Think the FAA is so great for making a slight loosening of its ridiculous regulations on phones on planes? Think again: The Euros are making us look bad by getting way ahead of us, and allowing full use of LTE at any time.
Anonymous is trying to go to war with America. Cells must start coming out denouncing this behavior I believe, or be considered anti-American and a threat to liberty until proven otherwise. Can we please go back to barring anarchists from the country, and expelling those we find?
Then again, the dope fiends among them are giving us plenty of reason to arrest them as it is through gangs like Silk Road, so… maybe that’s redundant.
I know it’s likely that the courts will toss out Net Neutrality again, but it still makes me smile to read predictions like that.
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Hey La-Mulanites! I’m Neil, and let’s play Tech at Night.
Anyway. Yeah, I took a break, as you may have noticed. It turns out between Christmas, New Year’s and the Fiscal Cliff, not much happened for me to cover, anyway! So let’s get started.
Two legislative notes: the outmoded video privacy law passed, while the so-called Marketplace Fairness Act is dead in the water. I always said its best chance was President Romney and a Republican Senate, but now that’s not happening. Poor Amazon, bargaining with states on the assumption this would happen.
And in case you forgot, a Cybersecurity executive order would be a bad thing, per Marsha Blackburn and Steve Scalise.
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AT&T has expanded its coverage in the last month since I decided I needed to go with Verizon. I’ve zoomed in enough on this map to show coverage for the whole area around the Loudoun County Government Center (where I spent 45 minutes every time I’m out there).
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Governors Robert Bentley, Mitch Daniels, Dennis Daugaard, Bill Haslam, Paul LePage, Rick Snyder, and Tom Corbett are part of push for the Marketplace Fairness act. I’ve come across a July letter to John Boehner, Harry Reid, Mitch McConnell, and Nancy Pelosi. I find it odd they’d do so now, unless they think they have no chance under a potential Republican Congress. Could that be the case? I wonder.
And yes, those are all Republican governors, some of whom were part of the 2010 landslide. It’s only Republicans I’m seeing back MFA, not Democrats. Democrats are fine with just passing new taxes or raising old ones. They aren’t as hard up to maximize collections of old taxes as Republicans are.
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I’ve been agonizing over whether to stay with AT&T or hop to Verizon when the new iPhone comes out. With AT&T I have a grandfathered-in unlimited plan, though AT&T is actively seeking to gut that, contract or no. So there’s genuine value in hopping to Verizon to take a subsidized iPhone.
I’m letting coverage make the decision. It turns out it’s an easy call. Verizon wins.
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John McCain. Lisa Murkowski. Kay Bailey Hutchison. Saxby Chambliss. Richard Burr. Dan Coats.
No, I’m not listing the centrist wing of the Senate Republicans. I’m listing some of the co-sponsors of SECURE IT, the bill that Senate Republicans have been forced to bring forth because the extremist Cybersecurity bill by Joe Lieberman and Susan Collins just couldn’t be bargained with. That’s right, John McCain of McCain-Feingold, McCain-Kennedy, and McCain-Lieberman couldn’t find a way to negotiate a compromise on this.
It’s the right bill to pass. It’s since gotten oversight champion Chuck Grassley and TEA Party favorite Ron Johnson on board, among others. It addresses the key security problems we face without giving the proven-incompetent feds any new powers over the Internet. Here’s KBH on the bill.
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Privacy? You want privacy in the digital age? Start by repealing campaign finance laws before you wag your socialist finger at the private sector.
Al Qaeda also denied 9/11 involvement at first, but we knew the truth. Also, how can Anonymous deny involvement in an attack when they claim to be unorganized? It’s these slipups that let us know the truth about them: they’re an organized online terror and crime group.
To paraphraze the fictionalized Wyatt Earp: “I see a Guy Fawkes mask, I kill the man wearing it.”
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Am I tired of expressing dissatisfaction with the Obama FCC and other government intrusions? Never!
Al Franken is setting up an unfalsifiable rationale for government action against Verizon and Comcast. Gotta love that, eh?
I’m sure he, the FCC, or both will try to overturn the courts who say bundling is not anticompetitive. I like bundling. It saves me money when I’m buying both things anyway. Then again, I like choices in the marketplace.
Why we want FCC subsidizing tablet makers though, I have no idea.
Chuck Grassley’s threat seems to be working at least, as FCC starts to break down on LightSquared transparency, a necessary step toward being able to confirm the President’s new appointees to the commission.
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I don’t know if Verizon has done some upgrades nearby since I tested on my LTE USB modem or what, but the iPad is getting even better results than that did.
I meant to talk about the cybersecurity bill on Monday as it’s a big story. But, it’s gotten even bigger since. You see, a broad spectrum of Republicans is coming out against it. Names like Kay Bailey Hutchison, John McCain, Mike Enzi, Saxby Chambliss, Jeff Sessions, and even Lisa Murkowski are against the crazy Rush Harry Reid and the Democrats are putting on the bill pushed by Joe Lieberman, Jay Rockefeller, and Susan Collins.
And they’re right to oppose it. The case is overblown, and even if they claim the Internet Kill Switch is gone, it’s still a power grab. We’re at the point where Dianne Feinstein is a voice of reason, as she promotes voluntary data sharing, a plan Tech at Night has previously supported when also proposed by Dan Lungren in the House. Yeah, seriously. If you know California political history you know how funny it is that Republican Lungren and Democrat Feinstein now have another thing in common. But I think they’re both right on this. The way we’ll get more secure is to share more data and to prosecute the offenders.
In other major news, the FCC has rejected LightSquared’s proposal to build a terrestrial wireless LTE network.
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