Well, not yet.  Tomorrow.  I’ll be writing tomorrow about whoever Obama picks as his running mate, so please look forward to that.

Sorry, this is later than I expected.  I had trouble writing from home and am just now getting to it.  But here it is!

So, Obama has finally picked his running mate.  Senator Joe Biden, a 30 year veteran of the political world.  He adds the experience that Obama lacks to the ticket, which many view as his greatest plus in this election.  Others have criticized the choice heavily for that reason exactly: They say it negates Obama’s call for change, one of the driving ideologies behind his whole campaign. 

What I see in this choice is a vice president candidate that isn’t going to be afraid to voice his opinion to his boss, something that I think should be very important in the selection of a vice president.  We don’t need a second in command who is going to be saying “Yes, sir.” for the next four to eight years.  We need someone who has their own valuable input on issues that face the nation.  So what if he’s been involved in politics as we know it for the past 30 years?  How many politicians are there who aren’t or haven’t been part of the political machine?  Then there’s the people who say the problem with Biden is that he’s not Clinton.  She’s been as much a part of the political machine as anyone, she’s been a governor’s wife, a First Lady, and a senator.  You know there’s something wrong when the opposing party is trying to tell the Democrats that it should have been Hillary.  Red flags?  Anyone?  The truth of the matter is that Hillary was by no means the best candidate.  She was a dirty fighter, a liar, and spent more money on her campaign than she had, a trait we don’t need in times of economic hardship.  Biden, on the other hand, knew he wasn’t going to win the presidential campaign and folded accordingly, something Hillary should have done much earlier than she did. 

All in all, Biden seems like a pretty solid choice to me.  His flaws, according to the mainstream news organizations, are that he likes to talk, he’s been around to long to be a part of the change in how Washington does politics, and that it rubs Hillary supporters the wrong way.  He’s good on education, the environment, and wants to see affordable healthcare.  He’s pro-union, and although he did vote for NAFTA, he voted against CAFTA.  I don’t like that he supports a wall between us and Mexico, but he does support providing a path towards citizenship for illegal immigrants.  He’s passionate about the need to help Darfur, and feels that would should help end the genocide there.  He voted for the war in Iraq, which is bad, but he feels the whole situation since has been poorly managed and has thus withdrawn his support.  He voted for the Defense of Marriage Act, which was a bad choice, but against the National Marriage Amendment, which was a good choice.  Overall he’s got a lot of good going for him and he understands the importance of diplomacy over military action.  Overall, I’d say I feel pretty good about Biden as the vice presidential candidate.

Posted by Wes Mueller on 08/22 at 09:29 PM  •   •  permalink

Well, I was getting ready to go to bed and I was suddenly reminded that I hadn’t written a post today.  Well, I definitely would like to apologize for that.  I don’t plan on making it a habit.  Anyways, since it’s late I’m just going to report on some great news in the world of copyright law.

Remember that post I made awhile back about the mother who was issued a DMCA takedown notice for the video of her dancing baby?  She, with the help of the EFF, won the lawsuit against Universal.  The Judge has stated that before a copyright owner sends a take down notice, they must first establish that the video is not fair use.  He stated “Fair use is a lawful use of a copyright. Accordingly, in order for a copyright owner to proceed under the DMCA with ‘a good faith belief that use of the material in the manner complained of is not authorized by the copyright owner, its agent, or the law,’ the owner must evaluate whether the material makes fair use of the copyright.” This is a great victory because it means that from now on major companies will have to actually investigate their take down notices before blasting them off in order to avoid future lawsuits from not establish an actual infringement on the copyright.  From here we’ll have to see what ends up being awarded as damages to the mother, as that will also be a major issue in a case such as this.  If she’s awarded a sizable sum it should help to prevent the large companies who are regularly abusing the DMCA from attacking user content on the web when they shouldn’t be.

Posted by Wes Mueller on 08/20 at 10:09 PM  •   •  permalink

Last year the U.S. Copyright Royalty Board enacted heavy royalty fees to be paid by online radio stations.  At this time, there was much outrage from webcasters claiming that the rates at which they had to pay royalties for the music was broken, and over time would destroy internet radio.  We’re now seeing proof of this as the negotiations in Washington appear to be in the same place they were last year: Dead in their tracks.  Pandora, one of the most popular internet radio sites out there, may be going offline soon if they don’t see a change in negotiations.  Right now their business is losing money fast, and it’s all because they’re having to pay per song, per listener.  Someone close to Soundexchange, the company responsible for gather royalties, noted that they had been surprised by the U.S. Copyright Royalty Board had selected Soundexchange’s first suggestion, noting that it had been meant to be a starting point for negotiations and not the actually rates.  Now the Royalty Board isn’t to keen to change it.

