- Entertainments

Australia's Internet: Not Neutral, And Proud Of It

nospam@example.com (Angelo) — Wed, 10 Feb 2010 10:11:46 -0700

"Limited availability may become common when access to the higher speed network becomes more widespread, where access would entail the ability to search and use the network but through the service providers portal and search functions. Streaming entertainment will surely be included in this limited availability... " - Harvest Dream, December 2008

Source: Ars Technica

Last week, an Australian federal judge issued a major ruling—the first of its kind worldwide—saying that ISPs aren't required to take action against subscribers after receiving letters alleging copyright infringement. But lost in most of the discussion of the ruling is another hot topic, net neutrality. If you want a good look at what a non-neutral 'Net looks like, take a gander at Australia.

The judge's ruling discussed the business practices of Australia's third-largest ISP, iiNet, and in doing so reminded non-Aussie readers about a defining feature of Internet life Down Under: bandwidth caps. Such caps are common around the world, but Australian ISPs take the idea one step further by setting up partnerships with entertainment services and music download companies. Any data usage directed at one of these favored services doesn't count against the monthly bandwidth cap.

Here's how the judge described iiNet's version of this service: "When an iiNet user exceeds this quota they are ‘shaped’ which means the speed of their connection is slowed to reduce their ability to download because the process of downloading data takes longer. [iiNet CEO] Mr. Malone deposed that the respondent was the first ISP in Australia to introduce ‘shaping’ to control excessive downloading instead of imposing excess usage charges, whereby any downloads over quota would incur a fee per megabyte.

Life in the Freezone

"However, any data downloaded from the Freezone is not included in the monthly quota of a subscriber. In this sense, an iiNet user can consume unlimited amounts of data from the Freezone per month. Further, an iiNet user is still able to use as much data at maximum speed as is desired per month in the Freezone, even if that subscriber is otherwise shaped for that month. The respondent has made a number of agreements with various content providers to make their content available on the Freezone. For example, the respondent has made an agreement with Apple iTunes."

Telstra, one of the largest ISPs in the country, has a similar service at its BigPond ISP. "Get a huge range of entertainment which is Too Big for TV including NRL, AFL, V8 Supercars, Movies, Games, Music and more," says the company. "Plus, downloads won't count towards your usage allowance."

Such strategies aren't limited to Australia. New Zealand ISP Orcon offers customers access to the O Zone, where downloads don't count against caps. And, in a special offer that expired at the end of January 2010, YouTube content didn't count towards the quota.

Network nonneutrality

This is quite clearly nonneutral behavior in any sense of the term. ISPs like iiNet shape traffic when the quota is reached, meaning that all traffic to nonpartner sites is slowed dramatically, while the favored services continue at full speed. This isn't an outright "blocking" of other websites, which can be freely accessed until the cap is reached, but the effect is quite similar. How are high-bandwidth services like video streaming going to compete against those services favored by an ISP? How will new players ever gain market share?

Sweden's Bizarre Christmas Tradition

nospam@example.com (Angelo) — Mon, 28 Dec 2009 17:12:28 -0700

Source: Slate

Three years ago, I went to Sweden with my then-girlfriend (now-wife), to meet her family and celebrate my first Christmas. As an only partially lapsed Jew, I was not well-versed in Christmas traditions, and I was completely ignorant of Swedish customs and culture. So I was prepared for surprises. I was not prepared for this: Every year on Dec. 24 at 3 p.m., half of Sweden sits down in front of the television for a family viewing of the 1958 Walt Disney Presents Christmas special, "From All of Us to All of You." Or as it is known in Sverige, Kalle Anka och hans vänner önskar God Jul: "Donald Duck and his friends wish you a Merry Christmas."

