European Union funds consortium to establish P2P standard for IPTV, has anyone even raised this in DC?

EU Sponsors P2P TV with 14m Euros: NewTeeVee

The European Union has taken initial steps toward establishing a continent-wide peer-to-peer television (P2PTV) protocol for delivering rich multimedia via broadband. An exciting opportunity exists for the EU to emerge as the pioneering force for entrepreneurial activity in the P2PTV market, which offers many exciting possibilities for innovative media strategies to redefine online video. Known as P2P-Next, the project homepage makes as clear an argument as I have yet found for the importance of finding useful applications of P2P technology, rather than take the suppressive approach that many in the US and Japan have adopted.



The EU is internally divided however, with some states taking equally aggressive stances against peer-driven protocols as those assumed by their American and Japanese counterparts, who have recently considered allowing ISPs to block P2P traffic. Pressure from powerful interests, such as the music industry, have led to institutional mistrust of P2P technology generally following the well documented file-sharing networks, such as Kazaa and Morpheus, which have utilized P2P to pirate music and movies for over a decade.

(From the P2P-Next Introduction) The P2P-Next integrated project will build a next generation peer-to-peer content delivery platform, to be designed, developed and applied jointly by a consortium consisting of high profile academic and industrial players with proven track records in innovation and commercial success. The current infrastructure of the Internet is not suited to simultaneous transmission of live events to millions of people (i.e. broadcasting). The problem is that a dedicated stream of data must be sent to every single user.



With millions of potential users, the simultaneous streams of data will easily congest the Internet. For several years, we have been told that the answer to this problem is "multicasting", whereby the data stream is distributed to many local servers that subsequently "re-broadcast" the content to local users. However, most IP routers of the Internet cannot support multicasting–and there seems to be no financial incentive for the ISPs to introduce multicasting. Also, the use of Audiovisual Media is moving from a collective and passive approach to personal active behavior, at home and in mobile situations outside the home. At the same time use patterns are shifting towards non-linear usages, moving away from the classic model of linear broadcast TV. The TV set no longer has the monopoly of delivery of audiovisual content; the PC and related media centers, mobile phones, and potentially initiatives from new stakeholders are all becoming increasingly important.



In such heterogeneous environments, efficient content delivery needs optimized unicast, multicast, broadcast, and also support for new mechanisms that have been made possible by the recent advances in P2P grids. This situation has important consequences for the existing business models and institutions, as well as for content production, content distribution, and end user experience on various terminals. This particular holds for stakeholders that propose services based on heterogeneous terminals and networks, together with the demand from users of transparent service continuity. This makes Peer-to-Peer -based technologies that can provide efficient and low-cost delivery of professional and user created content essential for the technologically-competitive future Europe.



In response to these challenges, the objective of P2P-Next is to move forward the technical enablers to facilitate new business scenarios for the complete value chain in the content domain from a linear unidirectional push mode to a user centric, time and place independent platform paradigm. A platform approach allows modular development and modular applications, enables knowledge sharing and facilitates technology integration, code- and skill re-use. This translates to fast development of new content delivery applications that build value for service and content providers. P2P-Next will develop a platform that takes open source development, open standards, and future proof iterative integration as key design principles.

A lofty goal for certain, but will the EU accomplish its mission if the rest of the western world is going to every extent imaginable to suppress all P2P network transmissions? There is some indication from Comcast, the primary target of P2P obstruction allegation in the US, that the company has come to see the merit in the legal application of P2P distribution on the 21st century Internet.

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Chinese GPS rival Beidou launched...

FT.com / Asia-Pacific / China - China launches first navigation satellite

Beidou Navigation System

After nearly twenty years of geo-spacial monopoly, the US GPS system, which so many people around the world have come to rely on when traveling to an unknown destination. The European Union has recently closed in on full operational capability of their real-time navigational system Galileo, and the Chinese took major steps toward implementing a third in the launch of a key satellite over the weekend in their Beidou Navigation System.

There exists fundamental differences between the US system and its EU contemporary which are as indicative of the fundamental differences in the guiding economic philosophies of the two continents. The GPS system that has been in operation under the Department of Defense since the 1970's has, since its declassification, been open for use at no cost to any company that can harness its vast capacities for use at the level of the individual consumer or corporate entity. Since that time the US has embraced GPS culture and all of our ground based commercial traffic is guided by the pulsing satellites that make up the GPS network. Galileo will take a different approach, instead charging its users a fee for usage with the value-added benefits not entirely clear as of yet, though to be fair, the system is hardly up and running.

The Beidou (Chinese name for the "Big Dipper" constellation) Navigation System is even further down the road than Magellan, and just as the US and EU networks are reflections of the fundamental economic differences that exist between the two Western civilizations, the Chinese strategy for its commercialization strategy is like all other economic policies in China: vague and highly speculative.

As the Chinese become wealthier and their country-sides are transformed into concrete jungles awash in semi-trucks and FedEx vans, their decision to enter the Global-Positioning market early and aggressively will likely prove to have been wise. If they choose, as I suspect they will, to follow the path of the free markets paved by their American competitor they will most likely outshine the Galileo network even if they are years behind in bringing the service to consumers.

Considering China is still a developing economy by official classification, it should be noted that they are making aggressive commercial, and not just militaristic advances in the space industry. If American policymakers, entrepreneurs and bankers heed the warnings that such an aggressive push by a growing competitor into an industry with limitless potential the US should have no problem competing with the Middle Kingdom anywhere in the known universe.

Obsurd statements from EU, Russian officials and liberal US media show where their true sympathies lie...

