Net Neutrality – Letter to My Senators
(I have never written a letter to any politician before today. Here is the letter I sent.)
Dear Sir,
I am quite concerned about the stagnation of the Net Neutrality discussions in the Senate. I think that keeping the Internet Free from unnecessary regulation is one of the most deceivingly pressing matters that has been raised in a while. It is a complicated issue, but what isn’t complicated is what is at stake. What is at stake is the potential innovation, and subsequent revenue, profits, jobs and shareholder value that could be created with a free Internet.
If this government allows phone companies and other Internet service providers to impose a system of special treatment to the highest bidder on the Internet, then this government has failed its people, because the Internet is like the American dream itself.
Individuals who are willing to tinker around and try to invent things have been able to create a lot of value for the world by having the Internet be free from specialized treatment. Without this freedom, we wouldn’t have Ebay, Amazon.com, Craigslist, or even Google.
Just think about the amount of value that those companies provide alone. And now think about the value of the dreams that those companies provide to kids learning computers everywhere. Every one of them believes that if they have a good idea, they can help people, and make a living doing it by providing an innovative service on the Internet.
If you allow phone companies and other Internet service providers to designate a “fast lane” for certain types of traffic, you are stifling this potential innovation, potential future shareholder value, and the dreams of these people who might someday create the next great service or product.
I know that the phone companies and ISP’s like to claim that there is a lot of innovation and money involved on their end in running their business, but they are clearly outnumbered by the amount of innovation that has taken place on the user side of things. Users think up an idea, implement on a smaller scale and are then acquired by larger companies to help scale to larger audiences. Without Net Neutrality, these ideas never come to be.
The only result of this is that ISP’s will be allowed to segregate the rich companies from the poor ones, regardless of who has the best idea. This isn’t good for anyone except the ISP’s who stand to put more money in their pockets even though they aren’t providing anything different in terms of service.
So please understand this issue and fight to make sure that the Internet stays free. The potential innovators in this country depend on it. This country’s competitiveness with the rest of the world depends on it.
I appreciate your time.
Regards,
FilteringCraig
A Word of Advice About Amazon
If you are purchasing something on Amazon that is not a DVD, CD, or Book, it is more than likely supplied by one of Amazon’s partner merchants rather than Amazon itself. This means that another party is listing their inventory in order to fulfill orders at Amazon. Shouldn’t be a problem, right? We will not only be able to purchase more things from Amazon, but we still get to pay an established online retailer like Amazon. But it is a problem. After purchasing one of these items be sure to check the delivery date of the item after you have placed your order.
Otherwise you might find yourself saying, “Hey. What happened to that innocuous non-media item that I ordered from the world’s largest Internet superstore about a month ago that still hasn’t arrived on my doorstep with unnecessary levels of packaging?”
What innocuous non-media item(s) did I order which apparently have more than two month’s lead time?
Vacuum Cleaner Bags.
Yes, I ordered some vacuum cleaner bags because I thought it would be quite convenient to search for the specific bag for my vacuum cleaner. And luckily for me, I found it on Amazon.com. Unluckily for me, the bags were still sitting in my account under “Undelivered Items” about 3 weeks after I placed the order.
I think maybe it is time for some new rules for Amazon to place on its partner merchants. You must have something in stock and ready to ship before it can be listed as inventory ready to be sold. Is that too much to ask? This is the third time this year that I have ordered something that didn’t seem very specialized, but had one hell of a specialized lead time. What about a zip drive is equal to supply chain disaster? Why would it take so long to ship a spindle of CD-R’s? I mean the only reason I order these things is because I don’t want to go to the store. It isn’t like they are rare or anything.
But apparently vacuum bags are rare too. Or maybe it is my deluxe vacuum that is rare, and the bags aren’t really all that common.
You see, I have a really great Panasonic vacuum cleaner.
It is very very powerful and just like Amazon’s partner merchants . . .
IT SUCKS. HARD.
Cleveland Cavaliers Draft Suggestions
It is no secret that what the Cleveland Cavaliers need more than anything else is a point guard. Whether they can get one at number 25 remains to be seen. It is true that San Antonio picked Tony Parker with the last pick in the first round in 2001. It is also true that Dallas got Josh Howard last year. But for every guy like that, there are about 100 that never did anything meaningful on an NBA court. And when it comes to the Cavs, I can name more than a few that were drafted much higher than 25 who never produced much of anything either. Trajan Langdon, Dajuan Wagner, Desegana Diop*, Luke Jackson and even the current GM of the Cavaliers, Danny Ferry were never worth the number they were picked in the draft.
So now that the Cavs finally ended their playoff drought, they have a pick down at number 25. That isn’t really a very exciting number. So what is the best possible scenario for the Cavs on Wednesday June 28?
The bottom line is that the Cavs need to make progress immediately. You can’t waste years with a guy like LeBron James on your roster. Also, if you want any hopes of keeping him around in a smaller market like Cleveland, then you really need to show all possible commitments to getting better. So, how can the Cavs heed this advice on draft night?
