dispersion of Internet download speeds
Better Internet connectivity tends to be associated with more urban areas, areas with a greater concentration of high-tech industries and employees, and areas with wealthier, more educated populations. These factors, however, do not provide simple explanations for the actual geographic pattern of Internet download speeds from Akamai’s server network. According to Akamai’s measurements (which include [...]
Tagged: broadband
understanding lack of interest in broadband speed
A person living in Arlington, Virginia, measured his Internet connection quality using the Federal Communications Commission’s Consumer Broadband Test. He found his Internet download speed to be about 750 kilobits per second (kbits/s). Studying Akamai data on observed average Internet speeds, I found that only about 2% of Internet addresses (from business and residential users) [...]
Tagged: broadband
COB-50: impacting cinematography
La Meurte de un burócrata, which was made in 1966 by the Cuban Tomás Gutiérrez Alea and which is transliterated into English as The Death of a Bureaucrat, is an important film for viewers to view so that by that means the viewer will come to appreciate the importance of following appropriate procedures when engaged [...]
knowledge from the nineteenth century to now
In a nineteenth century dataset, cabinets group birds at a high level of similarity. Each cabinet contains stuffed and mounted birds, arranged roughly in a grid. On the top row of this cabinet are three flycatchers followed by three kingbirds. On the second row are two kingbirds follwed by four flycatchers. The next row displays [...]
Tagged: data
online database of DS1 and DS3 special access rates
The DS1 and DS3 rates that the Ad Hoc Telecommunications Users filed publicly at the FCC are now accessible as an online, highly capable Needle domain (database). Needle is a data system that makes it easy to look at the data in different ways and to sort and filter it, all from within a web [...]
Tagged: telcos
making art exhibits accessible
The museum guard with a gun said, “Put your camera away. No photographs in the exhibit.” That’s what I remember most about my first visit to the exhibit Revealing Culture, now at the Smithsonian Institute in Washington DC. VSA, the International Organization on Arts and Disability, sponsored the exhibit. The guard was just doing his [...]
Tagged: review
the video revolution
Anyone can now make and distribute video world-wide at zero incremental cost. That’s a mind-boggling video communication revolution. Google’s recent heroic effort to count the number of books that have been published around the world shows how scarce video has been. Google estimates tomes — symbolically distinguished, printed and bound works — to number 146 [...]
Tagged: libraries
evolutionary origins of the iPhone
The evolutionary origin of the iPhone has recently been pushed back another million years. More specifically, scientists recently found evidence that hominini used tools about 3.4 million years ago. Dr. Zeresenay Alemseged, Curator of Anthropology at the California Academy of Sciences, explains: Tool use fundamentally altered the way our early ancestors interacted with nature, allowing [...]
Tagged: telephones