real time internet traffic map

akamai provides a real time monitor of internet traffic, attacks and latency on its site. now you can see who is straining the tubes by downloading too much porn, or which countries are being jerks and sending out attacks.

laika, the russian space programs heroic dog finally gets some recognition. a new statue in moscow has been erected in the dogs memory. animals were the test subjects for early space flight to prepare for humans and were often forgotten, let alone mentioned directly in the history books. have a toast to laika the next time youre at the bar cos if it wasnt for that dog we might not be where we are today.

so i am in montreal for the next 5 days for a conference and let me go over some things that have come to my attention whilest traveling. wireless is only as good as the amount of power plugs to recharge. multinational corporations are everywhere especially in the places that say they hate us american alot. i am an ignorant american in a land where french is dominant, i accept it, but seriously, cheese eating surrender monkies they are. all the signs have french on top of the english translation. the exit signs had french to the left of the english horizontally. oh and verizon you are a pack of lies. fuck you and your network. i need some dinner i am grumpy.

official NASA image.
yea i am a nerd. what?

its easy to diss on earthlink and the failed philly wifi initiative but history shows this is a huge undertaking. if silicon valley couldnt pull it off i think that should raise an alarm. covad, a major provider of bandwith, is “is hoping to cover one square mile of downtown San Carlos, California for three months, and during the test period it will gauge just how lucrative such an initiative is.” the key word being lucrative. providing wifi isnt cheap but being a bandwith provider already i think should help things along. as scary as this is to say, who in philly is in the position to pick up philly wifi and run with it? comcast? verizon? both very hated companies in the region.. should be interesting especially with the wide roll out already in place in philly who will come and rescue the project.

stumbled onto this article outlining a feature/flaw in the itunes rental schema. according to the post unless your new HDTV is capable of decoding HDCP (High Bandwidth Digital Content Protection) it will be unable to play the movie you just rented from the itunes store. this is another case where people trying to legitimately purchase a digital download but will be forced by the content industry to “pirate” it instead. this sucks cos i just bought an appletv over the weekend and am unsure as to whether my tv is HDCP compliant.

the library of congress took a $3mill “grant” of technology and services from microsoft in return for placing kiosks with the vista OS and redo the website using silverlight. this makes me sad. vista is a piece of crap. silverlight is only compatible on vista. an institution such as the library of congress should not be wrapping public works in proprietary and non-interoperable locks.

Lawrence Lessig is preparing a two prong approach to clean up congress. the first is his change congress initiative and a deciding on whether to run for congress himself in CA. Lessig came to my attention through his free culture push and his copyright reform talks, namely his TED talk entitled How creativity is being strangled by the law. he is a very very smart man on many fronts and would be a welcome addition to congress along with a good handful of his friends and colleagues as well. i say do it. new blood, new ideas are needed within washington to help this country move forward and out of the grips of money tainted lobbyists.