Thoughts after attending my first barcamp? First thought, will someone please dissolve parliament? Stop all this piss poor law now. You've got your warts and all ETS. Please, no more! Unwind the atrocious Copyright (New Technologies) Amendment Act. FFS, please do not enact that freaking gimp law.
On a slightly less hysterical note, it was a shock to realise how useless my questions on server space prices in New Zealand fell down. Alas, NZ is a piss in the ocean of servers. Why would anyone pay $150 a month here when they can get a better deal for a tenth of the price in Silicon Valley? What's more, local de-peering a few years ago lost whatever cost benefit bonus local servers might have had.
Way I see it, data security is a public concern. There's all sorts of aspects of privacy and other law that just stops at the border. Should you care that your bank account details are stored offshore? Do you care where Inland Revenue stores you're details? Are you OK with your passport and biometric details being stored in California, or that wonderful Server in the Sky database that NZ is contributing to? Who is responsible if a large segment of our our population is exposed to the equivalent of identity thieves and Nigerian scammers, or worse, the US Department of Homeland Security?
The Nat plan of introducing fibre to the home lends itself to bringing back peered networks. No point expanding the network traffic through the Southern Cross sphincter, which Telecom has an interest in. Re-peering and sifting broadband traffic prices between local and international bandwidth would also provide a more transparent price structure for consumers.
Re-peering would certainly be a vital bargaining chip to whatever deal has to be made with that devil. Long live the Kiwi Borg!
