Archive for the ‘Politics’ Category

I Killed a Russian Troll

Sunday, January 16th, 2022

At least I think he was a Russian troll. Clearly a troll, spreading disinformation, in a way Putin would like. And I’m guessing a “he” based on his demeanor, but I might be wrong about that.

Last Sunday, 9 January 2022, I saw someone on Twitter posting some nonsense, so I replied in what I think was a thoughtful way; I think I made a good point. He replied in a trollish way, I replied, etc.

Then I started to wonder who he was, I checked. His account was just a few hours old! He followed only one account and had only one follower (same person who followed him back). He was still wet behind the ears.

Except he was very good at trolling, he clearly was not new to Twitter.

So my 4th tweet at him was:

Wait. You are just a Russian troll?

And I started asking him questions about his job. (I think some of them were pretty good.)

He never answered my questions directly, but he did reply in ways to try to bolster his supposed Boston location, talking about Dunkin’ and swerving when he drives, and something else easy to Google that I forget.

I wish I had a complete record of our exchanges. Between my off-brand Twitter client on my phone and another copy on my tablet, I still have a lot of his tweets, but not all.

At one point he was trying to be condescending, to put me in a childish position, he asked whether I have been given a lollipop. But he said “lolli”. I have lived in Boston a long time, I called him on it, that is not how a Bostonian talks. I told him I have heard my next door neighbor say “lolli”, but that my next door neighbor was born in the UK.

He was thorough, he looked at other things I tweeted. In one I replied to a tweet by NPR’s @ElBeardsley. She had just arrived in Kyiv on a reporting trip, I said I had been scheduled to go there, but a pandemic intervened.

My troll replied. Repeating the “Kyiv” version of the city. I called him on that, said his Boston character would have been more likely write “Kiev”, I also pointed out that a Russian troll who was actually Russian would more likely spell it “Kiev”. (Saying “Kyiv” is more sensitive to Ukrainians.) I asked him whether he is actually Ukrainian. I asked whether he is worried by Putin’s buildup of troops on their border.

My logic on his name for the city didn’t hold water—he was quoting back what I had written—but he didn’t call me on it. He did accuse me of being the Russian troll, however.

I did rat him out a few times, telling people he was trolling that he was an apparent Russian troll. I praised him for being good at his job, observed that he tried hard to not actually lie. Be disingenuous, sure, that was his job. But he worked hard to not lie.

Yesterday, 15 January, I checked in on him again. He was still trolling, and I squealed on him again. I noticed someone who had blocked both of us had unblocked me. I replied to a previous tweet about the blocking:

Now I noticed I am no longer blocked.

I see you are trolling this morning.

And he blocked me. Or so I thought.

This morning I used a different account to see what he was up to…and the account has been deleted.

I killed him!


If someday in the future whoever was running @bsacamano545 (“bob sacamano”) is in a new line of work and can reminisce about old times, I’d love to talk.

In the mean time, “bob”, be well, stay safe,

-kb, the Kent who bets you don’t look at all like the Twitter avatar that was on the account.

©2022 Kent Borg

P.S. I still want to know which vaccine you got.

P.P.S. Comments are broken and have been for sometime. Sorry.

Why Do They Deny?

Sunday, September 15th, 2019

I think I have finally figured out something basic about human nature, something that has long puzzled me. I have gone from shaking my head in disbelief to maybe understanding.

Here is the most extreme example:

Why are the people who strenuously argue Hitler’s death camps never existed, also seem to argue they should have existed?

They are attracted to Hitler, Hitler is most infamous for his genocidal murder, there is clearly something attractive in that fact, but as they are attracted by infamy, they also go to great efforts to deny it! I mean, they are already going to a very taboo place, why not really go there and MGMGA? (Make Genocidal Mass-murder Great Again!).

Why this strange split?

This doesn’t only happen in the extreme: There is a resurgence of a kinder, gentler (than Nazis), racism these days…but as these newly outed racists gleefully promote their racism, they also say that they are not racist? They insist! Why?

To get all Star Wars here, I think it is a basic property of “the dark side”. Those who resist it see it as dark and repulsive. But my realization is that for those who embrace “the dark side” it is still dark and repulsive. Being dark and repulsive is somehow part of the appeal.

