Image=© Terminally-Incoherent
Senator Ted Stevens (R-Alaska) is the Senior Senator from the great barren wasteland that is Alaska. He’s been around forever. He is also the chairman of the Senate’s Commerce Committee, which handles all technology issues. Yes, one of the oldest people in the Senate is the chairman of the committee that handles all technology issues. Anyway. If you need an example of just how crazy Ted Stevens is, here’s a good starter from the Daily Show:
The most recent issue to cause a lot of stir on the Commerce Committee has been the large rewrite of the Telecommunications Act. Among many other controversial changes to the 1994 bill, is the proposal deemed “net neutrality.” Basically net neutrality says that internet service providors (i.e. Verizon, Comcast, North Dakota Telephone Company) cannot descriminate against content from other websites (i.e. Google, Amazon, YouTube). The internet service providors (ISPs) have said that switching networks from traditional phone lines to fiber optic networks is going to cost them a lot of money, and they need to convince Wall Street investors that fiber is worthwhile investment to assist in getting the build-outs paid for. The only way, ISPs claim, to convince Wall Street of this is if the networks can be created in tiers, one for bandwidth intensive things like video, and another for text. However, the fear is that this creates a situation in which the network providors can then discriminate content from content providors like Google or Amazon, while giving the content from the ISPs the “fast-lane.”At any level, it’s an incredibly complex issue, with some absolutely ridiculous arguments coming from the anti-Net Neutrality side.For instance, many network providors complain that Google’s Video service just sits on their networks taking up all of their bandwidth. Well, that might sound like a terrible, terrible thing to the incoherent Senior Senator from Alaska, but it’s a big bloody lie. The content from Google’s video service sits only on their servers in their data centers, which are distributed throughout the world. When I got to Google Video and ask for a video, then, and only then does that content traverse Comcast’s network. This same principle applies to every site on the internet. BrandonHirsch.com sits on a box in California. The only time this site sat on your ISPs network was when you asked to come here, you then connected to the box in Cali that my data resides on. You could leave this window open for two weeks and never during that time would you access content again on your ISPs network.
Ok, so now that I’ve explained the internet to those of you whom may not understand. Check out this great video of Senator Stevens’ on the internets:
Net Neutrality is out of the Telecom rewrite, which may not necessarily be a bad thing. But the provision may be needed in the future. It’s hard to say.What I can say, is that from a technologists perspective, it is very frightening that people that clearly don’t understand technology are regulating it. At least a few people in Congress do, but we need them all to.
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Heh! I see you used my “Internet is not a Truck” pic! Awesome. I’m really glad people like this little sign.
Would you mind putting a note below the image giving me credit for it? Something like © terminally-incoherent.com. I would really, really appreciate it.
Thanks
Done and done. I swear I meant to do that, and then just forgot. It’s a fantastic image!
No worries! Thanks!