Now, Apple’s patent suits are a topic for another post on another day, but the penultimate graf in the story is what interests me today (yes, I understand, a solid five months after its posting).

From the story:

According to Mobiledia, mobile manufacturers often pay royalties on up to 300 patents for a single smartphone, adding 15 to 20 percent of the selling price.

Some argue patents hurt innovation and should be done away with. Others doubt whether patents should be issued for computer code, seeing as software is protected by copyright, not patent. But to me, this is blatantly telling, especially in the context of a flurry of patent lawsuits between smartphone companies. First, because if technology patents are that easy to infringe upon, maybe the patent office should be taking a better look. Second, patents and patent licensing agreements are making smartphones more expensive. Certainly, smartphones for all isn’t solid public policy, but it is interesting to see how much extra the patent system is adding to our consumer electronics.

The article called it simultaneously “appealing and threatening,” and while it’s not quite videotex (which never really caught on) I think you’d have a hard time arguing that the videotex terminal the NSF mentioned hasn’t become the computer.

Yes, the Times, the United States’ hallmark newspaper, reported on the predicted rise of the internet, and only sort of figured how to leverage it financially and only did so recently. With the news media taking way too long to realize how important the internet is to their bottom line, and it is sort of (I do love journalism, after all) funny to see how the rise of technology was predicted, reported on and then ignored almost completely.

“They prevent people from tracking the financial end of this. Using real money, users purchase Bitcoins, which can be traded at $9 to one Bitcoin and use them as proxy for real money when they buy things on Silk Road. It’s an online form of money laundering used to disuse the source of the money and disuse who’s both selling and buying the drug.”

Gawker broke the news on The Silk Road last week – exposing the deep web’s eBay-for-drugs site. Fine, drugs are illegal, despite the drug war clearly having failed. If he wants to continue to argue drugs are the society-destroying evil the state seems to think they are, fine. Quite honestly, I’d expect no less.

But Sen. Schumer clearly has very little understanding of…well…how cash works. Aside from the face-to-face interactions it takes to buy things with cash, there are few ways to track exactly who is buying what from who with cash. Sen. Schumer does little to distinguish Bitcoins from the multitude of community currencies used across the country, except that Bitcoins can be used to buy stuff Sen. Schumer doesn’t like.

Unless Williamsburg coke dealers take Brooklyn Greenbacks.

So…we get more drug war paranoia, except this time its online in your TOR networks…

Marsha Blackburn (R, TN)

Republicans, no fans of Net Neutrality in the first place, have started working to get rid of it. Marsha Blackburn, representing Tennessee’s 7th district (which may or may not acutally have internet access), has proposed the Internet Freedom Act. The IFA makes the internet the jurisdiction of Congress because “Only Congress can address those challenges without compounding them. Until we do, the FCC and other federal bureaucracies should keep their hands off the ‘net.”

So bad ideas get worse.

I’m not sold on Net Neutrality, as evidenced by these posts and the fact that there will be mission creep, but I can tell you one way not to combat it: Don’t let Congress get it’s hands on it. I can promise you that much.

In the report, released last year, the FCC noted that cable companies are able to provide ever-faster internet and phone companies aren’t able to keep up due to outdated technology. This trend means that, eventually, there will only be one legitimate high-speed ISP in each municipality.

The fear is that eventually, everyone will have to use their cable providers for high speed internet, who, even by their own standards, are pretty much universally hated*. The phone companies will be out of the picture (well, except for Verizon and FIOS, I assume) because they just can’t keep up.

It’s an interesting insight into the rationale of the FCC: We need Net Neutrality to protect the ISPs from foisting their “managed services” on us (basically, no more Netflix, no more Hulu if we’re talking cable-based ISPs), which they will do once they achieve a “natural monopoly” and ISP competition goes the way of cable TV. Basically, we need Net Neutrality because the FCC screwed up in the first place.

The flip side to this is that people don’t hate their ISP they way they hate their cable provider – a statistic Net Neutrality For The Win noted in a study – and even the New York Times who usually walks in step with attempts at government regulation thinks competition is a better way to solve the problem**.

So maybe the old quote trotted out by every Net Neutrality supporter will finally go out of vogue since, evidently, it’s going to be the cable companies fucking us instead of the phone companies. Hey, it’s only been 5+ years.

*A little side note: Cable providers have been so historically awful at customer service that the FCC actually enacted guidelines in the early 90′s to try and improve customer service. Nice to see that worked out.

**Unfortunately I can’t find the link to the Op/Ed. I’ll keep looking, though. Keep in mind, it might be stuck behind a paywall.

The article, among other things, calls Anonymous a “hacker collective.” Of course, let’s ignore the rudimentary method of DDoS attacks, described in the article as utilizing “a large network of computers to flood websites with so many data requests that it cannot keep up, eventually crippling the site and forcing it to shut down.”

Let’s ignore that it doesn’t exactly take l33t haxx0r skillz to be part of a DDoS attack or that the majority of 4chan users have never participated in raids.

Basically, a bunch of white suburban computer nerds posting ridiculous pictures have become the single most lethal hacking entity in the world today.

