Rerouting the Web

SAN FRANCISCO — The era of the American Internet is ending

Invented by American computer scientists during the 1970s, the Internet has been embraced around the globe. During the network’s first three decades, most Internet traffic flowed through the United States. In many cases, data sent between two locations within a given country also passed through the United States.

And now, the balance of power is shifting. Data is increasingly flowing around the United States, which may have intelligence — and conceivably military — consequences.

American intelligence officials have warned about this shift. “Because of the nature of global telecommunications, we are playing with a tremendous home-field advantage, and we need to exploit that edge,” Michael V. Hayden, the director of the Central Intelligence Agency, testified before the Senate Judiciary Committee in 2006. “We also need to protect that edge, and we need to protect those who provide it to us.”

Indeed, Internet industry executives and government officials have acknowledged that Internet traffic passing through the switching equipment of companies based in the United States has proved a distinct advantage for American intelligence agencies. In December 2005, The New York Times reported that the National Security Agency had established a program with the cooperation of American telecommunications firms that included the interception of foreign Internet communications.

Some Internet technologists and privacy advocates say those actions and other government policies may be hastening the shift in Canadian and European traffic away from the United States.

“Since passage of the Patriot Act, many companies based outside of the United States have been reluctant to store client information in the U.S.,” said Marc Rotenberg, executive director of the Electronic Privacy Information Center in Washington. “There is an ongoing concern that U.S. intelligence agencies will gather this information without legal process. There is particular sensitivity about access to financial information as well as communications and Internet traffic that goes through U.S. switches.”

But economics also plays a role. Almost all nations see data networks as essential to economic development. “It’s no different than any other infrastructure that a country needs,” said K C Claffy, a research scientist at the Cooperative Association for Internet Data Analysis in San Diego. “You wouldn’t want someone owning your roads either.”

Source: NY Times

Comcast's 'Unlimited' Internet? - Cry Foul to the FCC !

Suppose you had a car lease with an annual cap of 20,000 miles, and arbitrarily the lease terms were changed to 10,000 miles. Would you push back?

What if your cell phone provider suddenly cut your minutes per month from say 700 to 350? Would you cry foul?

Well, enter Comcast, our greedy friends who just announced they'll cap every account at a total bandwidth of 250 GB per month.

Not an issue, you say. Well, what happens when they want to squeeze more new customers into existing bandwidth, and decide to cut your allocation again, and then charge you premium rates to add back what you've lost?

And consider this... How will your usage patterns change in the next 5 years? As the PC moves into the living room, your bandwidth consumption will increase exponentially as you wirelessly download and watch movies.

Just another profit opportunity for your friends at Comcast !

Here's a helpful guide to file complaints against Comcast:

A Resource Guide for Complaints Against Comcast

1) The customer service reps will give you the IP Network Abuse number: 1-856-317-7272. This is a waste of time. Be forewarned that all you can do at this number is leave a message for someone to call you back. The chances of someone calling back are slim to none .

2) Better to contact the Executive Offices at: 1-215-665-1700 or 1-215-665-2278. Just remember to always stay calm, be polite and be concise....don't ramble. Again, notes are helpful. Tell them you want to file a formal complaint and be specific about the issues involved. Again, log any names of people you speak with.

3) Write a formal letter of complaint to the top management of Comcast. Be very nice but firm, keep things concise and to the point. Try to keep it to one page if possible, two at the most. Start with Brian Roberts, the CEO. Send cc's to the rest of the management team and to each of the directors of the board.

The names of the management team and board of directors is available here:
»www.cmcsk.com/phoenix.zhtml?c=11···ovManage

Send the letters to the management team c/o
Comcast Corporation,
1500 Market Street,
Philadelphia, PA 19102

Use Google to find the mailing addresses of each of the directors.

4) File a complaint with the FCC Consumer Complaint division. Information on how to do this is here:
»www.fcc.gov/cgb/complaints.html

»www.fcc.gov/contacts.html

»www.congress.org/congressorg/dbq···=congdir

While they all have email available, it is better to send hard copies by snail mail. While the email is read by their staffers, much of it doesn't make it to the Congressperson. A higher priority is usually placed upon physical letters...they have a better chance of being seen. And again, try to keep it one page, two at the max.

Also send letters to the Chairman of the following two Congressional subcommittees that oversee internet issues:

The Senate Subcommittee on Communications
»www.congress.org/congressorg/web···nate.gov

The House Subcommittee on Telecommunications and the Internet
»www.congress.org/congressorg/web···ouse.gov

Be extremely polite, concise and professional. Briefly explain the issue, ask them to please look into it and let them know you value their time.

