Reports of the Net's demise are greatly exaggerated

So anti-spam group and a hardened hosting company are going at it. The security firm that runs interference for the anti-spammers is engaged in a bit of self-promotion and all the usual suspects are breathlessly reporting on it.

I picked up on this in Ars a few days ago, and groaned inwardly when I heard it on NPR this afternoon. While this is an example of the kind of conflict that can occur on the Internet, it isn't the world-shaking, Netflix-stuttering event that it has been made out to be. It is common knowledge that large criminal organizations employ botnets for the purpose of creating and sending spam, and their cost for doing it is so incredibly low they can deploy thousands and thousands of computers to execute DDoS attacks. What's interesting is that this is being reported on at all. The comings and goings of The Internet as a purely Net phenomenon is still fairly new for mainsteam publications. That's why they focus on things people can identify, like slow downloads and Netflix cutting out - neither of which seem to have actually happened. The Net as place, where things happen, has yet to enter the mainstream.

This is not the first time a botnet has been deployed in an offensive fashion. It may be the first time you've heard about it.

It will not be the last.

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Google is shutting down Reader. I am now seriously considering migrating this blog to something not Google-hosted or affiliated.
Reader is how I interact with the internet. Reader is how I follow hunreds of site: news sites, personal blogs, other aggregators.
Reader is the only service I visit every time I have an internet connection. I don't even do that with my e-mail account.
I understand that essentially nobody reads this blog, but I have to say it. Google killing Reader is a strong argument for creating your own server, with privately hosted e-mail, and your own, stable RSS reader.
Google shuttering Reader says, to me, "Don't trust 'The Cloud.'"

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Networks, Interconnectedness, and Points of Failure (III)

"The third is an alternate network, and more closely models real-world social structures."

The thrid type is one in which networks run orthogonal to each other. This can be visualised like a sponge - nodes connected in three dimensions, usually to neighbors but not always. Social networks work on this principle - people may work together, be members of the same religious community, bu tlive in different parts of a town. People share some interests, but not all interests. If one network of relationships is stressed, people will seek support from other, orthogonal networks. These relationships are the hardest to create in built space, as they rely on shifting, multidimensional arrangements between nodes. They can be easily created online, but since online communities have modeled themselves after real-world spaces (so far), no true free-form multiaxis networks have appeared.
Yet.

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Networks, Interconnectedness, And Points Of Failure (II)

<strong>So what can we do to mitigate the interconnected destructive potential of networks while preserving their benefits? </strong>

We can envision three alternate kinds of networks, in addition to the "main" net. The first is inter-reforced. Instead of a simple network, where nodes contain only linkages to neighboring nodes, a reinforced network, where nodes are secondarily linked to nodes further out, can allow for systemic stresses to spread. The second is a parallel network, occasionally interlinked. Imagine two nets, one on top of the other, with occasional main connections between them. The third is an alternate network, and more closely models real-world social structures.

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