Kalle Anka and the Aracuan BirdKalle Anka and the Aracuan BirdKalle Anka, for short, has been airing without commercial interruption at the same time on Sweden's main public-television channel, TV1, on Christmas Eve (when Swedes traditionally celebrate the holiday) since 1959. The show consists of Jiminy Cricket presenting about a dozen Disney cartoons from the '30s, '40s, '50s, and '60s, only a couple of which have anything to do with Christmas. There are "Silly Symphonies" shorts and clips from films like Cinderella, Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, and The Jungle Book. The special is pretty much the same every year, except for the live introduction by a host (who plays the role of Walt Disney from the original Walt Disney Presents series) and the annual addition of one new snippet from the latest Disney-produced movie, which TV1's parent network, SVT, is contractually obligated by Disney to air.

Kalle Anka is typically one of the three most popular television events of the year, with between 40 and 50 percent of the country tuning in to watch. In 2008, the show had its lowest ratings in more than 15 years but was still taken in by 36 percent of the viewing public, some 3,213,000 people.

...

Watching Kalle Anka for the first time, I was taken aback not only by the datedness of the clips (and the somewhat random dubbing) but also by how seriously my adoptive Swedish family took the show. Nobody talked, except to recite favorite lines along with the characters. My soon-to-be father-in-law, a burly man built like a Scandinavian spruce, laughed at jokes he had obviously heard scores of times before. Nobody blinked at the antiquated animation, the cheesiness of the stories, or even the good-old-fashioned '30s-era Disney-style racism. (In the 1932 "Silly Symphonies" short "Santa's Workshop," there is a scene involving a black doll who yells "Mammy" at the sight of Santa Claus then moons the screen. It was eventually censored from the American version of the cartoon but remains in Kalle Anka.)

The show's cultural significance cannot be understated. You do not tape or DVR Kalle Anka for later viewing. You do not eat or prepare dinner while watching Kalle Anka. Age does not matter—every member of the family is expected to sit quietly together and watch a program that generations of Swedes have been watching for 50 years. Most families plan their entire Christmas around Kalle Anka, from the Smörgåsbord at lunch to the post-Kalle visit from Jultomten. "At 3 o'clock in the afternoon, you can't to do anything else, because Sweden is closed," Lena Kättström Höök, a curator at the Nordic Museum who manages the "Traditions" exhibit, told me. "So even if you don't want to watch it yourself, you can't call anyone else or do anything else, because no one will do it with you."

James Cameron - Storyteller Extraordinaire

nospam@example.com (Angelo) — Mon, 21 Dec 2009 23:38:16 -0700

James Cameron Talks About the Impact Of Avatar

James Cameron - A Four Minute Biography

Google Goggles

nospam@example.com (Angelo) — Wed, 09 Dec 2009 15:11:29 -0700

Modern Warfare - Into The Maelstrom

nospam@example.com (Angelo) — Thu, 26 Nov 2009 12:37:03 -0700

(Warning: Graphic Video Content - Not Suitable For All Readers)

Modern society is in the throes of a deep descent - morality, kindness, patience and understanding are systematically being stripped away by a militaristic media machine that glorifies human massacre and callous indifference to suffering. The video below is taken from a 'game', one that is played by millions of youth around the world everyday. What effect does this type of imagery and interaction have on the subconscious repository of the human psyche?

I hesitated to post this video, but for the sake of keeping an accurate chronicle of the descent into the maelstrom, I felt it necessary. In a period in history where every week we hear of new mass shootings, where media portrayal of murder and brutality is commonplace, even elevated to the status of 'art', we must begin to question the direction of things, we must begin to question our role in the advance of a worldview based on sadism and violence.

With the advent of the remote controlled weaponized drone (now in use in Iraq and Afghanistan) and the slated roll-out of robotic field soldiers, the youth engaged in this type of 'entertainment' will provide the perfect resource pool for machine operators who will be tasked to kill indiscriminately from a room hundreds, if not thousands of miles, from the actual 'battlefield'. The future is being prefigured before our very eyes, but who can see it for what it really is?