So in the case of neo-Nazis I think it is also the point, but in this case taken to its logical extreme.

And I think that extreme–of murder on an industrial scale, in a network of slave labor camps–is enough to make even Nazis queasy. So they lie. They lie to all of us, as hard as they can, because that is the best way to lie to themselves.

In some extremely dark corner of their already dark souls, they know it is true that it happened, and in some still darker corner they sort of wish to see it again. But first they want to be part of a rampaging mob, they want to be drunk on the high they get in abusing their choice of “the other”, to have violent power over others, laughing with their fellows, being goaded on by their fellows, goading on the others, spreading responsibility. Because they know it is wrong.

It is bad stuff. Few have the stomach to really go there, to go there alone, so they lie to themselves and look for support in others.

A silver lining: There is still some good in most of these people, maybe not much good, but some. (No, Donald Trump that doesn’t make them “good people”, not on balance.) If they are still capable of being revolted, there is still some good in there.

No, don’t think I am going so far as to assert that sociopaths don’t exist, they do, but most Nazis are not sociopaths, and I suspect most sociopaths are not attracted to Nazis.

My thesis here is that–excepting some pathological, diseased minds–there is good in everyone. Look for it. Try to draw it out. Try to tempt them away from the repulsive “dark side”, for they find it repulsive, too.

-kb

©2019 Kent Borg

P.S. Comments are broken and have been for sometime. Sorry.

Why Trump Grovels so to Putin, I Figured it Out, Now That it is Obvious

Wednesday, August 1st, 2018

I have wondered what Putin has on Trump to get such deference. For a very long time I was deeply puzzled. Until a week or so ago when I realized that John Brennen nailed it a year ago May!

    "Frequently, people who go along a treasonous path do 
     not know they are on a treasonous path until it is too late"

It is as if Brennen knew something.

Recently someone smarter than I pointed out that the Russians likely started cultivating Trump years ago. (That’s part of how they do business.) And when his credit landed in the toilet and no US bank would touch him, their opening got ripe. He needed cash and there were plenty of oligarchs wanting to launder money into the US.

So do the Russians have him for “money laundering”? No, too simple. They laid a treasonous path, and he walked down it. They reeled him in, bit by bit, and as he thinks back, he’s not sure what all they have over him, but he knows they have plenty.

At this point I think Putin keeps his distance, never giving Trump the warm reassurance he craves. Rather, I think Putin takes pleasure in occasionally yanking Trump’s chain, torturing him, making him nervous as hell. Putin has no respect for Trump, but he still likes groveling from anyone, particularly from a US President.

-kb

©2018 Kent Borg

Snowden, the Movie

Friday, September 16th, 2016

I went to one of the first Boston matinees of the movie Snowden today.

It was all very familiar territory: it could have been boring or–as with any subject I know a lot about–it could have been excruciating in its errors. It was neither. It held my attention, it did not disappoint.

But was it a good movie? I usually have tons of opinions, I fret over whether a movie hits the ten-minute mark right, whether the script is “economical”, whether characters are compelling, whether the plot is interesting. In this case I can’t say, I am not unbiased: I am an American. And this is really important material–important to any American.

I do know it was at least a competent movie, because it had me wanting to cry. I knew Edward Snowden was a hero, but Oliver Stone tugs for tears. At least from me.

Is it a great movie? Probably not, just because great movies are rare. But I don’t know. Ask me in a few years, I’ll know better. But right now I am kinda choked up over a man whose illusions were shattered, followed by his world being shattered as he followed his conscience with selfless acts.

Another bit of praise: Usually it is painful to see a movie on a topic that I know something about, worse if the movie is technical, and far worse if it is about a technical topic I know something about. This movie did well by that measure.

-kb, the Kent who thinks the three branches of government should not be secret legislative measures, implemented by secret executive orders and agencies, overseen by secret courts.

©2016 Kent Borg

Why We Got Ourselves a Trump: 4 Crazy Tricks

Wednesday, May 4th, 2016

Four things came together to give us Donald J. Trump as the all-but-official GOP nominee.

