After that flurry of activity online, we seem be having a bit of a slow Friday. It’s no wonder: we have a long fight ahead with respect to the AT&T/T-Mobile deal, a process that Mike Wendy calls Legalized Extortion. And when property rights are made contingent on acceptance of a goverment-dictated consent degree, it’s hard to argue with the thrust of Wendy’s point. Scary thought | Read More »
So the top story this week is going to be the AT&T acquisition of T-Mobile USA. There’s a lot being said about it, about unions, about competition, but the story I’m seeing emerging is that this deal is about spectrum. AT&T sees in T-Mobile a way to get the spectrum it needs going forward. In fact, even power grabbing FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski said to | Read More »
So, read any good Tech posts lately? OK, I couldn’t think of a better way than that tonight to introduce a pair of RedState posts on the top story of the moment: AT&T’s announced plans to acquire T-Mobile USA from the Germans. It seems that there are two major conservative perspectives on this deal. One was described by LaborUnionReport on Sunday: if the non-union T-Mobile | Read More »
An academic by the name of Randall Bytwerk has gathered together an impressive snapshot of history in the form of the German Propaganda Archive, which covers Nazi propaganda from the early days of the party to the 1945, and then covers Communist Germany’s ruling SED Party propaganda from 1949 to 1989* What I find interesting about the archive is not only how it shows that | Read More »
In the fast-paced, highly-competitive market of wireless phone and Internet access, this announcement stands out. The wireless carrier with the second-most subscribers, AT&T, is to acquire the number four carrier, T-Mobile USA. Some would say that this is a grave threat to competitiveness, risks reducing competition and increasing prices on everyone, and so should be stopped by the benevolent masters of the Obama administration. I | Read More »
Long week on my end, but thankfully it’s over as soon as I’m done writing this. But the top story is danger at the FCC. The regulator is still threatening to overstep its bounds and circumvent the Telecommunications Act, which strictly limits the amount of power the FCC has over Information Services. So now they want to redefine high-speed Internet access as something new and | Read More »
You may have heard that there was an election in Ohio last year. Popular Governor Ted Strickland (D) was defeated in his re-election campaign by John Kasich (R), and Lieutenant Governor Lee Fisher (D) was crushed in the Senate race by former Bush advisor Rob Portman (R). Senator Sherrod Brown (D) has sure noticed. He’s also noticed that gas prices are going up, and up, | Read More »
This edition of Tech at Night is unfortunately delayed. It’s almost 4am now as I’m able to start this (7am eastern) because I had a bout of Net Neutrality to deal with. All websites loaded at the same speed on my DSL: zero. Total downtime. So, late or not, let’s go. As I warned on Monday, Net Neutrality is forcing ISPs like AT&T to impose | Read More »
Good evening. I’m going to start tonight with a clarification from Friday. While I identified last week’s Net Neutrality push poll with Consumer Reports, the poll was actually signed on by CR’s publisher, Consumers Union, and conducted by the Consumer Federation of America. As that one television network says, I have now made a report, and you can decide for yourself what to make of | Read More »
I just ran across this 2006 Fox News account of a dispute in Katy, TX, in which some Muslims bought land next to a century-old family pig farm, then insisted the pig farmers should leave and/or stop farming pigs, so the newcomers could be happier. Things got heated, the Muslim leader called the pig farmer a liar, and so the result was that the pig | Read More »
As I began work on tonight’s late Tech at Night, reports came out of an explosion at a nuclear power plant in Fukushima prefecture, Japan. As Japan continues to deal with an unimaginably strong earthquake and then a devastating tsunami caused by that quake, I hope nobody takes those special circumstances and tries to argue against clean, effective power generation technology in the general case. | Read More »
I know nobody wants to talk about Net Neutrality right now when unions are the issue giving everyone warm feelings right now, but there were important hearings held Wednesday. Greg Walden’s House subcommittee held hearings on HJ Res 37, which disapproves of Net Neutrality to invoke the Congressional Review act and overrule the FCC’s power grab. On top of that, the FCC responded to the | Read More »
Much to cover, and less time to cover it in! So many important things I don’t even know what to hit first. So, I’ll be biased and hit what I found out about from RedState. Google and the NLRB teamed up to promote unionization, with Google providing free ad space. That’s a problem for three reasons. First, the NLRB is supposed to be the impartial | Read More »
Good evening, I wrote in my best Alfred Hitchcock impression. Top story as we go into the weekend: our friendly neighborhood House Republicans are pressing on with their oversight of the FCC and Net Neutrality in particular. The resolution disapproving of Net Neutrality is postponed, but instead we’re getting pressure on the FCC to justify its actions economically. Good on Greg Walden, Fred Upton, and | Read More »
Welcome to the remarkably early Tech at Night tonight. When I have my initial preparation done by 6pm, I’m not going to stay up until midnight to do the actual writing. Not gonna do it. Wouldn’t be prudent. We start with some mild bad news: the resolution disapproving of Net Neutrality has been delayed. Fred Upton is getting recognition for his active work challenging the | Read More »
Hello! There’s no one clear theme of things to discuss tonight. It’s a diverse list of topics, so let’s just muddle on through and see what’s going on. We’ve got some good news from what the Republicans in Washington are going. On the Senate side, the side we haven’t heard nearly as much about thanks to the Obama-Reid majority there, conservative Republicans are taking key | Read More »
And now I really push the definition of Tech at Night, starting to write this at 2am. I’d originally planned to skip tonight’s edition, and instead just sleep. But I woke up, and sleep isn’t returning anytime soon, so let’s make the rounds of tech and policy. Some Democrats still haven’t learned the lesson of the PCCC. The far left alternative to the DCCC published | Read More »
Haley Barbour’s been taking some criticism lately, which to me is a sign of how seriously people are taking his rumored Presidential aspirations, with reports indicating that he’s running until he says he’s not. I was able to meet the Governor at CPAC and I’m certainly taking seriously his budding candidacy. I’d like to see him run and I’d like to see him win. Governor | Read More »
On Monday I did the first half of my catchup work. Now we’ll do the second half. And one of the big issues coming up is copyright. Over the last thirty years, copyright in America has been radically reformed. While traditionally it worked as patents still do work, as a temporary grant of monopoly enforceable in civil courts, we’ve gradually moved them into the realm | Read More »
I’m back. CPAC week came and went. Then another week came and went after the horrible cold I got at CPAC. But now I’m healthy again and it’s time to start catching up. Though there’s no way I’m going to post on every tidbit I’ve run across in the last two weeks, I can try to hit the highlights. And let’s start with the fact | Read More »
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