Network Neutrality – You Should Care!

Why you should care about network neutrality by Tim Wu of Slate.com

(an excerpt analogy to make you care)

“… In trying to figure out who’s right, let’s forget about the Internet and look at KFC. The fast-food chain discriminates. It has an exclusive deal with Pepsi, and that seems fine to pretty much everyone. Now, let’s think about the nation’s highways. How would you feel if I-95 announced an exclusive deal with General Motors to provide a special “rush-hour” lane for GM cars only? That seems intuitively wrong. But what, if anything, is the difference between KFC and I-95? And which is a better model for the Internet?

Two obvious differences are market power and the availability of substitutes. KFC is a small fry, relatively, locked in competition with the likes of McDonald’s and Popeye’s. KFC sells Pepsi? So what? McDonald’s sells Coke.

It’s a lot harder to substitute for an interstate. And if highways really did choose favorite brands, you might buy a Pontiac instead of a Toyota to get the rush-hour lane, not because the Pontiac is actually a good car. As a result, the nature of competition among car-makers would change. Rather than try to make the best product, they would battle to make deals with highways.

That’s what would happen if discrimination reigned on the Internet: a transformation from a market where innovation rules to one where deal-making rules. Or, a market where firms rush to make exclusive agreements with AT&T and Verizon instead of trying to improve their products. There’s a deeper point here: When who you know matters more than anything, the market is no longer meritocratic and consequently becomes less efficient. At the extreme, a market where centralized actors pick favorites isn’t a market at all, but a planned economy. …”

I think it matters, anyways. We can’t let major networks get a monopoly-like hold on the internet, otherwise we’re going to have large networks holding large chunks of the internet, and the “best deals” will be going through a mass-media-controlled server. Fuck that.

Sick

Only FOX news, upon a search for “popular blogs” would have a story on the “Green House Myth“.

One of the first grafs of the story:

Greenhouses work by physically blocking heat transfer (by convection) from inside to outside – the same effect that heats the inside of your car when it’s parked in the sun on a hot day. Opening the doors and windows allows air currents to flow and the heat to dissipate.

But neither the atmosphere nor “greenhouse gases” block convection, so there is no literal atmospheric “greenhouse effect.

That’s this guy’s working arguement? Sick. The author is Steven Milloy, author of the book “Junk Science Judo”. You must have heard of him! His site is www.junkscience.com. Though the prefix “Doctor” does not appear before his name, Steven Milloy seems to pose as an expert on various issues.

His philosophy on Junk Science:

Junk science?

“Junk science” is faulty scientific data and analysis used to advance special and, often, hidden agendas. The junk science “mob” includes:

• The MEDIA may use junk science for sensational headlines and programming. Some members of the media use junk science to advance their and their employers’ social and political agendas.

• PERSONAL INJURY LAWYERS may use junk science to bamboozle juries into awarding huge verdicts. Large verdicts may then be used to extort even greater sums from deep-pocket businesses fearful of future jury verdicts.

• SOCIAL ACTIVISTS, such as the “food police,” environmental extremists, and gun-control advocates, may use junk science to achieve social and political change.

• GOVERNMENT REGULATORS may use junk science to expand their authority and to increase their budgets.

• BUSINESSES may use junk science to bad-mouth competitors’ products or to make bogus claims about their own products.

• POLITICIANS may use junk science to curry favor with special interest groups or to be “politically correct.”

• INDIVIDUAL SCIENTISTS may use junk science to achieve fame and fortune.

• INDIVIDUALS who are ill (real or imagined) may use junk science to blame others for causing their illness.

It sounds to me like he’s actually a lobbyist, or at least he’s paid to tell people what they want to hear and back it up with absolutely no peer-reviewed research (the foundation of scholarly science), just data and graphs he has compiled himself. He used no researchers to speak of as sources in his story.

Upon further inspection of his website, I found this:

Mr. Milloy holds a B.A. in Natural Sciences from the Johns Hopkins University, a Master of Health Sciences in Biostatistics from the Johns Hopkins University School of Hygiene and Public Health, a Juris Doctorate from the University of Baltimore, and a Master of Laws from the Georgetown University Law Center.

Mr. Milloy is a frequent advocate for free enterprise/free market principles and policies in conjunction with the Free Enterprise Education Institute. FEEI is supported by individuals, foundations and businesses, including ExxonMobil.

Mr. Milloy is president of Steven J. Milloy, Inc., which provides news and consulting services on environment- and health-related public policy issues to food, beverage, and other consumer product businesses and organizations.

So he’s no idiot, but he has a neocon agenda, and he’s trying to discredit genuine science.

Boo-urns.

Birthday

Birthday thoughts from Ze Frank: http://www.zefrank.com/theshow/archives/2006/03/post_1.html

So well put.