Category Archives: Technology

Last day to weigh in on “Net Neutrality” — i.e., government-controlled communications

Posted on by

Laptop ExplodingToday is the last day the FCC will allow you to express your opinion on so-called “net neutrality.”  You can go to the FCC website here.

A nice phrase, except that “net neutrality” isn’t.  Neutral, that is.

It is a ways and a means for the government to control and regulate something that doesn’t require controlling and regulating — all it requires is what it currently has: a free market.

When “net neutrality” exists, two things primarily occur: 1) rates go up and 2) innovation plummets.

The bulk of Western Europe has a version of NN and those precise things have occurred: rate hikes and a lack of entrepreneurship and cutting-edge technology.  Not to mention general overall lower internet connectivity speeds.

For the obvious reason that, in order to get anything accomplished, a new idea or upgrade has to be proposed to an entirely new and large bureaucracy that will do its best to sit on and table said idea or upgrade, simply to exhibit its power and “prove” its worth.

Public utilities are regulated because everyone needs water and power.  Those things aren’t merely “suggestions.”  They are mandatory for survival.  The internet, however, is not “mandatory” for survival.  It’s a “nice” thing to have but you won’t die due to its removal from your life.

So-called “net neutrality” is a specious solution for a problem that doesn’t even exist.  It gets our government into an area where it doesn’t belong.  And I go back to some of my foundational Libertarian bents here, which occasionally get the best of me:

When the government, any government, intrudes into the primary source of communications today — the internet — it can shut you down when you proffer speech that IT doesn’t care for.  Which is what Socialist and Communist countries do, and nations run by dictators.

Signing off on “net neutrality” will not only allow the government to have its hands upon the spigot, but will allow it to silence you and potentially prosecute you as well.  For speech that it does not approve — on the Left or on the Right.

Leftists in the government are already working to revamp the US Constitution and the Bill of Rights but, specifically, the First and Second Amendments.  Facts in evidence.

Note to self: continue to look around.

BZ

P.S.

What does Free Speech protect?  It assures the worst of speech; it assures the most challenging of speech.  It does not exist for milktoast speech.  It embraces truth and emotion and change and shocking speech.  Sometimes older speech can be the most shocking, the most challenging, and the most warranted.

 

 Share

Journalist Wearing Google Glass Claims He Was Attacked; Device Smashed In SF Mission District

Posted on by

US-TECHNOLOGY-GOOGLE-GLASSFrom CBS KPIX 5:

by Carlos E. Castañeda

SAN FRANCISCO (CBS SF) — A man said he had his Google Glass snatched of his face and smashed to the ground in San Francisco’s Mission District Friday evening.

20-year-old journalist Kyle Russell, a reporter for Business Insider, said the attack happened as he was walking on the sidewalk with a colleague. A woman came up to him and yelled, “Glass!” and grabbed the device off his face and sprinted away, he said.

Russell said he chased the woman through traffic for a block before she stopped and flung the $1,500 device onto the ground, breaking it – then running away again.

Google Glass Tweet 1Let me make a statement, and let there be no mistake: good for her.  Good for the unknown woman who smashed this “man”s” privacy-invading device into the ground.

Because there has to be, there must be, consequences for the invasion of privacy of individuals in our society.

If not lawfully, then societally.

As a cop, I fully realize that anyone and everyone has a complete and full right to record whatever my actions may be in public as a result of my response to various calls.  And that I have no lawful ability to stop said persons from recording my reactions and my events.  That much is certain.

On the other hand, cops are now wearing body and eye cams, as well as implementing LPR technologies.

Fine.  Monitor me as I take a dump at work.  You want to see that, you are welcome to it.

But my off duty time is my off duty time.  And the first person that I see in a bar or in a restaurant or in line awaiting service for something/anything or recording “casually” my life on Google Glass will be rewarded with an unfortunate result.

My private life does not exist as an entertainment value for someone else, to be immured for infinity on a hard drive or the internet.  I do not exist for your “amusement” or for your pleasure or for your diversion.

