DDoS is Screwing With de Internet

In case you haven't noticed, there have been some major disturbances in the Force, er, interruptions in the Internet today. Several of you have commented here, and I have not replied because Disqus is down. Not just here, but most everywhere I've visited. The Disqus site itself is accessible, but comments are down.

Twitter is down, along with other random sites. It has been called a Distributed Denial of Service attack. The Feds are aware of it and are trying to track down those responsible for it.

There's is nothing wrong with your set. We control the vertical. We control the horizontal.

If you are suffering from Extreme Twitter Withdrawal, please call 1-800-Get-a-Life. Operators are standing by...

Email From an Amazon

No, not that Amazon! The retailer!

I got this email this AM, in part:

For well over a decade, the Amazon Associates Program has worked with thousands of California residents. Unfortunately, a potential new law that may be signed by Governor Brown compels us to terminate this program for California-based participants. It specifically imposes the collection of taxes from consumers on sales by online retailers - including but not limited to those referred by California-based marketing affiliates like you - even if those retailers have no physical presence in the state.

We oppose this bill because it is unconstitutional and counterproductive. It is supported by big-box retailers, most of which are based outside California, that seek to harm the affiliate advertising programs of their competitors. Similar legislation in other states has led to job and income losses, and little, if any, new tax revenue. We deeply regret that we must take this action.

Good to know that in tough economic times, small Internet retailers in California may lose at least one source, if not their sole source of income. Wonder if the added sales tax will make up for any losses of income taxes?

As a result, we will terminate contracts with all California residents that are participants in the Amazon Associates Program as of the date (if any) that the California law becomes effective. We will send a follow-up notice to you confirming the termination date if the California law is enacted. In the event that the California law does not become effective before September 30, 2011, we withdraw this notice. As of the termination date, California residents will no longer receive advertising fees for sales referred to Amazon.com, Endless.com, MYHABIT.COM or SmallParts.com. Please be assured that all qualifying advertising fees earned on or before the termination date will be processed and paid in full in accordance with the regular payment schedule.

...We have enjoyed working with you and other California-based participants in the Amazon Associates Program and, if this situation is rectified, would very much welcome the opportunity to re-open our Associates Program to California residents. We are also working on alternative ways to help California residents monetize their websites and we will be sure to contact you when these become available.

Regards,

The Amazon Associates Team

Not going to really affect me, but if thousands of Californians got the same email I did, Governor Brown might be hearing from more than a few of them tomorrow.

Update:

Unfortunately, Governor Brown has signed into law the bill that we emailed you about earlier today. As a result of this, contracts with all California residents participating in the Amazon Associates Program are terminated effective today, June 29, 2011.

UpdateII:More at Amazon ends deal with 25,000 California websites, Memeorandum

If You Don't Believe it is Theft, Then it Must Not Be!

Interesting opinion piece over at the NYT, by a teacher, who pirated the Internet for years from her neighbors' unsecured networks. There's a word for a person like this, but I can't quite put my finger ion it.

It may have been unfair, but I don’t believe I was stealing: the owners’ leaving their networks password-free was essentially a gift, an ethereal gesture of kindness.

Really? And if your neighbors had left their doors unlocked, would you feel free to raid the 'fridge, thinking it was an ethereal gesture of free food?

She says she did "freelance work from home", applied to graduate schools, paid her taxes online, streamed new episodes of “Friday Night Lights” each evening for a whole winter, reply to e-mails, video-chatted with my sister...until the neighbor "pulled the plug" by securing their network.

Sometimes I’d imagine my anonymous benefactors... thinking, “Well, I have Internet to spare.” And, really, who doesn’t? Home wireless networks can usually support five or more computers, yet there are only about 1.4 computers per American household.

Oh. So, as long as your neighbor has something in abundance, you can take it without asking for it? There's a great, if obvious, line in The Rocketeer, where the hero's much put upon assistant tells him, "If you "borrow" something without asking, that's stealing!"

And then the author slips in this bit of fluff at the end:

Perhaps the solution is a simple, old-fashioned gesture. Just knock on a neighbor’s door, and ask if she might be able to spare some wireless.

Read the piece for yourself, and see if there is the slightest indication that she ever asked permission to use any of their bandwidth? And some of her activities were real bandwidth hogs: she was streaming video and having video chats. Did it never occur to her that while she was enjoying herself at the neighbors' expense, they may have been putting up with slower downloads and less performance than they paid for?

I don't want to accuse her of hypocrisy, (Editor's note: Yes he does), but I'd be willing to bet that the good Ms. Rubenstein doesn't have a wireless network, and if she does, it has a password protecting it.

BTW, The word you are searching for is "leech".

H/T Closet Conservative

Cross posted at LCR.

