The Abstract Factory on net neutrality

"Cog" at The Abstract Factory has a good, thoughtful post on net neutrality--and gets hit by astroturfing shills in the comments who almost seem to be trying to change his mind. (He comments further on the shills, a few of which have appeared in the comments at this blog, here.)

Scientologists pay another web visit

As I noted in my "Scientology Sampler" post on March 4, my web sites still get periodic visits from Church of Scientology IP addresses, at that time most recently on January 1. They just came by again on May 22, attempting to look at my online copy of Russell Miller's biography of L. Ron Hubbard, Bare-Faced Messiah, as well as the article I co-authored with Jeff Jacobsen, "Scientology v. the Internet," and my skeptical links pages on Scientology. Here's an example web log entry:

[Mon May 22 11:42:00 2006] [error] [client 205.227.165.11] client denied by server configuration: path deleted/03.3.jl-jj-scientology.html, referer: http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&lr=&rls=GGLD%2CGGLD%3A2005-09%2CGGLD%3Aen&q=Jim+Lippard+Scientology

Then, yesterday afternoon, this blog got a visit and a comment (from a brand-new Blogger account) on my post on Arizona legislators accepting trips from the Church of Scientology in return for sponsoring bills for Scientology's front group the Citizens Commission on Human Rights. This poster, asking why I don't support Scientology's mental health efforts, came across the entry by Googling for "CCHR":

Time of Visit           May 29 2006 4:49:43 pm
Last Page View          May 29 2006 4:59:42 pm
Visit Length            9 minutes 59 seconds
Page Views              4
Referring URL           http://search.blogger.com/?ui=blg&q=cchr
Search Engine           search.blogger.com
Search Words            cchr
Visit Entry Page                http://lippard.blogs...ponsoring-bills.html
Visit Exit Page         http://lippard.blogs...ponsoring-bills.html
Out Click               a number of Arizona legislators have been sponsoring bills
http://www.azcentral...cientologists11.html
Time Zone               UTC-6:00

This individual's source IP, however, is an Ameritech/SBC IP out of Springfield, Illinois (not a big Scientology stronghold like Los Angeles or Clearwater, FL). Illinois is, however, the location where Scientology won a battle to get an exhibit that compares psychiatry to Nazis put back on public property in the Thompson Center--so it looks like the CCHR Chicago has a bit of pull.

Anyway, this is a good opportunity to recommend reading Janet Reitman's "Inside Scientology" from Rolling Stone magazine from February, an excellent overview and introduction to Scientology's beliefs and history.

Children detained at Guantanamo Bay

The London Independent reported yesterday that more than 60 detainees at Guantanamo Bay were under 18 at their time of capture, including some boys as young as 14. One child prisoner, Mohamed el Gharani, was accused of involvement in a 1998 al Qaeda plot in London, even though he was 12 years old at the time and living with his parents in Saudi Arabia.

British officials say the UK had been assured that juveniles would be held in a special facility called "Camp Iguana," but only three juveniles were treated as children.

A senior Pentagon spokesman says that no one being held now at Guantanamo Bay is a juvenile, though London lawyers say there are at least 10 still being held who were 14 or 15 when captured. (Those statements are not contradictory.)

Dishonesty from Paul Nelson

Paul Nelson, who has usually been known as one of the few honest major advocates of intelligent design at the otherwise disreputable Center for Science and Culture at the Discovery Institute, has fallen temptation to make his case stronger by being deceptive about what one of his opponents said in a debate. Ed Brayton gives the full account.

UPDATE (May 30, 2006): The discussion continues, with Paul Nelson's involvement in the comments, here.

Wine shipping in Arizona to become legal

Despite the attempted astro-turfing by beverage distributors, Arizona Senate Bill 1276 has passed. Actually, the wholesalers agreed to a compromise--the bill only allows shipping by wineries that produce less then 20,000 gallons of wine per year (and which obtain an Arizona domestic farm winery license and pay state taxes). The fact that the wholesalers agreed to a compromise based on wine production shows that they didn't really believe their own arguments that this created a new risk of underage drinking.