Here are my suggestions:
New Recording Gear
The relative quiet here on FC.com has been related to the number of projects that I have undertaken recently.
We moved into this house about two months ago now, and the work continues. We hung up all the pictures this weekend.
We are getting married in October. While this hasn’t caused me an abnormal amount of stress due to the efforts of other people, I will say that piling the registering process on top of everything else is slightly annoying.
On top of that, I have been itching to record some stuff lately. Right before I moved out of my old place, I bought this recording monstrosity.
It is the M-Audio Project Mix I/O and it has 8 simultaneous inputs via FireWire. And this, my friends, is what I have been spending so much time on lately. As you might guess, recording equipment is kind of complex. Mix in the fact that it has to talk to a computer (even with something as user friendly as FireWire is) and everything becomes that much more complex. Also, pile on the fact that the PC that I was running didn’t have XP Service Pack 2 and for some reason didn’t have appropriate USB support for the USB Wireless Network adapter that I decided to use.
I spent countless hours over the last two to three days trying to get it all up and running. The biggest problem, obviously, was my inability to get the wireless network adapter to work, because if I had been able to establish a connection to the internet then almost everything else takes care of itself. That way, I have access to drivers, help files, message boards and FAQ’s. But for whatever reason it just wouldn’t work.
Then last night, I finally decided to try the least elegant of all solutions. Disconnect the PC, take it upstairs, connect it via ethernet cable, get it all updated including the drivers for the wireless network card, and THEN take it downstairs.
Duh. I wasted all that time because I didn’t want to carry the PC all the way upstairs to my office where the network connection is. Sometimes my laziness shows no rationality what-so-ever.
The good news is that it is up and running. Now I can record all the new music that the band has been practicing. At least there will be a permanent record of what we are up to musically.
Oh, and I should be able to post here a bit more frequently now.
Larry Brown Fired, Isiah Thomas Hires . . . Himself?
After systematically tearing down a once great franchise, and filling it with players who fit together about as well as peanut butter and mayo, Isiah Thomas has decided to pull a Pat Riley and coach the team himself.
Couple differences though.
Isiah isn’t an accomplished coach, and he has neither Shaq nor Dwayne Wade on this team.
The current roster of Knicks looks like it would be the greatest streetball team of all time with tons of one-on-one talent in Steve Francis, Stephon Marbury, and Jamal Crawford. But whether or not these guys can ever form a cohesive team is yet to be seen at best, and not very likely at worst.
They have salary cap issues created by Thomas to the tune of a $125 million payroll. They posted a horrendous 23 – 59 record this past season with Larry Brown, considered to be a great coach. They have no draft pick to show for this season’s abysmal record. They gave that away when they acquired Eddy “The Dichotomy” Curry who is not only undersized, but also overweight and lethargic at the same time.
So now Jim Dolan, owner of the Knicks, puts the Master of Mess, The Architect of AAAARRRGH! in charge of the NBA team in the world’s largest market.
I can’t figure it out.
Maybe he hired a film crew and is going to turn it into a reality TV show. That can be the only explanation, because we all know that this is going to be one incredibly dark comedy.
Unless you are a Knicks fan and then it will be a tragic horror.
Some of My Best Friends are Black
Ozzie Guillen, manager of the Chicago White Sox is in a bit of trouble. He got mad at reporter Jay Mariotti for something and went into a profanity-laced tirade. The profanity isn’t what is getting him into trouble though.
Guillen said the following:
- “What a piece of [expletive] he is, [expletive] fag.”
Although it didn’t say in the article, I am guessing the first expletive was an S-word and the second is something alliterative with the word fag.
So, in the heat of anger, all this came out of Ozzie Guillen’s mouth. But when it comes to the defense, this is where the comedy comes in.
- Guillen also told Couch that he has gay friends, attends WNBA games, went to a Madonna concert and plans to go to the Gay Games in Chicago.
This, my friends, is the equivalent of saying “some of my best friends are black” in order to get away with something. I don’t really care what happens to Ozzie Guillen. I don’t care if a punishment is handed down at all. I feel like he looks like enough of an ass all on his own right now.
Indians (FINALLY) Dump Jason Johnson
Money freaking Quote:
- Johnson made 14 starts. He allowed 108 hits and 51 earned runs in 77 innings. The opposition hit .341 against him.
It is even worse. Jason Johnson had an ERA of 9.13 for the month of May as he gave up 24 runs (23 earned) in 22.2 innings.
I understand that as a baseball organization that works to sign players every season to plug holes that some experiments work better than others. Sometimes you have an inkling that you can strike gold with a player who hasn’t done too much anywhere else.
Did the Indians really think they were going to catch “lightning in a bottle” with Jason Johnson? His best season from an ERA standpoint was 2003 with 4.18 runs per nine inning average. In his career he has given up 1,437 hits in just over 1,200 innings of work.