Let’s ignore the fact the Chinese government orchestrated what’s essentially cyberwarfare* on one of our most successful companies. Yep, it’s those /b/tards who are the problem.

*There might not be a term I hate more than “cyberwarfare” or “cyberwar,” though, that’s another post all it’s own.

Granted, this is 4chan. One percent of respondents said they discovered 4chan in 2011. So the answers should be taken with a grain of salt, or as Christopher “moot” Poole told TechCrunch “a massive grain of salt.” (The survey results have since been muddled by TechCrunch users taking the survey. I posted the pre-TechCrunch story above, the post-story results are here.)

Of course, when TechCrunch got a hold of the story they immediately emailed Poole to figure out what he thought about it. Poole called it “unscientific” and “total garbage.”

The problem, of course, is that while the mass media has crowned Poole King of the Anons, what Poole really did was start the imageboard using code he ripped from a similar Japanese site. All he did was create the forum, which, if you’ve ever used it, is pretty damn rudimentary. And while it’s fun to get all excited over Canvas, Poole’s new venture that’s kind-of-like-4chan-but-not-really, or pit Poole against Facebook founder Mark Zuckerburg in a philosophical battle for the internet, the fact of the matter is that 4chan is less Facebook and Twitter – regimented and constructed, and more BitTorrent – an internet world all it’s own.

In an attempt to understand exactly what the fuck 4chan is, people essentially, put moot at the head of the table and the Anons as his followers. In reality 4chan is a disjointed mass of users all bound together by a desire to be on the seedy underbelly of the internet, no real leaders, no real followers, and lots of in-fighting. 4chan didn’t evolve in a world of APIs and iPhone apps. It’s from the fringes, not the mainstream, which is part of the allure I guess – how could an online force evolve with no VCs? No Harvard educated founders? No cross-platform integration?

I guess, too, that’s what Lerer Ventures is trying to find out.

What first was once a tool of bourgeoisie dominance is now free! Finally, comrades, our fake Christmas fires have been snatched from the hands of the Capitalist pig dogs! Viva la Yule Log! Viva la revolucion!

But, really, what started as a Christmas tradition at WPIX in New York has garnered enough fandom for enthusiasts to sit in front of their fireplace with a camera. To novices, this might make the internet sound like a strange place. You ain’t seen nothing yet. For internet veterans, this should come as no surprise.

Merry Christmas. And I leave you with this fine, fine example of internet Yule Log technology.

Not that I don’t have views on the subject: I don’t like government intervention, and a lot of industries do better with out it (craft brewing comes to mind immediately) and Net Neutrality supporters seem to cite a quote from former AT&T CEO Ed Whitacre from 2005 that proves paid prioritization is imminent (in fairness, he also said AT&T wouldn’t do that). Plus, I feel like there’s a whole lot of disincentive for telecoms to interrupt the internet as we know it for fear of a whole lot of backlash. So needless to say, I’m not totally sold on it,  but I’ve also read things that nudge me away from that stance.

In an attempt to get myself educated, I came across this guide from cybertelecom.org, which links lays out both sides of the argument on a case-by-case basis. It’s fairly academic, so expect to spend some time with it. I’m certainly not done with it, but from what I can tell it’s a very good primer.

According to the Assagne camp “the purpose can only be one thing: trying to make Julian look bad.” But as more details come out about the rape case, the more questions arise. When we in the United States hear “rape” we immediately conjure thoughts of a repulsive mix of violence, coercion, force, and sexual assault, which is why its so hard to quantify false rape charges, and why rape cases are so damming.

In Sweden, though, the concept of rape is a bit different, highlighted by the dual facts that 1) only 20 percent of rape accusations go to trial and only half result in convictions and 2) Sweden casts a large net over what they consider rape. These are the things that Assange’s supporters trump up in his defense.

Here in the States, though – where Vice President Biden recently called Assange a terrorist – this kind of thing is a PR nightmare. I, for one, am a staunch supporter of what Wikileaks is doing, although I do think Assage is a gigantic douchebag, but for those who think that its just a-okay for the government to do whatever diplomatically and seal those documents up for decades, this is not helping his already skewed image. When the word “rape” is brought into the conversation, few will care that “Miss W” consented to having sex with Assange, then they stopped, then she woke up with him having sex with her (“Miss A” also consented after Assange’s, strong comings-on).  He publicly refers to himself as a gentleman, though few would agree that this is gentlemanly behavior. The courts will decide if this is rape or not, but little doubt remains that Assange does need a healthy dose of humility.

The sad part, too, is that this hilariously ironic lack of self-awareness and self-interest will, largely, be missed by the public. Yes, its funny that the master of the leaked document is deriding the leak of documents directly related to him. What’s worse, though, is that he could have played this right into his hands. Instead his legal team goes to the press wreaking of the same closed nature as the governments Assange hopes to hold accountable. If anything the leaked documents show that Assange is the asshole we all knew he was to begin with, but his status as a rapist is questionable, at least in the sense that it is not 100 percent cut and try. He could have used that to his advantage. Instead, we sit here and laugh at him.