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Ars: "Why YouTube buffers: The secret deals that make—and break—online video"
by J.C. DE MARTIN Aug. 3, 2013

Aug. 3, 2013

E' lungo, ma ne vale assolutamente la pena. juan carlos Why YouTube buffers: The secret deals that make—and break—online video /When ISPs and video providers fight over money, Internet users suffer./ by Jon Brodkin <http://arstechnica.com/author/jon-brodkin/> - July 29 2013, 3:00am CEST Lee Hutchinson has a problem. My fellow Ars writer is a man who loves to watch YouTube videos—mostly space rocket launches <http://arstechnica.com/science/2013/03/swimming-with-spacemen/> and gun demonstrations <http://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2013/07/trackingpoint-aims-to-produce-super-…>, I assume—but he never knows when his home Internet service will let him do so. "For at least the past year, I've suffered from ridiculously awful YouTube speeds," Hutchinson tells me. "Ads load quickly—there's never anything wrong with the ads!—but during peak times, HD videos have been almost universally unwatchable. I've found myself having to reduce the quality down to 480p and sometimes even down to 240p to watch things without buffering. More recently, videos would start to play and buffer without issue, then simply stop buffering at some point between a third and two-thirds in. When the playhead hit the end of the buffer—which might be at 1:30 of a six-minute video—the video would hang for several seconds, then simply /end/. The video's total time would change from six minutes to 1:30 minutes and I'd be presented with the standard 'related videos' view that you see when a video is over." Hutchinson, a Houston resident who pays Comcast for 16Mbps business-class cable, is far from alone. As one Ars reader recently complained <http://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2013/06/verizon-bandwidth-pro…>, "YouTube is almost unusable on my [Verizon] FiOS connection during peak hours." Another reader responded, "To be fair, it's unusable with almost any ISP." Hutchinson's YouTube playback has actually gotten better in recent weeks. But complaints about streaming video services—notably YouTube and Netflix—are repeated again and again in articles <https://secure.dslreports.com/shownews/Why-Is-Everyone-Having-YouTube-Strea…> and support forums <http://forums.comcast.com/t5/Xfinity-com-Website/Netflix-too-slow/td-p/1728…> across the Internet. Why does online video have such problems? People may assume there are perfectly innocent causes related to their computers or to the mysterious workings of the Internet. Often, they're correct. But cynical types who suspect their Internet Service Providers (ISPs) intentionally degrade streaming video may be right as well. No, your ISP (probably) isn't sniffing your traffic every time you click a YouTube or Netflix link, ready to throttle your bandwidth. But behind the scenes, in negotiations that almost never become public, the world's biggest Internet providers and video services argue over how much one network should pay to connect to another. When these negotiations fail, users suffer. In other words, bad video performance is often caused not just by technology problems but also by /business decisions/ made by the companies that control the Internet. [...] Continua qui: http://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2013/07/why-youtube-buffers-t…

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Why 'I Have Nothing to Hide' Is the Wrong Way to Think About Surveillance
by Stefano Quintarelli Aug. 3, 2013

Aug. 3, 2013

Why 'I Have Nothing to Hide' Is the Wrong Way to Think About Surveillance bell'articolo di wired http://is.gd/rKjOIN ciao, s. -- my calendar: http://doodle.com/quinta http://blog.quintarelli.it

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Re: [nexa] Atlantic: "The Hole in Our Collective Memory: How Copyright Made Mid-Century Books Vanish"
by yanfry Aug. 2, 2013

