I keep waking up and it still isn't February.
Damn it.
So I thought it might be a good idea to attempt to distract each other from the waiting. So, who's got distractions?
Warehouse 13. Reading/listening to the Dresden Files. Leverage.
I play games... Lots and lots of games...
Explaining to the knee-jerkers why net neutrality wasnt murdered in cold blood yesterday in the US has taken quite a bit of my spare time haha. Court documents. Thrilling I know. It'll keep you busy though.
I chose January as the time to get back into Diablo 2, which I play for a month or two, maybe 2-3 times a year at the most.
Mrrr?
Never a bad choice sir!
Yarrr?
That was meant to be a sleepy, catlike expression of inquiry regarding the topic of "net neutrality" and yesterday's date.
Ooh, I have more Dresden on my Kindle that I haven't read yet. Not my favourite thing ever, but it's entertaining enough. Enjoyed the RPG too.
Games are good! Minecraft's keeping me busy at the moment, but I'm totally up for suggestions for other games.
I remember countless hours playing Diablo back in the day, taking my precious memory card to friends's houses so we could plow through another 10 levels (of course we never stopped at 10). For some reason 2 didn't hook me the same way despite me being really excited to get it when it came out, but I really should give it another try some time.
Yesterday in the case of Verizon v. FCC, the DC circuit court of appeals, one of the most important circuits in the country, ruled in favor of Verizon effectivly vacating some of the more key aspects of the "Open Internet Order", or more commonly, the net neutrality rule. In the short term, what this means is that ISP's can start giving preferential treatment to content providers who pay the ISP's a premium. Lets say you have Comcast internet and subscribe to Netflix (as an imaginary example). Comcast may now legaly intentionally slow down the end users connection to Netflix as a way to promote its own On Demand service (which would now come in lightning fast). That isn't happening right now, but thats the fear. Ever read Brave New World? You should.
Anyway, the ruling in the case is interesting for multiple reasons, and the knee jerk reactions that the sky is falling are just that. Basically the FCC was basically regulating ISP's similarly to "common carriers" without ever really labeling them as such, and it is that little detail the court found to be illegal which by defacto vacacted the ability of the FCC to keep enforcing its regulations. The FCC has options, the least of which is appealing the case to the Supreame Court (which would be its next stop if they even would agree to hear the case). Or, better yet, the FCC could do what it didnt have the balls to do in 2002 and classify ISP's as a utility (like the telecoms) and all that regulation would be back in place with no legal recourse of the ISPs to fight it.
We will see what happens.
Yeah. People always jump on the courts for these rulings, but most of the time it is just the court telling someone else to get their stuff together the right way. Our federal courts are pretty dang good.
Yeah, the FCC actually legally has the ability to keep doing what it's currently been doing about net neutrality, they basically have to just do a bunch of paperwork first. The court in fact recommended that they do exactly that. The ruling wasn't saying that net neutrality is bad or wrong or anything, just that the FCC was approaching the problem from the wrong angle. So I'm not super-worried, personally. The current head of the FCC is an old telecom lobbyist, though, so there is still SOME concern.
On topic, I've been reading Fullmetal Alchemist to pass the time, but I'm almost finished and Vengeance is still so far away! Ugh!
There's been a lot more "real life" lately than I prefer, but I'm also trying to get a Traveller game started with the folks I've been gaming with for… a while. (Wrapped up two other RPG campaigns late last year and I've been itching to run a Traveller game for years! 
)
While this is true, there is still a question ultimately of whether that proverbial paperwork will ever see ink. The FCC specifically didn't classify ISPs as a utility in 2002 when they had the chance due in no small part to special interests and lobbying against all the regulation that comes with being a utility. The federal courts seem content with the level of "competition" in the ISP market (citing Google fiber's 3 measly markets as evidence), you have to wonder if the FCC chairman feels the same way. If so, he might be content to sit back and wait for the next move by Time Warner, Comcast et al.
