3 Data Rights We Must Demand from Companies

Last week during covering a tool for analyzing your iPhone location data, I mused on my long-time interest in data portability - giving users access to and control over their own data. It's an idea we've been covering here for years.

Here's an example. One of my favorite features of Netflix is the recommendation engine. I've spent a lot of time teaching Netflix what I like and don't like. Amazon.com may be getting into the streaming movie business. So may other companies. Some of them might be better. However Netflix already knows my preferences, and I'm not keen on the idea of repeating the whole process of training another service, especially since I may end up deciding not to stick with it. It's a classic vendor lock-in scenario.

What seems like decades in Internet years

Doc Searls has been talking about this for what seems like decades in Internet years. In the rant we recently covered he wrote:

We have no choice however to agree with this system, if we want to be part of it. And, since the cows provide all the context for everything we do with them, we have onerous "agreements" in name only, just as what you see on your iPhone every time Apple makes a change to their store.

Don't like Dropbox's new terms of service? Tough - you either live with it, or you delete your account. Financial institutions and telecommunications companies are even worse about this sort of thing. Don't like the new fees they just added to your bill? Tough. You have to pay them at any rate, because when you signed up you agreed to let them add random charges to your bill.

Advances in Intel Ethernet 10 Gigabit Server Adapters and VMware vSphere 4 allow migration away from legacy Gigabit Ethernet networking.

This white paper provides network architects and decision makers with guidance for moving from GbE to 10GbE networking in their virtualized data centers.