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Monday, November 28, 2005
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Once again, the telecom companies are maneuvering to be able to control what bits you can send across your Internet connection. After being called on the carpet for this before, and swearing that they would never want to do that, now they're being pretty blatant about wanting to charge people on both sides of the connection.
The FCC and the FTC hold significant responsibility for this, because former FCC chairman Michael Powell gave free rein to the telecom companies, refused to force them to open up their lines to competitors as required by the Telecoms Act, and has allowed far too much consolidation (SBC just finished swallowing up AT&T, which at this point has almost completely reconstituted the old pre-breakup Ma Bell). It's a duopoly between the phone companies and the cable companies,and they work extra hard to make sure that as few houses as possible have a choice between the two. That means that we're held hostage to a single, largely unregulated provider, who can do whatever the hell they like.
The telecom industry has one of the best lobbying arms in D.C. Be ever vigilant, and don't assume that Congress is doing their job. We know better.
10:18:14 PM 
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The next step in the Intelligent Design case in Dover, PA took place last week: both sides submitted their proposed findings of fact and conclusions of law. You can find them here.
Lawyers get padi by the hour, so of course they are both quite lengthy -- but worth slogging through. You get to see two very different views of what actually transpired. And lots of other juicy stuff: the defendants (the school board) accuse one of the plaintiffs (a former school board member) of being "politically motivated." You get to see some money laundering and sleight of hand as copies of "Of Pandas and People" get bought and donated to the school district. And you get accusations of outright perjury.
It will be interesting to see how the judge rules from here -- the judge takes both sides' proposals on advice and writes his own. The plaintiffs state very clearly that Intelligent Design is not science; the defendants state very clearly that it is. One wonders whether the judge will take a stand on that, or find some way to dodge that hot-potato issue altogether.
Expect this to take months.
9:32:41 PM
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Here's a really interesting piece from Harpers magazine, discussing the city of Colorado Springs, aka "ground zero" for the Christian evangelical movement. Worth reading all the way through.
7:03:37 PM
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From time to time, Microsoft funds thrid parties to do studies comparing our products to competing ones. Many people are deeply suspicious of these kinds of studies, for the obvious reason that ne would assume there was strong pressure for the outcome to be biased toward the one funding the study.
Here's the author of one of those studies, being interviewed on Slashdot. It's worth reading, including all of the comments. It might change your mind about funded studies. Or it might just get you to look for the bias before you summarily discard the study as worthless.
7:00:26 PM
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© Copyright 2005 Kevin Schofield.
Last update: 12/1/2005; 3:08:03 PM.
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