The audiobook editions are read by James Marsters (best known for playing Spike on Buffy: the Vampire Slayer), except for Ghost Story, which was read by John Glover due to a schedule conflict caused by having to bump the book back several months. Quite entertaining, especially the not-quite-British accent he uses for Bob the Skull.
Ah yes, I remember my friend saying about that (he's a big Dresden fan). Said there are a couple of amusing mis-readings too, like pronouncing spellslinger as "spells linger".
I never thought of Bob as British. That's really weird.
He's at his best (in the Dresden readings) when he's doing an English character who is definitely not Spike but does sound damn close.
I climbed a mountain on Christmas because it was there. Mountain climbing face.
Other than that, I've been working out a lot in order to get in shape for my Tachyon costume. Gotta tone up the legs. And the rest of me, because why not?
I've gotten involved with at least three JRPGs–Xenoblade Chronicles, Shen Megami Tensei IV, and Tales of the Abyss. Those will keep me occupied for a while.
I've never played the original Diablo; from what I've heard, I would probably find the step backward painful, due to details such as gold taking up space in your backpack, and the limitation to just three characters, and so forth. For that matter I'm not interested in Diablo 3, based on what I've heard about the changes to it. While D2 is far from a perfect game, it seems to be about as close as I can expect from the industry.
Yep; re-read it quite recently, in fact. Confirmed my opinion that as far as dystopias go, it isn't the worst one by a long shot. Especially considering the ending…we're supposed to sympathize with this one character who more nearly resembles us than anyone else in the setting, but given that he is the only one who sees anything wrong with what's happening around him, what he ends up doing about it strikes me as, well, rather silly and pointless. I would want to rescue the victim/hero of 1984 from the nightmarish circumstances he's trapped in, but if I applied the same level of omnipotence to BNW, I'd be more likely to lecture what's-his-name about making things harder on himself than necessary, and politely suggest how he can avoid the trouble he gets into, rather than actually getting him out of it…my attitude is pretty much that he brought it on himself, and ought to just lighten up a little. By the main "villain's" own admission, there are plenty of alternatives, and his refusal to accept any of them doesn't come across to me as noble, just pigheaded. The world certainly has enough problems that it deserves to have someone opposing it, but he doesn't pick anything resembling an effective method of doing so; his actions are entirely self-involved and counterproductive, and I don't sympathize much with him when he suffers the consequences of them.
Anyway, the ruling in the case is interesting for multiple reasons, and the knee jerk reactions that the sky is falling are just that.
I dunno, it does sound pretty grim, though not exactly novel…I remember the exact debate happening several years ago (along with some crazy chick in the Netherlands doing a hilarious publicity stunt, which my much younger and stupider self took way too seriously). I think it'd be really nice, though, if someone besides me, someone with actual authority, would go "hey wait a minute, this is totally evil and BS and the answer is no, so knock it off".
Basically the FCC was basically regulating ISP's similarly to "common carriers" without ever really labeling them as such, and it is that little detail the court found to be illegal which by defacto vacacted the ability of the FCC to keep enforcing its regulations. The FCC has options, the least of which is appealing the case to the Supreame Court (which would be its next stop if they even would agree to hear the case). Or, better yet, the FCC could do what it didnt have the balls to do in 2002 and classify ISP's as a utility (like the telecoms) and all that regulation would be back in place with no legal recourse of the ISPs to fight it.We will see what happens.
Hm. I don't entirely get the details of all this, but my tentative take on it is that "common carriers" does sound like a more correct description for ISPs than "utility", and that if there are regulations in place, it would be better to extend them beyond the bounds of "utility" than to reclassify things as "utility" in order to get them regulated. My attitude is and has always been that the Internet is a public space, like the sidewalks in the real world, and that they need to be freely traffickable for the sake of the common good. I don't approve of attempts to cordon off physical spaces so that only the elite are allowed to use them, and I likewise disapprove of doing this for a purely mental form of "space" such as telecommunications.