I’m a Pundit

Net Nutrality is a very hot topic which is very conveniently looked over by the world media.

What is Net Nutrality?

Basically Net Nutrality  is the protection of the internet from ISPs who are looking to blackmail every single internet website.

International Giant Virgin for instance has already stated that it will reduce bandwidth to it’s customers on websites that do not pay a premium in the near future, many other ISPs have also stated this as well.  So why not th big debate?  Most ISPs are owned by media corporate giants, go figure!

What would this mean to us users?  Well the general degridation of the internet, starting up a new internet business would be harder due to the new lack of bandwidth and many businesses would go out of business because they could not aford to be held to ranom by a multitude of network providers.

Imagine for instance you lived in the midle of nowhere, isolated but in contact by regular bus services.   Now imagine that the bus decided to only go to places that paid a premium, limiting you to comercial giants who could suddenyl afford to rip you off because you had no choice of going anywhere else and they had the excuse of paying costs to increase prices.  Sure you could walk to another place, but it would take all day!

The only option left would be to move house to somewhere with a better ISP.

Of course net nutrality doesn’t just stop at drawing awarness to bandwidth reduction, you may also find that in ISP could cut a site off, cut you off from other ISPs (Whch has already been done in Europe, causing an Uproar in World of Warcraft gamers who can no longer access the game because their ISP failed to reach a deal with another ISP on its Internet strategy)

Now imagine your ISP cut you off from all the news sites but its own, all the shops but its own, and so forth and so on.  The internet would be in danger of becoming sectioned, with most people being forced to use one single provider.

Now you could say that one ISP could stick to net nutrality and keep open bandwidth to all sites connected to it.  Now, just playing a theory here, what would happen if all the other websites turned on it and blocked it completely?

I have to admit the thought scare me.

written by Oli \\ tags: Internet, ISPs, Net Nutrality

As a small break from my usual punditry on the world around me I though I would mention how I am trying to learn to play the guitar again. When I was younger i tried and failed to learn how to play the guitar many times over, so I was pleasently suprised when my friend recommended Guitar Made Easy.

When I first opened it I was a bit skeptical, eBooks tend to be fairly trashy so I avoid them. This however contained an absolute wealth of information for the beginner, with finger training rythem training and chord guides to start you off and then a hellova lot more to follow.

I would heartily recommend this book to anyone who wants to learn guitar, it contains everything you need to get started and enough to progress you onto more complex guitar chords and tricks.

You can get Guitar Made Easy Here!

written by Oli \\ tags: Guitar, Learn Guitar, Personal

Senator Barack Obama has come under fire again for the views of his former pastor and mentor Rev. Jeremiah Wright.  Now a quick way of summing up the controversy surrounding Wrights views is quite simply that he is against the wars recently.  Where the controversy starts is how he compares the USA to the Al’Qaeda.  Both parties he states have gone to war under the banner of a God.

Personally I think he makes a valid point, but I also think its disgraceful that these views are being so teniuosly linked to Obama, who was merely under his tutorage some time ago.

I would like to hear an Americans point of view on this though, do you think the comments made by Wright should impact on Obama’s campaign?  More importantly do you believe the the USA and Al’Qaeda can be compared so easily?

From a European stand point it is very easy to see the similarities that are pointed out in Wrights speech, though it is also easy to see that he oversimplifies  many things, the goals for instance are important.  Both have gone into war quoting God as supporting them.  Despite the fact that Both religions do in-fact have the same God the main difference does seem to focus on the fact that one group wishes to destroy the American presence in its country while the other wants an American presence in the country.

After all it is down to westernised insensitivity to religion that we put Christian military units on their land, something which they have been told to defend against.

My personal belief is that the current wars have been to prevent countries from selling Oil in Euros, Oil being the only current thing holding the Dollar up, this worked up until Iran, who successfully resisted.

I also believe  Wright should not be demonised for his position on the American War, while they are ‘Anti-American’ I do think they hint of a little common sense and grounding that is required to run a successful country.

written by Oli \\ tags: Obama, Politics, Wright

I have kind of a love/hate relationship with Greenpeace, and for that matter a lot of environmental organisations. On the one hand I agree with a lot of their goals, I think what they stand for is a worthy cause and so forth. But unfortunately they are all just SO fucking stupid.

Take for instance the latest debacle. They have today protested outside several Unilever buildings for using suppliers of Palm Oil, used in food and ethanol production. Now it was not that long ago that greenpeace along with pretty much every other environmental agency caught up in the latest fad was proclaiming palm oil to be the saviour to the environmental problems we were facing. They completely ignored sceptics who pointed out what would happen, and as it turns out the sceptics were right.

Due to subsidies enforced thanks to the environmental agencies efforts the rainforst is being cut down at record speeds, not even for lumber just burned down to make farmland. Ethanol cannot be transported by pipeline so is moved in Cargo ships and trucks and world hunger and poverty is increasing as basic food product prices have tripled in recent years.

Of course all this could have been avoided, but all the self righteous ejits in charge jumped on the carbon causes global warming freight train and managed to get their way by creating a public panic over a disproven theory of current global warming. Thanks to their actions a great deal of injustice has been rained down upon our planet, thanks fucktards.

Instead of media grabbing hype promoting idiots in charge of this so called charity I really do think they should tackle some real issues of pollution rather than continuing to support the global warming nightmare that was disproven in the 80s.

Take the mass destruction of the rainforest, the money spent on ’sponsored’ research into global warming could have paid for the protection of huge tracts of the rainforest.  Not a fan of jungles?   Perhaps the hundreds of millions invested in the global warming vote buy in could have cleaned up the great barrier reef.

