Hello again to those I saw in Charleston over the weekend, and hope to see you next time to those who weren’t able to make it!
While I return to California and get settled in again, it seems that some are leaving the state for good, and the hostile business climate is why. This includes the punitive Amazon Tax which has made it impossible for Amazon and others to host affiliate programs in California, destroying small businesses, slashing profits, and killing jobs. And this is a story we’re seeing again and again, up and down the state. New and higher taxes, even of the unconstitutional variety, kills jobs.
So my message to Tennessee’s Governor Haslam is don’t do it. Don’t be like us. Create a job-friendly environment, or you will only compound whatever revenue problems you have.
Once again, San Francisco bay area proves itself out of step even with far-left Democrats. The Bay Area Rapid Transit (BART) system shut down some wireless phone transmitters to disrupt some protests, and even the Obama FCC has a problem with that.
Speaking of the President and his FCC, just where is Barack Obama on FCC matters? Does this President intend to lead, or follow?
File under “When you lose the unions….”: Minnesota’s AFL-CIO has called out Al Franken for being too big government on the AT&T/T-Mobile deal. Al Franken: too extreme, even for Minnesota unions.
Genuine Astroturf is being driven by the radical left, and Sprint, to the FCC comments process. What they accuse our side of doing is nothing they don’t actually do. Projection, projection, projection.
How do groups like Anonymous do so much, with so little sense? People are lazy and/or ignorant and deploy insecure systems. Even the government. Why, I deployed a network a couple of weeks ago, and if I’d used the hardware supplied by the ISP, I’d have been giving my client encryption that was broken completely, years ago, making the network insecure against any determined listener.
And no, you can’t legislate or regulate this stuff. Legislation and regulation are too slow; consider that the government-sponsored DES encryption algorithm had grown insecure by brute force years before it was actually replaced by the new AES standard.
The debate between LightSquared and GPS manufacturers rages on. Heightened competition in the high-end, national, 4G wireless Internet market hangs in the balance.
App developers: Don’t target children under 13 with your email gathering, or the government will come after you. COPPA, unlike some for the children bills like CDA, does not enforce censorship and I expect to withstand any court scrutiny.
I caught some flak when I pointed out that Google is hypocritical about patents. Google acquires them freely, but like the Peace Loving Soviet Union said about its imperialist expansionism, Google claims its actions are different and don’t count. So some may be surprised that as Google announces plans to buy Motorola’s mobile phone business, it turns out that the big story is that Google wants Motorola’s patents related to those phones. And that’s not me saying that: It’s Google co-founder Larry Page, who has now replaced Eric Schmidt as CEO.
Anyone care to bet me, and lay me odds, on the proposition that Google will announce Royalty Free licensing on all its patents, to the public at large, with no discrimination of any kind, forever? I’m skeptical, but maybe a Google true believer has some money to burn make by betting me on this. Keep in mind that Android is supposed to be an open source platform, but Google is complaining its source code is confidential.
So let us all pause to chuckle a moment at the sad, unfair, big government intrusion by the FTC into Google’s business as Search Neutrality marches on. This investigation by the Obama administration will also check to see if Android is as open as they say it is. So it’s Search Neutrality and Android Neutrality. And yes, fellow conservatives, we must oppose this power grab. It may be funny now when it’s directed at Google, but it won’t be funny when it targets someone else next.