This to me highlights a much larger problem that we have in Washington, and that is the enormous generation gap, a gap that cause bad legislation to come through regarding technology issues.  We need more people in Congress, or at least some sort of advisory board for Congress, that understands modern technology, how it works, and how it’s developed.  You have to wonder if they realize how many hits popular websites get, and how unrealistic it is to have the pay such large amounts for song per listener.  A regular radio station doesn’t even have to pay these licensing fees because of the fact that they’re basically free marketing, so why are internet and satellite radio any different?

Posted by Wes Mueller on 08/18 at 01:54 PM  •   •  permalink

Having been born in the late 80’s, I don’t really have any recollection of the Cold War era.  Everything I know about it has been through history classes, reading Wikipedia, and action movies.  I know about the perception that the government built about what happened behind the Iron Curtain, about the dangers of communism world wide, and how being liberal could be your downfall during the McCarthy commie witch hunts.  But I don’t actually know what it was like to live in that environment, in the shadow of the Iron Curtain, and the shadow of a frightened United States government.  When the Berlin Wall came down I was too young to understand the significance of it.  I didn’t even know what “Soviet” was, other than my map said Union of Soviet Socialist Republics and that’s where the Russians were from.  I never lived under the threat of nuclear war.  Now I’m starting to wonder if I’ll get that “opportunity”.

The war between Russia and Georgia may cause a major reconsideration on how the West views Russia.  We have hard talk from Washington pledge to help the Georgians, Poland has finally agreed to hosting a missile shield location for the US, and Russia does not appear to be backing down in the conflict.  What are we looking at here?  Increased hostilities between the West and Russia?  They may not be Soviet anymore, but they still have one of the largest nuclear arsenals in the world, and bitterness could certainly still be a factor after we helped them into economic collapse with the arms race.  If Russia is looking to expand back into the areas that gained their independence after that collapse we could be looking at a second Cold (hopefully cold) War.  Russia is angry at our support of Georgia, we’re angry that Russia has invaded Georgia, and neither of us seem to be backing down, or even attempting diplomacy beyond telling Russia to get out.  Russia maintains that it’s their right to “defend” the regions of Georgia that want to be autonomous.  Don’t we have too many world police already?

Anyway, I’m hoping this conflict can blow over without exposing us to a nuclear holocaust, which I’m sure it will.  In other news, John McCain is being sued for using an Obama supporting musicians music, unlicensed, in one of his campaign ads.

Posted by Wes Mueller on 08/15 at 12:00 PM  •   •  permalink

Sorry about the short post today.  As the day went forward I just started realizing that it was another slow day as far as noteworthy news goes, so I through this together so you’d have something to read at least.

The Air Force Cyber Command was being developed under the idea that the calling of the Air Force was to command the air, space, and now cyberspace.  They were going to be there to defend our freedoms on the internet, and attack those who would harm those freedoms.  How?  Well, they weren’t exactly sure of that.  Thus, the Air Force Cyber Command is about to be suspended before any more resources and man power go into a project that no one in the military is quite sure how to get working.  I’m personally not sure that it’s a good idea to abandon this project right now.

The future of warfare is going to involve the internet.  There will be cyber attacks coinciding with bombing runs, D.D.O.S. attacks along side invasions.  If we really want to defend ourselves we are going to need people who are trained in cyber warfare and know how to combat it.  Right now we’re seeing an example of this with the D.D.O.S. attacks against Georgian government websites that forced them to move temporarily to a Blogspot account.  It’s clear already that this is going to be something we’ll have to defend ourselves from, especially if we’re attacked by a country that has more of an internet infrastructure than Iraq.  We don’t have to imagine the trouble that would cause, because we’ve just witnessed it overseas. 

It’s not like it would be hard for the government to find hackers to take up this cause.  Hit up Defcon next year, just say that you’ll pay for computers to their specifications and that all they have to do is make sure that other hackers can’t attack them.  Put some stripes on their shoulder, give them an office, and let ‘em fly.

Posted by Wes Mueller on 08/13 at 12:44 PM  •   •  permalink