George Ou
Latest from George Ou
Enough Alarmism on Peering Disputes from All Sides
Nate Anderson of Arstechica posted this article today slamming the latest study from A.T. Kearney on the nA Viable Future Model for the Internet commissioned by European broadband providers, but it’s led to more unnecessary alarmism on all sides. The Kearney report make the argument that an impending infrastructure crisis is upon the Internet unless they can charge ...
Netflix Performance Numbers Highlight Netflix Shortcomings
In a continuing effort to lobby for free bandwidth at the expense of the broadband consumer, Netflix seems to have turned to a smear campaign to embarrass and intimidate broadband providers. Netflix published their ISP performance metrics that managed to fool the media into reporting the data as some kind of broadband performance metric. But the results probably ...
Netflix Lobbying for Broadband Consumers to Subsidize Netflix
In the wake of news that Netflix added 7.7 million subscribers in 2010 and the fact that Netflix is counting on shifting their DVD mailer business to a video on demand broadband streaming model that is 20 times cheaper than postage, it is baffling that Netflix has decided kill the broadband golden goose that saves them ...
Facebook Finally Adds HTTPS, but Still Broken
Facebook announced that they’ve finally added secure web browsing for Facebook 2 months after the release of the Firesheep tool that made it trivially easy to hack Facebook accounts. That prompted me to give them an “F” in security which was widely cited in the media. But there are some major problems with this update ...
When Net Neutrality advocacy becomes scaremongering
The Internet was apparently coming to an end if were were to believe last weekend’s news excerpts based on Barry Collins sensational piece “The end of the Internet as we know it” on PCPro UK. Collins warned that “ISPs are threatening to cripple websites that don’t pay them first”. The predicable outcry ensued on Net Neutrality ...
What part of congressional tether is hard to understand?
Verizon announced yesterday that they would appeal the FCC’s Net Neutrality ruling before the DC Circuit Court of Appeals. Nate Anderson of ArsTechnica wondered why Verizon is suing over a ruling that is so similar to a joint Verizon-Google proposal 5 months ago and listed all the similarities and he essentially accused them of being ...
Put the Scroll Bar Out to Pasture Already!
After using a Nook Color tablet for the last month (a 7″ Android 2.1 device), it made me realize that the modern desktop operating system (Windows, Mac, and Linux) have very antiquated user interfaces (UI). The most obnoxious feature that comes immediately to mind is the scroll bar after getting used to the finger based ...
Google Confirms YouTube Will Continue Supporting H.264
All the speculation that Google is going to overthrow the H.264 video compression standard with their own VP8 technology for their WebM standard appears to have been debunked by Google. Google has confirmed that there is no current intention of removing H.264 support from YouTube or Android OS with the following statement. “The announcement is ...
Netflix Spends 20 Times More on Postage than Bandwidth
In an article published at The Hollywood Reporter, Netflix chief content officer Ted Sarandos tried to calm shareholders fearful of rising content licensing prices by explaining that rising content prices are offset by declining postage fees. It currently costs Netflix up to $1 per DVD mailed round trip while a typical streamed movie costs 5 ...
Google is killing HTML5 to harm Apple iOS
One of my explanations for Google’s decision to drop native HTML5 support for H.264 is that it is a masterful bluff to secure more favorable licensing terms for H.264, but it just occurred to me that Google’s decision effectively kills HTML5 video adoption and forces video content providers to continue using Flash as the delivery mechanism for ...