This may or may not come as a shock to you, but the Justice Department has announced that they are opposed to the idea of net neutrality and favor the idea that ISP’s should be able to charge content providers for prioritized traffic. This is a sad, though unsurprising, announcement. In a country that touts the land of the free and was founded on openness, this is a major blow to the net neutrality movement. Their reasoning behind this is that net neutrality could “hamper development of the Internet and prevent service providers from upgrading or expanding their networks” (AP article).
Now, as you can tell from the little button, I am 100% in favor of saving network neutrality. The notion that the content providers would have to pay more to have prioritized service because they are using the ISP’s pipes is just ridiculous. This would mean that your internet connection would be paid for twice. This doesn’t take into account that broadband connections in the USA cost more than they do in other countries, not to mention that our speeds are a lot lower than these other countries.
I urge you all to write your senators and representatives in Congress and tell them how you feel about network neutrality. Keeping the Internet open and free is what helps innovation and development of the Internet. The mere notion that anything other than pure openness would help the development of the Internet is contrary to the ideals behind the creation of the Internet. Please visit Save the Internet to learn more about this important issue facing our nation. If the FCC allows the service providers to charge for faster service or prioritized service, the Internet as you know it will cease to exist.
Discussion at Slashdot
This time it’s Brooklyn’s Brown Ale. I’ve been buying a lot of brown ales lately in my quest to find beers that Susan will enjoy (I’m determined to get her to drink more so I don’t feel like an alcoholic… that and so that she knows what she likes when we’re out). Unfortunately, she wasn’t crazy about this one. However, I liked it. It’s a very no frills beer. It’s just a plain old brown session ale, similar in flavor to Harpoon’s (get this) Brown Session Ale. It’s a reddish brown color with a decent head. The taste is slightly nutty and roasted malts are definitely present. There’s a slight hops bitterness to add a little balance to it. That’s about all you get. It’s not trying to be anything crazy or different, but it’s a good solid session beer. I can see myself putting back a few of these in a… well… session. If you like brown ales, you’ll probably like this one.
Tomorrow will bring us some other beers… I have 2 brown ales left (though one is Susan’s as she does like Sam Smith’s Nut Brown, and the other is Smuttynose’s Old Brown Dog Ale, which has a bit more flavor and is a bit “maltier” than the Brooklyn, and as such, Susan does like it). Of the beers I have left, only one is new to me. I’ll probably have that one tomorrow.
Continuing down my 12 pack of fun, today’s beer is Old Engine Oil from Harviestoun Brewery in Scotland. It’s not what I had originally thought it would be (a Scottish ale), but rather it’s an old ale.
Anywho… the beer pours like engine oil (old dirty black engine oil in fact). It’s pitch black with practically no head and no noticeable carbonation (though you can feel it when you drink it). It feels like it pours and sounds… like engine oil. It’s definitely a full bodied beer. The label says “Wickedly smooth chocolate dominates the flavour, which is nicely balanced by the bitterness of the hops.” This is quite true (they know their beer). It’s definitely smooth and the chocolate flavor is quite tastey. The label also says it’s a great “after dinner” beer. That is also true (although for me, right now, it’s a “before dinner” beer).
Since it’s still early, there’s a chance I’ll write about another of the beers tonight…
One of the announcements I failed to report last night was that Apple decided to drop the price of the iPhone by $200. Unfortunately, upon release about a million people bought the same phone for $599 and are now left $200 short. While I can fully understand Apple’s reasons for dropping the price (there’s no way they can compete with better smartphones while their own phone costs a whole lot more, meaning they can only depend on fanbois to a degree). The hate mail has been piling in since this announcement from angry customers who paid way more than they should have for this phone. The only thing Apple can really do at this point to appease their loyal customers (remember the lines of people waiting to get into Apple on the release date for the iPhone?) is to give anyone with a phone a $200 rebate. Of course, Apple has to keep their stockholders happy. If they do anything at all, they’ll end up giving these people $200 in Apple gift cards (or they can be real jerks and just give them iTunes gift cards and let people buy up their crappy compressed DRM’d music).
Regardless of what happens, Apple is in a bind… appease their loyal customers or keep stockholders happy. It seems to me that this might’ve been planned from the get go. They knew that people would buy the phone for $599, so they sold it. They also knew that the interest in the phone would drop really quickly after the initial release because of that ridiculous price tag. My theory is that they released the phone selling for as much as they thought they could get at the time, and then drop the price when sales started to dwindle and they made some other announcement. I expect that they figured their fans to be blind idiots who think everything that Steve Jobs does is infallible. They figured wrong.
Business 2.0 has a pretty good blog post about this. My opinion… the original iPhone adopters are rightfully pissed.
UPDATE: According to CNN, Apple’s stock dropped more than 5% after the announcement. The story is here.
UPDATE #2: Apparently, Apple is doing sorta what I had expected, only worse… they’re giving anyone who bought it over 2 weeks ago (those who bought it less 2 weeks ago can get a $200 rebate, those who still have it in the package and bought it less than 2 weeks ago can return it outright) a… get this… it’s a doozie… $100 Apple store credit! WOO HOO!!! Stevie-boy says he’s making things right with his “valued” iPhone customers. Making it right would be giving them all back $200 cash. Not only is this not cash, but it’s not even $200! Open Letter from Steve Jobs to iPhone Customer
Business 2.0 updated their post.
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