Commentary – Page 4 – Richard Rathe's Reflections

My Two Cents on Net Neutrality

Comment Sent to the FCC

I strongly object to splitting the Internet into fast and slow
lanes. The current near monopoly power of a handful of companies
(Comcast, Time Warner, Verizon, etc.) has led to our current
situation (supply of bandwidth lagging well behind demand). We the
people are already paying too much for too little. The fact that
Netflix must pay to have Comcast deliver its product is damning. If
Netflix is in such high demand, why doesn’t Comcast increase its
capacity? The public has already paid for it!! In a normal
marketplace this would be automatic. The FCC has been asleep at the
switch on this one.

The simple solution is to correctly label and regulate ALL
Internet Service Providers as Common Carriers! Please do this soon!!

Send your comments to: fcc.gov/comments

Painfully slow submission process; confusing, redundant web forms; when I first tried to submit I got a “can’t find the server” error. Had to come back an hour later to complete the process. Oy Vay!

It’s almost as if they don’t want to hear from us?

November 10 Update

President Obama comes out strong for Net Neutrality, including the most important bit… I believe the FCC should reclassify consumer broadband service under Title II of the Telecommunications Act. In other words, regulate ISPs as common carriers. Yes!

Daylight Saving Time Nonsense Again!

It’s that time of the year! Spring is always worse than the fall because we all lose an hour of sleep… Poof!… It’s just gone. When will the insanity end?!

Here are a view nuggets I discovered today…

Proposed Florida “Sunshine Protection Act” (HB 701, SB 74)

If this bill became law, the Florida would remain on DST all year long. That might be better than the current situation because our time reference would not change twice a year. At least our biological clocks would be spared, but remaining on Standard Time would be even better!

A Spring Forward or a Step Back?

This piece by David Dickinson brings up an issue I hadn’t thought of before… Astronomers don’t like DST. I find this ironic. If you go back a hundred years all time keeping relied on astronomers! For example there is an observatory where I went to college that was used to “set time for all the major railroads from Chicago to Seattle” up until the 1940’s.

Daylight Saving Time Explained

Finally there is this excellent video by CGP Grey…

[Expletive Deleted] Daylight Savings Time Again

Time for my biannual rant about DST. This time I’ll highlight the excellent essay Daylight Saving Time Is Terrible by Allison Schrager from The Atlantic. Her scheme basically collapses the four US time zones into two, with NO adjustment for Daylight Saving. (Yea!)

For me the the spring change is worse. It takes me more than a week to recover homeostasis. In the fall it mostly prevents me from starting my day with the sun.