Ryan I Am

Time for a quick rant.

At my last job, I used Spiceworks to monitor my network. At one point, I figured out that they collect data about my network and send it home to their servers, so that advertisers can hit me better. No worries, I thought. I read their TOS and found that the data is supposedly anonymized. That was enough to satisfy me at the time.

Now, I happen to work for a company that sells a product that Spiceworks customers might use, and we discussed advertising with them last year. At the time, we elected not to buy, but they encouraged us to be active on the forums and participate in the community.

So, I did just that. While not the most frequent poster, I got two ‘Best Answers’ and racked up enough points to move up a couple of their levels. You know, typical forum participation thing.

Naturally, I subscribe to the firewall and networking forums, where my company’s product fits in. And a few people asked for advice, and I chimed in with a recommendation to check out our product. Note that I was logged in as myself. I didn’t create fake accounts to astroturf. I’m not in sales, I’m not in marketing, and I don’t get a commission. I didn’t paste in copy from a brochure. I wrote a response tailored to each individual, from sysadmin to sysadmin, addressing their exact question. I have a few years of experience in IT, and I don’t like marketing BS. My responses were completely appropriate.

Next thing I know, I start getting PMs from Spiceworks people. They’re censoring my posts. Why? Because advertisers are supposed to pay. This seems kind of silly to me, because I think I’m providing pretty relevant information. So I check out their ToS:

“You may not post or transmit any advertising, promotional materials or any other solicitation of other users or Members to use or buy products, goods or services except in those areas (e.g., a classified bulletin board) that are designated for such purpose.”

I didn’t do any of the above, of course. I just answered a dude’s question. The number of general posts I wrote is much higher than the number of posts I wrote containing any information about my employer, so I would also argue I contributed quite a bit to the community, without being spammy.

Now, if they want to have a rule that says an employee may not say a word about his company’s products, then fine. Put that rule in the ToS (ironically, Spiceworks themselves would then be in violation of that rule), and tell your salespeople to stop telling potential customers to be active in the forums. But their policy as it stands now is quite hypocritcal.

Oh, and one last thing. One of their employees took it upon himself to email my PMs to my boss. I actually already printed out everything, and we had discussed it at length, and my boss agreed with me, but that’s beside the point. Internet etiquette states that a “private message” is private, and is not disclosed to anyone else without your consent.

So, to wrap it up:

• Spiceworks sends network data to advertisers, which may or may not be anonymized and may or may not be secure.
• Spiceworks censors forum posts.
• Spiceworks forwards PMs to other people.

If you use Spiceworks, consider switching to something else. For me?

Not on pink donuts. Those things are nasty. But is there anyone who understands more about nuclear energy than this man?

In the distinguished expert’s own words:

Well you know boys, a nuclear reactor is a lot like women. You just have to read the manual and press the right button.

And… we are especially thankful for nuclear power, the cleanest, safest energy source there is. Except for solar, which is just a pipe dream.

The tragedy in Japan has recently renewed interest in the safety of California’s two aging nuclear power plants, both of which are located on the coast. And rightly so—with the surprise discovery in 2008 of the Shoreline Fault that sits .6 miles offshore from Diablo Canyon, the revelation that a critical cooling system was unknowingly offline for 18 months, repeated citations at San Onofre for safety violations such as failed emergency generators, the lack of storage space for spent fuel rods, and  the design similarities between the California plants and Fukushima Daiichi, concern is certainly merited.

But of even greater concern is that our media has brainwashed us into thinking that the risks of nuclear power outweigh its advantages, and that those risks can’t be even further diminished. Never mind that coal ash is more radioactive than nuclear waste, or that “particle pollution from power plants is estimated to kill approximately 13,000 people a year,” or that the Kingston coal ash spill was one of the U.S.’s most catastrophic enviromental disasters (the volume of toxic slurry released was over 100 times the volume of the Exxon Valdez spill). Yet thanks to the public’s fear of nuclear energy, ground hasn’t been broken for a new nuclear reactor in the United States since 1974, allowing our consumption of coal, and production of toxic ash slurry, to steadily increase.

