Monthly Archive for July, 2006

News Depressed!

Published
by
Bryan
on Friday, 7 July 2006
in Notes
. 0 Comments

One of the things I remember when I was growing up is the soap opera, Santa Barbara. I’m even told that if you mention Santa Barbara while traveling abroad, you’ll most likely be asked about the soap opera. Interestingly enough, we have our own soap opera going on right here at Santa Barbara’s only daily newspaper, the Santa Barbara News-Press.

Nick Welsh, in his Angry Poodle column published in The Santa Barbara Independent, has reported on the troubles brewing at the News-Press for some time (27 April 2006, 25 May 2006). The latter piece describes how the News-Press‘ parent company has attempted to circumvent FCC regulations with regards to KZSB-AM 1290, the radio station it owns and operates in Santa Barbara.

This week, the senior editors at the News-Press decided they had all they could stand and they couldn’t stand anymore. The Santa Barbara Independent reported yesterday that all five senior editors and a 46 year veteran columnist of the News-Press resigned this week. The L.A. Times is reporting the departures in today’s edition, “5 Editors, Columnist Quit in Santa Barbara“, quoting USC Annenberg School for Communication professor Bryce Nelson, “”They must have felt like they were under severe pressure.” The News-Press itself acknowledged the controversy in a small blurb on the frontpage of today’s edition, basically portraying what some have called a “blood bath” as a needle prick.

Normally, I hate to kick folks while they are down, but in this case, the News-Press deserves it. These departures, and the decisions made leading up to these departures, have turned the only daily newspaper in Santa Barbara into our local version of the New York Post, with the owner, Wendy McCaw, playing the role of Rupert Murdoch. Hopefully, something good will come out of all of this - maybe even an alternative daily that focuses on the journalistic quality that could have happened at the News-Press had McCaw and her minglings left well enough alone.

Update: Add sports editor Gerry Spratt as the seventh person and sixth editor to resign from the News-Press this week. Wow.

The last photo…

Published
by
Bryan
on Monday, 3 July 2006
in Personal
. 0 Comments


last_photo.jpg

…of my family in front of the house in which my sister and I grew up. My parents are moving out of California to retire in a place that is NOT governed by a castmember of Red Sonja.

Am I sad about them leaving the house? Yes. Am I sad about them leaving Irvine? Ehhhh, not so much.

Going through the endless boxes of cra… err… stuff that I’ve kept in their house was interesting. Reliving memories connected to Star Wars action figures and then to senior prom photos in 30 seconds could be a bit jarring at times. An uncontrollable flood of childhood nostalgia kept pooring out of every box. Then again, I’m sentimental about things that haven’t even happened yet.

Still, it was a nice weekend to say good-bye to my old neighborhood. And to toast to the future, because… it’s better than the alternative.

Too Much Northern Exposure

Published
by
Bryan
on Sunday, 2 July 2006
in Political
. 0 Comments

Congress is currently reviewing various bills on network neutrality. I haven’t had the time to follow this as close as would like, so I couldn’t tell you where every bill dealing with this issue is at this exact point in time. But rest assured, this is one in on their radar screen.

For those not familiar with “network neutrality”, it’s the term used to describe the how content is currently delivered to internet users - first come, first serve, one fee, all access. You are not restricted from any content based on the type of service for which you pay. Advocates of network neutrality consist of corporations like Google, Microsoft and Yahoo. Internet Service Providers, on the other hand, are arguing that the internet needs to have a tiered system, similar to that of cable television, because upgrades in their infrastructure are needed to keep up with emerging content. In other words, the more you pay for access means the more content you can access, and government should not regulate any aspect of it.

My opinions aside, I am also worried that those in congress are ill-equipped to debate issues regarding technology. My concerns escalated when reading a transcript of Sen. Ted Stevens (R - Alaska) explanation of why ISPs should be allowed to change the current internet structure (Wired Magazine, 29 June 2006). Wired also has a link to the full audio of Stevens’ speech.

Anyway, here’s his understanding of the issue:

I just the other day got, an internet was sent by my staff at 10 o’clock in the morning on Friday and I just got it yesterday. Why?

Because it got tangled up with all these things going on the internet commercially.

So you want to talk about the consumer? Let’s talk about you and me. We use this internet to communicate and we aren’t using it for commercial purposes.

We aren’t earning anything by going on that internet. Now I’m not saying you have to or you want to discrimnate against those people [...]

The regulatory approach is wrong. Your approach is regulatory in the sense that it says “No one can charge anyone for massively invading this world of the internet”. No, I’m not finished. I want people to understand my position, I’m not going to take a lot of time.

They want to deliver vast amounts of information over the internet. And again, the internet is not something you just dump something on. It’s not a truck.

It’s a series of tubes.

And if you don’t understand those tubes can be filled and if they are filled, when you put your message in, it gets in line and its going to be delayed by anyone that puts into that tube enormous amounts of material, enormous amounts of material.

I never thought I’d say this, but somebody get this man a MySpace account! If this isn’t an obvious example of a complete misunderstanding of… I guess he’s talking about “the internet”… then I don’t know else could be - especially for a Senator who introduced legislation before congress dealing with this very matter.

Incidentally, if the name Ted Stevens rings a bell, it is because he is the Senator who threw a temper tantrum last October when the Sen. Tom Coburn (R - Oklahoma) tried to block part of the $435 million reserved for two Alaskan bridges, one of which connected a town of 8,900 people to a town of 50 (aka the “Bridge to Nowhere”), in favor of rebuilding part of Interstate 10 destroyed by a hurricane. After threatening to resign “if the Senate [decided] to discriminate against [Alaska]“, Sen. Stevens was successful in keeping that money in his state (thankfully, the future of the bridge is now in doubt).

Anyway, I plan to send “internets” to my congressional representative Lois Capps, to Sen. Diane Feinstein, and to Sen. Barbara Boxer asking them to do two things: to support legislation that keeps network neutrality intact, and to please give Sen. Ted Stevens a copy of Internet for Dummies. Hopefully then, he just might understand the legislation he is introducing.