News quikies of the day - 4/23

FCC says 'Screw It' on Net Neutrality

Net Neutrality is saying everyone get equal speed an access on all internet networks.  The FCC was holding tight to this idea.  That was until some courts said that Time Warner and Comcast can do whatever they want on their networks.  They don't have monopoly on the market and people can go elsewhere if they want a different internet experience.

My Opinion: The FCC was getting black eye and offending heavy contributors to the Democratic party and had to back down on this policy.  BTW: whatever happened to that free wireless network the FCC was going to build from the open bandwidth from the sale of analog TV channels?

Two Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Allegedly Planted Guns at a Pot Store

http://www.scpr.org/news/2014/04/23/43721/2-former-la-deputies-accused-of-planting-guns-to-j/

There is evidence that LA Sheriffs planted weapons jsut so that they could raid a pot dispensary.

My Opinion: I think marijuana should be legal.  But it needs tighter controls then what it has now.  Things are way to loose.  And I can see why law enforcement is frustrated because federally its illegal but at the state level it is legal.

But two wrongs don't make a right.  Also this isn't LA Sheriffs have been under a federal investigation.  I think all federal funds should be suspended to this department until either they officers do a full confession or the matter is fully investigated.

I was hoping to do another one tonight but I'm tired.

They want government observers in the newsroom

Its been announced that the FCC what to study how news stories are selected.  They want to make sure the 'undeserved' are getting equal time with CIN program.

Quoting from the FCC article:

Today, the Office of Communications Business Opportunities (OCBO) and the Media Bureau (MB) issued a Request for Quotation (RFQ) for a study to examine the critical information needs of the American public so that the Commission can more effectively meet its statutory and judicially mandated obligations.

That sound good, but what is the result?

Someone, or many someones, would be taking personal notes on what people are saying.  What they are doing.  Who they are and if they have views in favor of opposed to the state's.  That information could potentially be used to pull a station's license.  Sounds MacArthur like doesn't it?

The definition of 'undeserved' changes from administration to administration.  Each FCC chair and committee has their own parameters for what they think should happen in a newsroom.  Its all subjective and changing, dare I say newspeak.

With cable new networks and new media coming age does it really matter?  Everyone has access to a radio, internet, and newspapers now. So why concentrate so hard on a shrinking medium: over the air broadcasting? Also it makes me really nervous when I see government official intruding into private affairs.

Many of you maybe saying 'you must be a part of X party!  You sound like a kook.'  Let flip this, what if the opposite party wanted to do this you?  When you stand for or against it then?  You need to look beyond thr prism of party lines and look at what its really doing.

I want to keep the government out of my life as much as possible.  Beside, the TV newsroom has operated the essentially the same way since the 60's: 'if it bleeds its leads' or 'if positively reflects on my friends and advertiser or negatively reflects on my perceived enemies run the story.'  The FCC knows and the government in general knows this.  The president ran the most effective media campaign ever.  Why is this study really needed?

What is IPv8?

An article on SlashDot about the IPv4 'crisis' reminded of something else: what ever happened to IPv8 and IPv9.

For the non-techies you're wondering what is IPv4?  An IP address is like having a world wide ID card for buy food.  That card has enough room for 7 numbers (0 - 9,999,999).  We'll call this IPv4.  You need that card to buy food. Lets say we easily have enough numbers so everyone in the world has unique card.

But dogs and cats eat food too, we HAVE to count them now as well! So we need cards for them as well.  Uh oh, we have way more dogs, cats, gold fish, ect. then people.  We're running out of number!  So what do we do?

We make a new system that has more numbers and now uses letters as well.  We'll call that IPv6.  Wait, all our old system can't deal with bigger numbers and letters. That means we have to start all over again!  It took us 50 years to build the first system.

So you get the idea of where the internet is heading.  Change the animals to tablets, smart TV's, and even internet enabled crock pots and you can see where things are going. We're getting close to running out of numbers.

There are work arounds like NAT.  NAT works by giving a number to a neighborhood and having a runner take orders. The runner remembers who asked for a red apple, gets the apple, and gives the apple to them.  But NAT has issue like being slow. Also someone in your neighborhood ALWAYS knows what you're eating or mix up your order with your neighbors.

IPv6 is a much better and faster way to do things on the internet but it doesn't work well with old internet. The old internet can't talk back to it easily eitehr.  Also almost every electronic device that will talks on IPv6 has to be upgraded, replaced, or you have to but a proxy device to keep something that is wearing out working. That's expensive.

Now I know what IPv6 is, what's IPv8 and IPv9?  IPv8 was a replacement for IPv4 just like IPv6.  IPv8 was also supposed to work more like IPv4 for easier upgrades and have tons more numbers than IPv6.  So where is it?

IPv6 was designed but a very small group so that could get things going faster.  IPv8 what open to whole world and got lost the conversation.  IPv9 was a similar idea but it was being made by the Peoples Republic of China. Its seems to have been more of a PR stunt then anything.  No code or specs has ever been released for IPv9 to my knowledge.