Meanwhile, reactor design and passive safety engineering have steadily improved. China recently announced its thorium reactor project, and pebble bed technology has been in development for decades. To Wired Magazine’s credit, it reported on pebble bed technology in China in 2004 and on thorium reactor technology in 2009, and has consistently championed safe nuclear power that “employ[s] passive safety technologies, such as gravity-fed emergency cooling rather than pumps.” Yet I can’t think of, or find via Google search, any other major media outlet that has even bothered to touch the subject, much less champion the cause.

The problem isn’t nuclear energy itself. The problem is a public lack of awareness of the pros and cons of various energy production technologies, and the media’s lack of  interest in educating itself and the public in order to move the debate forward. Perhaps stories on safe nuclear power don’t sell magazines or garner clicks, but as long as we ignore the issue, we’re allowing dirty coal plants to pollute our environment with arsenic, mercury, and lead.

We can do better.

The Economist, a magazine I greatly respect when it sticks to issues it knows about, such as, say, economics, writes a giant fail of an article on Net Neutrality, apparently unknowingly contradicting itself in adjacent paragraphs. In a nutshell, the editorial claims:

1. Land-based ISPs should be able to fast-track. It only makes economic sense that an company should be able to charge more for a specific type of content.
2. Usage-based pricing is the norm, and wireless ISPs should be able to stick to this.
3. None of this would be an issue if there were more competition.

Well, I wear contacts, but I’m not blind. For anyone who knows anything about the internet, those three statements directly contradict each other.

First of all, the worry isn’t about an ISP fast-tracking a specific type of content, it’s about an ISP prioritizing its own services and deprioritizing delivery of a competitor’s service. Imagine if the Post Office, wonderful entity that it is, decided to start randomly throwing away mail from senders that didn’t pay it a kickback. You either have to pay into their circle, or live with the fact that you won’t receive half your mail. Nice system. Fortunately or unfortunately, snail mail has becoming increasingly marginalized, while a stable internet connection has become more and more vital.

Ironically, the easy solution to this problem is in point #2, that the Economist also advocates: Usage-based pricing. If you pay for 5Mbps of bandwidth, you get 5Mbps of bandwidth. If you pay for 10, you get 10. This is how pricing has been up to now, and it makes sense. As the Economist would recognize, this type of market will foster the greatest amount of competition within the industry, among both old and new business entities.

The Economist then goes on to brilliantly observe that the market lacks competition. Obviously, we wouldn’t be having this argument if there was more competition. We’ve essentially got a duopoly on our hands, yet the Economist seems to think that all we need to do is “demand it.” From who, is a little more unclear. Should I go petition my local Better Business Bureau in the hopes that some enterprising young whippersnapper will take up my idea and roll out a multi-billion dollar network, so he can compete against even larger corporate behemoths? I’m all for competition, and I think there are regulations that could and should be put into place to allow for a better resale environment for existing networks, but without government subsidies, the only financially feasible new ISP can work in the wireless space. Oh yeah, I guess the Economist forgot about Clearwire.

But until Clearwire WiMax is able to cover more area, we don’t have said competition. I live 45 minutes outside of Los Angeles and am not holding my breath. At this rate, they’ll continue rolling out over the next decade, and that still only adds one highly-leveraged competitor to the market, let alone the two or three necessary for real competition.

So, until we have another competitor or two, how about we go with the Economist’s second recommendation: Put the duopolies and startups on a level playing field, and require usage-based pricing? May the best ISP win.

