so for your hard drive to completely swallow. The Blu-ray version of the same ep might be 10 times that—like 14GB. Putting that in more context, a single TV episode would take up twice the space as the average dual-layer DVD movie.

Right now, we don't have the broadband infrastructure to support it, and who knows when we will? Hell, the people with the best chance of giving us that added bandwidth—the major ISPs like Comcast and AT&T—are doing just the opposite: Implementing usage caps that will mean less HD downloading. The sad thing is, they probably won't even use the added bandwidth to make their own HD TV channels look better.