5) File a complaint with your local Cable Franchise Board (found in your local phone book). Also file a complaint with your State Attorney General. Often, they will have a website set up for people to do this.

6)Finally, file a complaint with the Better Business Bureau. You can do this online at:

http://us.bbb.org/WWWRoot/SitePage.aspx?site=113&id=ab12ce37-3680-42cc-9817-df71ecfda32e

Be sure to read their website thoroughly...they are very picky about what they will accept complaints for, and what information is necessary in order for them to proceed with a complaint.

Be aware that processes such as these take time. No results are going to be seen overnight, and many government agencies can take months to deal with a complaint. Please be patient, and give them at least 30 days before checking back with them for a status report

Source: Thanks to "mapiper" for this helpful guide

http://www.dslreports.com/forum/remark,9076400

PA Turnpike - Highway Robbery

I have happy memories of riding in the back seat of my parents' car driving from New Jersey to Michigan to visit relatives each summer. Even at 4 years old, I remember how amazing it was to travel on the Pennsylvania Turnpike and drive through those tunnels that, from a 4 year old's perspective, seemed endless. I remember the (what's now considered retro) look of the toll plazas, as it was the 1950's futuristic.

Now, this national treasure is about to be put on the auction block. Inconceivable? Desperate to raise state revenue, PA is in the final stages of trying to auction off the licensing rights (read: revenue) to the highest bidder.

If this goes through, other major U.S. highways, that we paid for with our tax dollars, will be auctioned off similarly. That in turn could jump-start projects in waiting, from Florida's Alligator Alley to Chicago's Midway Airport.

You can only imagine how the toll prices will increase when the profiteer needs to recoup their investment. The new operators can raise tolls 25% in 2009, then keep them in line with inflation every year, according to the Wall Street Journal, 8/26/08. You can read more here.

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB121971201641371425.html

Please join me in telling your State Representatives to flush this idea.

And once you've done that, click on this link to read an amazing history of the PA Turnpike that dates back to the late 1800's as a failed railroad project.

www.pahighways.com/toll/PATurnpike.html

Finally, here's a link to a collector of PA Turnpike postcards that may bring you back to when you were 4 years old, and in awe of the majesty of this road.

http://flickr.com/photos/mytravelphotos/2681317644/

It's Finally Arrived, the Women's Remote

Pls. click on this picture to enlarge it. Source: Thanks to Babs !

Tightwalking the Twin Towers

On a gray morning in August, 1974, a young French aerialist walked a tightrope between Towers 1 and 2 of the World Trade Center. He stayed suspended above lower Manhattan for 45 minutes.

There, he was almost free.

Police couldn't get to him.

Authorities stood helpless, waiting.

Citizens cheered him from below.

For nearly an hour, as Phillippe Petit later described it, the Twin Towers breathed quietly with him, "as they welcomed a trespassing poet determined to etch his destiny on the sky."

When he completed his performance to his own satisfaction, he calmly stepped off the tightwire and back into the world, offering his wrists to the waiting handcuffs.

He was taken to New York's Downtown hospital to be examined for mental illness. “The police thought he was crazy,” remembers John Flynn, M.D., who at 87 is still practicing at the same hospital. “I told them he wasn’t — that he was a trained aerialist. Then they took the handcuffs off him.” Petit remembered Flynn and later sent him a photo. “We hung it in our bedroom at home,” he said.

Two years after the Towers fell, Petit wrote a brief and moving essay about them called

My Towers, Our Towers

I walked a tightrope from one to the other--and I watched them die.

by PHILIPPE PETIT

Saturday, September 13, 2003

You breathe, don't you?

So do I. And so did they, the twin towers of the World Trade Center. Whenever a cloud interrupted the sunshine that made their silver robes flutter chromatically, the drop in temperature caused the steel skeletons to contract a little; when it passed, they expanded again.

You and I groan in anger at times. So did they, when gales forced them to sway, although they had been designed to win that sort of tug-of-war.

All this I know for a fact; because I rigged a cable between the two towers, from crown to crown--the appellation for the inclined setback of the top floors that supported the roof, coined by Leslie Robertson, the buildings' structural engineer.

That gray morning of Aug. 7, 1974, the twins, separated at birth, acquiesced in a temporary union, as they welcomed a trespassing poet determined to etch his destiny upon the sky. I linked them with a smile, that of my cable's catenary curve. The curve of my involuntary smile mirrored that of the cable as I took my first steps. The towers whispered in awe. At midcrossing, I sat down to contemplate the horizon and noticed that it, like my balancing pole, was slightly curved; the towers had imparted to me a most important discovery: "The earth is round!" They quieted down the moment I genuflected, so that I could hear the clamoring of the astonished audience that had gathered a quarter of a mile below. The towers kindly held their breath as I lay down upon the wire, they eavesdropped on my silent dialogue with a red-eyed seagull that hovered above me.

