Fortuna Faveat... may fortune favor us

Yes, there was another important vote yesterday and you did read that headline correctly. The Federal Communications Commission voted yesterday to allow the use of the vacated white spaces between TV channels to be used for broadband internet access. This is a huge victory for those of us who see the expansion of broadband internet access as an essential step in preserving our democracy.

All you have to do is watch your local television “newscast” to know that it is increasingly difficult to get access to important news and information away from the internet. Look at the success of Barack Obama’s campaign. The internet and its ubiquity are essential in our modern democracy. [Psst...I am not forgetting my neo-luddism here. But until we are plagued by EMPs and need to bust out the printing presses again, the internet is key.]

I’m not going to bother you with the technical details of how this works, largely because I don’t have a technical grasp on it myself. In a nutshell, when the U.S. TV system switches to digital in February 2009, we will have more bandwidth available for local broadband access like city-wide WiFi and rural access. This will provide a viable alternative to expensive cable/DSL/Satellite/Cellular internet access. This is great news and a huge step forward; it is a marked change from past and concurrent FCC decisions. November 4, 2008. What a day!

I was just minding my own business, trying to figure out how I could ask a question of the candidates tonight, when I happened upon this disturbing tidbit. Can someone please explain to me why News Corp, by virtue of their web property MySpace, is the official partner of the Commission on Presidential Debates? Doesn’t that seem a bit odd? Shouldn’t such a commission be independent of ALL corporate interest, let alone those controlled by Rupert Murdoch? For those of you who don’t know, Murdoch owns a controlling interest in News Corp, who in turn own Fox News, Fox, MySpace, the New York Post, and many, many other media properties.

Damn, I just dug into this a bit further and it is apalling. Details after the jump… Read more »

Cory over at BoingBoing has a crystal clear example why you should never, ever pay for music that contains DRM:

Hey suckers! Did you buy DRM music from Wal*Mart instead of downloading MP3s for free from the P2P networks? Well, they’re repaying your honesty by taking away your music. Unless you go through a bunch of hoops (that you may never find out about, if you’ve changed email addresses or if you’re not a very technical person), your music will no longer be playable after October 9th.

But don’t worry, this will never ever happen to all those other DRM companies — unlike little fly-by-night mom-and-pop operations like Wal*Mart, the DRM companies are rock-ribbed veterans of commerce and industry, sure to be here for a thousand years…They are as solid and permanent as Commodore, Atari, the Soviet Union, the American credit system and the Roman Empire. Cory Doctorow
Happy Mutant

It is a good thing Congress created a new cabinet-level Copyright Czar on Friday to make sure we, the pesky consumers of content, don’t start demanding silly things like access to the goods we have purchased. What’s that you say? You thought Congress was meeting on Friday with singular focus to solve the “impending doom” (clears throat, screams Bullshit!) that is the Wall St. meltdown? Damn, you really are a sucker.

I generally don’t republish someone else’s writing wholecloth, but this piece by William Rivers Pitt for Truthout is worth it on two counts. First, it includes a link that I am amazed to discover is still live on the White House web site. Second, it is the truth. Without further adieu…

No one is such a liar as the indignant man.
- Friedrich Nietzsche

George W. Bush, Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld, Paul Wolfowitz, Condoleezza Rice, along with a slew of administration underlings and a revolving-door cavalcade of brass hats from the Pentagon, have been making claims regarding Iraq for many years now.

They claimed Iraq was in possession of 26,000 liters of anthrax, “enough to kill several million people,” according to a page on the White House web site titled Disarm Saddam Hussein.

They lied.

They claimed Iraq was in possession of 38,000 liters of botulinum toxin.

They lied.

They claimed Iraq was in possession of 500 tons, which equals 1,000,000 pounds, of sarin, mustard and VX nerve agent.

They lied.

They claimed Iraq was in possession of nearly 30,000 munitions capable of delivering these agents.

They lied.
Read more »

Forget the Pew Center or NBC/WSJ polls. Those “oversampled” ballots aren’t worth the effort when all you need to do is dial up a little FortunaFaveat.com and let your voice be heard! That’s right, I finally got the Democracy polling plugin installed, so now you can answer my questions, from the inane to the insightful. Vote early and vote often, won’t you?

Have a wunderbar weekend!

Ok, this is not the first time a president has forbade a press secretary from discussing a given topic. I’m sure it won’t be the last. But this just sticks in my craw.

There is something so terribly out of whack when the “leader of the free world” has to tell his PR flack that she will be fired if she says word one about the flagging dollar…and then she tells the world that very same thing! I don’t know if I am more disgusted with the ostrich-stance of the executive branch or the chicken-shit way Perino chose to stand up to her boss. Hell, I’m probably giving her too much credit; she probably just let it slip without thought to the implications of such a statement.

Don’t even get me started on the Fed beginning to bail out the robber baron billionaires sitting comfortably at Wall and Broad. I agree with the comment over at Jon Taplin’s blog that this should be the top headline in every major paper today. I guess that will have to wait for another day.

Growing up, I was obsessed with Garfield. Well, obsessed might be too strong of a word, but I own the Garfield collection books #1-26 or so, including the Halloween specials and, ooh, I forgot about U.S. Acres…yeah, maybe obsessed is the right word. Anywho (quickly diverts attention from mental illness), I recently discovered a source of derivative genius and art that is truly transcendent, Garfield minus Garfield.

Be warned: It is a tumblr blog, making it incredibly addictive. There is something so vacuous about tumblr blogs, yet you (I) cannot look away. Thankfully, in this case, there is quite a bit of substance. I laugh out loud often when checking this site. Who would have thought Jon Arbuckle (or Jim Davis) would ever provide such a wealth of found art? I hope you find as much enjoyment there as I do.

If this isn’t anti-competitive behavior, I don’t know what is. Verizon is pushing their FIOS network, a welcome push for the United States into the consumer fiber optic network world and an attempt to remedy our pathetic standing in world rankings of broadband penetration and speeds. Unfortunately, in doing so, Verizon actually cuts the copper wires out of your house. Those same copper wires that, for over a century, have reliably carried your phone calls, Internet, cable tv, with or without electricity in your home. Those days are gone.

Progress is wonderful, but progress with options is even better.

Thanks, Consumerist!