Still not a lot going on thanks to the shutdown, but there is the theory being floated that the Obama administration’s punitive shutdown policies are violating Net Neutrality rules. I don’t know that I agree, but it’s worth at least thinking about, as little as Net Neutrality even makes sense.
For all the people are claiming Silk Road wasn’t a significant part of the Bitcoin value, it could be that the feds are seizing 5% of all Bitcoins in circulation. But it is going to be interesting to see how seizing assets works when the assets are encrypted.
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So I’ve been gone a while. Sorry about that. After Summer Games Done Quick and the Redstate Gathering, I was supposed to be back in action. But a case of the shingles took me down fast. I was a sleepless zombie in pain for a week. No fun. Was actually alright on Friday, but I had so much reading to do I couldn’t catch up in time to post on Friday, so here we are. Hang on.
So let’s start with Time-Warner and CBS. The two had their negotiations fall through with respect to carrying CBS on Cable, and so a blackout began. The left wants this as the pretext to more government, but let’s be clear about this. Government created this pickle. The way out of it was proposed way back when, and backed in Tech at Night, when Jim DeMint and Steve Scalise proposed legislation. It’s still the right answer.
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New York City’s ban on select beverages larger than 16 ounces struck many of us as a progressive nanny state running its due course. It was a senseless blow to liberty, expanding government in a pointless way, that also happened to affect less-wealthy New Yorkers disproportionately.
But as the city now turns toward enforcement of the ban, new developments in city government point to a disturbing revelation: New York City’s health department knows nothing about science, about testing, or about how to use calibrated instrumentation to make accurate measurements in restaurants.
In expanding the nanny state, Mike Bloomberg reveals New Yorkers probably aren’t very safe under its growing umbrella.
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Quick hits night. Enjoy!
Google beats Oracle on the matter of patent infringement in the big Java/Android case. So the only question left is how the copyright matters will be resolved.
New York legislators want to censor the Internet? Come on guys, come on.
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CISPA is still a harmless bill devoid of new mandates of power grabs, but I’m actually short of new things to say about it this week. Lieberman-Collins is the real threat. Watch the other hand.
Let’s start with some spectrum instead. Verizon is under fire for trying to buy spectrum from Comcast and other cable companies, even as it tries to sell other spectrum. Note though that observers are saying T-Mobile, recently held up as a competitor who must be propped up by government action, stands to benefit in the marketplace by Verizon’s actions. Sprint, however, is put under pressure to to continued mismanagement and lack of funds to invest in its network.
Why would Verizon buy and sell its spectrum is all over the place, and consolidation allows for less demanding hardware requirements for its phones, which benefits Verizon’s customers. That’s good thinking, and that kind of market innovation should be rewarded, not regulated out of existence.
Look: it’s well and good to try to find a treasure trove of unused spectrum as Mark Warner wants, but hope is not a substitute for making more efficient use of what we already know about.
Though while Warner is optimistic, the NAB is insane. I mean, seriously? Did they miss where Verizon is also buying spectrum, so that it’ll have a net gain? Or that Verizon needs to look to the future, unlike various American broadcasters, who are doing the same old thing, and gradually losing out to new technologies? Jealous much of the Internet, NAB?
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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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At RedState we’ve hammered for a long time the idea that your local politics matter. We also give plenty of attention to federal elections for the House, the Senate, and of course the President.
But governors matter, too. The next governor of South Carolina will affect us all. As will Georgia’s, Ohio’s, and Oregon’s. It doesn’t matter where you live. These Governors, as well as 26 others, are up for election this year and will have veto power over their state’s next Congressional districts.
It’s no good to win in 2010 if we have to give the House back in 2012 because the Democrats gerrymander our majority away. So let’s pay attention to these races.
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