News and Views From my kids accomplishments, to my heretical perspective of the world

There’s a lot of talk about “Net Neutrality” lately.

Basically, net neutrality means that those who provide and control the internet cannot adjust speeds or give preference based on content or other criteria. They have to remain “neutral” to the content.

Here’s a useful analogy: Compare an electricity utility and cable (or satellite) TV. For electricity you pay a monthly bill and get electricity that you can use however you want; lighting, TV, computer, air conditioning. You pay more to use more, but how you use it is entirely up to you. The power company can’t offer you more reliable power if you install a certain brand of air conditioner. With cable TV you also pay a monthly bill, but the cable company has much more control about what is available to watch. You can choose a “package” of programs and add on premium channels, but the company assembles the packages, and they often depend on financial agreements between the cable company and the networks.

Right now the internet is more like a utility company. You pay a monthly fee for service, but how you use that service is entirely up to you. Your ISP (Internet Service Providers like Cox or Comcast) can’t throttle your speeds for Amazon streaming movies but speed them up for Netflix movies, for example. This is the way the internet has functioned since the beginning with a few temporary exceptions, but things may be about to change.

In April of this year the FCC (which has jurisdiction over the internet) was reported to be considering changes to make the internet more like cable TV. One proposed change is that ISPs (Internet Service Providers like Cox or Comcast) can start charging internet companies like Netflix a surcharge to get a faster connection. Since Netflix uses about a third of all the bandwidth of the internet, it almost seems plausible that they might have to pay a little more for a reliable, fast connection. But the big concern I have is that a small start-up company providing some kind of video service might not have the budget to pay for a fast connection, and wouldn’t be able to compete on a level playing field. This would stifle competition and innovation.

And from the consumer’s perspective, I pay a premium for a faster connection already. Let me decide how to use that bandwidth.

The strongest opposition to net neutrality comes from the ISPs. Cox Cable would love to charge Netflix a fee for a fast connection. I can foresee situations like the current one between Dish Satellite and CNN: While they have been negotiating a contract for several weeks, I can’t watch CNN. If Cox and Netflix were negotiating their contract, would I be able to stream movies, or would Netflix be slowed to a crawl, or even blocked?

I can see a possibly acceptable compromise to net neutrality: Allocate bandwidth generally based on content type. For example, allow video streams (e.g. Neflix) priority over email. This sounds reasonable: I’d rather my email be delayed by a few seconds than have to wait while my movie stops and buffers. But this doesn’t help the cable companies at all; in fact it adds a layer of complexity to their systems, so I’m sure they would fight strongly against this approach.

An amusing side note to this discussion is that after Obama recently came out in favor of net neutrality, there were a few knee-jerk reactions from his usual opponents. Glen Beck mistakenly complains that the government wants to control the internet and says that with net neutrality the government will be able to “choke down his speeds”, which is exactly backwards. His guest asks why we would want the government intruding into the free internet which is working so well. Net neutrality keeps the internet free as it is now.

Ted Cruz calls net neutrality “Obamacare for the Internet“, that it would be government control of the internet. Politifact gives him a half-true, since net neutrality would allow the government control to the extent that they could prohibit favoritism and enforce neutrality rules.

Rush Limbaugh complains that net neutrality is just a liberal ruse to control the internet. He falsely states that “The FCC has just asserted its authority to regulate the Internet”, which is of course wrong; the FCC has had jurisdiction over the internet for years. But that jurisdiction has been mostly limited to ensuring that everyone plays fair and that all streams are created equal. When Limbaugh says that the internet is working fine and doesn’t need to change, he is agreeing with Obama, though he apparently doesn’t know that and would never admit it.

My conclusion to this is that net neutrality has worked well for years and is beneficial to the consumer. Any large changes to the system would only benefit ISPs and backbone providers, and would be our loss.

This seems like an appropriate topic for today, Friday the thirteenth, with a full moon in the sky.

I was in Las Vegas a few years ago with some friends and passed a little idle time playing Keno. Keno is a game like the lottery, where you choose some numbers and hope they match the random numbers chosen by the system.

For one of my bets, I chose the numbers 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, and 6. My companions thought I was wasting my money, since you never see a sequence like that. Better to emulate the appearance of the actual results by spreading the numbers out in a random-like manner.

But my point then and now is that this set of numbers is exactly as likely as any other set of 6 numbers. It’s true you never see a straight sequence like this, but you could choose any set of 6 numbers and say the same thing. Random is random, no numbers are preferred over any others.

To me it helps emphasize how unlikely it is to win at a game like this. If my set of sequential numbers ever came up, people would be astonished, or suspicious, and ask, “What are the odds?” The answer is that the odds are exactly the same as any other set of 6 numbers. If you’re playing a lottery with 49 balls, the odds of selecting any specific set of 6 balls is about 1 in 14 million.

Starting January 1, 2014 it is now illegal to manufacture or import incandescent light bulbs in the US.

Actually, the law (signed by George W. Bush) doesn’t specifically state incandescents. It just sets a maximum wattage to produce a given amount of light, from 40 to 100 watt equivalents, and there are many loopholes for appliance, 3-way, reflector, rough service and decorative bulbs. There are also incandescent halogen bulbs that meet the standards, but given price, longevity and performance it probably makes more sense to go with CFL or LED bulbs for most applications.

I’ve started converting my whole house to LED bulbs, gradually replacing the incandescent and CFL bulbs as they burn out. The data I have collected over 15 years shows that CFL bulbs actually do last much longer than incandescent bulbs, and my early data shows that LEDs last at least as long (I won’t know for sure until some burn out). CFLs continue to be cheaper than LEDs, but LEDs come on instantly to full brightness, contain no mercury and I like the color better. The one advantage of CFLs is the relatively soothing ramp up in brightness in the early morning that lets my eyes adjust.

I’m sure some will complain about the “nanny state”, or government tyranny, but I think the improvements in energy conservation will be worth the inconvenience. The American Council for Energy Efficient Economy states that the average household uses 5 – 10% of their electricity for lighting, spending $50 – $150 per year, and that doesn’t include the added air conditioning costs in the summer to remove the excess heat (though admittedly some of that heat will reduce heating costs in the winter).

GE has some good information about the change here.

The word “malaria” comes from the Latin for “bad air”. Before the mosquito connection was discovered, people thought that the disease came from exposure to air from swamps. Black Plague in the middle ages was also thought to be caused by exposure to bad air, and the rat-flea connection was only discovered in the 19th century or later.

There are similar examples that we scoff at today, but how about the belief that exposure to cold air causes the common cold? It is commonly accepted that viruses are involved, but there is a strongly held belief that exposure to cold somehow reduces the bodies resistance to the infection or enables the transmission. How often do you hear mothers admonishing their kids to put on a coat so they don’t get sick?

We all know that colds seem to increase in the winter. One theory that the increase is because of crowding indoors during cold winter months doesn’t seem to apply to a place like Phoenix, where people are more likely to crowd indoors during the hot summer months and come outside during the pleasant winter months, yet colds are more prevalent here in the winter too.

The latest research indicates that there may be a connection between the cooling of the nasal passages and the susceptibility of being infected, though of course the virus has to be present. Research also indicates that cooling of the body in general does not seem to have an effect on the immune system, though extreme chilling of the body core itself may be an exception.

My take from this is to only wear a jacket if it truly makes me more comfortable. But of course, medical experts insist that the best way to avoid infection by rhino-virus is to frequently wash your hands, and avoid hand-eye or hand-nose contact. Breathing someone elses sneeze or kissing a sick person are also probably bad ideas, and under no circumstances should you kiss someone while they are sneezing.