By: Neil Stevens (Diary)  |  May 21st at 03:00 AM  | 

Ah, Claire McCaskill. Her not particularly active Twitter account said this week that she wants to be careful about regulation of privacy online, lest those regulations cause us all to have “less access to amazing stuff.” True statement I think. Too bad she refused to stick to her guns on the radical left’s key policy, Net Neutrality. On that issue, McCaskill told MyDD government regulation | Read More »

By: Neil Stevens (Diary)  |  May 14th at 04:11 AM  | 

House pressure on the FCC continues, with Friday’s hearings on FCC process reform, including testimony from all four active FCC Commissioners (Republican Commissioner Meredith Baker has quit the FCC). I associate myself with the remarks of Seton Motley on the preferred outcome of FCC Process Reform: “FCC ‘Process Reform’ Should Be About Reducing FCC Power. Oh, and making them obey the law.” Meanwhile, as much | Read More »

By: Neil Stevens (Diary)  |  May 12th at 02:00 AM  | 

For a while there, we seemed to have a bit of a break from the big news. We knew big fights like the AT&T/T-Mobile deal loomed, but it was all talk. But that’s changing. As the coalition of self-seekers and socialists forms, the final scope of the debate is beginning to take shape. Listen to this: Some Democrats are criticizing AT&T for planning to use | Read More »

By: Neil Stevens (Diary)  |  May 10th at 12:30 AM  | 

Hello. So, the big rumor that just started going around is that Microsoft will buy out Skype. This worries me. I’m a paying customer, I’m happy with the service (though not with recent client releases), and I rely on it. If Microsoft ruins it, it will be a problem for me. Anyway, can somebody please explain to Joe Barton that you can’t take data off | Read More »

By: Neil Stevens (Diary)  |  May 7th at 03:30 AM  | 

Hello. Yes, I’m late again. But I’m genuinely starting to have fun with OpenGL ES 2. So Tech at Night got to wait a bit. Sorry! Anyway, as I usually do when I have a link to a RedState article, I’ll start tonight with it. RedState Insider suggests cutting the budget while implementing better policy by eliminating the Agriculture Department’s venture into tech subsidy, the | Read More »

By: Neil Stevens (Diary)  |  April 30th at 01:30 AM  | 

Good evening. Here’s a bit I’d never expect to read from the San Francisco Chronicle about Sprint’s begging for the FCC to pick winners and losers, instead of just standing aside and letting AT&T and T-Mobile get together: At a time when wireless service is getting cheaper and more innovative, there is no reason for a Depression-era bureaucracy like the FCC to step in and | Read More »

By: Neil Stevens (Diary)  |  April 23rd at 02:30 AM  | 

It’s the calm before the storm. House Republicans have taken every ordinary measure to work with the President and get the regulatory excesses under control. The administration has refused though, and now the House is preparing to get tough. This buildup applies not just to the FCC, but also to the EPA and other runaway parts of the executive, but here I’m focused on the | Read More »

By: Neil Stevens (Diary)  |  April 16th at 03:30 AM  | 

Happy weekend, all. To get personal, had some real excitement on my end. Preemptively replaced my chair before it fell apart, since the last one I let fall apart collapsed while I was sitting in it. I was lucky the only injury I took was a smack on each arm. But, the new chair had the LUMBAR PAD OF DOOM which started killing my back. | Read More »

By: Neil Stevens (Diary)  |  April 2nd at 03:30 AM  | 

So yeah, Tech at Night. I should start it at some point shouldn’t I? Hours of Spelunky are fun on a Friday evening, combining the action of a classic NES game with the exploration, power growth, and vindictive shopkeepers of Nethack, but I have things to cover tonight, so let’s go. We’ll start with my own post, going over how Eric Schmidt really stepped in | Read More »

By: Neil Stevens (Diary)  |  March 28th at 11:30 PM  | 

Remember when I seemed to write about Net Neutrality four times a week, which was really something when I was only posting three times? Well, the AT&T/T-Mobile deal is probably going to get that much discussion for now. Of course there’s nothing new yet. Discussion is all there is until government actually starts acting. My job is to find the interesting discussion, I suppose. So | Read More »

By: Neil Stevens (Diary)  |  March 25th at 11:30 PM  | 

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 »

By: Neil Stevens (Diary)  |  March 24th at 03:30 AM  | 

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 »

By: Neil Stevens (Diary)  |  March 21st at 11:30 PM  | 

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 »

By: Neil Stevens (Diary)  |  March 21st at 09:00 AM  | 

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 »

By: Neil Stevens (Diary)  |  March 10th at 02:30 AM  | 

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 »

By: Neil Stevens (Diary)  |  January 19th at 11:30 PM  | 

I went ahead and took Martin Luther King day off, so it’s a double dose of stories to cover tonight. Though first, in case you missed it, make sure to see my post today on Marsha Blackburn‘s call to action against stifling, destabilizing Internet and technology regulation. Other than that, the big story this week so far has been the FCC finally approving the NBC | Read More »

By: Neil Stevens (Diary)  |  September 14th at 01:30 AM  | 

Good evening. I’ve been getting some warnings for a while now about the possible next frontier in Internet regulation. I still haven’t digested it all myself, but I wanted to get the idea out there for people to think about, and be watchful for. The Access Board is a government agency that sets rules for websites as directed under Section 508 of the Rehabilitation Act. | Read More »

By: Neil Stevens (Diary)  |  May 19th at 12:13 PM  | 

Having laid the groundwork for price controls and content censorship on the Internet in America, the FCC desperately needs to justify their reasoning for the Title II deem-and-pass reclassification of ISPs. So, they’re just going to start lying about stuff. The latest lie apparently is that the wireless market isn’t competitive. Here’s why that’s a lie. Wireless market leader Verizon only has 31% of the | Read More »

By: Neil Stevens (Diary)  |  August 23rd at 12:55 PM  | 

“Allowing broadband carriers to control what people see and do online would fundamentally undermine the principles that have made the Internet such a success” – Vint Cerf, Google Chief Internet Evangelist and Co-Developer of the Internet Protocol Updated at the bottom. Attention leftists: hypocrisy is not a failure to live up to one’s own ideals. Hypocrisy is a willful professing of a belief, that one that | Read More »