First, the so-called cable news channels in the US are, indeed, for-profit businesses, looking for ratings, looking for an edge. Thump was ratings gold for them. He got enormous free publicity in exchange for supplying viewers. He did a very good clown-act. Maybe professional “wrestling” is a closer approximation, but either way they have airtime to fill and he provided them with riveting free content.

Second, the GOP has been pandering to, and fanning the flames of, a very dissatisfied base. They have been promoting a “reality” that is remote from actual facts. And, they have not delivered on their promises. This left the GOP a hollow party, dependent on a narrowing base, that no one could reason with. They created a monster. A monster that apparently watches cable TV.

Third, due to something the GOP has accomplished, the 1% have done great in this otherwise tepid recovery, but vast areas of this country (it goes zip code, by zip code) have been left behind and are still where George II’s Great Recession left them. They have not seen the recovery at all. They are rightfully afraid, and unfortunately very angry. And they watch TV.

Fourth, The Donald turned out to be a political genius. The man is nothing if not arrogant, but I don’t think even he had a clue how good he would be at this. He took his entertainment TV experience and turned it into an entertaining campaign, driven by free TV.

I thought the Trump phenomenon would burn out. I think he guessed it would, too, that he would come away with a bigger “brand”. Well, the second part sure came true.

-kb

©2016 Kent Borg

Will Donald Trump Split the Republican Party?

Tuesday, November 24th, 2015

Splitting the GOP: Refused

A few years ago, when the GOP first lurched right and so seemed to be dismissing any reasonable chance of winning the presidency, I figured they needed to split in two, they needed to kick out the crazies.

But they didn’t, instead they all adopted this crazy attitude, and I forgot about my constructive idea. The GOP wasn’t following my suggestion.

Now it Might Happen

Not saying it will, but I can see a way it might: Donald Trump.

Observers have puzzled to figure out what Trump’s ideology is, and other than being a brash showman, it has been hard. I think it is because he didn’t much have any political ideology. But now, as he shifts right–shifts far right–he might be finding his ideology. For the last week The Donald is having a good time with fascism; he might decide he really likes it.

So if a GOP split happens it won’t be because crazies were pushed out but it might be that they leave to follow Trump.

His chance of winning the GOP nomination is not zero, but it is low. If he looses he might go third-party. He said he won’t, but he could change his mind. If he walks, and is the pied piper who leads the brownshirts and tea baggers to form a white-wing party, er, right-wing party, what is left behind?

A quieter and rather shaken GOP, free to be sensible and reality-based again.

Not saying it will happen, but it could. And it would be good for the country, good for the world. The GOP will win the presidency again–if for no other reason than the Democrat might trip and fall. I want a reasonable GOP to return before that happens.

-kb

©2015 Kent Borg

Benefits of The Donald

Monday, October 19th, 2015

I missed the first Democratic debate of the 2016 election. I wanted to see it and being stuck on an airplane, with CNN, while it was on, seemed a fine coincidence. Except my Virgin America flight from LA to Boston was missing a quarter of the channels it was supposed to have, including CNN. And they didn’t want to reset too much of their entertainment equipment because the Dodger’s playoff game was coming in loud-and-clear and for some reason my fellow passengers seemed more interested in that.

From what I gather, the dog didn’t bark: Hillary is alive and Sanders is real. But that’s news. Likely it keeps Biden undecided until it is too late to get in.

Oh, and the guy from Maryland maybe has some bite.

The other two?

I’ve always liked Chafee, but he is disqualified for being funny looking, he can’t be elected president in 2016 without being more attractive on TV. A shame. I also saw a spin-room photo where he was being interviewed, surrounded by…one lone reporter. In the same room where Bernie was mobbed. Sad.

I used to like Webb, but I forget what earlier silliness from him was my letdown. But I am over him.

On to The Donald

As I have often repeated, I don’t dare root for a crazy-but-weak GOP candidate because in a two horse race the most embarrassing and lagging nag can win–if the other horse trips and falls. But that reticence doesn’t mean I can’t appreciate some aspects of GOP infighting and stunts.

