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Inbox zero: the radical approach
There's been a bit of discussion recently about Inbox Zero, getting your email inbox empty. Well I just discovered a rather radical approach to getting there. I accidentally deleted everything in the inbox. Thought I was in another folder and deleted all.
I've got backups, so if I find there's anything vital I'll be able to recover, but for now it's strangely liberating. Will see how I go.
02 May 2008 15:13 [category: /geek] #
ABC peering
I seem to have been misunderstood here. My post was rather rambling, for which I apologise, though that's the nature of blogs really. The ABC does, indeed, peer with ISPs through PIPE, and no doubt peers whenever approached to do so.
The problem is that they've started delivering their multimedia content (i.e., the chunky stuff) through the Akamai content distribution network. This makes it difficult for the ISPs to work out what is ABC content and what is from somewhere else, as Akamai have a lot of customers.
Now every ISP of anything more than puny size has an Akamai box somewhere in their network, so most of the content would indeed be coming locally, but the point of Akamai's network design is that if the local box is overloaded, doesn't have the latest content, is down, or any other reason, it falls back to the next nearest suitable node. So this content is normally local, but might not be.
What I'm suggesting is that the ABC work with Akamai and ISPs to work out a solution to this. It could be that ABC content almost always comes from the local node. Could it even be always except when the local node is down, in which case the content comes from the ABC network via peering? Dunno. Bigger brains than mine, who know the area well, should work on it.
My simplistic thoughts sees some kind of multicasting over their peering links to ISPs that sign up to the program, and something on the ISP network caches the content. That way the ISP can push the content as far out into their network as demand requires. Though I suppose that's pushing the cost onto the ISPs, so there's probably a better approach, and smarter minds than mine should be brought to bear on the problem.
Hell, for those of us with sweet, sweet megabit-in-the-teens ADSL2+ links could get really, really nice qualkity.
02 Apr 2008 22:09 [category: /geek] #
ABC Playback and quotas
"Sam" comments on Stigherrian's blog about some of his ABC Playback feedback. In particular, he points out that the video is highly compressed because they're mindful of "download caps that the public has to contemplate". There is a solution for this.
Download caps in Australia are a response to the high cost of transit bandwidth. They're a principle that is easy to understand by consumers, but actually bear only a passing relationship with the actual costs of bandwidth. Bandwidth is actually more usually charged, at wholesale level, based on the size of fixed pipe or a pipe's average utilisation. So a gigabyte of download from a consumer is only a cost if it happens at a time when the pipe is under heavy use. Hence the "off-peak" bandwidth allocations from some ISPs.
Now the majority of these costs are for international bandwidth, but the difficulty of determining whether a given chunk of traffic is interntational or local bandwidth, explaining this to consumers and the inevitable disputes led to bandwidth just being charged in a single block. To enhance their offerings, some ISPs offer "free" bandwidth for specific resources, generally ones that are hosted on cheap bandwidth and don't consume any international bandwidth.
The actual bandwidth costs are on a descending scale that looks something like this: international, national (other network), national (own network), ISP's own data centre(s), peering links (but note Telstra refuses to do this), exchange to consumer. So one of the cheapest sources of bandwidth is free peering links, and the ABC sensibly does do such peering.
So the solution here is actually quite simple. The ABC needs to peer with ISPs in a free and open manner, ideally in at least all the major capital cities. The video downloads that will be supplied when ABC Playback is eventually launched would then be a "value add" for ISPs that want to supply it for free.
The BBC has done something exactly like this, though they don't have broadband caps in the UK so it was actually done for rights-management reasons. That way the Beeb can be sure that a consumer ISP service is actually supplied to a UK address, meaning the person has (theoretically) paid the TV Licence fee and so is entitled to the media.
Now there's a problem here that I haven't mentioned. Due to The Chaser vodcasts' popularity last year, the ABC started using Akamai's content distribution network to distribute their multimedia content. This caused my ISP, Internode, to stop including this content in their "unmetered" offering, because they can't distinguish between ABC content and other Akamai-hosted stuff.
It shouldn't be too difficult for the ABC, ISPs and Akamai to come up with a solution, and by offering it on the same basis to all ISPs, there's no conflict with the ABC Charter. It would also mean that the ABC can make available vastly better-quality streams, and be pretty sure that the downloader is Australia-based.
So how about it Auntie?
02 Apr 2008 11:04 [category: /geek] #
A DVD player that doesn't suck?
DVD players seem to be disposable devices these days. You really only get a year out of one before it starts randomly skipping on brand new discs. So I'm in the market for a new one.
This time around, I'd like one that doesn't insist on following the studio's instructions. When I press the "root menu" button, I don't want to be told "Operation not allowed by disc" given that I own both the disc and player.
So does such a device exist? Are there DVD players that obey their owners?
02 Jan 2008 12:54 [category: /geek] #
NYE 2008 and housewarming
The party at our new place last night was loads of fun. Stretching across twelve hours, a bunch of people tramped through the house, got drunk, danced and shouted at each other. Great fun!
