Bye Bye Network Neutrality

Some of you may have heard about the COPE Act (HR 5252). For those of you who have not the COPE Act is a major overhaul to the Telecommunications Act that is working its way through Congress. A problem with this modification is the weakening of network neutrality, which guarantees a free and open Internet. Net neutrality is the principle that you should be able access whatever content or services without interference from your ISP. The COPE Act is changing net neutrality by making it impossible to create laws preventing obstacles to access of information on the Internet. The COPE Act could allow for a multi-tiered Internet creating a 'fast-lane' and 'slow-lane' on the internet, where for a fee websites and services can run at high speeds unobstructed and others would be stuck in the 'slow-lane'. This plan has been announced by Comcast and Verizon. The problems with a multi-tiered internet are political organizations and non-profits groups could have a harder time starting up due to the fact of an added fee to get unobstructed access on the Internet. This would also make it harder for individuals like us to post and write our own blogs.

With the current version of net neutrality problems have occurred with lower quality of service and censorship. For example in 1994 Madison River ISP blocked their users from using rival companies web-based phone services. Also in Canada, Shaw intentionally downgraded quality and reliability of rivals Internet phone services. In 2005 Telus, a Canadian telephone giant, blocked customers from visiting a site favoring the Telecommunications Workers Union during a strike. Also AOL blocked all emails mentioning dearaol.com, a campaign against AOL's pay-to-send email scheme. So even with the current form of net neutrality problems arise so why should we weaken it and allow more problems to occur.

There will be a day of action in Chicago, Boston, New York and more on Wed. May 24. The location for the protest will be outside of the AT&T /SBC Building at the intersection of Congress Parkway and S. Federal St. at 4:00 pm. If you feel that the Internet should be free and open please let show your support by signing the petitions or coming out to the day of action.

Links
http://www.commoncause.org/site/pp.asp?c=dkLNK1MQIwG&b=1421497
http://www.commoncause.org/site/pp.asp?c=dkLNK1MQIwG&b=1539607
http://www.savetheinternet.com/

Hail Those Who Write Good Documentation

I always appreciated good documentation when I read it. That is an aspect that some open source projects excel at while others struggle to get anything together. I always knew that it was a pain to write good documentation, after last night I just realized how tedious it is to write documentation. I had to write a user manual for my Software Engineering class, and this documentation wasn't even at the level of what I would classify as good. So now I would like to give all you authors of good documentation, and you know who you are, a round of applause.

WeeeeEEEEeeee First Post

Welcome this is my first post, hopefully all goes good and this gets added to Planet Chicago LUG. First off some LUG business please post presentation ideas here, it would be great to get a nice list of presentations that people would like to see done. Also if you have a blog that you would like on Planet Chicago LUG let us know. Hope to see you Saturday at the meeting.

Later