In this case The Donald is taking on W’s reputation. It has been almost as if George II wasn’t even president on September 11th, 2001. Until Jeb! said “At least he kept us safe.”. A few liberals jumped on that and no one notices them.

But now The Donald is hitting Jeb! with the fact of what his brother’s job was at the time: President of the United States of America. And in true Donald-style, he isn’t being gentle about it. Legions of Ignorant Americans (who think the movie The Martian is based on a true story) are learning that George W. Bush maybe was a bad president. (“Really!?”)

Now if The Donald would only take on W’s torture, kidnapping, and arbitrary imprisonment.

Okay if he wants to leave alone W’s hollowing out of the federal government by driving scads of competent talent into retirement. (A dozen or so years from now, ask Barack about the consequences of that–he might not give a straight answer, but watch him take a deep breath and try not to roll is eyes.) Also okay if The Donald doesn’t want to touch W’s horrible deficits, before he very nearly plunged us into another Great Depression.

At some point it becomes implausible that George II was that bad, so best keep it believable…

But I would like the torture, kidnapping, and arbitrary imprisonment trotted out by a showman of The Donald’s calibre. Please?

-kb
©2015 Kent Borg

How Political “Red Meat” Works (and Isn’t Necessarily Bad)

Saturday, October 17th, 2015

[Sorry I wrote this back at the end of July but didn't post it then. Silly me. Maybe I never finished it. Does it look complete to you?]

I am sure political scientists have fancy names for this and organize conferences about it, but it is new to me, I just figured it out: how “red meat” works, and how it is made.

A freaky part of living in these times is that someone like Donald Trump can toss ridiculous “red meat” to the Republican base, and millions fall for it! How does that work? Today I spotted a rare attempt at left-wing “red meat” (What do we call left-wing “red meat”?) and it got me thinking in a little more depth.

It seems to be a three-part recipe:

1. Select a complicated problem, a problem that we must solve.

This needs to be something controversial–we can’t have a bipartisan solution or the result won’t be ideological red meat. And if you want traction with your public, it should be a familiar and topical problem.

2. Select a tenet of ideological dogma.

Something that is obviously true to anyone who looks at it, yet something that your political opponents inexplicably won’t see. How can anyone be so blind!? Some things are obvious!

3. Apply the dogma to the problem for a simple solution.

Simple solutions are naturally better than complicated and red meat needs to be simple. And if you want to really juicy, dripping red meat, it is better if it outrages your opponents, that helps solidify the distinction between good and evil. The solution doesn’t have to be practical nor make sense, it doesn’t have to actually address the original problem, but it does have to fit with the dogma chosen above.

If anyone argues against it, the true believer can easily dismiss any logic or facts, and see the complaint as a rejection of the dogma. It doesn’t matter if the objection is from the opposition or from the same side, the very fact that there is an objection is all one needs to know, only a non-believer could think such a thing. A valuable litmus test can be built this way.

A little marketing savvy helps in selecting and packaging the solution, but if done right the result is emotionally satisfying to the core of your ideological group and they won’t be able to resist it.

Right Wing Examples

Taxes. To the political right taxes are bad by definition. This dogma has been used to cut taxes. The slight detail that Republican presidents like Reagan or George W. Bush who put in big tax cuts had enormous deficits is a bit of reality that doesn’t need to be worried about, at least not on the Federal level where we have good credit and can run deficits. States don’t have this flexibility. Consider Kansas, the enormous GOP tax cuts have been a big problem, but as it is a red state, the Democrats can’t take over and take the heat, instead the GOP needs to fix it, so they make a point of not saying what they are doing is taxing. It is okay to defy reality, but never defy dogma.

Regulations. Regulations are almost the same as taxes, bad by definition to the political right. It doesn’t matter if the world is coming to an end, dogma can prompt one to deny it. In fact the more extreme the situation, the greater importance to preserve the dogma, for the dogma will save you.

Military might, we can’ be weak. More is better, we need to support our military. Even if this means starting wars that kill and maim our own and leaves us weaker, any argument against belligerence must be an argument for weakness.

Left Wing Examples

These are harder to come up with in 2015. Ronald Reagan did such a good job of changing the very agenda questions from not whether to cut socail programs or taxes, but how much to cut. He crushed the left and the Democrats have been marching to the right ever since. It it hard to throw read meat to the left when the crowd is constantly ambling to the right.

