What's one of the most annoying things about television? Advertising. Radio? Advertising. Hulu.com? Advertising. And now YouTube? That's right... Advertising. It's everywhere, and it makes me want to /wrists.
SOME advertising on the Internet (although very little) is actually done tastefully. In fact, I'm not sure I have a problem with unintrusive advertising. Take GMail, for example, or the Google search engine. Small text ads that don't interfere with the content I'm trying to view. Admittedly, I think they have little effect on me, as I mostly ignore them and hardly ever remember seeing them. But they're there, so the advertisers are happy and the websites posting them are happy.
But YouTube has for some time put ads at the bottom of videos. DIE YOUTUBE!! It's really dumb, because they cover the bottom portion of the video, and to get rid of it I have to click something. I hate it enough to consider not using YouTube, but so far it hasn't gotten to that point (yet). I'm wondering when we'll get to the point where the bandwidth consumed by ads exceeds the bandwidth consumed by spam e-mail. I know we have a long way to go for that, but it wouldn't surprise me if spam actually had a rival in the future...
Monday, April 19, 2010
Wednesday, April 7, 2010
Comcast vs Net Neutrality
So apparently Comcast won a court case whereby it was determined that Comcast has the right to restrict internet traffic that traverses their network. There are at least several viewpoints on this, but I'm focusing on two in particular: (1) Comcast is offering the service, owns the equipment providing the service, and has every right to set forth the terms of use for that service. If customers don't like the terms of that service then they can get internet service from another company (if available) or do without. (2) Comcast restricting traffic that traverses their network is censorship. Everyone except the Chinese government knows that censorship is evil.
I can honestly say that I see and understand both viewpoints. Comcast wants to protect their investment and offer adequate levels of service to all their customers. In particular, BitTorrent traffic apparently places an undue stress on their network and hampers the adequacy of service to other customers on their network. The move to block BitTorrent traffic is a protective mechanism. But customers want free reign over what they can do on the public internet. The internet is public and (supposedly) largely unregulated. Paying for access to this public medium entitles people to use it as they wish within the laws of the land set forth by the government. This free reign is unrestrictive and the most desireable scenario. (Like I said, censorship is evil.)
It's a battle between what customers want and what service providers offer. Customers aren't going to do without the service, and if providers are few there isn't much choice for the customer. I see two possible conclusions that I can draw about Comcast. First, Comcast is being a dick to its customer base. It either has a god complex or some underlying motive to extort money from customers through all of this. But I'm usually the type of person to give the benefit of the doubt in most scenarios, and I will do so here. I defer to my second possible conclusion, and that is that Comcast has an inadequate infrastructure to handle the traffic generated by their customers. They've provided more offerings than they can support, and are now restricting their offerings so they can provide service to their too-large customer base.
According to Comcast's SEC filing on February 23, 2010, Comcast had a net income of $3.638 billion in 2009, an increase of 42.8% from 2008. Now with a debt of $29.1 billion I can understand that Comcast might want to spend money paying that off. In fact, they apparently reduced their debt by $3.4 billion in 2009 according to the filing. At the same time I'd like to think an investment of even part of that $3.638 billion net income in infrastructure upgrades would allow for happier, unrestricted customers more willing to give their money to Comcast for internet service. But that's just me.
What do you think?
I can honestly say that I see and understand both viewpoints. Comcast wants to protect their investment and offer adequate levels of service to all their customers. In particular, BitTorrent traffic apparently places an undue stress on their network and hampers the adequacy of service to other customers on their network. The move to block BitTorrent traffic is a protective mechanism. But customers want free reign over what they can do on the public internet. The internet is public and (supposedly) largely unregulated. Paying for access to this public medium entitles people to use it as they wish within the laws of the land set forth by the government. This free reign is unrestrictive and the most desireable scenario. (Like I said, censorship is evil.)
It's a battle between what customers want and what service providers offer. Customers aren't going to do without the service, and if providers are few there isn't much choice for the customer. I see two possible conclusions that I can draw about Comcast. First, Comcast is being a dick to its customer base. It either has a god complex or some underlying motive to extort money from customers through all of this. But I'm usually the type of person to give the benefit of the doubt in most scenarios, and I will do so here. I defer to my second possible conclusion, and that is that Comcast has an inadequate infrastructure to handle the traffic generated by their customers. They've provided more offerings than they can support, and are now restricting their offerings so they can provide service to their too-large customer base.
According to Comcast's SEC filing on February 23, 2010, Comcast had a net income of $3.638 billion in 2009, an increase of 42.8% from 2008. Now with a debt of $29.1 billion I can understand that Comcast might want to spend money paying that off. In fact, they apparently reduced their debt by $3.4 billion in 2009 according to the filing. At the same time I'd like to think an investment of even part of that $3.638 billion net income in infrastructure upgrades would allow for happier, unrestricted customers more willing to give their money to Comcast for internet service. But that's just me.
What do you think?
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