http://www.boston.com/business/articles/2008/03/28/advanced_tactic_targeted_grocer/
Undoubtedly all of Hannaford Brothers's servers were running the same software using the same communications protocols, and most likely they were all running on the same hardware. Standardization cuts costs, and large corporations have been especially diligent in standardizing their information technology resources.
Standardization also made it easy, once the cyber-thieves learned how to compromise one server, to commandeer all of Hannaford Brothers's servers, quickly and quietly.
HB's information structure was a monoculture. In the natural world of living things, monocultures are highly vulnerable to disease, pests and changes in environment. Industrial agriculture requires heavy applications of pesticides, herbicides. and fertilizer to grow monocrops. The same goes for corporate IT, where at least part of the savings from standardization must be spent on anti-virus software and anti-spybot software for every organizational computer and on sophisticated firewalls between the local network and the rest of the world. And IT is still vulnerable to hackers, no matter how carefully the systems are engineered.
It might have cost Hannaford Brothers more to diversify their software and hardware, but the diversity would have made it almost impossible for thieves to have compromised the entire network and probably would have made it more likely that the exploit would be discovered.
It appears that the Republicans do not have the votes to overcome a filibuster of the telecommunications bill, at least for now. The campaign for net neutrality has been highly effective in the face of intense propaganda and arm-twisting by the telecommunications industry.
It struck me today as I was walking down Capitol Street that monopolists, even the high-tech ones, are not really interested in technological innovation. They are interested in money, and they are extraordiarily profitable, since they can raise prices without being undercut by competition. Radically new technologies are a threat to well-established monopolies, so unless they see how it will enable them to continue their monopoly, they will try to kill it. When ARPA wanted to build the first packet-switching network in the world, they went to AT&T, which declined. With IP technology taking over voice communication, it's understandable why AT&T wasn't interested in a technology that would threaten its monopoly. ARPA contracted the job to another company which created ARPANET, the predecessor of the Internet. Yes, the Internet was not a product of private enterprise or the free market. The U.S. military was responsible for getting it all started.
For readers who are under 30, AT&T owned virtually all the telephone infrastructure in the United States, including the telephones in people's homes. BellSouth was an operating subsidiary of AT&T named South Central Bell. Several Supreme Court cases over a period of twenty-five years ultimately led to a court-ordered breakup of the company. The portion of AT&T that retained the name took over long-distance.
There are plenty other examples of monopolies fighting innovation. Microsoft innovates when it has to, as it has with Internet Explorer, which it neglected for years, until the clamor over its security weaknesses and obsolete interface forced it to make some changes. The U.S. auto industry has been remarkably inflexible.
Read a very savvy article on what happened. Maybe top executives at Google, eBay and Microsoft will be quick studies. Their future depends on it.
6/18/2006 Caviat: In this battle the dotcoms happen to be on the right side because their existence depends upon the Internet remaining an open commons, but this does not mean that their primary motivation is the public interest, or that they will advocate net neutrality next year if it is more profitable to do otherwise. The Internet, designed and built by taxpayer money, will remain open only if the ability of the major players to control and deny access is strictly regulated. Many users of the Internet are not old enough to remember that only 13 or 14 years ago the telephone companies wanted to block telephone subscribers from using modems without paying outrageously high fees for "data" access, but were prevented by the regulatory agencies from interfering. Had they been able to "de-neutralize" the net then it would have never become the information superhighway it is now, but instead, would have remained the equivalent of an overpriced gravel toll-road, with speed-traps at every intersection. Gopher (and it's big sister, Veronica) would have stayed the search engine of choice.
Keep in mind what broadcast, cable and satellite television have become under the free market system. Sure, you have a choice; you can choose between hundreds of channels carrying mostly junk or worse. On the Internet, you have a choice between millions of web sites, and if you can't find something you like (or don't like something you find) you can set up your own website for $10/month or even less. The cost of entry is for all practical purposes zero. The telecom companies would like to limit your choices to web sites that make a profit—for them. They would love to charge you dearly for the privilege of having a website and even more for the traffic that your site generates. Given a sufficient lock, they could even demand a percentage of your revenue if you happen to be selling something through your website.
