ihoby wog

First I checked in with Launchnet and Covad separately and found out some bad news: my new house would cut my download speed in half. 3mbit is the fastest I could get from them or any other DSL provider. Hm. Also I’d have to buy a new modem and be locked in for a full year (or was it 2 years?). The other DSL providers could indeed be cheaper but they wouldn’t be better or faster. Next I checked to see if Verizon has gotten fiber into the area. Nope. Has the city done anything with all the fiber they strung up and down the city limits? No. Okay so cable internet. I had high hopes that cable companies other than Comcast had begun providing in the area but they all turned out to be ones that sold ONLY to tenants of the giant sky-rise appts/condos downtown. For WiMax all there is, is Clear, who used to be called Clearwire.

So now from 5 potential options I’m down to 3 actual options:

I had a thought then about the companies themselves, about their evil factor, so I looked up their history:

The info on these companies can be found in many places but most of it is already summarized well on Wikipedia.

Faced with this information I was twisted in a dilemma: Should I choose the least evil for the highest cost, slowest service, and most inflexible contract? Or the middle evil for questionably better service? Or the cheapest, fastest service who will use all the money I give them to undermine every internet/media policy I stand for?

In the end, I ended up trying out Clear since it seemed the easiest to back out of if it didn’t work well. It certainly wasn’t a clear winner (bad pun) but it seemed like the only balance between evil and connectivity in North Seattle. It shouldn’t have to be this difficult.

This is a very complex issue – one that needs thorough examination.

What I see going on now are multiple trends happening in unison, most of which are ultimately bad for children. Whether or not there is in fact a boom in pedophilia or even child molestation, it is certainly something that has become a “hot button” topic with a large portion of money and time spent on the issue that could really be better spent on breaking the cycle of abuse and neglect that leads to these crimes. Instead, it is spent on the following:

On one hand we have for the first time, special and extreme attention aimed at pedophilia and sex crimes. We have a situation where it’s being sensationalized beyond the scope of reality. We have tv shows and special police forces who are not only aiming to catch actual pedophiles but actually luring people into being far bolder than they would have been in order to permanently ruin their public life.

This is bad for children because for the most part, they aren’t stopping 90% of child abuse and molestation.. they’re just making examples out of the fringe cases from internet chat rooms, most of whom would never have strayed beyond their keyboards.. so they go to jail and have their info posted on the sex offenders list, while the real sex offenders.. the people who take photos of the kids they abuse, they walk free.

Another ingredient: commercialism. Corporate advertising is becoming increasingly aimed at sexualizing younger and younger kids, girls especially. All for the sake of profit, companies in all kinds of industries (clothes/fashion, pop music, magazines, movies, tv, toys) are targeting our children with laser beams of overtly sexualized media. This message attached to any product (a person, a wearable, a consumable, etc.) says the same thing to girls: “You will not be liked/loved/noticed unless you dress like a slutty adult, act flirty, and fit in to the culture we’re trying to manufacture with this marketing campaign. Buying our product will help you to do those things and attain the recognition you desire.” A similar but decidedly less oppressive message applies to boys.

This kind of commercialism is probably one of the most influential drivers of producing new predators and victims.. and it’s only getting worse. Psychologists and criminal lawyers alike report that sexualized and explicit media are one of the tools that convicted child molesters use to influence their victims into thinking that their sexual advances are okay, acceptable, and even desirable.. and that’s exactly what the world of business is providing.

Another bad thing is how “the scare” is being presented, yet again. 90% or so (maybe more) of even reported cases of child molestation occur between a child and adult who already know each other.. family or family friends. This boogyman of the lone stranger pedophile molester is largely a myth.. and a particularly damaging one for our children because once again, it focuses on the fringe cases while most of the men (most child molesters are men) who are exploiting kids are free to keep molesting.

So in light of all this.. I think that if a person is caught with abuse photos they didn’t take – they should be given a stern warning and be periodically monitored somehow.. if they paid for the photos then maybe include a fine. It’s the people that are actually molesting the children, the ones taking the photos that people should be more concerned about.. and that includes corporate america. They need to be held accountable for what they’re doing.

Ah, the endless struggle… I like to call what happens to systems, places, anything that groups participate in – The AOL Effect. I call it that because whenever there is a jewel of participatory coolness created, it is often later crushed by a flood of abusive population when the gates are opened to them.. Like what happened to just about everything (irc, email, usenet, etc.) when AOL users were granted access to the rest of the internet.

I have three theories for how participatory systems can be built to deal with this effect.

1. Build the system, enjoy it while you can, then run away and build the next version in secrecy.. enjoy until the flood arrives there. Repeat forever.
2. Build semi-closed systems where a small dictatorship of admins have godlike power. Delete, confine, limit, and exile as necessary.
3. Somehow build systems that simply make it infinitely more desirable to participate in the system in ways that are not abusive. Systems that make abuse ineffectual and intended use work nicely. Preemptive enticement and positive results to keep the system healthy, instead the traditional (and failed) methods of constructing artificial walls and punishment.

