Posts

Yeah, it’s great how the free market and competition has a good chance of sorting out any problems we have with net neutrality and Internet access. Or, at least, that’s what the Federal Trade Commission says. This report recommends that policy makers proceed with caution in the evolving, dynamic industry of broadband Internet access, which generally is moving toward more – not less – competition. In the absence of significant market failure or demonstrated consumer harm, policy makers should be particularly hesitant to enact new regulation in this area. ...

Google’s new interface is nice, and it seems like it even works a bit faster. However, I’ve seen a few blogs mentioning they replaced tags with folders – the blog I linked to isn’t one of them – and it appears they just renamed the tags as folders and put a little folder icon next to them. As I said, the new interface works great, but is there really a large part of the Internet populace that can’t be comfortable with tags unless they have a folder icon next to them? :) ...

I haven’t written anything about this horrible crime. I doubt I will write much. But I will say that if you had asked me a few days ago who my favorite wrestler has been since the mid-1990s, I probably would have said Chris Benoit, from the effort he gave in his performances, the odds he overcame to be a success, and the fact he seemed to be a genuinely nice guy from his interviews and what his friends uniformly said about him. ...

So far, I’ve seen one news outlet after another talk about the disappointing opening weekend for Evan Almighty: $32.1 million. That return might not be so bad for a comedy, except this one cost anywhere between $175 million and $220 million to make, according to the same outlets. Now, personally, I have almost as little interest in seeing Evan Almighty as I did Bruce Almighty. The only difference? I’ll see most things with Steve Carell in them, but I avoid movies with Jim Carrey in them. So, for me, spending that much money on the movie doesn’t seem like a good decision. However, maybe that’s just me? ...

U.S. to fingerprint E.U. visitors: Visitors from European nations traveling with visas or visa-free to the United States will soon have to give 10 digital fingerprints when entering the country, a senior U.S. Homeland Security official said Monday. Let’s see, the last time I had my fingerprints taken by a digital scanner owned by the U.S. government, it took 30 minutes and continual rewetting of my fingertips because the system was having trouble matching the individual prints to a ten-print scan. Since that was in April, and the machine was fairly new and expensive, I doubt the technology used in the various points of entry has any reason to work much more consistently. I wonder how they plan on handling the extra delays? ...

Nuts, my Cat Interest Quotient just fell off: Previously, on The Phantom-Thought, Interested Cat.

You know that Ohio state government data storage device, containing the personal information of hundreds of thousands of people, that was stolen from an intern’s car? You ever wonder why that kind of information would be in an intern’s car? Well, the Associated Press explains: Under protocol in place since 2002, a first backup storage device is kept at a temporary work site for a state office along with the computer system that holds all the employee information, and a second backup device is given to employees on a rotating basis to take home for safekeeping, officials said. ...

From I Can Has Cheezburger?

We went to see Nancy Drew last weekend, partly because we were curious what Hollywood might do with the character, and partially because we weren’t quite in the mood for seeing another comedy or comic-book action blockbuster on opening weekend in a crowded theater. You know what? It was good. Not one of the best movies of the year – well, I shouldn’t say that, the year’s been moving a little slow so far – but a good story that conveyed what’s appealing about the novels. It also would have been a good movie for parents to take their kids…as opposed to Ocean’s Thirteen, where we saw several children getting dragged. ...

I just ran across my first phishing email referring to Amazon.com! Usually they’re “from” Ebay, PayPal, or MySpace. Anyone who knows me knows I’m far more likely to be interested in an email from Amazon. Tricky…uh…phishermen? :)