Because of the way corporations and our economy are structured, a typical corporation cannot stand the idea of someone else making a buck if the corporation can make that buck instead. Typical examples of this corporate mentality are the efforts of successful franchisors to take over the businesses of their franchisees. Radio Shack once had a foolproof method of acquiring their franchises: it didn't reimburse the franchisee when people returned defective equipment, so the franchisee was at the mercy of Radio Shack's quality control. The more defective items, the less the franchisee made. But I digress.
Moveon.com has created a most amusing and educational movie made by Grammy-nominated musician Moby.
Click here to watch the movie.
The giant media companies rankle at the low entry cost of the Internet, because it is the only thing that stands between them and total control of the flow of information. Right now, you can build a web site and make it available to the world for $10 per month. Startup costs are negligible. Everybody can participate. It's precisely the opposite of the top-down command structure of newspapers, television and cable.
If there were ten competing broadband ISPs it wouldn't make much of a difference, but with only three giants controlling most of the access to the Internet, its fundamental character would change. There would be nothing to keep them from slowing down or even blocking web sites that don't pay extra fees or that are a little too critical of them.
The Internet is too important to be left to the whims of politicians. If you want the Internet to stay neutral as to content, let your congressman know. It doesn't matter if his largest contributors are the telecommunications companies, like Chip Pickering, my representative. Tell them, anyway.
This morning, however, it looks as though the CC suddenly realized what could happen to the Internet if the major telecom corporations got their way with the new telecommunications bill now in Congress. Here's the gist of the message:
Smart folks. They figured out that no one will win but the telecoms if the bill goes through in its current form.Major telecom companies are laying plans to create tiered access to the Internet – and to charge extra fees to consumers and content providers in order to offer select web sites for "fast access" by consumers. Without "Net Neutrality", American consumers who want to pay for fast broadband access to the Internet will find out they don't actually have what they thought they were paying for. They won't have high-speed broadband access to the entire Internet; just the part that the phone and cable companies allow them to see.
The Internet is what it is today because every site, no matter how obscure, is just as accessible to every individual as any name brand site with a multi-million dollar budget. Every American has the opportunity to create their own site and say what they want to the entire world and have the same access to the world as anyone else. And consumers have the ability to connect with them.
Since the inception of the Internet, it has existed on phone lines, which were covered under what are known as "common carrier" regulations, which prevented discrimination, based on content. This principle helped make the Internet what it is today -- a dynamic engine for free expression and economic growth.
Mrs. Combs [CC president] said, "Under the new rules, there is nothing to stop the cable and phone companies from not allowing consumers to have access to speech that they don't support. What if a cable company with a pro-choice Board of Directors decides that it doesn't like a pro-life organization using its high-speed network to encourage pro-life activities? Under the new rules, they could slow down the pro-life web site, harming their ability to communicate with other pro-lifers - and it would be legal. We urge Congress to move aggressively to save the Internet -- and allow ideas rather than money to control what Americans can access on the World Wide Web. We urge all Americans to contact their Congressmen and Senators and tell them to save the Internet and to support 'Net Neutrality'."
The Internet today is the only mass information-dissiminating medium that is not owned and controlled by a small handful of giant corporations. No one today, no matter how visionary, can predict the changes it will bring about as the entire world plugs into a single knowledge network. It all depends, however, on the Internet remaining open and accessible to everyone at a decent price, which is what net neutrality preserves.
Postscript: Reps. Sensenbrenner and Conyers have introduced a net neutrality bill in Congress. Looks like the mobilization of the netroots is having its effect.
Our own representative, Chip Pickering, is vice-chairman of the committee, and there's little question of how he voted. Look at where his campaign money comes from.
There is nothing to be gained by allowing the major broadband providers to sell better service to firms that pay them more and to degrade everyone else's service, except more profits for the providers. Such an arrangement will put startups at a terrific disadvantage because the giants will have the money to purchase special treatment for their IP packets.
