Al Franken on net neutrality

Senator Al Franken is well-focused on the current threat to net neutrality:

If we learned that the government was planning to limit our First Amendment rights, we’d be outraged. Well our rights are under attack – not from the government but from corporations seeking to control the flow of information online. I believe that net neutrality, preserving a free and open Internet, is the First Amendment issue of our time. Today, a small Minnesota bookstore’s website loads just as fast as Amazon.com. That’s because right now Internet service providers don’t discriminate between different kinds of content online. So if you have something to say or a product to sell, there is currently no limit to how influential or successful you can be. But the nation’s largest telephone, Internet, and media companies have a different plan for the Internet. Instead of a level playing field, these companies have made clear they plan to reserve express lanes for their own content and services – or those of big corporations that can afford to pay a higher price – and leave Minnesota’s consumers and small businesses in the slow lane. We can’t let companies write the rules that they’re supposed to follow. Because if that happens those rules are only going to protect corporations, not the public interest.

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A new site for Biblical scholarship?

I have to admit, I enjoy reading about the gaming scene (I live my geek vicariously). I was therefore delighted/amazed/surprised/dumbfounded to read about a new MMO game called The Bible Online warning - extremely slow server The site describes the game as follows

<The Bible Online: Ch1. The Heroes> is based on the first book of the Bible, Genesis. Players can meet and play the real heroes of Genesis, Abraham and his descendants. The game is designed for users to actually experience the Book of Genesis by fulfilling quests of Abraham, which is based on the true stories of the Genesis. As a MMORTS, players are to lead their tribe, build buildings, maintain resources and engage in warfare with other tribes. However, players do not stay in one place, but will go on a quest to go to the Promised Land. Players will lead Abraham’s tribe from Ur to Haran and finally to Canaan.
Most game sites are very excited, but confidently expect the game to be 'adult only' due to the graphic nature of the sex, violence, and general debauchery inherent in the source material. [H/T - Destructoid and Penny Arcade]

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Dangerous Intersection now available on your smart phone

We have now upgraded Dangerous Intersection so that you can access all of our articles and comments (and submit comments) on your smart phone. I'd like to give some recognition to two entities and one person that/who have made this advance possible. First of all, this website runs on a WordPress platform. This is excellent and free open source software has been developed by hundreds of community volunteers (how does Free Market Fundamentalism explain this massive effort?). For the new mobile capability, we are using a new release, WPtouch Pro 2.0, by Bravenewcode. For those of you who run your own WordPress sites, WPtouch allows incredible functionality for about $30 per website. If you visit DI on your smartphone, I suspect that you'll agree. I'd also like to thank Josh Timmons, a St. Louis computer consultant who tirelessly maintains our server and provides me with immense amounts of technical know-how, much of it in the wee hours. For those of you who use iPhones, you can also make DI the equivalent of an App. Simply visit this site by entering the URL (http://dangerousintersection.org/ ). Once you see the site on your phone, press the "+" button at the bottom of your screen and choose "Add to Home Screen." The next screen allows you to choose a shortened name for our site (I chose "DI"). Then press "Add." From then on, you can access DI directly from your iPhone home screen (you needn't go through Safari any longer). I don't want to be presumptuous. I hope that your finding this site to be thought-provoking in a civil way. To the extent that this is true, then, see you in the future, either on your computer or on your phone.

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Big money causes President Obama to choke on net neutrality

Do you remember the way candidate Obama spoke out fervently in favor of net neutrality throughout his campaign? Check out this video compilation of some of his many pre-election pro-net-neutrality pronouncements. Guess what? Now that Google and Verizon have decided that a multi-tier non-neutral arrangement will help their profits statements, Obama is unwilling to fight back. Just as he failed to do regarding single payer health care. Just like he failed to do when Wall Street "reform" failed to address too-big-to-fail and failed to reinstate Glass-Steagall (and see here). Just like he did when the military-industrial complex insisted on ramping up U.S. military involvement in Afghanistan. Just like he fail to do as he continues to drag his feet on Don't-Ask-Don't-Tell. Now Obama is unwilling to fight back in support of net neutrality: "President Obama campaigned on net neutrality, and yet the White House has been surprisingly quiet on the issue since the breakdown of FCC negotiations and in the wake of Google and Verizon's joint policy proposal." President Obama has lost his voice regarding net neutrality even though

Joel Kelsey, political advisor with nonprofit media-reform group Free Press, "said the proposal would create "tollbooths on the information superhighway." "It's a signed, sealed and delivered policy framework with giant loopholes that blesses the carving up of the Internet for a few deep-pocketed Internet companies and carriers," he said in a statement.
In the midst of all of this hypocrisy, Obama's Press Secretary Robert Gibbs unloaded on the "professional left," insisting that " “They will be satisfied when we have Canadian healthcare and we’ve eliminated the Pentagon. That’s not reality.” How about this, Mr. Gibbs? Barack Obama has repeatedly proven that he would rather have any sort of deal than a deal that achieves the principles Mr. Obama announced in his campaign speeches. Obama achieved some good things too, but how is anything mentioned at the top of this post differ from anything john McCain would have done? Except, perhaps, when he called the health care bill "reform" instead of calling it the "send gushers of tax money and forced clientele to the health insurance industry." The above-described failures didn't occur in a vacuum. We also seen his refusal to bring American torturers to justice. We've seen expansion of off-shore oil drilling. He's authorized remote-controlled drone attacks on Pakistan, Afghanistan and Yemen, where these are conducted by the CIA, and in which numerous civilians have been killed, and we have good reason to believe that many other deaths of innocent people have been covered up. I voted for Barack Obama, but I'm sorely disappointed. Not that there was any other reasonable place to put my vote. From now one, though, I am going to judge Barack Obama solely by what he does, not by his elegant campaign speeches. For additional trustworthy information on the Google-Verizon deal, see this list of articles at Free Press.

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Most Americans: no concerns with slow internet connections

Apparently, most Americans are OK with the idea that many Americans have slow internet connections:

A majority of Americans believe the government's plan to deliver a high speed internet connection to every citizen by 2020 is either not important or should not be embarked upon.The Pew Internet Project said 52% of survey respondents felt that way while 40% felt the issue was a top priority.

Keep in mind that the $7.2 Billion in stimulus grants dedicated to national broadband are the equivalent of only a few weeks of funding for the American adventures in Afghanistan. Keep in mind that this $7.2 Billion stimulus is far less than 1% of the U.S. in defense spending for 2010.

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