Wednesday Evening Links

said by ThrowDemsOut:

Good luck with that. The Pirate Bay users won't go straight. They will go to some other pirate service.

For the past couple years, everyone's been talking about net neutrality and how important it is. Is it really more important than the pressing issues of poor rural Internet access, DNS attacks, spam, bots, snooping, and virus writers?

That's a rhetorical question. In fact, net neutrality is crap. I say this partially because there is no real definition of "net neutrality." When I see a buzzword with a nebulous definition, I suspect a ruse.

Ask anyone who is all jacked up about net neutrality, and you'll get a kind of Jay Leno "Jaywalking" answer: "It's, like, so the net, man. It's, like, even-steven for, like, everyone, so it's not, like, unfair to anyone or a rip-off, man." Or "We don't want, like, anyone messing with the net just to make more money, dude."

We hear that the new FCC director, Julius Genachowski, is a big proponent of net neutrality. I hope he asks himself what exactly it is, and whether we can cope with it in some way that does not involve regulating the Internet. While I think a lot of things need regulation, I am not a fan of regulating the Internet in any way until it becomes so problematic that we must regulate it to fix some horrible situation. In the meantime, why don't we expend our energy fighting bot attacks, DNS attacks, hackers, viruses?

said by cableties:

Does Pre use micro-usb or proprietary connection for charging/interface?

said by Mr Matt:

1) Eliminated a benefit, that included in the subscription fee, access to Sirius/XM via the Internet. Sirius/XM is now charging subscribers a fee of $12.95 to listen to their programming via the Internet. Why doesn't the Government considered that charge, an increase in the subscription fee.

2) The RIAA fee that Sirius/XM now claims to pass on to subscribers, Sirius/XM represents as justifiable. Techdirt's author Mike Masnick, pointed out that Sirius/XM is misleading the FCC and Subscribers because the original subscription fee included payment to the RIAA for using copyrighted music. Sirius/XM management is simply using a small increase in RIAA fees to increase subscriber rates in violation of the merger agreement.

In my opinion Sirius/XM have violated the terms set forth by the Government to allow the merger. The Sirius/XM company should be forced to refund all increases in rates and fees to subscribers. The company should then be fined for violating the agreement with the Government to obtain the right to merge.

Perhaps unsurprisingly to some parents, a survey by the Pew Internet & Life Project has concluded that more and more teens are using cell phones.

according to the Pew report, with only 52 percent of 12- to 13-year-olds owning one. By age 17, about 82 percent of the survey's respondents owned one.

62 percent of respondents in households earning less than $30,000 owned a phone, 63 percent owned one within households earning $30,000 to $50,000, and 79 percent owned a phone within families earning more than $75,000

more than 70 percent of 17-year-olds talk with their friends via cell phone on a daily basis, versus 28 percent of 12-year-olds. That also holds true for texting, as 51 percent of teens aged 15 to 17 text daily, versus a quarter of teens aged 12 to 14.

Interestingly, girls are the more frequent texters, 42 percent to 34 percent for boys, the study found.

said by SeoulDOG :

I speak Korean.

....

Thanks Karl, you are a real bright mind.