Rasmussen: 67% Americans Better Informed Than 10 Years Ago

Rie Rasmussen (no relation)

Rasmussen is reporting poll results where "two-out-of-three Americans (67%) feel they are more informed today than they were 10 years ago." At first blush, this seems to indicate a triumph of the New Media over the old. And to a certain extent, this is true.

Adults ages 30 to 49 believe that more strongly than those in any other age group

That shouldn't come as a surprise to anyone. If you asked me if I was better informed at 29 than I was at 19, although the answer is "yes" it is largely irrelevant. What I knew at 19 was largely academic. What I knew at 29 had some real world experience to back it up.

Then, there's the phenomenon about lying to pollsters. "Are you better informed?" This question might be one that people might be inclined to fudge a bit on, even to an impersonal pollster. People are sometimes embarrassed to admit ignorance, even to strangers. Like asking adolescent boys how much sex they've had.

And finally, there's the reliability of the Internet.

Forty-four percent (44%) of all adults say the Internet is the best way to get news and information.

I agree. But, I have also seen too many people search the Internet merely for examples to bolster their ignorance and misconceptions. Truly informed individuals have learned how to sift through much of the dreck and misinformation on the web. After all, WhiteHouse.gov may have a better creative writing staff than say a FlatEarth.org, but in the end, you have to be able to compare more than one source to test the veracity of their claims. A closed mind will only look for or accept evidence that reinforces its own world view.

With those caveats, I am mildly encouraged. The demise of the stranglehold of the Old Media was unleashed by virtually unlimited access to information, via the Internet. Sans traditional filters, the consumer must be more discerning about what they receive, but then there is an abundance of material with which to fact check.

Persons today who are uninformed, choose to be.

First National Campaign to Attempt to Make Use of the Internet

That would have been...John McCain's!
(McCain can't e-mail, but Obama can't Google!)

Kevin over at Wizbang, offers the following:

The man behind the Howard Dean's Internet operations, Joe Trippi, details where he got his inspiration in his book, The Revolution Will Not Be Televised: Democracy, the Internet, and the Overthrow of Everything

I closely followed John McCain's insurgent Republican presidential bid in 2000, the first national campaign to attempt to make use of the Internet. I held my breath that year - excited that someone was trying it, but terrified that they'd pull it off before I got the chance. They didn't. McCain managed to pull a decent number of people, about 40,000, into his campaign via the Internet, but it was the Newton of online political campaigns. The technology simply wasn't quite mature enough yet; enough snow hadn't been plowed.

So, instead of the "out of touch" grouchy neighbor yelling at kids to get off his lawn, John McCain was a pioneer in harnessing the Internet for its possibilities in politics? Sweet!
So much for Obama's attempt to paint him as a techno-phobe!

Update: Suitably Flip points to a Forbes article in 2000,

Yes, Virginia (northern Virginia, to be specific), there is a Max Fose. I know this because I am sitting with the soon-to-be-legendary Webmaster of the John McCain presidential campaign and watching one of the damnedest political exercises the year 2000 campaign will likely produce. Fose is staring intently at a PC in his office at McCain's national headquarters in Alexandria. A spartan former printing plant, the place hums with the tension of a military command post on the eve of battle. Dozens of young men and women hunch forward in front of computers or talk urgently on their standard-issue Nokia cell phones.

Campaign donations scroll down the screen in relentless real-time display. Each of these Web-based credit card transactions is political ammunition, ready to be loaded, aimed, and fired on this day, one week before the Super Tuesday primaries. No muss, no fuss, no messy checks to be photocopied, sent to the bank, and cleared--just sweet, instantly exploitable Visa, AmEx, and MasterCard electronic cash.

"I check the contributions several times a day," says the especially young-looking 28-year-old who is, at the moment, both wired and tired. He has been working 18-hour days for six months. "It's running close to $30,000 an hour," he says, hard pressed to keep the wonder out of his voice.

Here's the money quote:

In certain ways, McCain was a natural Web candidate. Chairman of the Senate Telecommunications Subcommittee and regarded as the U.S. Senate's savviest technologist, McCain is an inveterate devotee of email. His nightly ritual is to read his email together with his wife, Cindy. The injuries he incurred as a Vietnam POW make it painful for McCain to type. Instead, he dictates responses that his wife types on a laptop. "She's a whiz on the keyboard, and I'm so laborious," McCain admits.

Flip goes on:

What percentage of 64-year-olds do you suppose were daily e-mail users back in 2000?

This is a quadruple whammy for Obama. The ad 1) is apparently wildly inaccurate, 2) makes Obama look like a jerk for needling McCain (if inadvertently) about his war injuries, 3) reminds people which of these two candidates is a hero, and 4) exposes the delicious tech-idiocy behind this initiative to demonstrate McCain's tech-idiocy.

Heh.

Cross Posted at Say Anything