What’s left of the right today?

There’s Bernie Sanders! But he’s blast from a distant past. He has been a refugee who years ago found asylum in a distant and mythical place called “Vermont”. Pinko world he grew up in doesn’t exist anymore. He is one of the last isolated individuals of a species that looks as good as extinct. Maybe he can “breed” more political socialists, but it would be a dodo-back-from-the-dead miracle.

Isn’t there something newer available? Something with a glint of new?

There is (was?) the occupy movement. It had a lot of buzz and support and momentum…but I don’t remember those crowds getting any good red meat thrown to them. Why not?

What would it have taken?

Step 1: choose a complicated problem. That’s easy, we hate the big banks and WTO, get rid of them!

Good start! Almost there, now hit that over the head with an appropriate tenet of your dogma, see what pops our, and you’ll be done. There’s no right answer, pick any core article of your dogma and it can probably be applied. I can wait while you think it over. If you don’t like the word “dogma” think “philosophy” or “principles”; just pick one…

Silence.

The occupy movement had no overarching principles to guide it. No pocket-sized crib sheet to remind the followers what they were there for. People have said that the occupy movement didn’t have any leaders, but had they had some coherent doctrine, leaders would have naturally arisen as the ones who could select some nice red meat and organize around it.

Left Wing Attempt I Saw

Today there was news of Obama visiting Kenya, and it seems he was railing against corruption as a way to address Africa’s chronic poverty. Someone I follow on Twitter said that African poverty has “more to do with global trade structure than misbehavior”. And in in another tweet said: “If you’d sunk 1/5 of what went towards bailing out U.S. Banks to infrastructure in Africa it would change the continent, corruption or not.”

Sounds like the complaints from occupy, but then what? Where’s the meat?

I compare this to red meat because this person is not objecting to fighting corruption but, if I may put words into his mouth, he seems to be longing for something bigger and better–though international development is tricky, it is never clear whether any specific bigger and better project by outsiders helps more than it might unintentionally hurt. And this person knows more about foolish development projects in Africa than I do.

But I think a good piece of red meat is longed for by much of the left: some satisfying, simple solution, to a real problem, a solution that grows from guiding principles.

When Making Political Movements: Red Meat, Not All Bad

You can’t have a political movement without someone articulating some direction, something to organize how the movement should move. Present a problem, apply a dogma/principle/philosophy, and let your follows see the inexorable logic in your solution. Let them go forth and repeat the argument to others, throw your followers some red meat.

When Red Meat Goes Bad

Why does “red meat” have such bad connotations? Because in recent years it has been a cynical way rally the right wing base with extremism that (1) isn’t practical or even based in reality, and (2) leaves the party estranged with some important voting blocks.

The Republicans have so alienated blacks and Hispanics that they can’t win the White House any time soon. Not unless the Democrats throw a presidential election: say, nominate someone clunky, lacking in charisma, with her own accumulated negatives (plausible?), who then has a big stumble and fall, letting even the lamest Republican nominee to win.

Political Predictions, Red Meat or Not

The GOP is in trouble and will stay that way until the last of the gone-rabid Greatest Generation dies off, and the GOP drops the race-bating, and quits with the culture wars which they have lost. Then they can maybe drift back to something my grandfathers would have recognized.

What of the other side? The left is maybe terribly disorganized, but it might find focus by simply drawing on Democratic principles. Bernie Sanders might look like a longshot for being elected president, but he is drawing crowds with his consistent old message. And, though not running for president, Elizabeth Warren is making pretty good hay doing a “Democratic-wing of the Democratic party”-thing, and doing something pretty occupy-compatible in the process.

-kb
©2015 Kent Borg

Net Neutrality: An Objective Definition (with Technical Gotchas)

Friday, February 27th, 2015

I saw someone on Twitter looking for a definition of net neutrality that was objective, and doubting it was possible.

Here is my attempt, and I am going to maybe cheat a little by trying to give two perspectives. Disclaimer: I am for net neutrality.