That morning, the twin towers became my towers.

Six years earlier, learning of their impending birth, I had decided to conquer them. I watched them grow. I spied on them. I fell in love. Then, under cover of night, I married them, with a seven-eighths-inch steel cable composed of six strands of 19 wires each. At daybreak, the entire world was our witness.

For what seemed an eternity, we enjoyed each other. I visited them often, through the ups and downs of their colorful lives. I introduced them to my friends and family. And then, on a perfectly clear blue September morning, I watched them die, stabbed in the back by assassins who vaporized in mid-air.

I heard my towers cry for help for a long, long time. I listened in anguish, powerless, to their last sighs. I witnessed their collapse and fell silent, eviscerated. Where had they gone? Who besides me knew that, despite 200,000 tons of steel, glass, concrete, and aluminum, the towers were made mostly of air? Between every piece of solid material, air! Mostly air. Could it be air to air? Like ashes to ashes?

Fluidly, in a deadly cascade of smoke and debris, in a matter of seconds, they erased themselves, taking thousands of human lives with them.

I close my eyes, I remember and pay my respect to the victims and their families. That dreadful morning, my towers became your towers, our towers.

Eleven years ago, when my young daughter died without warning, the dean of the Cathedral Church of St. John the Divine, the Very Rev. James Parks Morton, came to my side. He offered me guidance from his heart, but quite commandingly: "Speak of her in the present; you must not use the past tense!"

When asked today, "Do you have children?" I answer, "Yes, I have a daughter named Gypsy. She is 9 1/2 years old, and no longer alive."

So are my twin towers, our twin towers, gone, yet still standing tall, made of thin air, yet gloriously defying the sunset on this warm late summer evening.

Look at them!

Mr. Petit is artist in residence at the Cathedral of St. John the Divine in New York

Sources:

Thanks to lisa schamess and WSJ for narrative and pix.

Why Is This Dog Looking Confused?

For years, lots of dog lovers have gone without the companionship of man's best friend because, for one reason or another, they felt they couldn't keep a pet.

Now, some are getting around obstacles by sharing ownership. And to meet that growing demand, pet-lending services are proliferating.

Penny De Los Santos wanted a dog but traveled too much to care for one full time. So, she opted for the next best thing: a time-share pet.

For two years, Ms. Santos shared a mellow female Husky mix with her neighbors, who took the dog for about one week a month. They split veterinary bills and the cost of vaccinations and heartworm pills. The neighbors called the dog Nika. Ms. Santos preferred the name Monica.

"It's kind of like Monica had two lives with two families," says the 39-year-old photographer in Austin, Texas.

For travelers, some locations of Fairmont Hotels & Resorts, a subsidiary of Marriott International Inc., are offering guests the chance to take out resident dogs for hours at a time.

Some animal shelters let dog lovers swing by and take a pooch out for a day.

Short-term pet leasing, specifically, has drawn criticism that the practice frays the traditional bond between man and dog. "From a social standpoint, it's very hard on the animal," says Bonnie Beaver, professor at Texas A&M University College of Veterinary Medicine, in College Station, and a past president of the American Veterinary Medical Association.

Dogs could develop abnormal behaviors such as obsessive licking and whining. Also, the practice "can make them more leery of people," Dr. Beaver says.

Source: WSJ's Anjali Athavaley reports. (Aug. 5)

Why It Pays To Rent

For all you financial whizzes and MBAs, do the math on the Paul McCartney-Heather Mills divorce vs. Eliot Spitzer's deal.

After 5 years of marriage, Sir Paul paid Heather $49 million. Assuming he got sex every night during their 5 year relationship (which would NOT have happened!) it ended up costing him $26,849 per time.

On the other hand, Elliot Spitzer's call girl, Kristen (see pic) is an absolute stunner with a body like no other, charges $4,000 an hour. For anything!

At Eliot's rate, Paul McCartney would have paid Kristen a total of $7.3 million for sex every night for 5 years, and still pocketed a saving of $41.7 million!

Value-added benefits are: a 22 year old hot babe, no begging, no coaxing, never a headache, plays all requests, no bitching and complaining or 'to do' lists.

Best of all, she leaves when you're done, and comes back when you ask her. All at 1/7th the cost, with no legal fees.

Sometimes renting makes far more sense.

Source: Thank you to the Big Boy