Technologizer » John McCain

FCC Votes for Net Neutrality, McCain Wants to Stop Them

Ed Oswald — Fri, 23 Oct 2009 06:00:09 +0000

Well net neutrality fans, your enemies list just got one person bigger. John McCain is the latest to come out against the FCC’s work, and has even proposed legislation to stop the agency in its tracks.

On Thursday, the FCC approved a measure to begin the process of formalizing a set of net neutrality rules that would ban ISPs from selectively filtering or throttling content. Texas Rep. Barton tried to stop the FCC from voting on the measure in the first place by pleading with commissioners to stop the vote from occurring.

This was an exercise in futility: Chairman Julius Genachowski had already worked to seal the support of the two other Democratic commissioners, making approval all but certain before the vote occurred.

Enter McCain. The Arizona senator introduced the Internet Freedom Act, which would expressly prohibit the FCC from making rules on net neutrality in the simplest terms. Using the Republicans’ favorite phrase of late–”government takeover”–McCain said net neutrality would stifle competition and hurt the job market.

Much like Barton, McCain also took issue with the inclusion of wireless Internet in the FCC’s planned policy, saying the lack of regulation has helped the industry grow rapidly. It’s unclear if such a measure could pass: however at least 70 House Democrats have already written the FCC expressing concern over the proposal, Reuters reports.

It will be interesting to see how it plays out as net neutrality was one of Obama’s campaign priorities. You can bet there will be a lot of vote counting being done in the coming months: Republicans will have to get a super majority as I would almost expect the President to veto any legislation like this if it makes it to his desk.

McCain Campaign Still Inept Post-Election, Sells Unwiped Blackberry

Ed Oswald — Mon, 15 Dec 2008 20:41:19 +0000

If you thought John McCain ran a shoddy campaign, here’s another reason to add to your argument. Fox 5 in Washington, DC was able to pick up a used BlackBerry from the campaign at a fire sale for a rock bottom price of $20. What the newsroom found when charging up the device was shocking. The campaign didn’t even bother to wipe the device’s memory!

Reporters were able to find the contact information for about 50 people associated with the campaign, as well as hundreds of emails dating from September through a few days past election night. The phone in question apparently belonged to a member of Citizens for McCain, a group of Democrats that were working to elect the Arizona senator.

The contact information was correct, Fox 5 reported, as it successfully contacted several of the individuals in the BlackBerry’s contact list. A few of them were quite peeved about the slip-up. When the McCain campaign was approached about it, they said it was a mistake and the phone was supposed to be erased.

One of the people they called made a comment that I have to admit I did chuckle at.

“They should have wiped that stuff out. Given the way the campaign was run, this is not a surprise.”

Isn’t that the truth. It’s not like its too difficult to wipe a BlackBerry clean: actually its a simple process that takes less that a minute to begin. One begins to wonder: with all the other stuff that was being sold, what else may we find out?

Maybe They Shoulda Called It the McCainBerry

Harry McCracken — Wed, 17 Sep 2008 06:17:57 +0000

As you may have noticed, we rarely broach the topic of politics here on Technologizer. We endorse no party, nor any candidate for any office. But some stories are too entertaining not to tackle.

Thank John McCain for That Pearl
So it’s like this: Douglas Holtz-Eakin, a policy advisor to Senator and Republican nominee for the presidency John McCain brandished a BlackBerry in front of some reporters and told them that it was a miracle that Sen. McCain had helped to create. He was apparently making reference to the senator’s involvement with telecommunications legislation. But you’d think that any policy aide who remembers the legend of Al Gore supposedly claiming to have invented the Internet would be really, really, really careful about saying anything that sounded even remotely like it involved a candidate having invented anything relating to communications. And hey, if telecommunications legislation is enough to claim credit for a specific phone, wouldn’t the iPhone have been hipper? (Not to mention more patriotic–the BlackBerry is a Canadian product.)

Read more at: Gizmodo

And You Thought Alienware Made Expensive PCs
$25,000 for a Windows computer? It sounds a tad on the pricey side, but it’s really a bargain–the computer in question is from supercomputer pioneer Cray. The http://www.cray.com/products/CX1.aspx, powered by Intel Xeons and running Windows HPC Server 2008, is the cheapest supercomputer the company has ever made. It’s probably overkill for even my most demanding tasks, but the vault-like case is pretty darn neat. Maybe Cray should sell a $1200 version with that housing and a Core 2 Duo inside.

Read more at: All About Microsoft

You Want Fries With That Zune?
I’m not sure if Microsoft and McDonalds have ever worked together before, but it was probably inevitable that they’d get together. And now they have–courtesy of a new deal that will give three years of free Wi-Fi at the hamburger giant to owners of the Zune, Microsoft’s MP3 player. The free connectivity will let them buy music wirelessly. Not bad, but also far from world-changing. How about a deal that would let Windows Vista users surf for free at McDonald’s and make everybody else pay up?

Read more at: Digital Noise

Another Google Outage
TechCrunch reported today about an outage for some users of Google’s Custom Search service, which lets anyone create a search engine, that TC said lasted for at least twelve hours. At last report, Google fixed the problem and apologized. But it’s still more evidence that even the company that knows more than any other about delivering reliable service to millions of people can’t promise perfect service. You gotta wonder whether the main Google site is immune from serious problems–and what sort of headlines it would make if that service ever went down for half a day.

Read more at: TechCrunch

More on App Store’s Application Acceptance Policies
Blogger Niall Kennedy has a nice piece digging into the details of what happened with Podcaster, the iPhone app which Apple rejected from its App Store, whereupon the author used Apple’s “ad-hoc” distribution to get it into the hands of anyone who’d donate $10 to him. Niall says that the developer may have made $11,000 over the weekend. Not too shabby–especially since he doesn’t have to share the proceeds with Apple, unlike companies that sell apps through the App Store.

Read more at: Niall Kennedy’s Weblog

Like the T-List? Read it as a feed.