Global warming is all well and good for votes and donations but personally I would be more concerned about the biological miracle providing our oxygen than a degree or two temprature change.

written by Oli \\ tags: Environment, Global Warming, Green Peace

It seems that more and more cases are appearing of women who have been kept in captivity for long periods of time by some fairly weird people.

The most recent case is that of a man in Austria who imprisoned his ten year old daughter for 24 years.  During this time he fathered 7 kids with her, 6 of which survived, and three of which were sent to his grandparents with the claim they had been abandoned on his doorstep.

Even more worryingly his wife denies any knowledge of his crimes, despite the daughter and grand kids being kept in his basement. You would have though at least the issue of the food bill might have come up at some point, i mean keeping 7 people fed and watered is no cheap thing to do!

The good news however is that this man will be going to jail for a long time, with kidnapping, imprisonment, Incest and murder of the dead child on the cards.

I think the real question which needs to be asked is HOW did this man get away with imprisoning a girl for so long?

Surely someone in the town must have noticed the disappearance at some point.  I think some real work needs to be done from stopping this king of thing from happening.

written by Oli \\ tags: Abduction, Crime, Imprisonment, Incest, Kidnapping, News

The psychic community today delivered a 5000 strong petition against new laws which are asking for the peddlers in the supernatural to prove their abilities or reveal the fact that they are for entertainment only. The psychics who delivered the petition to enforce that their belief in their own powers should not be questioned was not deterred by the fact that they delivered the petition on a day when the Prime Minister Gordon Brown was not in the Country, and they blatantly ignored the headlining jubes about their failure to see the new law coming.

Personally I think this is a good and a bad thing. First off these guys are all con merchants in my opinion, but in the same vein if we make things too easy then natural selection will fall down and all the really stupid people will have just that little bit of an extra chance to reproduce.

There is another downside though, the good old placebo. Yes, While these idiotics, fanatics, and conmen pull away these peoples hard earned savings they do occasionally manage to pull off something that is a real miracle. Occasionally the homeopathic, religious healing, magnetic, ESP related treatments despite all practical tests do manage to work.

Now Personally I put this down to more of a power of the body kind of thing, but should a treatment that releases the power of ones own body really be so easily discounted from our system?

written by Oli \\ tags: Healing, Law, Placebo, Religion

The Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints is indeep trouble over allegations of child sexual abuse and brain washing. This church was founded around five years go in Texas by a man named Warren Jeffs (Currently in Jail as an accomplice in the rape of an underaged girl)

While the members of the church themselves have remained quiet on the matter it has become apparent that several of the children may have been put into marraige at a younger age than 14. The children themselves showed a strong sense of wanting to get married as soon as possible, with no age too young and to have as many babies as possible.

Now while some of the accuracy of the accusations has been debated and the families of the children hotly denying any wrong doing there is some major contention in the courts. (Where mass DNA testing is underway to decide the actual structures of these polygamistic families) . The adults are refusing to say the current relationships between the families fueling the investigation as to wether or not adults have been marrying and engaging in girls who in some cases may have not even hit puberty.

Personally I can see the plus points of polygamy, the child sex abuse is however something that needs to be looked into with all available resource, peaodphilia this widespread is something that deeply worries me.

written by Oli \\ tags: , Crime, Mormons, Peadophilia

In the recent debating arena between Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton have both glossed over this issue.  They have both, kind of, voiced support for abortion, but avoided the issue of when a life really begins.  Clinton has said that she believes in the ‘potential’ for life begins at conception, while Obama states that he cannot even presume to know the answer to that question.

I have to admit I prefer Obamas answer, it seems to be much more honest than most.

Personally I agree with abortion, I also think that the life really does begin at conception.  After all it is at that point where the life begins to exist, if you kill off that embryo  it cancels out the life ahead of it.

But I also believe that if the parents are not ready for a child it would be a mistake to bring it into the world,  something that is causing a lot of problems in todays society.

written by Oli \\ tags: Abortion, America, Barack Obama, Election 2008, Hillary Clinton, US

We have heard a lot of, and i say this without hesitation, shite from an array of environmental parties since their inception.  Some focus more on realistic matters than others, but the fact rmemains that the majority jump on the latest bandwagon without even thinking of the consequence, such as the recent increase of starvation in teird world countries thanks to the Ethanol lobby.  Bet they didn’t factor in the reduction of Co2 produced by the death of thousands of children.

Recently however Algae has come to the front yet again, the small green scum on the top of ponds which has been touted as everything from food to fuel may now be getting government backing. When algae was first considered as a fuel it seemed a rather frivalous waste of money, however at the time oil was $20 a barrel, now it looks like it will not drop below $100 in quite a long time.  This has given both corporations and government a good incentive to review the possibilites of using algae for oil.

The good news about this is the huge reduction in side effects, and possible bonuses.  Algae will grow in very harsh conditions, including desert environments.  This leaves us not only with a fuel source which will slow down the current destruction of the rainforest, but could also boost economies in some of the worlds poorest countries.

And if that itself wasn’t a great bonus, it is also possible that wth sufficient research this could become a very valid source of food. While this may not end world hunger and poverty it could be a huge step in reducing it.

written by Oli \\ tags: Algae, Food, Fuel, Poverty

The IMF and G7 Summit groups have decided to tackle the growing starvation problems being brought on by rapidly rising food prices.  While they are still refusing to accept that Ethanol production mandated and subsidised by US law and now accounting for 20% of corn production worldwide could be the cause of this.

I thought it quite humorous that on the BBC’s blase report about this they included the above photo.  It seems the man on the left has a rather different opinion on the current food shortages in third world countries, as he glances at his colleagues rather impressive stomach.

In other news for those more technically minded I have recently taken over the Gadget blog Geekywood.  I will Be updating ths reqularly on the latest and greatest gadgets and technological items from around the world!

written by Oli