The Case For

Everything seems to run over the internet these days. Let me focus on one that captures most of it: Television. Hip young folks are “cord cutters” by not having cable TV, but that doesn’t mean they aren’t addicted to TV, they watch it over the internet instead. They aren’t stuck with what their local cable company offers, they can go to Net Flix or Hulu or Amazon or some new outfits I haven’t heard of. Cool, competition. Except we have a near monopoly in how we get internet access. We can get it from the local cable company or maybe the local telephone company, and both of them are also selling TV channels and don’t want to be their own competition, or at least they want to make more money for that; so Net Flix might have a great connection to the internet and you might have a great connection to the internet, but when the packets are nearly at your door, and they hit Comcast’s wires, Comcast might intentionally slow down Net Flix’ data packets unless Net Flix pays Comcast a little something extra. Maybe a future Timewarnercomcast is powerful enough they simply refuse any TV streaming over internet connections they sell, and you would have to buy their TV offerings.

Net neutrality wants to prevent that and say that if Comcast wants to charge you for your internet connection, fine, but they can’t then charge others for your connection and slow them down (or block them) if they don’t pay. In the past cable companies have been caught blocking and slowing various kinds of data, even though they had denied doing so. By making internet service providers “common carriers” (a bit like phone companies back when the telephone was new and important), the FCC can regulate this behavior.

The Case Against

Cable companies and telephone companies have spent a lot of money building their networks and they want a free hand in how they make money off that investment. They want the freedom to partner with this company or that for offer new products with this or that cool feature. This regulation means they can’t make those deals if they discriminate against other companies that aren’t part of the deal. This regulation puts them in a boring business of offering a commodity service. Also, this regulation is regulation. They have an ideological objection to regulation.

Technical Gotchas

Net neutrality is hard to precisely define. Really hard. The internet is a whole series of protocols that define how different computers talk to each other. How is an e-mail sent vs. how is an HD movie streamed vs. how is a video chat handled. Very different services and the documents that just define the technical details of how they work are plenty long and complicated. It is hard enough to craft these protocols so they will work in the first place, do they also have to be net neutral? And what does that mean, down in the nittygritty details of some protocol only a few people really understand?

The internet is quite open and if you want to define a new protocol for your new wizbang product, go ahead! It is possible it can be defined in terms of lower-level protocols and run on the internet as-is, or you might need to convince others to cooperate with your new protocol. Does the rest of the internet have to add support for your new protocol? What is neutral?

Here is a concrete example: e-mail. Spam is a big problem, and one of the ways to fight it is to limit which computers are allowed to send e-mail messages to other computers. The logic being that Joe Average isn’t sending e-mail directly from his computer to my computer, but rather he is sending the e-mail to, say, gmail and Google will send the message on to, say, Yahoo, and I will have my computer collect the message from Yahoo. A problem arises when some piece of malware infects Joe Average’s computer it is starts sending vast amounts of spam directly to thousands of accounts at gmail and Yahoo and Company XYZ and everyone gets annoyed and says that Something Must be Done. Okay, a common thing is to have Joe’s internet provider block that direct e-mail traffic. It will still let Joe talk to gmail, so legitimate e-mail will go through, just not the bulk spam. Except I run my own e-mail server. When I send an e-mail it doesn’t go first to Yahoo, instead it first goes to my basement and from there goes to the final destination at gmail or Yahoo or Company XYZ. If my internet provider blocks that I’ll be pissed! Should internet providers block this kind of traffic or not? It is a legitimate question with more than one answer. And it is not obvious what the “neutral” answer is. Probably it is to block those messages from Joe’s computer (he doesn’t mind) but not from mine (I do mind). That is how it mostly is at the moment. How complicated! And should it be allowed? Is it net neutral? Will the FCC continue to let me run my own e-mail server?

