Working at Home on the Internet Webpage Archive

(from the Working at Home on the Internet WebPage) 

I read more than one post today regarding Net Neutrality. I actually wrote a post my self on my PolBlog. This could be a Big Problem if you Work at Home on the Internet, or do anything else there at a reasonable price.

I know I said, that I would keep the Political Rantings on the other Blog, but this could be more important than any of us realize. I will include quotes and links to these other Blogs so that you can find out more on the subject.

My entry into the fray:

Back on March 28th I wrote an article for the PolBlog, SuperHighway or Toll Road*. In it I mentioned that the Broadband, Cable and DSL providers wanted to charge extra for additional speed and preferred access.
 
There is a fledgling movement underfoot. Some of the more important ( in my eyes ) Bloggers and internet users are starting to bring the problem to light.

ME “Liz” Strauss of Successful Blog** writes of Blogging and Country Stores:

So hear me whisper this. Some folks don’t care about country stores and communities. They care about pipelines that carry bits and bytes and how much they can charge for that service. . .
 
Would you read what I read today by a man named Jeff Pulver? He’s running a contest for ideas to help make people aware. Here are the rules.
 
I really like our country stores a lot. My life would be less without all of you. What if WE Go the Way of the Old Country Store?

Brian Clark of CopyBlogger*** writes of the Four Horsemen of the Internet Apocalypse:

The US Congress is pushing a law that would abandon Network Neutrality, the Internet’s First Amendment. Network neutrality currently prevents companies like AT&T, Verizon, Comcast and Time Warner from deciding which Web sites work best for you based on what site pays them the most. Without Network Neutrality, the scenarios outlined above are just the beginning. And it will affect people all over the world, not just in the States.

Jeff Pulver has started Viral Marketing to Save the Internet+ inviting anyone who can write or put a video together (in a professional manner), to enter his contest++ to Help Save the Internet.

If you care that you are probably going to be wedged off the internet by Big Business, with Congress’ help, then try to do something that will keep the Internet Neutral and open to everyone.

I personally plan on writing more that one E-mail to various portions of the MSM (Main Stream Media) in order to get the word out to stop Congress and the Phone and Cable companies from infringing on the Neutrality of the Internet.

Update: There is a petition at MoveOn.org to send to Congress. If this is important to you, you may want to stop by and sign it… and be sure to send an E-mail to your friends.

Referrals:
* SuperHighway or Toll Road
** Successful-Blog
*** CopyBlogger
+ Jeff Pulver’s Virial Marketing to Save the Internet
++ Rules of contest

(from the Working at Home on the Internet WebPage) 

It seems that now Singapore is getting in on the act. They are threatening Bloggers not to write any political commentary.

See, they are going to have an election soon.

Speaking in parliament, Senior Minister of State Balaji Sadasivan said anyone using the Internet to persistently propagate, promote or circulate political issues about Singapore during election periods was breaking the law
 
In a free-for-all Internet environment, where there are no rules, political debate could easily degenerate into an unhealthy, unreliable and dangerous discourse, flush with rumors and distortions to mislead and confuse the public, Sadasivan said. (from ZDNet)

It looks like just ANOTHER Government that wants to muzzle the Citizens of their country and prevent them from using the blogosphere to voice their opinion before an election period.

From my PloBlog: World Politics and the Internet

Rice Lake High School in Rice Lake,Wisconsin is considering expelling a student after the discovery of a “hate list” naming 19 fellow students on his blog. The list was just that, a hate list, posted from the students home which made no threats against others. Now the high school student is also subject to a police investigation.

WQOW, a Wisconsin radio station, quotes Dr. David Gordon, a professor who deals with free speech issues, who said that a student’s First Amendment rights end at the school gates, as long as the school can prove the speech is a disruption to the smooth operation of the facility.
“There are very clear Supreme Court decisions that say the school can, in fact, restrict First Amendment rights if it’s necessary to maintain proper order in the school” he said.

“If the student is making vulgar comments about classmates, I think we probably agree that he shouldn’t be doing it, but he probably does have a legal right to be irresponsible”.

The only thing the kid did was write a post on his blog saying that he hated some other students, and he did so from the privacy of his own home, on his own time. He didn’t threaten anyone, or suggest that he was seeking to hurt anyone.

What we have here is an interesting case involving freedom of speech for students inside or outside of school.

This is the latest…
Although they say the problem should be fixed and you can publish, you get an error that tells you that your post has been saved, BUT… you have to come back in 10 minutes to Publish your post.

Saturday, February 04, 2006
As many people will have noticed, we’ve had significant hardware trouble over the past couple days. We have tried to keep all of you informed about the status of the service and our efforts to correct the problems. Unfortunately, today’s problems were widespread enough such that we were unable to provide ongoing updates. One of the things we’ll be doing in the short term is to come up with ways to prevent this.Eric details the chronology below. There is one residual issue related to the outage: some legacy users have domain associations between Blog*Spot and external domains. These associations are not functional at this time.In addition to working on this problem, we’ll also be making the necessary changes to guard against the outages we experienced over the past 48 hours. We will provide updates on our progress as changes are made. I sincerely apologize for the downtime - in the past six months I feel we’ve made significant strides to limit this type of failure. We obviously have more work to do and carrying it out will be our highest priority.
Posted by Jason at 23:12 PST
Blogspot is again experiencing problems - we are investigating.Update, 8PM: We have restored all of Blog*Spot, save one of our filers. This means that some blogs will still be unpublishable and inaccessible. Our engineers are continuing to work on this problem.Update, 11PM: Blog*Spot servers are restarting now and connecting with the filer. All blogs should be publishable and accessible within the next 20–30 minutes.[So how has everyone else’s weekend been? —Pete]
Posted by Eric at 16:04 PST