TMO, EFF, and Net Neutrality

January 7th, 2016 in eff, net neutrality, Opinion 0 comments

I’ve been watching T-Mobile’s new Binge-On (BO) offering for a few weeks now as it gains more and more headlines. Today TMO CEO John Legere went on a rant directed at the Electronic Freedom Foundation (of which I am a member) and their recent analysis of the service.

TMO and Legere say that Binge-On is a feature aimed at providing their customers with a better video experience, and saving them money by not charging data fees for video from Binge-On partners such as Netflix, Hulu, and Youtube. This sounds like a good thing, doesn’t it? Free is good.

There are two issues with this. The first is that TMO is slowing down ALL video streams to mobile devices, not just streams from non-BO partners. Every HTML5 video stream is slowed to 1.5Mbps. Some sources are saying that HD video is being converted to 480p, but I haven’t seen a definitive answer to this question. Frankly, reducing bandwidth to mobile devices makes a lot of sense, because on those devices a reduced-resolution image looks just fine. If you are watching a video on a 5-inch screen, you really don’t need to see that stream in high-bandwidth, high-resolution. You can opt out of Binge-On, and that’s really what has folks in a dither…it’s turned on by default. TMO counters by pointing out that customers were inadvertently burning through their data plan by watching unnecessarily high bandwidth video.

The second, and larger issue, is net neutrality. In 2015 the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) issued a ruling that basically said that data is data…it’s illegal to differentiate among and treat differently email versus text versus video versus web browsing. TMO’s Binge-On is in direct violation of this, treating video differently than other network traffic. Worse, the Electronic Freedom Foundation (EFF) showed that TMO slowed down video traffic even when the file was not explicitly identified as video (with a .mpg file extension, for example). That means that TMO is peering inside the data to see what it is…a technique called deep packet inspection. If TMO is inspecting packets, what else are they planning on doing? And who are they sharing that information with?

I’m of two minds on this issue. I’m a proponent of net neutrality, and I find it offensive that TMO is treating different kinds of data traffic in different ways. Net neutrality was hard-fought and extremely important in protecting the free exchange of ideas on the internet. As a consumer, though (and  I use TMO on a tablet for audio streaming), how can I argue against free? I specifically bought a TMO tablet so that I could stream music at no charge through their Music Freedom program.

I’ve asked the EFF about Music Freedom and if its the same technique as Binge-On (deep packet inspection). No one complained about MF when it was launched a year ago. I have to think that TMO’s competitors are lining up their lawyers to take this one to the mat. I think that my position has to be with net neutrality…it is so much more important than a bunch of TMO subscribers getting free video.

Just Let Me Cook!

January 4th, 2016 in Opinion 0 comments

Andrew Binstock, the Editor over at Dr. Dobbs, wrote an article a few months ago about how difficult it is for software engineers to focus on coding rather than all of the overhead tasks involved in building applications and systems. The article is Just Let Me Code! and is well worth the read.

Andrew makes a really good point, in a roundabout sort of way, that industrial-strength, production-quality code is less about actual programming than it is planning, architecture, testing, monitoring, and configuration. There's a big difference between a programmer — someone who can write decent code — and an engineer — someone who can produce a quality product.

You can hire a decent programmer right out of high school, but to bring up a software engineer takes time. Anyone can learn to code. Heck, even the President was seen writing a few lines during the last Code Hour. Coding is a skill, just like cooking, and you can hire a cook right out of high school.

To carry the analogy further, the cook understands how to follow a recipe. They might be an excellent cook, and honestly there's nothing wrong with that. However, a chef understands that a good meal is so much more than cooking — it's flavors and textures and pairings, along with presentation and expectation that make for a memorable meal. There's timing and long preparation involved, and the ability to juggle several tasks in just the right order to bring everything onto the plate at the perfect moment. It's an art, just like software engineering.

I expect software engineers to have a lot of skills, such as tools and languages. But I also expect them to bring so much more to the table. This is why we spend so much time on the non-coding aspects of software engineering. We don't want to create cooks, we want to create chefs.

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