Seems like I’m always coming up with excuses not to post, but I knew nobody would read if I posted over Thanksgiving, so I just ate ham instead. I’m now at risk of turning into bacon, I’ve had so much.
Oops. The Department of Defense signed a deal with Apprticity to buy 500 user licenses and a number of server licenses of its software. But after the Army let slip during a presentation that “thousands” of users were in the system, the government’s large-scale copyright infringement exposed. Apptricity and the Obama administration settled for $50 million.
This is your periodic reminder that kids don’t belong on the Internet. The Internet is every sex predator on Earth, all hiding in your kid’s computer or phone. Be careful out there.
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Rooting for injuries watch: Anonymous Australia takes on Anonymous Indonesia. And then Singapore is after their own Anonymous cell. The blackshirts will be rooted out wherever they are, around the world*.
Cognitive dissonance watch: Google paints themselves as the Hobbits against Sauron that the NSA is supposed to be, even as they try to simultaneously goad people onto Google+ via Youtube comments, and then broadcast Google+ information to Android users, opting you in by default. I’m sorry, but these hobbits aren’t being taken to Isengard. They’re ruling Isengard.
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If you’re really that worried about Dropbox “opening your files” as these guys on a wild goose chase were, then why exactly are you uploading them unencrypted to Dropbox to begin with? This is what I’m talking about when I say people don’t actually act like they care about privacy. If people did care, they’d act differently.
Once again, the FCC is looking to reduce competition by picking winners and losers int he marketplace, this time in attacking owners of UHF stations. The guy who owns channel 56 doesn’t even have the same market power as the guy who owns channel 4, so why try to make UHF owners divest? That just reduces competition.
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I enjoy that in America, we refuse to give official sanction of the radical appropriation of May Day, and instead have a Labor Day on a completely different day, separating ourselves from anti-liberty radicals.
You can tell the anti-NSA people are really scraping the bottom of the barrel now in their attempts to attack the agency. It’s kind of ridiculous. Even if we take traitor Edward Snowden at his word, despite how he could easily have modified or even fabricated parts of or entire documents to push an agenda, it’s actually the NSA’s job to spy on foreign agents like the Qatar-funded Al Jazeera.
Of course, this is really interesting timing for DEA to be seeking massive amounts of call metadata. That’s not going to go over well with the libertarians. Then again, I don’t know if it’ll sway anyone who didn’t already favor free dope and sodomy. Sorry, but it’s true. You can talk a lot of people into part-way legalizations of cannabis, but it takes a hardcore radical to go all the way and legalize opiates and cocaine.
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This will bet he only edition of Tech at Night this week. I was out of it Monday night, and this weekend I’m traveling to Denver for SGDQ 2013. I will be there to give live on stream commentary for the Legend of Zelda and Zelda II runs, so watch and donate if you care to.
House Democrats, together with a few libertarians, tried to restrict the NSA, and failed. I’m fine with this.
In other news, Google is accused of Net Neutrality violations for trying to restrict servers on Google Fiber. Heh. If people can run servers on Google Fiber then they’re going to have problems quickly. So this is a very interesting case.
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Heh, the Playstation 4 is pro-used games and cheaper, right? Not so fast. The PS4 simply didn’t include the Eye and will let publishers restrict used games after all. Told you EA didn’t stop online passes because they were suddenly fine with used games.
Kids don’t belong on the Internet, because predators are out there. Even if your kid is high school aged, Be careful!
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So the left is mad that the President’s new pick for Commerce isn’t totally in the pocket of the unions, and they’re mad the new pick for FCC, Tom Wheeler, isn’t a radical socialist like Bernie Sanders. I’m not all that optimistic about either pick though. The President is choosing bundlers for personal loyalty, which means radicalism on his terms, but still radicalism.
This is amazing though, and this is something the radicals will never tell you: more Americans lack access to public water than to broadband Internet. Twice as many, in fact. Government is a failure, compared with private competition.
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Leave it to the Obama administration to botch everything. Trying to shortchange rural TV stations will only discourage them from participating in incentive auctions, therefore harming universal access and competition in the rural broadband market.
More wireless means more competition, folks. Allowing TV stations to reap the full rewards of selling off their spectrum is win-win.
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And this is how that tech coalition begins to die: Ron Wyden working with Al Franken on large expansions of government online, a startling reversal from the anti-PROTECT IP Senator from Oregon.
Google caves to the Chinese Communists even as Google’s Eric Schmidt hands a propaganda victory to North Korean Communists. A pattern?
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Top story: the FCC is moving forward with spectrum auctions, providing incentives for television stations to auction off their spectrum for wireless Internet use. We could see the auctions completed by the end of 2014.
Everyone admits there’s a spectrum crunch, and on the right and left of the FCC they say it’s a difficult question of how to transfer spectrum to alleviate it. Greg Walden is right though that this is good “if implemented well.” Bruce Mehlman of iia calls it “a terrific start” and that’s also true.
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