Meaning: if I see you recording me in a private venue via Google Glass, things won’t go well.  For you, I mean.

And clearly I’m not alone.

BZ

 

 Share

Sunday Post

Posted on by

Obama, Syria, Assault WeaponsIt would seem there are still some unresolved conflicts between the loving Microsoft Windows 8, myself, and Mozilla Firefox.  I am writing this, lovingly, an hour after I wanted to send a loving Blu-82 through the ceiling of Microsoft corporate headquarters.

If anyone believes that, having worked in every other environment Microsoft has foisted on us, Windows 8 is in any way “intuitive,” that one would be a raving blastocyst.  More to come.  Lovingly, of course.

BZ

 

 

 Share

A brief tech update:

Posted on by

BZ As Druid

BZ’s Druid cowl and analog sword

My wife and I have a pact.

She stays away from plants, because she has what some call the proverbial Black Thumb.  Most plants she touches die.  I handle the plants at the homes.

Conversely, I am the family Druid, the Luddite.  I am as tech-savvy as a pair of worn socks in your dresser drawer.  I stay away from the technology and let her handle the bulk of it.

Recently, for example — on WordPress, which powers this blog — I uploaded one single, solitary plugin.  I’ve loaded plugins before on WordPress but this plugin somehow crashed my entire blog about two weeks ago.  I couldn’t even access the dashboard in order to discover which plugin was responsible.

Luckily, my tech guru is Robert, who is the I.T. expert for the blog consortium of myself, Texas Fred, American & Proud, The Right Handed Cowboy and The O Word.

Robert was able to suss out the problem, un-crash everything, and bring my blog back up.  God bless him.  But absent his intervention, my digital world would have remained shattered.

That said, I’ve had — like most all of you, I suspect — damned near thousands of computers to date.  And today I updated the one at my wife’s house in Ghetto Centrale.

Right now I’m typing my last post, for a while, on my Sony Vaio 15″ laptop.  It’s been a great machine, not a hiccup to it, ever, with a great keyboard.  I really like its keyboard, illuminated as it is in white, with a crisp strike, and very responsive.  But it’s no Toshiba all-in-one, like the 25″ screen I have at the cabin in the Sierra Nevadas.  It’s a remarkably sharp touchscreen with no cables or wires or confusion.  It has a wireless keyboard and a wireless mouse.  I, however, dislike touching screens because I have to reach.  And you have to clean the screen.

Samsung-dp700a3d-a01usToday, as a replacement for the Sony Vaio, I purchased a 27″ Samsung Series 7, with an Intel® Core™ i7 processor, 10 gigs of RAM and 2 TB hard drive.  Another all-in-one with a power cord and that’s it.

This will be my new confuser down here in Ghetto Centrale, at my wife’s house.

One niggling little problem: it has Windows 8 loaded.  And, from what I’ve seen, I don’t like Windows 8.  You cannot get any new PC without Windows 8.  But apparently you can revert back to something similar to Windows 7 and the desktop with the START.

For shite’s sake, I don’t want to re-learn some new OS every damned 6 months.

Thoughts, anyone, on my purchases or Windows or PCs or Macs or desktops or all-in-ones or tablets or anything else digital?

BZ

 

 

 Share

Patience, pretty please:

Posted on by

Perhaps some of you have noticed my blog has had its “ups and downs” in the past three or four days.

This is a server/host issue, not a WordPress or BZ issue.

Trust me when I tell you there have been many, many hours of hate, discontent, dirty words, sweat, mud, keyboard tapping and strenuous phone calls made in order to ameliorate this problem.  Bushwack has been laboring mightily behind the scenes because Yours Truly is a complete HTML Idiot.

I would ask kindly: if BZ doesn’t load immediately, please don’t give up.  Please come back.  The problem is temporary and may in fact be fixed.

Final question: have any of you experienced problems with the BZ site within the past few days, and what were the results?

Thanks for reading and thanks for your support!

BZ

 

 

 Share