The problem is, the ISPs are uncomfortable in their own skin. They don’t want to be a utility company, they want to be content providers, or at least syndicators. Instead of being an internet gateway, they want to be a content gateway. Instead of optimizing their network and running a lean, efficient, business that competes on the value of its product, they want to be a digital middleman where none is necessary. I buy electronics from Newegg and content from Netflix. I don’t need Southern California Edison tellling me I can only buy their electronics if I want to use their electricity any more than I need Comcast telling me I can only buy their content if I want to use their pipe. Not a lot of utility in that.

But the devil is in the detail. What happens for instance if some people want to pay for their data to go faster, or if others hog all the bandwidth?

It’s simple, Economist. You already answered it yourself. Usage-based pricing. Internet 101. Now stop hogging my bandwidth.

In case you haven’t figured it out already, here’s a handy forumla:

1. Look in your 1999 tech IPO database for the name of some has-been entrepreneur you haven’t heard of in ten years.
2. Figure out whatever project he’s working on now and regurgitate its business plan. Bonus points if it’s in biotech.
3. Add in the mad scientist angle. Use words such as “faith” and “lone ranger” to paint him as a solo misunderstood genius.
4. Write the headline: How [name] is Changing the World: One [widget] at a Time.
5. ????
6. Profit!

Well, I’m actually not so sure about about that last part.

First, I’ll admit it: I’m a Google fanboy. I switched to Google Search in late 1999 and never looked back. I’ve lost track of how many Google services I use. Sometimes, I wonder what my life would be like without Google. Between my phone number and email alone, it’s really infiltrated almost all areas of my life.

But Secure Search is here, and that’s cause for concern. I love privacy, really. With secure search, people who fear they’re being spied on can safely search without fear of consequences, right? And I prefer Google Search. So isn’t this the perfect match?

The problem lies in the fact that when someone clicks on a link from within Google Secure Search to go to a new site, that new site won’t know where they came from. Let’s suppose you run an eCommerce site that sells pet food. when somebody searches for ‘organic dog food’, they’ll land on a web page such as http://www.google.com/search?q=organic+dog+food. When they click on your link in the search results, Google sends that address as the HTTP referrer to the your site, and your analytics software logs that page as the source (and is also smart enough to know that the visitor searched for ‘organic dog food’). You might be interested to know that a certain percentage of your visitors arrived on your site by searching for this particular term. Perhaps you will tailor a portion of your site for this clientele, or offer them a discount on a certain product. At the very least, you’d like to know your most common referrers (also known as incoming links), and most popular search terms.

But if your visitor arrives from Secure Search or any other page served over HTTPS, their browser won’t send you the referrer. So you can’t customize your site for different visitors. Your analytics software can’t tell you what your most popular search terms are, or which search terms brought visitors to which pages.

Of course, Google knows where you went. And webmasters will still be able to see their most popular search terms through Google Webmaster Tools. But now you’ll have to check two different places: your analytics software, and Webmaster Tools. Obviously, having that information integrated with analytics software (as is the case today) is much more convenient, and can provide much more useful information. For example, did the people who searched for organic dog food live primarily in certain regions of the country? Did they use a particular browser or operating system? This type of information can prove invaluable in creating a custom user experience that can eventually increase your sales. But without knowing those pieces of information together, you’ll have to give everyone the same generic web page.

And that’s why I believe Google is planning on tight integration between Google Analytics and Google Webmaster Tools. GA will be able to snag all those missing HTTP referrers from Webmaster Tools, and give you the complete picture. But what about those of us who use non-Google analytics software, such as Clicky? We’ll be left in the dark. Despite Clicky’s superiority, some people will undoubtedly migrate back to GA due to this integration. There’s the Mountain View muscle at play.

One other thing. HTTPS traffic really isn’t secure anymore. With devices on the market like this one, anyone between you and your destination can still conduct a man-in-the-middle attack and see what you’re doing. If you were really concerned about security, you wouldn’t even need Secure Search, because you’d be using other technologies such as Tor, VPN, and SSH tunneling that mask your complete identity, not just your search results.

This isn’t about security. It’s a power play.