I supported the Indians in the off-season in not overspending for Kevin Millwood who had a great season with the Indians last year. I was also in support of the team in not bringing Scott Elarton back who pitched adequately for the Indians last year. Hell, I didn’t even bury them when they traded Coco Crisp and Arthur Rhodes for Andy Marte, Guillermo Mota and Jason Michaels. (By the way, a whole story on Guillermo Mota is in order.)
My only real complaint is that if you are going to try to get lucky with players, you need to be agile enough to dump the hell out of these experiments when they come to the conclusion that you might expect.
It is now June 21. The Indians are 6 games UNDER 500. They are 15 back in their division. It is true that they made an unbelievable comeback last year to miss the playoffs by a game, but just like you can’t expect every move you make to work out, you can’t expect to make up that much ground at some point every year.
Humbled by Ivories
Last night I finally took my first piano lesson. I decided that I wanted to add another instrument to the growing cache of musical weapons at my disposal when I am attempting to rock thee.
I will not be rocking thee with my piano abilities anytime soon.
This thing is HARD.
Reading music isn’t my forte, but apparently the form of your hands that you are supposed to use to play the piano isn’t my forte either. (It isn’t even my mezzo forte.)
I will be sure to keep you up to date with my progress. I will definitely let you guys know when I can play Jingle Bells with both hands. It should be an exciting day for us all.
Let’s just hope it doesn’t take until December.
Is the IPod Nano Too Small?
Yesterday, my 60 Gig IPod Photo decided that it didn’t want to interface with my PC anymore. I plugged it into the USB cable and the screen on the IPod changed like it always does to say that it was connecting to the PC. The little USB device manager said that a portable hard drive was connected, but none of the IPod-specific programs would recognize my portable jukebox. Itunes wouldn’t work. My Winamp IPod plugin didn’t react. Even the factory program that is used to flash new software updates onto the IPod wouldn’t recognize the device so that I could try to reset the IPod to factory settings. So, I couldn’t update my IPod and I couldn’t fix it.
Luckily for me, I have something of a backup. A couple months ago I purchased an expensive piece of recording equipment on EBay and the seller threw in a free 4 GB IPod Nano to entice potential purchasers. Yesterday, when faced with not having any way to listen to my recorded radio shows in the car, I decided to free the lil IPod from its shrink-wrapped sarcophagus. I plugged it in and away I went. The computer recognized it and in no time I had eight hours worth of programming in my pocket.
Sure, it is perplexing that the Nano had no problems connecting while my ginormous IPod wouldn’t connect. (It is even more perplexing that the guy at the “Genius Bar” (blech!) at the Apple Store was able to get it working on one of the in-store Macs.) But that is not why I am writing this.
The reason that I am writing today is that, I think we have finally hit the point where the form-factor is smaller than it needs to be. The first thing I noticed after getting this Nano up and running is that it is a burden to carry around, not because it is too big, but because it is too small.
I don’t have huge hands. In fact, I find it difficult to stretch my fingers across the frets on my guitar in order to play most scales. Even with my stubby fingers, this little MP3 player is too small to hold comfortably in my hand. It is so small that I worry about putting it in my pocket with my cell phone. If I was wearing even slightly form-fitting jeans or something, I would worry about its health as it sits in my pocket while I move around. As I continue to try to get used to this Nano, it strikes me just how insubstantial this device seems in contrast to the wires that connect my ear bud head phones.
I think it might be time to start doing some additional research on minimum sizes for technological devices. Just because you CAN make it smaller, doesn’t mean that you should, necessarily. I understand that making these things easy to carry around is important, but when you go too small, I think you actually decrease the device’s usability. I would love it if my 60 gig IPod was reduced in size and weight by probably about 25 or 30%, but any more and it too would become increasingly difficult to carry around.
Am I off base on this one? Am I the only one who has found the Nano to be too small?
Roethlisberger Hurt in Motorcycle Wreck (UPDATE)
AS OF 4:44 EST
- WTAE-TV, citing a person in the police department it didn’t identify, reported that Roethlisberger has a broken jaw, a broken left sinus, a 9-inch cut on the back of his head, lost teeth and has severe injuries to his knees from hitting the pavement.
- Steelers quarterback Ben Roethlisberger was badly hurt in a motorcycle crash Monday and undergoing surgery. The extent of his injuries was not known.
Roethlisberger was in serious but stable condition, said Dr. Larry Jones, chief of trauma at Mercy Hospital.
Dude. Are you serious? It is true that I despise the Steelers, but only on the field. All I can say is what a dumbass. Kellen Winslow did this last year and erased an entire season because of all the ligaments he tore while being a daredevil on his bike. Now Roethlisberger hurt himself badly enough that he reportedly had surgery yesterday?
You guys are all retarded. Get yourself behind the wheel of a car and protect your money, the investment of your employers and the mental health of all your fans. Why should your fans and your team have to enter a season trying to defend the Super Bowl with a question mark in the lineup because you just HAD to ride a motorcycle?
The Browns fans shouldn’t have had to do it last year, and the Steelers fans shouldn’t have to do it this year.
