BrokenClaw | June 18, 2008
Net Neutrality, also known as Network Neutrality or Internet Neutrality, is the idea that all data moving across the Internet should be treated equally by the companies who move it. In other words, your ISP should not be allowed to slow down your traffic based on what it is. The telecommunication companies who own the [...]
BrokenClaw | April 4, 2008
Digital Rights Management, often abbreviated DRM, is a technology that publishers and producers of digital media use to limit the way you can play their media. In the non-digital world, it would be as if you had to sign an agreement whenever you purchased something for your home. For example, suppose you purchased a nice [...]
BrokenClaw | April 2, 2008
BitTorrent is a specialized method of a larger process called peer-to-peer file sharing. Peer-to-peer (often abbreviated and pronounced P2P) is the term used to describe a method of file transfer that goes from one user (a peer) to another user (a peer), without using a computer server in the middle. A typical home network, where [...]
BrokenClaw | November 4, 2007
Open source software is a description of the way that some software is distributed. It refers to the fact that the writers or developers of the software publicly share the source code (see below). This policy is the opposite of most commercial software, where the source code is considered a trade secret and is never [...]
BrokenClaw | October 8, 2007
The Global Positioning System, abbreviated and more commonly known as GPS, is a tracking system that allows a GPS device on earth, called a receiver, to determine its precise location by measuring microwave signals from orbiting satellites. Since it uses extremely accurate clocks and makes this determination essentially instantaneously, it can use a series of [...]
BrokenClaw | January 3, 2000
On New Year’s Eve, we attended a party at a local hotel restaurant. As with many millennium events, the turnout was less than the organizers expected. In fact, we noticed that there were fewer people than the previous year. Nevertheless, we were together, and that’s all that mattered. We had a lovely dinner and danced [...]