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July 3rd, the Liz-t

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On This Day

324 – Constantine defeated Licinius at the Battle of Adrianople

1511 – Giorgio Vasari, Italian painter and architect was born (d. 1574)

1567 – Samuel de Champlain, French explorer was born (d. 1635)

1608 – Quebec City founded by Samuel de Champlain

1767 – Norway’s oldest newspaper still in print, Adresseavisen, is founded (first edition published this date).

1848 – Slaves are freed in the Danish West Indies (now U.S. Virgin Islands)

1878 – George M. Cohan, American composer, was born

1883 – Franz Kafka, Czech writer was born. (d. 1924)

1886 – The New York Tribune becomes the first newspaper to use a linotype machine, eliminating typesetting by hand

1928 – First color television broadcast in London.

1938 – World record for a steam railway locomotive is set in England, by the Mallard, which reaches a speed of 203 km/h (126 mph).

1947 – Dave Barry, American writer was born.

1951 – Richard Hadlee, New Zealand cricketer

1964 – President Lyndon B. Johnson signs the Civil Rights Act of 1964, which prohibits segregation in public places.

1969 – Kevin Hearn, Canadian keyboardist (Barenaked Ladies) was born.

The youngest child of Geno and Daisy was born.

Do you have more to add to the list?

–ME “Liz” Strauss
Thanks to wi- wi- wi-ki-pedia for help in putting this list together.
Yes, I purposely left Tom Cruise out.

Net Neutrality 7-3-2006

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Net Neutrality Links

I’ve added these links to the Net Neutrality Page today.

Getting serious about Net Neutrality

[Quoting David Sims] . . . “The Senate bill’s main focus is creating a national video franchise system that would allow phone and cable companies to bypass the sometimes lengthy negotiations with local authorities over offering pay-television service,” [cable industry observer Amy] Schatz writes. “But the bill also contains a wide variety of other requirements, from antipiracy technologies for television broadcasts to changes in a federal fund that subsidizes phone services in rural areas.”

Is this going to be another case where the public starts complaining only when they’ve discovered what they’ve lost?

IT’S ONLY THREE PARAGRAPHS. Read it. Then go to the source.

Net Neutrality: It’s Pretty Simple, Really.

–ME “Liz” Strauss

Related
NET NEUTRALITY PAGE

Net Neutrality 7-2-2006

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Net Neutrality Links

I’ve added these links to the Net Neutrality Page today.

What If End-Users Owned Their Access Pipe?

PBS tech columnist Robert Cringely has penned an intriguing (and I think important) piece called “If we build it they will come: It’s time to own our own last mile.” It’s apparently based on conversations he’s had with Bob Frankston, who years ago wrote the VisiCalc program (which Cringely describes as “the first killer app”) and who last year authored an essay entitled “Connectivity is a Utility.” Cringely describes Frankston as “one of the smartest people I speak to.” . . .

If We Build It They Will Come. It’s time to own our own last mile. by Roger X.Cringley

To Bob [Frankston, the programmer who wrote VisiCalc] the issues surrounding Net Neutrality come down to billability and infrastructure. While saying they are doing us favors, ISPs are really offering us services they can bill for. Nothing is aimed at helping us, while everything is aimed at creating a billable event. Take WiFi hotspots, for example. Why should the telephone or cable company care about who connects to my WiFi access point? They are my bits, not the ISP’s. I paid for them. If I can download gigabytes of pornography why can’t I share my hotspot with someone walking down the street wanting to check his e-mail? Frankston’s analogy for this is accusing someone of stealing your porch light by using it to read a street sign.

It isn’t about service, it is about creating billable events, that’s all. And billable events, by definition, are things we have others do because we are unable or unwilling to do for ourselves. So a Verizon or a Comcast does us a favor, they say, by licensing rights to a movie and allowing us to buy or rent it over the Internet. We could buy the rights ourselves, but who would know where to even go? And wouldn’t Verizon, as a big buyer, necessarily get a better price? When you have a preferred or exclusive provider versus a competitive marketplace, prices are always higher, not lower. In this case the ISP isn’t doing us a favor, they are forcing us to buy from them something that we might well be able to buy from someone else for a lot less. . . .

The New Paranoid style in American politics By Andrew Orlowski

The “Net Neutrality” campaign – which created little excitement except on the outer fringes of the web – suggests that the left is now just as capable of being haunted by paranoid fantasies as the right.

