Tag: technology WIN

Net Neutrality and why the FCC’s new rules matter

I was overjoyed to hear that the FCC voted 3-2 to adopt new rules that treat broadband internet as a utility, much like telephones.  The basic purpose of this would be to guarantee that internet service providers are neutral in terms of treating all customers and web content equally, and not favoring those who can pay more money or slowing down those that pay less.  It means that a cable company can’t slow down the traffic to their competitors’ websites.   It assures that the Internet remains a generally level playing field, so small businesses and start-ups don’t get squashed by huge corporate competitors who can afford to pay more to have their own service prioritized.  And critically for people like me who have complained incessantly about being at the mercy of a few big telecoms when it comes to broadband service, it also means that it will become easier to get more choices, especially if those choices mean expanding municipal broadband service where they were previously banned by state laws favoring those big telecom companies.

And yet, there are those who are still opposed to it and will fight this tooth and nail.  Needless to say, I am not a fan of those people.  But I am encouraged by the fact that so many people thought net neutrality would fail, and they turned out to be wrong.

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IT redundancy really is your friend

Like I mentioned in my earlier post, I have managed to rebuild our server into a better machine than it was.  But for some reason the hard drive from the old server was giving me fits, trying to move data.  Perhaps it was damaged somehow.  I am not sure.

But I do know this: a backup of the backups saved our data.

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Speaking of rocks…

Yes, I guess you could say that geology is a hobby of ours.  There are certainly some aspects of geology that interest me more than others, just as there are some that interest Kelly more.   And one of the things about geology that really really interests me is studying impact craters, and there have been some interesting developments in recent weeks.

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The relevancy of technology and underwater archaeology

The ability of human beings to work in an underwater environment has obviously improved pretty dramatically in the last few decades, and our ability to find the wrecks of vessels like the Titanic in thousands of feet of water many decades later is pretty amazing when you think about it.

But there is still a long way to go when it comes to underwater searches.  The problems with locating that missing Malaysian Air flight immediately come to mind, but there have been a few other examples lately that make me wonder what the hell we are doing wrong and what we could do to improve.

We seem to have a widespread problem of not finding people in (relatively) shallow waters like lakes, ponds, rivers, and creeks.

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