Hello! As it crosses midnight here in California, I apologize for the lateness but do return with yet another installment of Tech at Night.
Still don’t believe the socialist pushes at the FCC are driven in part by a desire to get free stuff? Take a look at the ITU Broadband Plan for the whole world, what with its insistence that governments must build Internet infrastructure, which of course would result in greater state ownership of the Internet.
Ars Technica points out also that the ITU claims that state Internet development will end poverty and hunger. Talk about socialist utopian thought! And we’re supposed to let these types get more power over the Internet with magical thinking like this?
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I skipped Tech at Night on Friday because I was in Austin for the Red State Gathering 2010, but I’m back now, so here we go.
We start off with what would have been the lead story on Friday, too: Net Neutrality hero and all around socialist gasbag Al Franken is now under a cloud of suspicion for ethics violations, violating Senate rules to spend money inappropriately on Net Neutrality advocacy, as well as using his role as Senator to raise money for private groups.
He’s crooked enough, he’s dishonest enough, and doggone it, people pay him.
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I’ve worn myself out tonight making last minute preparations for my trip out to Austin for the RedState Gathering this weekend, so this will be brief. Additionally, Tech at Night will not appear on Friday because I will be in Austin and away from Safari, whose great RSS reader is the most important tool I use to complete my Tech at Night research.
First off, the Google backlash is well underway. The firm seems to operate under the assumption that there will be no serious objections from the technical community to whatever they do, because of that “Don’t be evil” mumbo jumbo. But when articles like this at IT World show up with no purpose but to question the attitude displayed by Google and CEO Eric Schmidt, it’s time for a new plan.
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Good evening. I’ve been getting some warnings for a while now about the possible next frontier in Internet regulation. I still haven’t digested it all myself, but I wanted to get the idea out there for people to think about, and be watchful for.
The Access Board is a government agency that sets rules for websites as directed under Section 508 of the Rehabilitation Act. It only applies to government websites. I see nothing to fear here right now. However this sort of thing could grow, first to federal contractors over a certain size, then all contractors, then to all businesses over a certain size… you get the idea.
After all, there’s already a push at the UN to declare it a Right to have accessible websites. I’m all for accessibility. I’ve long written HTML and supported good coding practices that naturally help accessibility. But I’m not for a nanny state, sorry.
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Yesterday at the Daily Caller we found out why John Kerry was such a flip-flopper during his Presidential run. The reason is that he just can’t help it. He even flips around when he’s not running for anything. In 1998 he wrote a letter to the FCC explaining that the Telecommunications Act 1996 forbids the FCC to do the very same deem and pass Title II Reclassification that the FCC is talking about now… a move that John Kerry now supports.
So all that time we thought he was flip-flopping to become President we were wrong. He does even when nobody’s looking! If character is what you are in the dark, then we now know all about John Kerry’s character right now.
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