RepWeiner @GennetteNicole http://yfrog.com/h25m3luj 22 hours, 18 minutes ago
The Twitter post and the image on YFrog have since been deleted. To attempt to be delicate about it, the linked photo (posted under Weiner’s YFrog account) was of a man in in somewhat tight-fitting underwear, with just that area of his body visible. Big Government has the photo if you want to judge for yourself.
And to be clear, Weiner is married, and the person the photo was directed at is a 21 year old college student in Washington near the Canadian border. So naturally, Weiner needed to explain this fast. About an hour and a half later, Weiner claimed he’d been hacked. That explanation doesn’t hold up. Here’s why.
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This week I already called upon Rick Perry to veto the Texas Amazon Tax, and now I’m left to hope that California Democrats will be less stupid than Joe Straus. Sigh.
Meanwhile the posturing around the AT&T/T-Mobile deal continues. We find from a press conference with COMPTEL CEO Jerry James that the Rural Cellular Alliance is joining with radical left, George Soros/OSI-funded group Public Knowledge to favor government intervention. If only they realized Soros will turn on them as soon as they’re no longer needed to pursue their socialist agenda.
The Wall Street Journal has also looked into the unholy alliance against AT&T. The leading members are of course direct competitors: Leap Wireless, MetroPCS, Sprint. Verizon is also mentioned, but the WSJ lists good reasons Verizon really wouldn’t mind either way. I also see one good reason for Verizon to want to see AT&T and T-Mobile win this: Anything that happens to AT&T now can also happen to Verizon, and Verizon becomes public enemy number one if it’s the undisputed leader of the industry. Sprint, meanwhile, doesn’t have to worry about being #1 because Sprint these days literally has to mooch off its competitors with things like the FCC Data Roaming order just to service its customers, so relatively little does it invest in its network anymore.
John Conyers and Edward Markey are also pressing for big government here. Look, even if you’re the biggest T-Mobile fan, the writing is on the wall regarding the fans of government intervention here. Everyone who is opposing this deal is self-interested, socialist, or both.
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Good evening. Care for your latest dose of regulation crushes innovation and competition? If you’re unhappy about the lack of innovation in America for mobile payments like they have in Japan, blame the Dodd-Frank bill. It prevented the wireless industry from getting together and making it happen. But we sure stuck it to the bankers, eh? Our faces are sure spited from cutting off our noses like that.
Of course, that doesn’t stop the Democrats from continuing to try to take power. If it’s not the PROTECT IP bill to institute national censorship of the Internet, it’s the continuing push to insert government with “cybersecurity” as the wedge. Never let a crisis go to waste. This time it’s the Playstation Network, but anything will do. This is the party that brought you the Clipper Chip designed to let the government spy on any encrypted data in America. When they say cybersecurity they mean their security, not yours or mine.
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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.
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Wow, my Tech at Night graphic is now out of date. I was already late to the iPhone 4 party because of the iPad and because I had waited for the legendary White iPhone 4. But now that I have an iPhone 4, having the 3GS in the graphic seems wrong somehow. Time for a new one if I get a good idea. Comments welcome.
Anyway, I want to be very clear about the Internet Kill Switch plan. The plan by Susan Collins and Joe Lieberman has now passed the Democrat-controlled Senate Committee claims to be a grand venture for “Cybersecurity,” but the plain fact is the plan as written is unworkable as a security venture, but only works as a tool to let the government control or even destroy the internet.
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Previously we covered Chris Bowers working over at Daily Kos on a linking scheme to manipulate Google’s search service. Now we come across a new attack on the company, a plan to manipulate click tracking the firm does to figure out what links are most interesting to its users. Of course, the Daily Kos folk want to smear Republicans using Google.
Again, we look to Google to see if they will penalize the firm for attacking it, or just wink, nod, and do nothing. They went after Kay Bailey Hutchison’s campaign for Governor over manipulative tactics. A failure to act against Daily Kos shows bias on Google’s part, no more, no less.
I’m actually mentioned, though not by name, in this Politico piece, and I stand by that position. Google needs to be fair and delist Daily Kos until these tactics are ceased.
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Good evening RedStaters. I spent all weekend battling a monster cold, so I’m still a bit thrown off, and so didn’t even try to get tonight’s installment of Tech at Night in before midnight Eastern. In fact it’ll be a reach to get this done before midnight Pacific, but such is life.
RedState diarist ladyimpactohio (follow her on Twitter at @ladyimpactohio) already scored one big win by peeling the Gun Owners of America from the Free Press radical Net Neutrality coalition, but the right is already at work on the next target: the Christian Coalition. Dick Armey and FreedomWorks are leading this fight, and I’m glad of it.
Way back when I started covering this issue, I said there were three names on the Save the Internet (Free Press front group) list that bugged me: Gun Owners of America, Christian Coalition, and Glenn “Instapundit” Reynolds. If we can peel off at least two of three, I’ll be happy.
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So, while Google may have seen the light on Net Neutrality (which is actually, amusingly enough, making the far left sound like me), they still have other issues going on. The WiSpy Street View spying issue is still ongoing, with South Korea raiding their offices and Germany pressuring the firm to be more transparent and responsive to privacy complaints about the program.
Because as I said earlier today, asking Eric Schmidt about privacy is like asking Phillip Morris about smoking. The conflict of interest is inherent. Everyone who hides his identity from Google Analytics, Google Adsense, and every other Google program is costing the firm money.
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