Silverwolf's Auditorium

The following is my reply to Comcast's recent admission that they degrade bittorrent on their network:

Traffic Shaping is not necessarily a bad thing, in fact it is necessary to keep a network running smoothly.

However, it all depends on the implementation. Available Network bandwidth should be evenly distributed among the different users, not according to what protocol is being used.

And when you start running out of bandwidth, you should upgrade your network to add more capacity.

Furthermore, I believe if you are going to sell a service described as 10mbps "Always On" Internet you should be prepared to provide 10mbps of data transfer to each user 24 x 7 x 365.

You shouldn't be able to sell an unlimited "always on" product and then piss and moan about it later when it turns out some people actually want to fully utilize it.

Once again the Bush Administration has directly acted to Prevent California from cleaning up it's air. 

Earlier we had commented about how The Bush Administration joined a lawsuit against the California Air Resources Board that resulted in the death of the electric car.  Now They have blocked California's attempt to impose stricter emissions and fuel-economy requirements.

California was trying to Require an average of 36 miles per gallon by 2016, where as the Bush Plan requires an average of 35 miles per gallon by 2020.

You can read more about it on nytimes.com

From informationweek:

The Minnesota mother who vowed to fight the Recording Industry Association of America after she was convicted of illegally downloading copyrighted music now has another heavyweight to content with.

The U.S. Justice Department has sided with the RIAA and a jury's $222,000 judgment against Jammie Thomas for illegally downloading and sharing copyrighted music. The amount breaks down to $9,250 per song. The case, Capitol v. Thomas, was the first file-sharing lawsuit to make it to trial. It gained widespread attention because of that.

Thomas vowed to fight the judgment and appealed. Her lawyer argued that the damages were too steep and that the clause in the Copyright Act violates due process because it's "severe" and out of sync with actual damages. The clause allows fines up to $150,000 per illegally downloaded song.

In a court filing, DOJ argued that the law allows penalties to be steeper than actual damages.

The agency said that the damages awarded under the Copyright Act's statutory damages provision didn't violate due process and aren't so severe and oppressive to be disproportionate to the offense or obviously unreasonable.

Justice ?  This isn't justice, it's a freaking disaster.  Talk about swatting a fly with a sledge hammer.  If the bought and paid for DOJ thinks $ 150,000 per song downloaded is reasonable then i'd like to see them explain how.

The following is a list of individuals or organizations that are clearly biased and obviously bought and paid for by big business.  This may also include any Big Business that values it's profit margins over the betterment of mankind, and the health and wellbeing of it's employees or the population at large.

This list can never be exhaustive and you are welcome to suggest additions via the comments.  It is also not in any particular order.  I would also like to make it clear that this list represents my personal opinion in this regard, and is not an accusation or statement of fact.

You may click on any item in the list to see why it was added.

From usatoday.com:

Yahoo (YHOO) shares plunged again Wednesday, a day after Congress hammered top executives over the company's cooperation with Chinese officials in the jailing of a pro-democracy journalist.

Good, Yahoo deserves to lose their ass for conspiring with a communist government to quell dissidents.  it just goes to show you how little they care about their users, it's all about cash baby.