Aug. 2, 2013

---------- Messaggio inoltrato ---------- > From: "J.C. DE MARTIN" <demartin(a)polito.it> > To: nexa(a)server-nexa.polito.it > Cc: > Date: Wed, 31 Jul 2013 19:39:24 +0200 > Subject: [nexa] Atlantic: "The Hole in Our Collective Memory: How > Copyright Made Mid-Century Books Vanish" > The Hole in Our Collective Memory: > How Copyright Made Mid-Century Books Vanish > *A book published during the presidency of Chester A. Arthur has a > greater chance of being in print today than one published during the time > of Reagan. * > > Rebecca J. Rosen <http://www.theatlantic.com/rebecca-rosen/> **Jul 30 > 2013, 1:35 PM ET** > > Last year I wrote about some very interesting research<http://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2012/03/the-missing-20th-cent…>being done by Paul J. Heald at the University of Illinois, based on > software that crawled Amazon for a random selection of books. At the time, > his results were only preliminary, but they were nevertheless startling: > There were as many books available from the 1910s as there were from the > 2000s. The number of books from the 1850s was double the number available > from the 1950s. Why? Copyright protections (which cover titles published in > 1923 and after) had squashed the market for books from the middle of the > 20th century, keeping those titles off shelves and out of the hands of the > reading public. > > Heald has now finalized his research<http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2290181>and the picture, though more detailed, is largely the same: "Copyright > correlates significantly with the disappearance of works rather than with > their availability," Heald writes. "Shortly after works are created and > proprietized, they tend to disappear from public view only to reappear in > significantly increased numbers when they fall into the public domain and > lose their owners." > > The graph above shows the simplest interpretation of the data. It reveals, > shockingly, that there are substantially more new editions available of > books from the 1910s than from the 2000s. Editions of books that fall under > copyright are available in about the same quantities as those from the > first half of the 19th century. Publishers are simply not publishing > copyrighted titles unless they are very recent. > [...] > > Continua qui: > http://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2013/07/the-hole-in-our-colle… > > Per i non anglofoni (e per eventuali "reply in rete") potete trovare la traduzione del collega pirata Mauro qui http://allarrembaggiopirati.blogspot.it/2013/08/l-buco-nella-nostra-memoria… Byez. -- - Sito Ufficiale http://partito-pirata.it - Wiki del Partito Pirata Italiano http://www.piratpartiet.it/mediawiki/ PGP ID Chiave: 0x5999DA69 PGP Fingerprint: 7645 E550 DE63 F9B0 F5DF F699 69C9 29D5 0C88 C5E5

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Economist: "Liberty’s lost decade"
by J.C. DE MARTIN Aug. 2, 2013

Aug. 2, 2013

Security v freedom in the United States *Liberty’s lost decade* /The war on terror haunts America still; it should recover some of its most cherished values/ Aug 3rd 2013 |From the print edition THE case of Private Bradley Manning, convicted this week by a military court of leaking secrets to the WikiLeaks website and now facing up to 136 years in jail, looks as if it might be the high-water mark of America’s zealous security culture. It certainly ought to be. After the attacks of September 11th 2001, George Bush tipped the balance too far from liberty towards security, and it has stayed there under Barack Obama. As Mr Manning awaits his sentence, Edward Snowden, a contractor for the American intelligence services, was reported on August 1st to have gone to Russia, where he has been offered a year's temporary asylum. He had set out to shed light on the warrantless warehousing by the National Security Agency (NSA) of private data belonging to millions of American citizens, possibly in breach of the Patriot Act and the Fourth Amendment. His revelations continued this week. Meanwhile the Obama administration has seized journalists’ telephone records and pursued leakers with a legal sledgehammer. [...] Continua qui: http://www.economist.com/news/leaders/21582525-war-terror-haunts-america-st…

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Piemonte Visual Contest
by Fabio Malagnino Aug. 2, 2013

Aug. 2, 2013

Ciao a tutti con una punta di orgoglio vi comunico che oggi lanciamo il Piemonte Visual Contest, un progetto pensato da Consiglio regionale del Piemonte e consorzio Top-Ix. L'obiettivo è raccontare la storia della regione attraverso l'utlizzo dei dati pubblici, elaborando visualizzazioni statiche (Infografiche) o dinamiche (data visualization). Il concorso è aperto a grafici, designer, sviluppatori, scuole e aziende. In allegato trovate tutte le informazioni vi chiedo la cortesia, se potete, di far girare l'informazione grazie mille a presto -- Fabio Malagnino Blog&SenzaRete: http://www.fabiomalagnino.it Torino Digitale: http://www.torinodigitale.it Twitter @invisigot @crpiemonte Email me at fabio.malagnino(a)gmail.com G-Talk me on invisigot(a)gmail.com Skype me at invisigot74 Call me at +39.340.3642979

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SAVE THE DATE: workshop I CODICI (software) DELLA DEMOCRAZIA
by fiorella de cindio Aug. 2, 2013