Another example: video streaming vs. video conferencing. These are different kinds of traffic and they should be handled differently–for important technical reasons. In the case of video streaming I am probably watching something recorded anyway, so it doesn’t really matter if I see a given frame of the movie at one moment or another–a three-second delay isn’t important, what is important is I want it to flow smoothly without breakup or stopping, and if three-seconds of buffering makes it work better, please buffer. If I am in a video conference, however, the circumstance is quite different: I want what I say to get to the other end quickly and I want whatever is said on the other end to get back to me quickly, I don’t want a three-second delay! If this means sometimes the picture deteriorates or the audio cuts out for a fraction of a second, then that’s the price I pay for wanting a live conversation. Should the routing protocols on the internet be allowed to differentiate between these different kinds of traffic? Can they try to schedule when different kinds of packets are sent down their wires to try to keep everyone happy?

No commercial considerations here, but solid technical issues complicating what “neutral” means.

So maybe net neutrality just kicks in when someone wants to pay for special treatment?

Okay, what about teleconferencing companies, they want their products to be better than the competition. Currently they send representatives to the standards committees that define the protocols, and they try to push the standard definition in a direction so their products will be better. Annoying, but it does get us some kind of standard that might work, and if the standard is too broken with company-specific garbage others won’t adopt it. Under net neutrality are they not allowed to participate in those standard committees? Are people free to not adopt a badly written standard? Does the FCC write all the standards? (Oh, that will put a stop to innovation.)

Another case might be CNN doing a remote feed, but wanting to do it over the internet–everything goes over the internet these days right? In this case they want it both ways: they want a good quality signal and they want a conversation without delays. Should they be able to pay for that priority treatment? Or are they forever cursed to use satellites and all the delays involved there? In oldendays television networks were allowed to buy from regulated phone companies special services that could handle their video, seems that something like that should still be allowed. But it is complicated.

Or what about Net Flix? When the new season of House of Cards comes out, millions of people might all be watching the same program at about the same time. Net Flix’ network needs to have capacity for all of that to flow at once, and the next network they connect to also has to have all the capacity. Were I designing such a distribution system I would think about caching popular content near the edges of the network. Send Season 3 once to a bunch of file servers scattered all around the country, and them let those file servers send it on to all those binge watchers. The total load on Net Flix’ hardware and the internet as a whole would be reduced. Should net neutrality permit that? Who is allowed to pay whom what to rent what space to place those file servers connected to what network?

Airplanes don’t allow people to make phone calls over their wifi services. At first it might have been to protect their expensive telephone service. Is that neutral? And now that airlines have mostly lost interest in these phone services because no one uses them, they still block voice calls over their wifi service because other passengers don’t want to have to listen to all that gabbing for hours at a time. (Thank goodness! It would drive me crazy.) Is that neutral? Airlines also don’t allow streaming video over their wifi because they don’t have enough bandwidth for more than a couple streams and they have a plane full of passengers who might want to stream and if more than a couple tried no one would get good airborne wifi for anything. Is that neutral? Airlines also sell movies, is that still neutral? And the airlines aren’t streaming those for-sale movies directly from the studios who made then, no they have cached them on file servers on the planes when they are on the ground and can just plug in a new disk. Is it neutral for the airlines to do that? (Was it neutral for Net Flix?)

I present a lot of questions here, and there are at least partial answers to many of these questions, and my point is that net neutrality is a technical mess and the technical details are not obvious to anyone. Still I am in favor of trying to sort it out anyway, because as bad as that result will be, letting the timewarnercomcastverizon monopoly decide will be worse.

-kb

©2015 Kent Borg

Battling ISIL: For the Hearts and Minds of our own Citizens

Thursday, September 11th, 2014

Last night President Obama said we will attack ISIL (or ISIS or IS…). Yes, they are extremely nasty, it makes sense to attack people who massacre religious minorities and behead US reporters. Even the Pope agrees that in this case violence must be met with violence. That is the easy part.

But the scariest aspect of ISIL is that they are attractive to citizens from western Europe and the United States. Sure, this is scary because they have our passports, but what should really unnerve us is what it says about our society. We have citizens who are so disaffected that they want to join in on beheadings!?

How is it that we offer these citizens so little that ISIL’s fanaticism is more attractive than what they have at home? Home for them must be pretty horrible.

What we doing about this side of the problem? We need to struggle for the hearts and minds of our own citizens. Instead I fear we will treat them as criminals and further drive them into the welcoming arms of this hateful movement.

-kb

©2015 Kent Borg