Senior European Union, Russian and Indian officials, along with every "compassionate" and "concerned" member of the US media, expressed their dismay following the execution of Saddam Hussein last evening in Iraq, while President Bush and most American political figures found peace and closure in the long battle fought by American troops who are ONLY IN IRAQ BECAUSE OF SADDAM. As I mentioned in the previous post, Alan Colmes from Fox News Channel's Hannity and Colmes disgusted me with his negative, "how can I make Bush look bad?" comments which were posed with such bristled rigidity that he appeared to have taken a large horse tranquilizer, but he never says much intelligent anyways. Colmes must have insinuated or flat out stated that the US was executing the former-Iraqi president and that they had failed to provide him a fair trial, oh wait, it was that they were risking provoking retaliatory attacks from Sunni-backed terror groups in and around Baghdad, oh but I mean, uh, oh, PLEASE SHUT UP ALAN.

I can respect the EU and Russian officials publicly questioning the moral premise for the death penalty, and choosing to express their distaste for the Iraqi governments use of the harsh measure following what many are calling an "unfair" (whatever that means) trial. I have absolutely no respect for the people that have chosen to take issue with President Bush and the interim Iraqi government for acting barbarically, for if they were so concerned about due process and the letter of the law in Iraq maybe they should show up and do something other than sell munitions and rifles to our our terrorist enemy.

Saddam was not a good man, I have never heard anyone suggest that, but he received more sympathy for his execution last night from people who were never able to extend the slightest bit of doubt or uncertainty in the case of Scott Peterson, whose wife's body happened to turn up in the same Bay that every news channel in the US had been broadcasting 24/7 had been the very location his had gone boating that morning?! If you killed Lacy Peterson, wouldn't you have thought the police were offering you an easy way out by leading you to the spot he was present at all morning when she disappeared? If that is not an obvious reason for at least one juror (OR MEMBER OF THE LIBERAL MEDIA) to rule out the death penalty though they still thought he "probably" did it.

However, despite all of the videotaped evidence of Saddam's atrocities, the wars we waged against him, none of this stuff matters because Bush might come out looking good at the end of the day. Someone should send out an intra-hippy memo and make sure these lunatics understand exactly how reckless they have become with words that aren't just empty rhetoric but rather brand what is by no stretch of the imagination a loss for the American military, but is instead a loss for the Iraqi people. Unfortunately, left-wing political hacks like David Letterman, Chris Matthews, Nora O'Donnell, and the entire cast of The View, think it is appropriate and classy to remind us everyday how much smarter they are than the President, or how much Donald Rumsfeld reminds them of Hitler, or pages worth of other ridiculous ad hominum attacks that have penetrated the thick skulls of their obviously sedated/shallow viewers that encourage such blather.

Personally, having now had the opportunity to watch the video footage of the execution I must admit it looked a little bit creepy, but I felt no remorse for the disgraced and condemned Butcher of Baghdad. When I heard he was dead I was reminded of the feeling of relief I had when as a little kid I had heard that famed serial-killer and child-rapist John Wayne Gasey was dead. I don't understand the type of moral-mindset that would allow a person, or in this case dozens of people, to find it appropriate to stand on principal when the world has lost the man that was the cause of all the problems these same people are so frequently bemoaning and relegating to the dust bin of American history.

View of the universe may be cast in new light as we focus our lenses on the heavens...

Today the EU hopes to begin a mission that may redefine our view of the universe by adding new focus to the cartographic conquest of deep space and worlds not too unlike our own. Until now, we have not had the ability to see with much clarity planets orbiting distant suns similar to our own, which has left only with speculation as to whether or not water, the essence of life in our own ecosystem, is widely proliferated though out the many billions of solar systems.

Moore's Law, the famous prediction made by Intel co-founder Gordon Moore states that since microchip "complexity" is proportional to the number of transistors, it should hold that the performance of a single chip should double every 24 months. I have never put the time into looking for a comparable axiom coined by an astronomer or space physicist regarding the rate of improvement in our telescopic capability, but it seems to me that our discoveries in just the last five years would make the exponential implications of Moore's logic totally applicable. It has awed me to read about the incredible discoveries made by scientists at NASA and the European Space Agency toward realizing greater meaning of our seemingly insignificant existence in a remote and tranquil corner of the galaxies. We have witnessed and begun to unlock the mysteries of catastrophic interstellar collisions that puzzled and inspired great thinkers like Einstein and his theory of general relativity, or his brilliant thought on "large objects". I have been overwhelmed by the relative obscurity of these groundbreaking and before now science fictional observations that were once thought to be eternal mysteries. We have found planetary systems, made advancements in our physical understanding of the applicability of natural laws in anomolies such as black-holes, and the presence of "dark matter" has become a discovery well within our grasp. We even now believe that we have discovered actual flowing water on Mars, which if confirmed would turn our understanding of our own solar-system on its head.

I am very excited to view the heavenly images captured by the COROT satellite, but I am wish the world would pay better attention to what is going on in the world of astronomy, because it may end up being the biggest story since the Gospels.

France Pulls Through for Lebanon Peacekeeping Mission

Google News- France Meets Commitment, Offers 2,000 Troops

Paris has finally agreed to send 2,000 troops to take the lead of an international peacekeeping force, which already has 5,000 Italians and commitments from every member of the Arab League to contributed "boots on the ground." Looking as silly as I have ever seen him, French President Jacques Chirac spoke quite earnestly on French television announcing the governments decision to send more than their previously embarrassing offer had called for. I can't say that before the current crisis I had ever said anything favorable about the French President, but his response to the actions of the Israeli government was the most impressive of all veto-wielding Security Council members. Similarly, prior to the current debacle I hadn't been one to criticize Bush's policies because generally I think he is on the right track, but his disregard for all reason and compassion in response to the brutal tactics and disproportionate response of the Israeli army will be a permanent stain on his otherwise historic legacy as a crusader of virtue in the Middle East.