More on last-mile options in Phoenix

I've posted this as an update on the original post, but it's also worth bringing out as a separate posting. I've made a few minor changes here (e.g., to insert the point about Cable America that is made elsewhere in the original post).

Douglas Ross (directorblue) has called this list "bogus" and claimed that only two of the options (Qwest and Cox) actually count. He rightly dismisses Cable America from the list on the grounds that Cox entered into an agreement to acquire them in January of this year--I grant his point and that reduces the number of broadband providers by one.

He dismisses Covad because it uses Qwest last-mile wires, but goes on to say, inconsistently, that he would count other cable resellers if the Brand X decision had gone the other way and providers like Cox were forced to enter into relationships like Covad has with Qwest. My observation is that if those reseller relationships exist and the reseller provides access to its own Internet network, then that is enough to foster a competitive environment. It doesn't matter whether it's government-mandated, it matters whether it exists.

Doug rejects all the wireless options out of hand on the grounds of Verizon's EVDO terms-of-service. (His section about why WiMax isn't viable doesn't actually discuss WiMax at all, only EVDO terms-of-service.) He misses the point that Sprint Broadband and Sprint EVDO are *two different services*--he doesn't actually give a reason to reject Sprint Broadband.

He says he doesn't understand why I put the City of Tempe's municipal WiFi network in the list--I did so because Tempe is right in the middle of the Phoenix metropolitan area (and noted Chandler's metro WiFi in-development, which is just south of Tempe, for the same reason). These are real options for people moving to the Phoenix area and for anyone who is willing to move to get different broadband service. (And certainly broadband options in an area are an important factor in choosing a place to live.)

Finally, he rejects HughesNet because it is unsuitable for VOIP or P2P. At least he doesn't say that HughesNet should be mandated to change the laws of physics in order to provide those services under net neutrality.

Doug's position on net neutrality appears to be that nothing counts as broadband unless it supports every application he wants to use. But it's important to note that the net neutrality bills in Congress *do* count all these options and place regulations on them--they count anything as broadband that is greater than 200kbps in one direction, whether wired or wireless. I don't see Doug volunteering to exempt things he doesn't count as valid broadband options from broadband net neutrality restrictions.

It appears to me that Doug's position is that whoever builds an infrastructure capable of supporting what he wants has to provide it to him, without recovering the costs of that infrastructure by charging any third parties. But I bet he also is unwilling to pay an unsubsidized rate to use such a service.

(UPDATE: I was just looking at Doug's blogroll, and he's pretty strong evidence that net neutrality positions don't necessarily correlate with political positions. Doug's political blog links include Michelle Malkin, Little Green Footballs, and the dishonest nutcases at "Stop the ACLU.")

Dave Siegel on QoS and net neutrality

Dave Siegel has given a very brief introduction to QoS (with some specifics about how it's engineered into Global Crossing's network today) and chimed in on the net neutrality debate.

A bit more detail about how QoS has been a problem in some networks but successfully engineered into Global Crossing's network can be found in this presentation by Dr. Xiao Xipeng of Alcatel, "The Elusive QoS" (PDF). Xiao Xipeng was one of the designers of QoS for Global Crossing and is the author or co-author of numerous IETF standards for QoS.

Good Math, Bad Math blog on Dembski's "Searching Large Spaces"

I'm about a month late in linking to this, but Mark Chu-Carroll has done a good job of debunking the Dembski's "Searching Large Spaces: Displacement and the No Free Lunch Regress." He shows that Dembski's use of the NFL theorems is dishonest and inappropriate (even after he's repeatedly been told that, even by the discoverer, David Wolpert), involves jargon-filled misdirection, and proves nothing.

Save the Internet: Fighting astroturf with astroturf

As the InOpinion blog has pointed out, Save the Internet-generated form letters have been published as letters to the editor here, here, and here. This is ironic given their complaints about astroturf by "Hands Off The Internet."

InOpinion has a project to identify astroturf where it appears, which appears to be nonpartisan.

35th Skeptics Circle

I've been a bit lax on reporting blog carnivals... the 35th Skeptics Circle is up at Skeptico's blog, and includes a contribution from Einzige.