Washington Post: Cable Firms Faulted For Restrictions On Internet Service. With the Bush administration deciding that the issues should be settled at the FCC and not through legislation, the agency has become a lobbying locus. More than 80 filings from industry and consumer organizations were received on the topic of cable-modem service alone. [Tomalak's Realm]

I'm glad someone is starting to take notice of the Accepable Use Policies and the many restrictions that the cable companies place on Internet users.  The biggest problem with these restrictions is that they severely limit innovation.  Ultimately, this hurts the cable companies, because they really need a killer app to drive subscriber growth.

The Internet is all about computers being connected to each other and about the tremendous value that results from that connectivity.  Unfortunately, I believe the cable companies -- actually most big technology companies -- take a slightly different view: the Internet is about providing various services to consumers who use PCs.

A guy on Slashdot posted an interesting message about how he uses his always on Internet connection.  His computer apparently has the ability to pick up the caller ID of his incoming phone calls.  He uses a web browser, from work or from wherever he happens to be, to connect to the computer in his home and check the caller IDs of those who have called.  That's a truly innovative idea!  While you're away, you can check back to the house and see who has called since you've been away!  That's exactly the kind of innovation that is prohibited by the restrictions placed by Comcast and other cable companies.  I have often envisioned a personal HTTP server, password protected, that allows one to install various plug-ins that provide interesting services via an always-on Internet connection.  Checking your caller ID logs is just one such service.  With such a server running, you could also check your new or stored email or your voice mail (stored on your hard drive).  You could check that your home security system is operating correctly and has not been breached.  You could store your files that you work on while on the road (WebDAV would be good for that).  You could set up a mirroring/peering system with friends or relatives that encrypts important files on your computer (and all your peers' computers) and duplicates them to the hard drives of all your peers -- a kind of transparent backup system.  All of these possibilities are prohibited by restrictions placed by the cable modem ISPs.

12:03:11 PM   

Dylan Tweney: Broken trust. The problem is that Palladium requires users to place a huge amount of trust in Microsoft. You don't get to decide what runs on your computer -- Microsoft does. You can't even open files unless you've been authorized by Microsoft, or by a third party. [Tomalak's Realm]

Many individuals are starting to take a look at Microsoft's Palladium.  I guess corporations are going to love it.  But the opposite is true for individuals.

If I understand Palladium correctly, it's about allowing certain system privileges for only trusted code.  This is a good idea.  It has been the standard operating procedure on Unix systems for decades.  On Unix systems, there is a privileged user account (root) and there are non-privileged users accounts.  By using a non-privileged user account for all computer activities except system administration, Unix users maintain some degree of safety.  Why hasn't Microsoft adopted this idea?  To some extent they have, but not for home users.  Now they want to make a distinction between privileged code and non-privileged code, but they want to do this in a very heavy-handed way, even involving the hardware.  I don't understand why they feel that hardware has to be involved, unless they feel they need to convince Hollywood and other interested parties that the system is so secure that even the computers' owners can't break the security.

I think that we as computer owners feel that we should be able to choose who we trust and who we don't trust.  In particular, I think we should be able to trust ourselves.  But part of Palladium is the idea that a computer's owner can't be trusted.

We want safer computing, but what about the alternatives to Palladium.  Windows XP Home Edition does not allow file shares to be password protected.  That is not a good idea in an increasingly connected world.  Another way to achieve safer computing is to treat program code and data separately.  Microsoft has allowed code and data to merge, through VBA code in Microsoft Office documents and through Active Scripting (Javascript, VBScript) in HTML documents.  If we had separation of code and data, then we would only have to be sure that the applications (the code) were trusted, and we could open any data file.  But when code and data are merged, it's no longer safe to open a data file, because it may contain dangerous code.  Emacs is a good example to look at, because emacs got it right.  Emacs allows customization through user-written program code (macros), but the macros come separate from the data files, and there is a separate step in which the macros are installed.

11:37:20 AM