Category Archives: Internet

Welcome to Tuesday: “U.N. to Seek Control of the Internet.”

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From the WeeklyStandard.com:

Next week the United Nations’ International Telecommunications Union will meet in Dubai to figure out how to control the Internet. Representatives from 193 nations will attend the nearly two week long meeting, according to news reports.

“Next week the ITU holds a negotiating conference in Dubai, and past months have brought many leaks of proposals for a new treaty. U.S. congressional resolutions and much of the commentary, including in this column, have focused on proposals by authoritarian governments to censor the Internet. Just as objectionable are proposals that ignore how the Internet works, threatening its smooth and open operations,” reports the Wall Street Journal.

“Having the Internet rewired by bureaucrats would be like handing a Stradivarius to a gorilla. The Internet is made up of 40,000 networks that interconnect among 425,000 global routes, cheaply and efficiently delivering messages and other digital content among more than two billion people around the world, with some 500,000 new users a day.

The internet IS and WAS a major “game changer” on the planet.

Bill O’Reilly hates it.  I happen to love it: the Libertarian in me –

– for any number of reasons, not the least of which is its freedom.  It’s — as yet — total and rampant freedom, within purpose.

It’s the absolute Wild West and an amazing gift — all at once — in a tumultuous rumble of staggering mayhem.

Just like human beings, it’s as good or as bad as we are.

But it’s also The Great Equalizer.

If I knew the HTML, I could have a website every bit as gorgeous, intuitive, extensive, professional, graphically intense or beautiful as that of Rolls-Royce or Exxon-Mobil or Hyundai or Fuji Heavy Industries.  Sometimes the most powerful companies have the worst-looking websites.

There is, truly, great equilibrium in the internet.

It is terribly bad.  Yet it is terribly good.

It deserves — it must — have its freedom protected.

BZ

 

 

“Houston, WE HAVE INTERNET!”

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Those who read this blog know that I am something of a “bi-coastal” person; that is to say, I stay at my wife’s house in Elk Grove (otherwise known as Baja Mack Road or Ghetto Centrale) and also at my house at the 4,000-foot elevation in the Sierra Nevada Mountains of Fornicalia.

I’ve had my house since 1993 and it’s a two-story open-loft cabin surrounded by trees and a landscaped, fenced terrain.  I own it now, outright.  It is a stone’s throw from the original Central Pacific Railroad line built in the 1860s — now owned by the Union Pacific.  Because of this, I found a reinvigorated interest in history, video and photography (I was, at one time, a paid stringer for The Sacramento Bee).  This interest also spawned my train blog (which I highly recommend), Milepost154.

That said, my only connection to the internet at the cabin was via — no, I’m not kidding — a “dial-up” connection.  For those who wish to relive their horrible dial-up past, click here.  Because that was the story of my internet life for many years.

Of course, I tried alternatives.  Hughesnet and SkyBlue were an incredibly expensive abomination which penalized you at the first sense of pressured bandwidth.  ColfaxNet was simply incompetent.  DigitalPath couldn’t make things work.  Luckily, AT&T came through the area with the offer of their U-verse.

So, roughly an hour ago, AT&T left my cabin, leaving behind a vertical black plastic monolith with little winking green lights, hooked directly up to my Toshiba DX-735  “all-in-one.”  I’ve disabled the wi-fi until I can figure it out.  However, I’m “on the net” to the tune of up to 12 mbps.

At this point I’m listening to Hugh Hewitt over streaming radio, watching YouTube train videos, creating this post and clicking between seven open tabs.

A few minutes ago, I set fire to the tin cans and twine I used to access the internet.  Because now — holey moley — I may not have the fastest internet connection known to Man, but it’s infinitely faster than eastern red-backed squirrels, carrier pigeons or this.

I’m a lucky guy.

BZ