Forgive me if I’m not as engaging as usual tonight. Firefox robbed me of a good 20 minutes of time tonight. Firefox 3, what was supposed to be faster and better than ever, had taken up so much memory it was slowing my whole system, and then it took forever to restart. Of course, now they’re saying Firefox 4 will be better this time. Really. Forgive me if I’m not optimistic. As soon as NoScript or equivalent comes to Safari, I’m away from Mozilla forever.
Moving on, I wrote on RedState today about the FCC plotting something that could be a sign that the left wants to start manipulating statistics to push their agenda. We need to watch and make sure they don’t try anything funny.
The IPv4 Panic Button has been hit again. People are saying we’re out of addresses! But we’re actually not. We’ve just handed out many large blocks of addresses to regional authorities who then assign them to those who need them. Of course, if we actually did run out (and couldn’t fix the issue of a few large companies having obscene numbers of addresses, from the old days), I say we just strip pubic IP addresses from countries that firewall the Internet, including China, Saudi Arabia, and Australia. If you’re not on the public Internet, you don’t need public IP addresses.
Do you use a wireless Internet router or access point at home? Put a password on it or you are at risk. Don’t use the older WEP encryption either. Use something harder to break like WPA.
Britain wants global action against hackers and “cybersecurity” issues and international standards to prevent “cyberwar.” Considering the Internet is primarily commercial anyway, this can be a good thing. Of course the specter of global governance online gets some worried, especially when the Obama administration routinely uses “cybersecurity” as the camel’s nose, so we can always watch closely and be careful before we agree to anything.
Bayshore Networks suggests that stronger penalties are a good way to address security issues. It’s something to consider, to be sure.
Guess what? Remember how Net Neutrality wasn’t supposed to be about free stuff? Well Verizon is setting policy to deal with excessive burdens on its wireless network… and the left is shrieking about Net Neutrality. Note that Verizon’s throttling is not content-based or peer-based but purely based on usage. There’s no bias. Net Neutrality is only an issue if Net Neut is just code for socialism, like we said!
Good thing Chairman Fred Upton plans aggressive oversight of the Obama administration, then!
You know what happens when you let government take emergency powers over our communications network? Abuse, as happened in Egypt. Our system of government isn’t on the model of the benevolent dictator. If we wanted that we’d have a King, not a President. Someone explain this to Susan Collins and Joe Lieberman, please. They just don’t get it.
And to round out the night, the EFF goes into the details arguing that the FCC has no authority to pass Net Neutrality. It’s dry, but it’s important.