Evoflux

El Paso, Texas Shielding Itself from the Mexico Drug War

There is a nifty NPR audio stream interviewing a city councilman from El Paso and how the Mexico drug war is spilling over the border.

El Paso, Texas ranks as one of the safest cities in the U.S. It borders Ciudad Juarez, a Mexican town that has been engulfed in ongoing drug violence. Beto O’Rourke, a city councilman for El Paso, explains the impact of Mexico’s drug war on his town.

Follow the link for the audio stream.

Link (NPR)

Watching the Inaugural Event Means Sleeping with Microsoft

They always say a picture is worth a thousand words. File this under bitching. I went to the official inauguration website to watch the event only to be hit with this.

I have a mac which means I’m using a flavor of -NIX for my operating system. To all you PC users shut the fuck up. I’m not installing Microsoft Silverlight. I try and stay out of bed with as many companies as possible. Sure everyone switches sheets, but I’ll be damned if I leave this world due to a venereal disease. This is just another clue that the software running our government needs to be removed from the commercial world. I’m sure the bleeding costs behind the investment on one side and the lobbying on the other are staggering.

Link to watch Inauguration 2009

AT&T Begins a Trail for Capped and Metered Internet

Considering everyone one else is going to be yapping about it we’ll just move along until all the smoke clears. Today’s story is brought to us by the powers who didn’t have the foresight to invest in infrastructure. AT&T is going to be forcing customers into a monthly bandwidth cap. In plain english you can only use so much internet in a month before they charge you more. Is this far? I think not. Currently its only going to be Reno, Nevada. That isn’t going to last long seeing what crap Comcast is pulling.

Link (via slashdot)

Some Companies Say the FCC Net Neutrality Regulation is Enough

Of course companies wouldn’t want congress to make net neutrality law. They’d love to keep it as FCC regulation!

“Executives from AT&T and Verizon Communications said Tuesday that it’s important for the Federal Communications Commission to take action against Comcast for slowing down some peer-to-peer traffic to prove that legislation is not necessary when it comes to Net neutrality.

Comcast, the largest cable provider in the U.S., has been under fire for months after it was discovered the company had been slowing down peer-to-peer traffic on its network. The company claimed it had singled out peer-to-peer, file-sharing traffic, because it was eating up an inordinate amount of bandwidth, which caused degradation across the rest of its customers.

Consumer groups were incensed by the tactic, and the blogosphere filled with criticism. And as a result the FCC has been examining whether Comcast violated any of the agency’s Net neutrality principles. A hearing was held earlier this year, and the FCC is expected to make a ruling on the matter sometime this summer.”

Link

Guantanamo Bay Ruled to be Bypassing Miranda Rights

In a close decision the Supreme Court pisses off the Bush administration by declaring the terrorist courts in Guantanamo Bay need some oversight. Checks and Balances are a beautiful thing.

The U.S. Supreme Court ruled Thursday that detainees at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, have the right to seek their release in federal court. The 5-4 decision was a stinging rebuke to President Bush’s anti-terrorism policies, and reaction from law experts and Bush allies was swift.

Link (NPR with audio)

Anti-Child Pronography = Good, Fencing the Internet = Bad

I firmly believe that child abusers and sexual predators need to be killed slowly. What I don’t agree with is limiting the internet. They’ll take an inch now, then block everything later. Soon America will be like China when it comes to blocked sites. Do you really want that to happen?

Verizon, Sprint and Time Warner Cable have agreed to block access to Internet bulletin boards and Web sites nationwide that disseminate child pornography.

The move is part of a groundbreaking agreement with the New York attorney general, Andrew M. Cuomo, that will be formally announced on Tuesday as a significant step by leading companies to curtail access to child pornography. Many in the industry have previously resisted similar efforts, saying they could not be responsible for content online, given the decentralized and largely unmonitored nature of the Internet.

The agreements will affect customers not just in New York but throughout the country. Verizon and Time Warner Cable are two of the nation’s five largest service providers, with roughly 16 million customers between them.

Link