Tech News Updates

Net Neutrality
I’ve posted before in favor of Net Neutrality. The House voted - we lost. My Rep., Bobby Jindal, voted against it but it’s not a deal-breaker for my vote. Jindal still has an “A” report card on immigration and that is higher on my list than Net Neutrality. Next stop: Senate. Forbes has an article on it:

“At present, the net neutrality language in the Senate bill is even weaker than the House version, reflecting the conviction of Stevens and many Republicans that enforcing net neutrality amounts to needless and onerous regulation. But Stevens recently announced that he would amend his bill to ensure that the FCC is entrusted to police any blocking of content, bringing it in line with the House version.

The raging debate over whether telcos and cable companies should be able to charge for faster guaranteed delivery of content on their networks was sparked by the FCC’s deregulation of broadband services back in August 2005. Bluster from telco executives like AT&T’s (nyse: T - news - people ) Edward E. Whitacre Jr. has only thrown fuel on the fire: In an interview last November 2005, he questioned why companies like Google should be allowed to use his “pipes” for free.”

If Whitacre is not charging his users for bandwidth, he should start. [/sarcasm]

Windows Vista
The big catch-phrase for Vista is “the experience.” If you want to engage in a little technological “pre-marital sex” by trying it out before it’s for sale, you can help beta test Vista. Why the pre-marital sex comparison? Well, the comparison holds as far as this: it might feel good but it’s dangerous, and there are potentially very bad consequences. If you do try it out, back your data up on a CD or DVD before you do anything else and make sure you still have your original Windows CD and info in case you need to reinstall. I’m going to do it, but not on my work computer, at least until I’ve tried it out on my backup machine for a while. The new features look interesting and if the performance is better I’m all for it. I’ve got 2GB of RAM but it’s just not fast enough and I can’t have as many programs running as I’d really like. Once I have it up and running I’ll post some screen shots and info on how it’s going - if it’s just another Windows bloatware product or if they’ve actually improved it.