What the internet has achieved, with its twisty maze of echo chambers all alike, is a rapid acceleration of this paranoid discourse, which expels nuanced and complex reasoning. Let’s have a look what was being written this week, after the Senate failed to pass those “Neutrality” provisions, as these hundreds of Nation States of One broadcast their distress signals.

“This could mean the death of small internet businesses,” wrote one MySpace blogger, quoted on CNET. A Republican opponent of the “Net Neutrality” legislation was graced, on the same site, with this riposte:

“Thanks, Jim, for being a fascist and promoting fascism in our country.”

–ME “Liz” Strauss

Related
NET NEUTRALITY PAGE

Happy Birthday and Blog Tip

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Happy Birthday and Blogtipping Day to

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C.Blohm and Associates, the best small-business PR firm in the country.

You are my hero because

You know more about educational tech than I ever will.

You understand friendship and loyalty down to your fingertips.

You have a midwestern work etchic I admire.

Here’s my tip: Don’t change one think about you or the way you do business.

Liz

PS Wish we were spending our birthdays together.

Blogtipping the Three Stooges

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They Aren’t the Three Stooges Really

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They aren’t the Three Stooges really, but they sure did talk about them on one Tuesday Night comment night. By the time they were done, we knew more about the Three Stooges than I thought I ever would. So today being Blogtipping Day, July 1, I tip my blog to them.

Here’s how it works.

  • Choose three or more bloggers you admire and link to them,
  • List three reasons why you admire each one.
  • Then add a tip at the end.

That’s all there is to it.

1. Mr. Mark Wade of R Webs Designs I tip my blog to you because

  • you blog with passion and research you’re saying.
  • you know the meaning of blogging community.
  • you fill the blogosphere with color and laughter even when you don’t bring along crayons.

    • My blog tip: Work on that stutter around that stupid W-word.

    2. Mr. Chris Cree of CREEations

  • you balance blogging and life in a beautiful blog symmetry.
  • you share your thoughts with power and gentleness.
  • you always share your Klondike bars and welcome new friends into the community.

    • Tip: Jack is not a good name for a code-writing donkey.

    3. Mr. Joe Hauckes of Working at Home on the Internet

  • you put yourself so fully into every detail of every thought you blog.
  • your new blog reflects your strength and commitment to what you’re doing.
  • you always show up to support the community.

    • Tip: Don’t sweat the small stuff. It works itself out.

    Net Neutrality 7-1-2006

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    Net Neutrality Links

    I’ve added these links to the Net Neutrality Page today.

    Stopping the Big Giveaway – by John Kerry

    The Commerce Committee voted on net neutrality and it failed on an 11-11 tie. This vote was a gift to cable and telephone companies, and a slap in the face of every Internet user and consumer.

    It will not stand.

    I voted against this lousy bill for two reasons: because net neutrality and internet build-out are crucial to building a more modern and fair Information Society, and both were pushed aside by the Republicans.

    . . . Why are United States Senators afraid to say that companies should be expected to foster growth by building out their broadband networks to increase access?

    . . . This bill was passed in committee over our objections. Now we need to fight to either fix it or kill it in the full Senate. Senator Wyden has already drawn a line in the sand — putting a “hold” on the bill, which prevents it from going forward for now. But there will be a day of reckoning on this legislation soon, make no mistake about it, and we need you to get engaged — pressure your Senators, follow the issue, demand net neutrality and build-out.

    It’s not just net neutrality that is at stake

    Kos wrote yesterday that the Net Neutrality amendment was defeated yesterday in the Commerce Committee, and there have been several diaries about that since. A bill that was kept however has not been remarked upon here. This is the revival of the broadcast flag, which the FCC had mandated several years ago but was struck down by a court. Now the entertainment industry is trying to bring the broadcast flag back with a new law. . . .

    With respect to the broadcast flag however, Republicans take precisely the opposite position. By supporting the broadcast flag, they are saying that it is necessary for the government to control which of those transmissions that we listen to or watch on TV we can record: something that is unprecedented. It has been taken for granted up until now by everyone that if you can hear something on the radio or hear it on TV you should be able to record it, but the broadcast flag would change all that. The government would require all electronic devices that are capable of receiving digital TV or radio signals to implement restrictions blocking recording of those signals if the producer of the signal has embedded in it a flag indicating that it does not want the signal recorded. In other words, the government will mandate that you no longer control what you do with your electronic devices, but the corporations of the entertainment industry do.

    –ME “Liz” Strauss

    Related
    NET NEUTRALITY PAGE