Aug. 2, 2013

Che differenza c'è tra LiquidFeedback e Airesis ? e tra Tu Parlamento promosso da Laura Puppato e il Parlamento Elettronico di cui il Movimento 5 Stelle ha avviato la sperimentazione? come sono state progettate e gestite le consultazioni promosse prima dal Governo Monti e ora dal governo Letta? con quali risultati? e soprattutto: riuscirà l'uso di questi strumenti, a migliorare l'esercizio della democrazia nel nostro Paese? Negli ultimi mesi, si è parlato molto sui media di questi temi, non sempre a proposito. Spesso confondendo le piattaforme software, le iniziative di partecipazione che le utilizzano e le piattaforme politiche che (sempre più) ricorrono a tali strumenti di partecipazione e deliberazione online per rispondere alle pressanti richieste di nuove forme di democrazia. Il rapporto su I Media Civici in ambito parlamentare (pubblicato dal Servizio Informatica del Senato della Repubblica e curato da Fondazione <ahref) ha avviato l'analisi, ma ora serve un confronto diretto tra i progettisti delle varie piattaforme software e coloro che hanno avviato e gestito esperienze di consultazione e raccolta di proposte da parte dei cittadini, in un contesto che dia spazio anche a considerazioni di scenario internazionale, culturale (dal punto di vista di diverse discipline) e politico. Nella convinzione che l'interazione via rete non può sostituirsi a quella fisica, ma la arricchisce e trasforma fino a incidere, con le scelte fatte nello sviluppo dei software, sulle modalità della partecipazione democratica. Per questa ragione abbiamo scelto I CODICI (software) DELLA DEMOCRAZIA come titolo del workshop che si terrà a Milano il prossimo 13-14-15 settembre organizzato dal Dipartimento di Informatica e Comunicazione, con la collaborazione di Fondazione RCM (e speriamo con il patrocinio di Comune e Provincia di Milano). Dati i tempi che corrono, sarà un workshop organizzato davvero al risparmio: il contributo del Dipartimento servirà a coprire le spese di chi viene dall'estero. Una più ampia presentazione del workshop, che sarà aperto dal Rettore dell'Università di Milano, e il dettaglio delle sessioni (ancora in parte in via di definizione) sono (e saranno via via aggiornate) sul sito http://codicidellademocrazia.partecipate.it/ Hanno accettato di moderare le varie sessioni giornalisti che hanno seguito questi temi con grande competenza. ISCRIVETEVI SUL SITO ALLE SESSIONI A CUI INTENDETE PARTECIPARE: noi speriamo che possiate seguire il workshop per intero ! un saluto e buona estate a tutti ! -- fiorella

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Atlantic: "The Hole in Our Collective Memory: How Copyright Made Mid-Century Books Vanish"
by J.C. DE MARTIN July 31, 2013

July 31, 2013

The Hole in Our Collective Memory: How Copyright Made Mid-Century Books Vanish /A book published during the presidency of Chester A. Arthur has a greater chance of being in print today than one published during the time of Reagan. / Rebecca J. Rosen <http://www.theatlantic.com/rebecca-rosen/> Jul 30 2013, 1:35 PM ET Last year I wrote about some very interesting research <http://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2012/03/the-missing-20th-cent…> being done by Paul J. Heald at the University of Illinois, based on software that crawled Amazon for a random selection of books. At the time, his results were only preliminary, but they were nevertheless startling: There were as many books available from the 1910s as there were from the 2000s. The number of books from the 1850s was double the number available from the 1950s. Why? Copyright protections (which cover titles published in 1923 and after) had squashed the market for books from the middle of the 20th century, keeping those titles off shelves and out of the hands of the reading public. Heald has now finalized his research <http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2290181> and the picture, though more detailed, is largely the same: "Copyright correlates significantly with the disappearance of works rather than with their availability," Heald writes. "Shortly after works are created and proprietized, they tend to disappear from public view only to reappear in significantly increased numbers when they fall into the public domain and lose their owners." The graph above shows the simplest interpretation of the data. It reveals, shockingly, that there are substantially more new editions available of books from the 1910s than from the 2000s. Editions of books that fall under copyright are available in about the same quantities as those from the first half of the 19th century. Publishers are simply not publishing copyrighted titles unless they are very recent. [...] Continua qui: http://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2013/07/the-hole-in-our-colle…

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Re: [nexa] Il Commissario agcom Posteraro parla di inesattezze e superficialità nell'analisi "critica" del regolamento Agcom su copyright. La replica
by A Dicorinto July 31, 2013

July 31, 2013

mi sembra che non faccia una piega... bravi. Art 2013/7/31 Fulvio Sarzana <fulvio.sarzana(a)lidis.it> > > http://www.corrierecomunicazioni.it/media/22721_copyright-posteraro-sbaglia… > **** > > ** ** > > ** ** > > _______________________________________________ > nexa mailing list > nexa(a)server-nexa.polito.it > https://server-nexa.polito.it/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/nexa > >

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Il Commissario agcom Posteraro parla di inesattezze e superficialità nell'analisi "critica" del regolamento Agcom su copyright. La replica
by Fulvio Sarzana July 31, 2013

July 31, 2013

http://www.corrierecomunicazioni.it/media/22721_copyright-posteraro-sbaglia- sul-ruolo-dei-provider.htm

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Data protection: Peter Schaar su dialogo EU-US
by Alessandro Mantelero July 31, 2013

July 31, 2013

http://www.bfdi.bund.de/SharedDocs/ExterneLinks/EN/AmericanChamber_Viewpoin… ovviamente trattasi di echi per chi vive (e governa) nella "periferia" dell'EU. A.

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