Net Neutrality debate gets murky, RFID gets an icon
I don't care who you are or what you're fighting for, outright lying and misrepresentation is not way to make your argument. If you're told the information you have is wrong, either answer those allegations or correct the error. Further proof that you should always double-check info from a distinctly biased source.
Net neutrality proponents flagrantly lie about Craigslist blockage
It appears that the Net neutrality proponents have been caught in a flagrant lie in their effort to scare the public (thanks to The Original Blog and The Lippard Blog for pointing this out). MyDD.com and SaveTheInternet.com along with many other Net neutrality activist sites have accused Cox Communications of deliberately blocking the website Craigslist by quoting a report from our own Tom Foremski. This alleged blockage of Craigslist was supposedly an example of what would happen without the passage of an extreme version of Net neutrality being pushed by Congressman Markey and Senator Snowe and big Internet companies such as Google. The only problem with this accusation is that it is flat out wrong, yet SaveTheInternet.com and MyDD.com are flagrantly lying about it. Even though they have been repeatedly notified of the real situation, they refuse to retract their stories and continue peddling the lie.
And here's some commentary from Deavid Berlind on the issue.
Another Net Neutrality news bit. Proving, once again, that this is a very complex issue with no easy answers.
Sen. Stevens Offers Deal on Net Neutrality
Senate Commerce Committee Chairman Ted Stevens has offered a compromise in the fierce fight over legislation on Internet network neutrality, but stopped short of demands sought by content companies like Google Inc.
Google, Microsoft Corp. and other Internet companies have lobbied hard for Congress to bar broadband Internet service providers such as AT&T Inc. and Comcast Corp. from charging them to guarantee access and service quality, often called network neutrality.
AT&T and Comcast, two of the largest high-speed broadband Internet providers, have opposed any obligations imposed on their services or restricting their business operations.
I'm going to be very curious to see what kind of compromise comes out of all this. And even more interested in how it plays out in the real world in the years that follow.
On another controversial front, it looks like there's some logo choices for RFID-equiped things. Not that the places making the things with the logos seem to be making much noise about them...
RFID passport logo (or "mark of the beast"?)
The RFID passport logo was prominently printed or embossed on the cover of all of Moss' sample RFID passports, immediately below the words, "United States of America" -- but without any indication, anywhere in the passport, even in the finest print, that would tip off those not already in the know as to what the logo means.
The ICAO technical documents include an entire paper on the RFID passport logo, the need for standard RFID indicia on passports, and the discussion of which of several proposed logos to adopt. But none of those proposed logos, much less which one was ultimately adopted as the standard, are reproduced in the file on the public ICAO Web site.
The USA State Department mentions the logo in its "FAQ on RFID Passports", and even includes a hyperlink to an image file -- that doesn't exist at the specified location. But I found an image file with the same name, which I recognized and remembered from Moss's sample RFID passports at CFP, in another public directory elsewhere on the State Department Web server.
And here's some commentary by Bruce Sterling on the issue.
In the original post there, Hasbrouck makes some interesting points about why this whole RFID in a passport is a bad idea. That was all written months ago. Apparently things haven't gotten much better.
It's not the big things that are going to get us, it's these little, complex things. The ones with such subtle intonations that the underlying "bad" can be easily whisked away by the slightly more immediate sense of convenience and safety. The issues and technologies just complex enough that they can't be condensed into a one minute bit on the evening news or three column inches in a paper over-crowded with ads and celebrity "news" items.
That's where we come in. We are the intellectual and active elite. The people that will take the time to understand these issues. The people that will put what we've got (no matter how little or how much) to speak out on things in a calm and direct manner. The people that will take the time to whittle away at the propagandized and one sided arguments and answer the questions of the normal person on the street.
We've got the education. We've got the natural talent that we've (hopefully) honed to some sort of skillful point. If we don't use it, no one around us stands a chance.
Right now, this isn't about physical force. But soon, soon it may be.
And if we let it get that far... well, then we've really lost.
Net neutrality proponents flagrantly lie about Craigslist blockage
It appears that the Net neutrality proponents have been caught in a flagrant lie in their effort to scare the public (thanks to The Original Blog and The Lippard Blog for pointing this out). MyDD.com and SaveTheInternet.com along with many other Net neutrality activist sites have accused Cox Communications of deliberately blocking the website Craigslist by quoting a report from our own Tom Foremski. This alleged blockage of Craigslist was supposedly an example of what would happen without the passage of an extreme version of Net neutrality being pushed by Congressman Markey and Senator Snowe and big Internet companies such as Google. The only problem with this accusation is that it is flat out wrong, yet SaveTheInternet.com and MyDD.com are flagrantly lying about it. Even though they have been repeatedly notified of the real situation, they refuse to retract their stories and continue peddling the lie.
And here's some commentary from Deavid Berlind on the issue.
Another Net Neutrality news bit. Proving, once again, that this is a very complex issue with no easy answers.
Sen. Stevens Offers Deal on Net Neutrality
Senate Commerce Committee Chairman Ted Stevens has offered a compromise in the fierce fight over legislation on Internet network neutrality, but stopped short of demands sought by content companies like Google Inc.
Google, Microsoft Corp. and other Internet companies have lobbied hard for Congress to bar broadband Internet service providers such as AT&T Inc. and Comcast Corp. from charging them to guarantee access and service quality, often called network neutrality.
AT&T and Comcast, two of the largest high-speed broadband Internet providers, have opposed any obligations imposed on their services or restricting their business operations.
I'm going to be very curious to see what kind of compromise comes out of all this. And even more interested in how it plays out in the real world in the years that follow.
On another controversial front, it looks like there's some logo choices for RFID-equiped things. Not that the places making the things with the logos seem to be making much noise about them...
RFID passport logo (or "mark of the beast"?)
The RFID passport logo was prominently printed or embossed on the cover of all of Moss' sample RFID passports, immediately below the words, "United States of America" -- but without any indication, anywhere in the passport, even in the finest print, that would tip off those not already in the know as to what the logo means.
The ICAO technical documents include an entire paper on the RFID passport logo, the need for standard RFID indicia on passports, and the discussion of which of several proposed logos to adopt. But none of those proposed logos, much less which one was ultimately adopted as the standard, are reproduced in the file on the public ICAO Web site.
The USA State Department mentions the logo in its "FAQ on RFID Passports", and even includes a hyperlink to an image file -- that doesn't exist at the specified location. But I found an image file with the same name, which I recognized and remembered from Moss's sample RFID passports at CFP, in another public directory elsewhere on the State Department Web server.
And here's some commentary by Bruce Sterling on the issue.
In the original post there, Hasbrouck makes some interesting points about why this whole RFID in a passport is a bad idea. That was all written months ago. Apparently things haven't gotten much better.
It's not the big things that are going to get us, it's these little, complex things. The ones with such subtle intonations that the underlying "bad" can be easily whisked away by the slightly more immediate sense of convenience and safety. The issues and technologies just complex enough that they can't be condensed into a one minute bit on the evening news or three column inches in a paper over-crowded with ads and celebrity "news" items.
That's where we come in. We are the intellectual and active elite. The people that will take the time to understand these issues. The people that will put what we've got (no matter how little or how much) to speak out on things in a calm and direct manner. The people that will take the time to whittle away at the propagandized and one sided arguments and answer the questions of the normal person on the street.
We've got the education. We've got the natural talent that we've (hopefully) honed to some sort of skillful point. If we don't use it, no one around us stands a chance.
Right now, this isn't about physical force. But soon, soon it may be.
And if we let it get that far... well, then we've really lost.