Columbus Day winds to a close, a cold slows me down, but Tech at Night marches on somehow. You know what’s also marched on? The New York Stock Exchange’s website. The anarcho-terrorists of Anonymous promised to take that website down (note: just the website, not the actual trading computers). Well, they failed, unless you count a two minute outage as success. Heck, RedState pretty much goes down for about 5 minutes every night, and we’re not even trying.
Speaking of security: in theory I love the idea of government focusing on government Internet security, while leaving the private sector alone. It doesn’t surprise me though if it turns out Obama’s brain trust can’t even do that right. Barack Obama’s disastrous regulatory record doesn’t suggest competence.
Which is why Mary Bono Mack needs to drop her ongoing privacy investigations, because it can only lead to more power for the government online, and that won’t end well.
Remember when I gave a little cheer for the supercommittee’s plans to auction off some spectrum? that plan is getting some criticism from people who want to keep some unlicensed spectrum free. If the spectrum can’t be put to use for high-speed Internet, then maybe it’s not worth bothering. If it can, though, let’s do it.
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Steve Jobs died today after a long battle with cancer. He was 56. Founding NeXT would have been enough to turn anyone into a cult hero in his field. Acquiring Lucasfilm’s Graphics Group and turning it into Pixar would have made anyone a respected business leader.
But for Steve Jobs, those were feathers in his cap called Apple, the company he co-founded with Steve Wozniak, and then later saved from extinction by returning to lead it again. He led Apple to its point today as the most valuable corporation in America, measured by public market capitalization. To do that, Jobs had to beat Microsoft and he had to beat IBM. He won in the end.
Far from just a visionary, people from Apple have always said he was a hands-on leader, who had a personal stake in the success of the company and of the products he helped create. Apple ][. Macintosh. NextStep. iMac. MacOS X. iPod. iPhone. iPad. Jobs leaves behind an incredible legacy, and his death will be felt by his industry, and the world. RIP.
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As is usual, tonight I’ll give priority to the things we had posted at RedState, and mention those first. Especially My own post on the latest on the California Amazon Tax referendum, and more specifically on the plans of Democrats to nullify the constitutional referendum process, in service of their unconstitutional Internet sales tax. We need to pressure Republicans to vote the right away, at least.
We also have a post by streiff on regulation, and how we need to do something about it. He asks a great question, on the relative levels of oversight the Congress gives to the military and to the post-New Deal alphabet soup: “So why should the commissioning of a lieutenant or the promotion of a mid-grade officer merit positive action on the part of Congress but an EPA regulatory regime that seems focused on making the use of coal illegal allowed with no action?”
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South Korea has Net Neutrality activists in an uproar as, guess what? The government is considering asking a high-bandwidth Internet service to pay its fair share for the government-subsidized Internet in the country. Just more proof that when the radicals say “Net Neutrality,” they really mean “free stuff paid for by the taxpayers.”
The radical left’s push for freeloading continues in America too, as Public Knowledge insanely campaigns against 4G wireless Internet. Why? Because providers are making you pay for what you use. Clearly, paying for what you use, according to the principles of freedom of enterprise, is unacceptable to any committed socialist.
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Anonymous is starting to lose more than it wins. As I already mentioned on Wednesday, the FBI is racking up names to arrest, and moving on them. Anonymous responded by claiming to have broken into NATO systems. The world responded by trashing Anonymous’s AnonPlus website. Of course, when they’re in jail, that won’t matter much, but it’s fun to see.
Good news: Early polling suggests a slight lead for the referendum to repeal the California Amazon/Internet Sales Tax.
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Sorry if you’ve been missing Tech at Night this week. Monday I just ran out of time as I had to do a whole bunch of housekeeping*, and tonight I’m running late. So let’s go.
In classic Tech at Night style, let’s talk about the FCC. They took forever to get the ball rolling on Net Neutrality, but it’s coming now and it’s a vehicle for censorship, says Seton Motley. As he says, “As every place we get our news and information continue their rapid migration to the Internet, Net Neutrality will lord larger and larger over the free market – and our free speech. Which is why we must rid ourselves of it as rapidly as possible.”
More fuel for the FCC reform fire: Free State Foundation points out the FCC has known for years of its problems with the intercarrier compensation system, which is how money changes hands when phone calls are carried across different private phone networks. They knew in 2001. That’s a long time coming. Though if they do tackle it now, we need to watch out for the Universal Service Fund becoming an Internet Tax.
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Friday, Friday, Friday. Black Friday? Net Neutrality rules have become one step closer to official as the FCC finally delivered something to the OMB after months of stalling. Verizon, MetroPCS, Virginia AG Ken Cuccinelli, and others ended up unable sue to throw out the illegal power grab until it’s published, so the longer the FCC waited, the longer everyone else had to wait to begin to defeat rules that will harm innovation, investment, and jobs, say Fred Upton and Greg Walden.
It’ll be 90 more days at least before the rules hit the Federal Register and the rush to the courthouse begins.
Meanwhile the FCC’s bad run in the courts continues as it lost another case. Of course, this was actually a Bush-era rule, being thrown out on a technicality. But the Obama FCC continued its defense, and lost.
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Even as Mary Bono Mack and Republicans fiddle with the pointless SAFE Data act that won’t actually do anything to prevent or even to deter online crime, the Internet burns with a string of further attacks. The Senate was hit twice, and the CIA was hit as well.
I thought we were the party that likes to solve crime by putting the criminals in jail? Why don’t we drop this reporting theater and get back to catching criminals blackmailing the US government and private enterprise?
Seriously? We want to jail kids who upload music to YouTube, and create a Communist China-style Internet censorship blacklist, but we’re blaming the victims of online attacks?
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Top story: the great Steven Crowder has a new video on Net Neutrality. With all the hype on Twitter leading up to this release, I was looking forward to Crowder’s video release. It’s funny, accurate, and devastating to the left. As usual for Crowder.
Sometimes a patent troll runs into fire. Lodsys, as you may recall, decided to abandon the strategy of targeting deep pockets and went after small-time and single developers. Well, Apple struck back, demanding that Lodsys withdraw threats to iOS developers, and warning that Apple would defend its own rights as a license holder.
There’s some rough language, but Twitter user oceankidbilly sums it up perfectly. Heh.
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Ah, Claire McCaskill. Her not particularly active Twitter account said this week that she wants to be careful about regulation of privacy online, lest those regulations cause us all to have “less access to amazing stuff.” True statement I think. Too bad she refused to stick to her guns on the radical left’s key policy, Net Neutrality. On that issue, McCaskill told MyDD government regulation could cause “an open and free exchange of information” and that she would be “happy to wage” the fight to regulate.
Not sure how to reconcile these two positions except that when the radical left tugs on Claire McCaskill’s leash, she jumps, regardless of what’s good for America or for Missouri.
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