This remarkably well-presented presentation arguing for net neutrality very clearly explains the problem of network neutrality. The short version is that companies providing internet access (for a fee, mind you) to companies that create and/or host content (web sites like YouTube, Slashdot, Yahoo!, and Google) are toying with the notion of charging extra to web sites that want “higher priority” access. That is, they want to create a “tiered” internet that delivers packets to you not as quickly as possible no matter where they’re from, but that delivers those packets to you faster if the entity sending them has paid extra for top priority.

Why is this a bad thing? Because it instantly transforms the internet from a level playing field where everyone can play on even footing to a split network where people with deep pockets are the only ones that will be assured of getting any useful bandwidth. All of the “little people” like us get to fight it out over the scraps. You likely wouldn’t be able to even visit a site like mine if I don’t pay the fee — all the “high priority” packets will be clogging the pipes.

Go watch that video (and look at the mockup for future internet service providers’ pricing — imagine an internet where you pay a different fee depending on which sites you want to be able to access, just like how cable and satellite providers now charge for different programming packages). It’s amusing, and it’s important. Don’t let them pull this off without a fight.

This screenshot was taken from a Facebook application called Likeness that asks you to compare your friends on such topics as “who’d you rather be stuck on a desert island with?” and “who is sexier?” This particular question seemed innocent enough (though I really do wonder why the hell it got included in the first place): “Who smells nicer?” I blurred both pictures and names just for courtesy’s sake — I know the woman on the left (but not the woman shown at right, actually, so I dunno why she shows up in this thing) and I know she wouldn’t be offended at appearing in the shot, but I figured I’d play it safe.

It’s the pose of the woman on the right that just makes me crack up. My friend spotted this and mused “do I smell tuna?” When you see someone posed like that and are asked to “rate” how they might smell, you don’t exactly get a good picture. Heh. I suspect both ladies smell just fine anyway; it was just an unfortunate choice of pictures for the one on the right.

I clicked the “skip” button for this particular question …

Switching my site back to a more reliable system where I have more direct control over things is both a good thing and a bad thing, but it’s good in that I have a much nicer stats suite available now and it gives me all sorts of funny amusing stuff to poke fun at. It also helps me more quickly find abusers and spammers to [plonk] into the killfile.

Here are just a few of the funnier/stranger search phrases that lead to my web site, along with my ever-so-helpful answers to these meaning-of-life caliber questions.

The Internet has handed all sorts of really useful and impressive things to the people who use it. These days you can do everything from banking and investing to shopping, communicating, organizing protests and rallies, and conducting research all from the comfort of your own home.

One of the single most empowering things about the Internet is that it lets individuals (even lowly scumbags like me ) do all their financial juggling electronically — because of the reduced overhead of not running any “brick and mortar” branches, online banks can offer savings accounts with (much) higher interest rates (even in this craptacular economy, FNBO Direct’s online savings accounts make 3.25% instead of the paltry 1.05% I see offered at local credit unions (who generally pay at least a little better than commercial banks)). Because electronic debits can be done quickly and easily, I save $2.05 a month just by paying five bills electronically (instead of by mail — that savings is on the postage). Finally, because investment firms and banks want my business (i.e. they want my money), they advertise all their best offerings online for me to see at my leisure, while forums and websites review and advise on how these companies really treat their customers.

It just figures — the day I decide to quit reading Reddit[1], Google Reader manages to break so nobody can access the settings or “manage subscriptions” pages, so I can’t even yank the Reddit feed from my usual browsing method. Ugh. There are quite a few complaints about the problem on their help group, so I imagine this will get cleared up fairly soon.

In the meantime, the solution I’ve been relying on is just clicking that feed, then hitting “Mark all as read.” Heh. Close enough for me.

[1] Why bail on Reddit? Besides it turning into a general rabble-rousing political quagmire of useless ranting and raving (heh — there’s enough of that for my tastes right here on my site ), there’s no courtesy left there. I’ve been a dick here and there in the comments, too, so I’m even a part of the problem (which I’m solving by just unplugging), but it’s just not enjoyable, helpful or useful in any sense anymore. You get voted down if someone disagrees with you (especially if your opinion differs from the majority’s), even if you’re articulate and obviously not trolling in your posts. I’m not the first person to bail like this, though I won’t be posting any long-winded “goodbye” to the site directly. I’m just not in the mood for dealing with the same snarky responses this guy did when he submitted his “goodbye” to Reddit. The last person to reply to something I posted wrote a single-word reply to a question I asked him: “penis” … It’s time to go.

[Edit]: As Adam (the author of the “I’m Done with Reddit” piece) points out in a comment below, he didn’t actually submit the piece directly to Reddit; someone else did it, and he saw an unexpected spike in traffic to his site (and initially assumed his stat counters were broken). Ironically I thought the same thing when a random DDoS attack briefly hit my domain late last year — once I (and my webhost) blocked the offending netblocks, my stats sank back to their depressingly low levels

I did scroll through the Reddit comments related to that post, and did see lots of snark, but I must give a quick nod to the folks who did take it seriously and didn’t just hurl insults. Adam and I are certainly not the only people who feel it’s not worth visiting Reddit anymore, which is encouraging. Maybe they’ll do something to fix it, and a few months from now it might be enjoyable again. Maybe once a site like that becomes popular enough to go “mainstream” and get bought out, it automatically turns to crap. Who knows? There’s plenty of other spots out there to get my news fix (it strikes me as more “useful” to take in an actual random sampling of news from everywhere, from the friggin’ Christian Science Monitor (shudder) to the BBC).

[Edit 2]: Google has since corrected this issue; the settings page works again!

So much for “freedom of the press” or “freedom of speech.” Okay, we haven’t had those for quite awhile. Still, a court in California ruled that Wikileaks, a site for both public and anonymous whistleblowing, had to go offline today. It’s a real pisser that just suing somebody never kills the message. Equally irritating for the Cayman Islands bank caught doing illegal things as a result of the whistleblowing done on this site, I don’t live in California.

Go have a look at Wikileaks, which is still working despite attempts to censor it. I love the internet. You can’t silence a whistleblower or a critic, no matter how hard you try. No wonder governments and corporations around the world hate and fear it so much.

For years, I’ve participated in a barely-legitimate, yet remarkably popular (and probably well-known) spam-for-pay “program” wherein advertisers pay some pittance to the organizing company, which in turn sends me spam that, oddly enough, I’m supposed to filter into a special folder so I can give each and every one enough attention to click the “redemption” button that gives me “tokens” (that’s not the word they actually use for them, by the way) that I can later redeem for gift cards and such.

In terms of “something for nothing,” now that (thanks largely to GMail) I’ve gotten this thing nearly completely automated, it’s paying in spades. I’ve probably been sent over $200 in gift cards from these people in the past 5 years or so I’ve been a member and I’ve never spent a fucking dime at any of the sponsors’ web sites.

You’ll note I’m not mentioning their name, linking to their web site, nor using terminology that could uniquely identify them. First I don’t want anyone thinking I’m trying to score “affiliate” brownie points with them by sending referrals, but second I don’t want them to sue me or cancel my account — I like getting ten bucks worth of free gas every few months even though that amounts to three gallons or less now).

I absolutely love stumbling across sites like these, pissing and moaning about things like “bandwidth theft” and social sites failing to “obey” robots.txt “law,” and completely missing the fucking point of the concept of the Internet.

To those idiots out there who think the world wide web is solely your domain for simple monetization, and getting pissed when those dollars don’t instantly start rolling in, I’ve put together a little list of hints for you.