Net Neutrality

You may have heard about net neutrality over the years. Recently, the concept has gone through some changes, and many would consider its underlying principles to be in danger of corruption or dissolution. However, the technical nature of net neutrality ethics makes it difficult to understand for the layperson. Read on, and the central themes and controversies surrounding the principle will be outlined and explained for your convenience.

The Theme

Passbook is one of the newest features of the iPhone. What many people were offput by standards today is that we rely too much on disposable tickets, and the like, such as when you go to the airport for a boarding pass, or a movie ticket. Apple strove to solve that with a new application that is bundled with the newest update: Passbook.

Passbook offers everything you need, especially when a ticket, coupon, or gift card is needed. When you first open the application you are greeted by a sampling of applications that support Passbook, and its features. To begin, install the particular application you want to use. For example, we will be going with the Starbucks application to satiate our coffee needs every morning, as we have a gift card to spend.

Open up the freshly downloaded application, and get ready to be blown away. Like most applications, especially when it has to do with airlines, or coffee, you are almost always required to sign up for a respective account. Don’t worry, it is easy. All you will be asked is to fill out your email, a password, and other miscellaneous information to identify you when you lose your password or others.

Once you have finished signing up, you’re ready to roll. It will prompt you to enter a gift card that you already own, or begin a digital gift card. If you don’t have a gift card, you can start a digital gift card (or, as many may call it: a prepaid card), and pay for your coffee in a fast, and efficient way. Just tap on “Tap to Pay” when you are ready to pay, and tap again after you have paid. It’s really that easy.

The Zen of Python, by Tim Peters has been adopted by many as a model summary manual of python's philosophy.  Though these statements should be considered more as guideline and not mandatory rules, developers worldwide find the poem to be on a solid guiding ground.

Beautiful is better than ugly.
Explicit is better than implicit.
Simple is better than complex.
Complex is better than complicated.
Flat is better than nested.
Sparse is better than dense.
Readability counts.
Special cases aren't special enough to break the rules.
Although practicality beats purity.
Errors should never pass silently.
Unless explicitly silenced.
In the face of ambiguity, refuse the temptation to guess.
There should be one-- and preferably only one --obvious way to do it.
Although that way may not be obvious at first unless you're Dutch.
Now is better than never.
Although never is often better than *right* now.
If the implementation is hard to explain, it's a bad idea.
If the implementation is easy to explain, it may be a good idea.
Namespaces are one honking great idea -- let's do more of those!

HP is taking legal action against Oracle for allegedly breaching its 2010 partnership agreement of porting HP’s core software products with the latest versions of Itanium. In March, Oracle announced it would not be developing any new versions for products designed for the Itanium processor. Itanium has the ability to power the so-called Business Critical Systems hardware for extremely demanding enterprise applications. However, Oracle said the chip line is about to die.

The companies’ lawyer met in the Santa Clara County Superior Court with Judge James Kleinberg presiding to discuss their side of the event. Others in the courtroom included Ann Livermore, HP board member and former enterprise business chief, and Oracle’s co-President Safra Catz. Catz and Livermore were the two key negotiators for the agreement. Livermore was to testify later in the day. Kleinberg is set to rule if the companies had a legally binding contract.

Jeff Thomas, HP’s lawyer, focused on the so-called Hurd Agreement wording, where the companies reiterated their partnership after Oracle hired Mark Hurd, former CEO for HP. HP also sued Hurd for breaking the confidentiality agreement.

Thomas and the lead lawyer for Oracle focused on one paragraph of the agreement, which read Oracle would continue to provide its product suite on the HP platform in a way that’s consistent with the existing partnership before Hurd’s hiring.