Theory solution 3 I think is the best way to go with social ills in the physical world as well.

Well, ICANN doesn’t listen to public suggestion. More than 6 years ago I submitted a couple of letters to them suggesting among other domain choices, that .xxx be used as a new top level domain. I wrote that the best course of action would be if .xxx were made available and provided free switch overs from their com/net/org based domains to xxx.

Back then, it would have worked. The web was different then, the porn sites operated differently and didn’t build markets by relying on the tricks they do now (spam, domain typo, unrelated domains, etc.). The hubs, portals, and outlets didn’t exist in the same complexity. Less was centralized, indexed and organized. All the .com domains were rapidly being snatched up.

Adult sites would have welcomed both the exposure (to their audience) and freedom (from groups of the offended) that this top level domain can provide. As long as the non-switch price stayed affordable, .xxx tld could even be used for individual objects of content.. for instance, sites that have some adult material mixed with much that is not, simply have that content linked from their .xxx domain – automatic child-safe exclusion. All groups involved would have benefitted from the line in the sand drawn by the tld.

But much time has passed.

Now it seems to me that it’s too late. Especially if they’re going to charge more for it than other domains. With methods changed and price not attractive, there is little incentive now for porn sites (or any sites with some amount of adult oriented contents) to purchase or consider switching to .xxx anymore. I still foresee there being some usage of this better-late-than-never tld but I don’t expect it to match level of success that it would have so many years ago. Too bad, really.

Because over the many years I’ve been a customer of InterNIC, Network Solutions and Verisign, I’ve been treated to a long and steady series of unpleasant customer experiences.

        ?        First there was the “we are God, we’ll do what we want, when we want” mentality that has persisted in some form to the present day.
        ?        Then there was the “we need to start charging, though we don’t know the first thing about running a real business” stage that was marked with high prices and some of the worst customer support in the world.
        ?        Then there is the current stage of “we’ve got all these gobs of cash from charging people so much in our market monopoly but now we’re being under-cut, so we’d better use all that money to bludgeon everyone with high-priced marketing ploys instead of improving the value of our products and services” that has only slightly improved with the better-late-than-never enhanced web account tools.

The only reason I still use Verisign Secure Certificates is because competing certificates don’t yet have enough browser support and the general public is uninformed about web security.

(in the final bit of irony, a couple years later, Verisign’s own root certificates lost all browser support all over the world – requiring every single web master to modify their server setup to make up for this error in planning)

(responding to a badly written, wrong-headed article)

There are several major points given as reasons in this article, which I don’t feel ARE the main reasons behind various events and decisions.

1. Near the beginning of this piece, it is mentioned that reasons for customers not adopting broadband were cost and content, being further narrowed to lack of content being the only reason. In my experience reading of satisfied and unsatisfied customers broadband, I’ve found the main inhibiting factors to be Cost, Availability and Hassle. For VERY large number of people trying to get broadband, it simply costs too much, they can’t get it at their house and they’ve had all sorts of trouble with customer service, reliability, contracts and line speed. I’ve never heard anyone complaining about or praising an ISP because of ‘content’. The Industry Watchers, whoever they are, are obviously smoking crack.

2. The featured success story of SBC and Yahoo and it’s rise in number of customers has nearly everything to do with the FCC cutting off third party access to phone company switches and millions of dollars in marketing than it has to do with this supposed list of unique content and features. When local ISPs are barred from providing and the only choice is the heavily advertised SBC-Yahoo DSL, that’s the only place customers CAN go.

3. The reference to “what happened to the music companies” is also a crock. The reason why record sales are down is mainly because they illegally raised their prices way too high, they’re producing fewer and fewer artists and those artists are making less and less compelling music. In short, maximizing their profits with minimal investment. If anything, internet-based mp3 swapping has HELPED record sales because it’s free promotion for artists who the RIAA is not actively promoting and distributing. The Big Labels are gouging themselves out of their own market and lynching their customers in a spiteful abuse of power simply because the public wants music that is diverse, available and affordable..something the RIAA is not willing to provide. I see the same thing coming into play with Hollywood.

What really needs to happen for broader broadband to take off in the U.S., is that the ISPs need to counter the FCC monopoly ruling to allow access and competitive pricing/features, the government needs to provide fat subsidies for last mile wiring, and mega-corp content publishers need to keep their greedy mitts out of the DRM schemes. People want hassle-free, affordable broadband wherever they live. If they choose to download sounds and videos, they want those as well to be affordable and hassle-free.

Choice, after all, is what separates us from the inanimate. And a forced choice is not a real choice at all.