This is a land grab in cyberspace and if it succeeds we will all be the poorer for it. Call your representative and let him or her know that you expect the Internet to remain neutral, like a common carrier.
Below are some related articles. The Lessig article is particularly good:
[W]hen the Internet first reached beyond research facilities to the masses, it did so on regulated lines — telephone lines. Had the telephone companies been free of the “heavy hand” of government regulation, it’s quite clear what they would have done — they would have killed it, just as they did when Paul Baran first proposed the idea in 1964. It was precisely because they were not free to kill it, because the “heavy hand[ed]” regulation required them to act neutrally, that the Internet was able to happen, and then flourish.
So Waltzman’s [house majority telecommunications counsel] wrong about the Internet’s past. But he’s certainly right about what a mandated net neutrality requirement would be. It would certainly be a “complete step backward for the Internet” — back to the time when we were world leaders in Internet penetration, and competition kept prices low and services high. Today, in the world where the duopoly increasingly talks about returning us to the world where innovation is as the network owners says, broadband in the US sucks. We are somewhere between 12th and 19th in the world, depending upon whose scale you use. As the Wall Street Journal reported two months ago, broadband in the US is “slow and expensive.” Verizon’s entry-level broadband is $14.95 for 786 kbs. That about $20 per megabit. In FRANCE, for $36/m, you get 20 megabits/s — or about $1.80 per megabit.
Save the Internet
TPM Cafe: Net Neutrality Defeated -- Telcos and Cable Win
Daily Kos: Net Neutrality Committee Vote Update
Washington Post: Intel Offers Support for Net Legislation
Lessig: the fiction zone that DC has become
This is something worth fighting for, folks.
Information Week: Test of Net Neutrality
In the early '90s, shortly after the Worldwide Web came into existence and the demand for dial-up service went through the roof, the telcos started demanding the right to charge a premium on phone lines used for data, reasoning that data lines were being used more hours of the day than voice lines, which cost them more to service. Fortunately, they got nowhere.
Now, the politicking is far more sophisticated and much of it is being done outside the glare of public scrutiny. The importance of what is being contemplated, however, cannot be over-stressed. The providers are willing to concede current technology in return for being allowed to lock up future technology. As Bill Thompson of the BBC puts it, it's like a transportation company conceding the dirt roads in return for owning and controlling the traffic on all paved roads and highways. If you don't play their game, you take the dirt roads. What's even worse, they will control the connections from the dirt roads into the paved roads, so if for some reason they find your existence inconvenient, they can simply build their system around you, much like the interstate system can destroy a small town by not providing an interchange.
It will only be a short jump from preferential treatment of some information providers to completely blocking access to any web site your ISP wishes. This, of course, would be done in the name of property rights. We own the net and therefore we get to control who uses the net. In the '60s the U. S. Supreme Court held that shopping mall owners could ban political activity in the common areas of their malls, not realizing that the traditional public areas--the downtown retail business districts--would soon be deserted except for office workers. Pamphleteering, one of the most effective methods of political organizing, has virtually disappeared. Had the justices foreseen these changes, it is conceivable that the decision would have been different.
The contemporary equivalent of the political pamphlet is the political web site, like this one. Blogs and podcasting are the equivalent of political rallies of the past minus the barbecued chicken (at least in the American South). What has made the Internet a positive force for political change has been its open structure, where anyone with a few bucks per month can stand up on his or her electronic soapbox and preach to the world. Blogs are like the town crier, spreading news to all who are willing to listen. That would change radically in the proposed regime.
What the providers want is the prerogative of medieval robber barons: they want complete control of the great river of communications, including its contents, and they want to fill it with their exclusive traffic.
Why the net should stay neutral (BBC)
Lawrence Lessig Blog
Lessig's Testimony Before the Senate committee on Science, Commerce and Transportation, February 7, 2006 Because of his audience, I assume that Lessig stressed technological innovation and economic gain as the principal benefit of a free Internet, whereas I believe that the greatest benefit will ultimately turn out to be the open political space made possible by inexpensive access.