Internet – Page 94 – Stilgherrian

15 April 201016 April 2010

Internet hosting: the cost of support

[This is the first in a series of three articles to help people understand how internet hosting services work from a business perspective. They’re written for my small business clients over at Prussia.Net as part of a review of our own internet hosting service, but I’m hoping they’ll be of general interest. Enjoy.]

Internet hosting prices are usually explained in terms of the amount of storage space you get and the amount of data transfers (“bandwidth”) per month. However the real cost factor is paying the humans who provide support.

Some technical factors do affect the price of hosting, and I’ll address those tomorrow in Internet hosting: the cost of reliability. But with storage and bandwidth prices always dropping, particularly when set up on a large scale, hosting is now so cheap that Google, say, or WordPress.com and many others can provide free hosting in exchange for advertising. Or in Google’s case with Gmail, monitoring your email to build a profile so they can target advertising at you.

No, the humans are the expensive bit, and the cost can vary dramatically depending on how that support is provided. Here’s just a few of the factors.

Continue reading “Internet hosting: the cost of support”

07 April 201007 April 2010

Without civil liberties…

“The only difference between a Nation State and a Mafioso protection racket is the letterhead and the rituals — and the series of concessions, hard-won over eight centuries, that we call ‘civil liberties’.”

That’s the start of my guest post today for Electronic Frontiers Australia, entitled Without civil liberties, government is just a criminal racket.

It’s an essay that combines some thoughts about the constant battle for civil liberties with my reaction to the video posted by Wikileaks at Collateral Murder. It’s footage from 2007 showing a Reuters photojournalist and his driver and others being killed by US helicopter gunfire in Baghdad. It’s footage the US Department of Defence didn’t want you to see. It’s challenging to watch.

This is one of a series of guest posts for the EFA as part of their current fundraising campaign.

07 April 201010 March 2012

Patch Monday: Refused Classification means what, exactly?

Australia’s planned mandatory ISP-level internet filter will block Refused Classification (RC) material. Communications Minister Senator Stephen Conroy says that’s “child pornography, pro-bestiality sites, pro-rape websites and material like that”. But it’s actually more than that.

I covered this in the most recent episode of the Patch Monday podcast, back on 29 March, but I forgot to re-post it here. Consider that fixed.

My guest is Professor Catharine Lumby, one of the authors of Untangling the Net: The Scope of Content caught by Mandatory Internet Filtering.

You can listen below. But it’s probably better for my stats if you listen at ZDNet Australia or subscribe to the RSS feed or subscribe in iTunes.

Please let me know what you think. Comments below. We accept audio comments too. Either Skype to stilgherrian or phone Sydney +61 2 8011 3733.

24 March 201016 December 2011

The 9pm Edict #8

Google takes on China. Internet heavies and clueful people rip into Australia’s mandatory censorship plan. And Senator Conroy says he will release the NBN report… in May.

Here is episode 8 of The 9pm Edict.

You can listen to this episode below. But if you want them all, subscribe to the podcast feed, or even subscribe automatically in iTunes.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 12:22 — 6.0MB)

For more information about tonight’s rant, you can check out my story for Crikey about Refused Classification, the Facebook sacking of Chelsea Taylor, a Google News search for Google versus China and Tony Abbott’s victory speech.

And here’s the story about the National Broadband Network report which I didn’t cover.

If you’d like to comment on this episode, please add your comment below, or Skype to stilgherrian or phone Sydney +61 2 8011 3733.

[Credits: The 9pm Edict theme by mansardian, Edict fanfare by neonaeon, all from The Freesound Project. Photograph of Stilgherrian taken 29 March 2009 by misswired, used by permission.]

22 March 201022 March 2010

Patch Monday: Parents don’t act on cyber-safety fears

Most Australian parents are concerned about the safety of their children online. But new research shows that parents don’t back up their concerns with meaningful actions, and that in any event they might well be concerned about the wrong risks.

Last week Microsoft Australia released their “For Safety’s Sake” research [PDF] which, while giving them a chance to pimp the parental controls in Windows 7, also produced some interesting figures.

While 64% of parents were concerned about cyber-safety, 65% don’t use any parental control software and 62% allow their kids to access the internet unsupervised.

Parents perceive their kids to be more at risk accessing the internet from friends’ homes than their own, and rate the risk from online predators as being more dangerous than exposure to pornography. In turn that’s seen as more dangerous than bullying, which is seen as more dangerous than identity theft.

In this week’s Patch Monday podcast I speak with Microsoft’s chief security advisor in Australia, Stuart Strathdee, as well as with child protection expert Karen Flanagan from Save the Children Australia. The risks are not what they seem.

You can listen below. But it’s probably better for my stats if you listen at ZDNet Australia or subscribe to the RSS feed or subscribe in iTunes.

Please let me know what you think — especially if you’re a parent. We accept audio comments too. Either Skype to stilgherrian or phone Sydney +61 2 8011 3733.

11 March 201014 March 2010

Patch Monday: WAN optimisation and the Facebook patent

The perceived speed of your internet connection isn’t just about raw bandwidth. The National Broadband Network won’t automatically speed up everything.

In this week’s Patch Monday podcast, Steve Dixon from Riverbed Technology explains how inefficiencies in TCP/IP network protocols mean that latency can be as much of a problem as bandwidth. “WAN optimisation”, which is something Riverbed and others sell, can help.

And Kimberlee Weatherall provides some perspective on the controversial Facebook “news feed” patent for “Dynamically providing a news feed about a user of a social network” into perspective. She teaches intellectual property law at the University of Queensland.

You can listen below. But it’s probably better for my stats if you listen at ZDNet Australia — where you’ll see some of the comments already posted — or subscribe to the RSS feed or subscribe in iTunes.

Besides, you’ll get it faster than waiting for me to post it here.

Please let me know what you think. We accept audio comments too. Either Skype to stilgherrian or phone Sydney +61 2 8011 3733.