| Sorry I have been slacking on updating lately. I've been really busy with my Wii. "The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess" is awesome. That is all.
On a side note: waiting in line for 8 hours in below freezing temperatures is not a good way to cure a cold.
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| I finally found a good feature of Windows Vista. No, it's not Aero, the new "security" features, or the DRM that they manage to put everywhere. No, this feature is the subtle jab at everyone's favorite Alaskan representative who doesn't know shit about the Internet, Senator Stevens. Check out the new network icon for Vista.
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| I exude an aura of computer nerdiness otherwise referred to as an "I'll bet this random person that I occasionally see outside the dorm building can fix my computer" field.
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| Alright, I have to make another post, the Telecos are pissing me off. You might have heard about something called "Net Neutrality", you've probably heard it explained as some evil scheme that Google has to charge you more money. I assure you, that is not the truth, only Teleco propaganda. Let me break down the situation for you.
In the early days of broadband Internet service, the networks sucked (and they still do), the Telecos and ISPs thought "Hey, we can't support selling consumers 1.5 MbPS of bandwidth for ~$50 bucks a month, however, most consumers won't even use that bandwidth. We should go ahead and sell that bandwidth, surely the computer industry won't have people that will want to create new services to offer customers that will actually take advantage of this increase in bandwidth."
Enter youtube, google, and others. They said "Hey, now that consumers have fast Internet connections, why don't we come up with new and invotive ways to use all this bandwidth available to consumers? It will be great, we can make the consumers happy by offering them something they will like AND make money in the process."
Now that we have these services, customers actually have the gall to use the services they are currently paying for. What are the Telecos to do? They already charge the consumer for Internet access, they already charge the content providers for Internet access (believe it or not, Google and Youtube have to pay an Internet bill just like you or I, the only difference is that they are paying shit tons more than you or I). The Telecos have run out of people to charge. Thus they came up with an idea, charge content providers an additional fee (a very, very large one at that) and, if they don't, their service will be greatly reduced in quality. They say they won't start blocking companies or redirect URLs to competitors if the content providers don't pay the extortion fees but personally, I don't trust Ma Bell.
Net Neutrality will make this illegal. The Telecos would have to treat all traffic going over their network the same.
I try to avoid politics but I have to say this, SUPPORT NET NEUTRALITY! Tell the fucking Telecos that THEY are responsible for their bad business decisions, not anyone else.
P.S. During the late 90s and early 2000s, the United States Government gave the Telecos billions and billions of dollars in subsidies and tax breaks so that they could improve their networks. The importance of this is two fold. First, their propaganda states that government interference with business is bad. If they think government intererence is bad, they should give back all money. Last I checked, government subsidies to business is, in fact, government interfering with business. Second, what did they do with that money? We just gave you fucking billions of dollars to improve your networks and now your crying that your networks aren't good enough. WTF?
P.P.S. Contrary to what Senator Stevens will tell you, the Internet actually isn't a series of tubes.
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