I hear IPv8 is used by spies?  I thought you said it never got off the ground?  You know I change my name to Barrack Obama but that doesn't make me the president.  Someone else started a P2P system for sending secret messages and called it IPv8 as well.

Are there any other IPv... something out there.  Sure but they're all in the shape of IPv8.

Will we ever see IPv6 running?  If you have a smart phone you already have.  Most cell phone companies use IPv6 on their phones and use NAT to talk to old IPv4 that our computers use now.  I guessing in about 4-6 years the real IPv4 crisis is going to hit us.  Then we'll see the big change over to IPv6 happen.

Desperate times make people stupid

We hear that the economy is bad.  We hear about wars.  During these times is when we should be pulling friends and families together.  Instead people are placing themselves as judge and executioner to prove some  personal point.  I looked at a Twitter account and here some of the first stories I found:

Libyan rebels fighting Gadhafi troops in Misrata say 8 oftheir fighters have been killed in clashes - Reuters
Up to 9 shot and a 19-year-old male killed when birthday party in Chester, Pa. turns violent - Philadelphia Daily News http://bit.ly/ggXsWXDutch shooting update: At least 6 dead; gunman ran through mall with automatic weapon before killing self -DutchNews.nl http://bit.ly/fBrbUH

I can understand people fighting for freedom.  I can understand defending your homeland.  But is with the arrogance of these people that believe they're purpose is to do something so horrific as too kill people indiscriminately?  Is an argument really worth killing people at a birthday party?

If you feel the need to kill move away from people.  There many places you can go to get away from your problems until you can deal with them.  If you feel the need to bring a gun to birthday don't go.  Gun rarely bring joy to party.

What is and isn't social media

I the last few minutes I received a post on Facebook:

We all have at least 60 friends on Facebook; However when it comes to needing someone to talk to, How many will actually be there for you? I can guarantee you, not even 15 of your Facebook friends will like this status. If you would be there for me, set this as your status & see how many of us there for you!!!

My reply was:

I understand the sentiment of your post but you have remember this is an asynchronous media. IE when you post something I may not even see it for hours or days. During that time more people will add their messages. If you want true conversation I would say invite some people out to lunch or meet up at church. Facebook, Twitter and other social media just quick ways of starting a conversation. The real conversations happen in the real world.

Social media is about the moment: "I'm playing a game now I need" or "Here's my quick thought."  While those thought snippets are getting posted so are twenty or thirty other thoughts by other people.  Theres no way can keep up with every conversation.

The real question becomes how do you want to use your social media?  If you want the maximum number of friends to play you RockYou/Zanga games then you loose intimacy.  If you want conversation then only friend people that want the same thing as you.  But don;t get upset if you friend people who don't want the same thing.

Can you pout some more?

Francine Lawrence, president of the Toledo Federation of Teachers, has notified the Ohio Department of Education that the union intends to pull out of the Race to the Top Program, she said Tuesday night.

Ohio was awarded in August $400 million in the federal Race to the Top competition, a program aimed at reforming schools. The Toledo district's share is $10.8 million.

Source: ToledoBlade.com, published on 3/19/2011

The issue is that the Toledo Public Schools (TPS) academic programs have been floundering for nearly two decade. Together with budget shortfall from a shrinking population TPS has to make drastic changes and make them now.  TPS is trying to negotiate those changes with local teacher's union but they're not budging.

Right now the TPS teacher union is waging a PR war against TPS to keep every single benifit they have negitiated over the last two decades.  This is the latest tatic to force the school board the give in their demands.  The problem is TPS doesn;t have the money and if Francine Lawrence and the Toledo teacher union drop this program the teachers loose even more and the school have even less to pay their teacher and maintain the facilities.

This a big game of chicken that Francine can't loose in. Why can't she loose? Simple: Her contract is set in stone and she will continue to earn her six figure salary until the day she retires.  So really right now she's heading negotiations for her legacy as she nears retirement and not the good of the children.

Skirting the Laws in Pants

Have you ever heard of earmarks?  You ever hear of pork barrel spending?  They're the same thing, it just every few years the media change the name of the practice so that most people don't realize what it means.  Earmarks are when someone in political power take tax payers' money and give it to a company or other organization, usually for political favors.

Because of most of these organizations are for-profit and should be bringing in enough money that they should be  paying for themselves and the earmarks (your money) is almost always some sort of payback.  So lets make it really hard for for-profit companies to get this money and potential political favor?  Some of our representative did. Of course some those same representative the next day went out and started giving money to non-profit companies.  But wait, the non-profit companies were for-profit companies the day before.

The first person take advantage of this loophole was Ohio congress woman Marcy Kapter to Victoria Kurtz of the Great Lakes Research Center.  Of course at the exact same address is Ms. Kurtz' sister's business TeamIST. Both have the same executive staff.  So all of these ladies have went out of their way to funnel money to themselves.  I wonder how much the TeamIST has contributed to Marcy's campaigns in the past?  A better question is how much of the cash to the research center are going to go to Marcy's campaign?