Broadband in America

We have a problem in America. The United States is the last standing superpower in the world. As a country, we have some of the best scientific minds in the world. We have access to some of the best universities in the world. We spend billions of dollars to “police” the world, and yet our technology infrastructure is lagging behind most of the worlds developed countries.

According to Phillip J. Weiser and Thomas Bleha in an article from the September issue of Foreign Affairs the number of DSL connections in Japan went from 100,000 in 2001 to more than 9,000,000 in 2004. He reason for this phenomenal growth in Japan is simple. Japan does not have policies that stifle competition in its telecommunications industry. As a matter of fact, Japan provides incentives for expanding broadband and wireless technologies and making them available for it’s people. As a result, there is more competition in Japan, which means lower prices and higher speeds for it’s high tech consumers.

Japan is not the only one ahead of the United States in broadband technologies. One study I saw while researching this topic puts the United States at 16th in the world in broadband technologies and another study, published on money.cnn.com ranks the US at 12th in the world. In case you where wondering who was ahead of us, they were (in order) Korea, Netherlands, Denmark, Iceland, Canada, Switzerland, Belgium, Japan Finland, Norway, Sweden, and finally the United States.

OK, those are the stats. Now you may ask yourself how could this happen? The standards body for the Internet is located in the United States. Silicon Valley is in California, not Korea. We should be the world leader in technology, right? Wrong, and the answer to why is simple. Lobbyists. The telecommunications industry has one of the most powerful lobbying groups in Washington and they will do anything to protect their interests. As a result, in 2002 the FCC made a stupid decision in favor of large cable companies. They do not have to let their competitors lease their backbone network, so much less competition. Some would say that the reason for this is to encourage providers to invest in a more robust backbone for their networks and theoretically expand their services to a bigger market without fear that they will be building lines for the competition. This is a weak reason. There are thousands of miles of dark fiber in the US that is not being utilized already, and I believe if this infrastructure was opened up to smaller, newer providers. This would foster growth and competition.

But as usual, when the United States government is involved, growth is stifled to protect the interests of the bigger corporations. Another industry that is involved is the television and movie industry. They are so afraid that people will start stealing their content that they would love to stop growth in the industry. I say to them, if they would be innovative and provide a viable alternative to theft, just like iTunes did for the music industry, they wouldn’t have to worry about it.

If the government continues to favor the big companies, and suppress innovation, there is no hope of making the US a major player in the world technology market. The only hopes that I see is maybe America will finally wake up and realize George Bush is a terrible president and get those Republican warmongers out of congress and elect a forward thinking Democrat.

Is Google the next evil empire?

Microsoft has long held the title in the computer and software industry as being the “evil empire”. I agree with this statement somewhat. Microsoft does play hardball with computer manufacturers, and of course Microsoft wants you to use their media player, and they want you to use their MSN web portal, but hey, they are in business to make money just like the next guy.

The other side of the coin is, as far as the desktop market is concerned and certainly the Office Suite market, no one has built a better mousetrap. If there were a product that could compete with Microsoft on either front, I’m sure the words “evil empire” and “monopoly” would never be uttered. Basically, to make a long story short, Microsoft is not considered a darling of the computer industry.

Ok, back to Google. Google is following a similar path that the Microsoft of old followed long ago. They are doing search better than anybody. Not only that, they are doing ads better than anybody, hence the 7 billion dollars in liquid revenue. Google is poised to take over the Internet as far as local searches and mapping are concerned with the free wi-fi they are offering in larger cities (and rumored to go nationwide). If they can pull this off, Microsoft and Yahoo may as well throw in the towel. This has the current evil empire on the run in this particular market, and I’m sure they are wondering with all the brainpower that Google is hiring, what’s next for the company with the famous motto “Don’t be evil”.

With the new wi-fi service, which could easily pay for itself with targeted ads, the Internet belongs to Google. GMail, Googles new E-mail service upped the ante and gave users a gigabyte of storage, and now over two gigs of storage for free. When this service came out last year I thought it was great, but it was the first time I heard the words “Google and Evil Empire” in the same sentence.

Now there is Google Earth. Google is launching satellites left and right. Google Labs is turning out products left and right. Lets not forget Google talk, their new instant messaging program that is based open source standards! This is much different than Microsoft or Google have done it so even though it hasn’t taken off yet, there is potential there. Oh I forgot about Blogger, the source for millions and millions of people to publish a little news and a lot of absolutely nothing. Never the less, it’s a very popular service. And my absolute favorite, Google Desktop Search, bringing the power of Google to the desktop. It is the absolute fastest way to find files on your computer, and the good thing is, you don’t even have to keep everything in neat little folders, just type a keyword and BAM its there.

Which brings me to my next point, what if Google, with all the engineering and algorithm pumping power they have, made an operating system, or an office suite? That would make the 800-pound gorilla (or Microsoft for now) shake in their shoes and Google would become the evil empire of the next generation.

Funniest George W. Bush Video Ever!!

This is hilarious. Click Here to laugh your ass off.

Linux Developers Unite!!

Linux as an operating system has grown in leaps and bounds in the server market. I believe there is a lot more room to grow in this vertical market, but the biggest area for growth is the desktop environment. Microsoft has a stranglehold on the market in this area and the reasons for this monopoly are simple. Microsoft is designed so that anyone can use their operating system. Can Linux do this without losing some of the powerful features of the operating system that make it so popular with the IT professional? I believe the answer is yes, and in the following paragraphs I am going to address some of the key development issues that are holding Linux back as a desktop contender.

Linux succeeds in the server market for a couple of reasons. Cost of the operating system is generally nil. This fact, coupled with the overall power of the operating system make it attractive to those of us that are technically inclined. If you take the time to learn the command line interface, and how to configure the sometimes cryptic .config files, Linux is a much more powerful OS than Windows.

There are some very real and very big problems with the Linux development community. Everyone is working on their own proprietary distribution and every distribution is different. One developer will name the directory one thing, and one will name it something else. You install applications one way on one distro, and another way on another distro. The point I am trying to make is that the Linux community needs to develop standards. Instead of building hundreds of different distributions the community needs to get together and build a richer experience in a smaller amount of distributions. If there was a standard filing system, for example, the end user could adapt to the change much easier. I am not saying, “Make a Microsoft-like product.” And I am not saying to take away the powerful features of Linux. What I am saying is build around standards. Don’t do one thing a hundred different ways, but do one thing well and move on to develop a richer experience around those standards.