I'm Sorry...

but you're all going to have to start 
reading a heck of a lot faster.

Okay, that's not me or my house, and my antenna is slightly smaller, just a tad... or so it seems perched on the ridge line of my home.  Western Hero, at least some of it has jumped into the latter part of the 20th century with both feet and is now coming to you via a microwave broadband link.  Now, I say late 20th century because if you have fiber or FiOS I don't want to hear it, and for the record... I hate you.

It wasn't all that long ago (okay it was a little more than a decade) that I moved from a little fishing village on the shores of the Yellow Sea (okay, it was really just outside Pyeongtaek, not to be confused with that worker's paradise - Pyongyang) trading my 11 Mbps connection for that greatest American invention since sliced bread... dial-up.  I was overjoyed a little less than a decade ago when I traded that dial-up for a 1.5 Mbps DSL line, a speed I have been languishing at ever since (best available).

Now I'll jump up on my soapbox and point out the the #1 country for internet speed at an average connection speed of 23.6 Mbps is, drum roll please... South Korea.  Guess who's #10...

Wrong again, it's Ireland... the US is currently sitting at number 11with a not so astonishingly fast 10.5 Mbps, although #2 Japan is only 14.6 Mbps.

Me, I'm currently sitting at 8 Mbps although they're coming back tomorrow with a taller mast and promising 18-20 Mbps.  Why you may ask...

Actually a couple of weeks ago my flat screen gave up the ghost and we wound up buying one of the new 4K Ultra HDTVs.  Now, no one is offering 4K video yet with the exception of NetFlix and a few other streaming sources and as my research has indicated you need a minimum of 15 Mbps to stream 4K video I've gone broadband.  Why do we need 4K video? Well you'll have to take that up with my darling wife ;)  That and the fact that I'll be saving $105 a month by switching all my data and communication services to a local company.  Heck, they're treating me right so I figured I'd give'em a plug.

For those of you that are interested, 4K Blu-ray is due out mid to late summer and Dish Network, who I also switched to, is due to have a 4K Ultra box also this summer. Strangely enough Direct TV does offer 4K service but apparently in some kind of proprietary format thing that only works with one TV currently on the market, the Samsung UHD/4K model which is "Direct TV Ready", well if your reading this Direct TV, wise business move... you've lost a ten-year customer.

Why am I telling you all this? Well I've been disconnected from the internet all day and unable to do any research.  How 'bout them Pats!

WELCOME TO THE DANGER ZONE

Revolutionary thought at a whole heck of a lot of bits per second. 

Trollz

John Bauer - 1915

AMAZING SCIENTIFIC BREAKTRHOUGH

Those dark denizens of the internet really are horrible people.  

The research, conducted by Erin Buckels of the University of Manitoba and two colleagues, sought to directly investigate whether people who engage in trolling are characterized by personality traits that fall in the so-called Dark Tetrad: Machiavellianism (willingness to manipulate and deceive others), narcissism (egotism and self-obsession), psychopathy (the lack of remorse and empathy), and sadism (pleasure in the suffering of others).

Slate

Of all personality measures, sadism showed the most robust associations with trolling and, importantly, the relationship was specific to trolling behavior.

Science Direct

Administration vs. Legislation

We all know how annoying trolls can be and some in outrage or offense would like to see an end to internet anonymity.  Last year Huffington Post began requiring visitors to identify themselves by name, that is certainly within the prerogative of the owners and administrators of Huffington Post... their site, their rules. I may disagree with Arianna when she says:

"Freedom of expression is given to people who stand up for what they're saying and who are not hiding behind anonymity,"

 And may point to Thomas Paine publishing Common Sense as "written by an Englishman", but as I said, her site, her rules.

More dangerous are those that propose legislating away the possibility of internet anonymity.  First, internet anonymity is superficial at best, none of us have real anonymity.  Your ISP know who you are, leaving the proverbial trail of breadcrumbs straight to your door, back here behind the curtain at Western Hero, I have seen how easy it is to track a commenter back to his lair.   

Internet anonymity provides us not anonymity from our ISP or from the government, it provides us anonymity, for the most part, from each other.  While that anonymity can be abused it also provides a level of comfort or a relatively effective level of non-attribution.  

The best argument for anonymity I have heard is what I'll call the John Smith argument.  The John Smiths of the world are relatively safe, there are 46,000 John Smiths in the United States.  There are 81 other people in the US that share my name... there is one Aloysius Guggenheim.  Do you think Aloysius Guggenheim wants to post comments on an Irritable Bowel Syndrome forum?  It doesn't take a degree from the University of the Obvious to figure that one out.

Suffer the Little Trolls...

and forbid them not, to come unto me: for of such is the Kingdom of Internet.

The Selfie

Robert Cornelius

The photo above is presumed to be the first "Selfie" taken in 1839 by Robert Cornelius.  With the advent of the Kodak box camera, Selfies moved from the realm of the professional to the amateur.

Unknown

It wasn't until the advent of the internet and the camera phone that things really started to go downhill.

Child Pornography

A sixteen year old girl in Virginia takes a nude selfie of herself and shares it with her friends on Twitter.  Someone notifies a school resource officer who talks to the girl, her parents, and then notifies the authorities.  The authorities then charge the girl with one felony count of possession, reproduction, distribution, solicitation, and facilitation of child pornography.  The minimum sentence associated with the charge is five years.  Had any of her friends retweeted the image, they would also be guilty.

CBS News 

Rare but increasing

Involvement of the authorities is a rare but increasing phenomena.  Two teens in Los Angeles have been charged after swapping nude photos, two teens in Florida have also been charged.  In the worst case among the many I stumbled across browsing news stories was that of the State of Tennessee stamping out a "child pornography ring"... 24 teens who were swapping nude selfies amongst themselves.

Misapplication of the Law?

Laws that were written and implemented to protect children from adult predators are being used to prosecute, some say persecute, the children themselves.  Not confined solely to the United States there have been similar cases in Canada and Australia, as far as Europe goes I found one case in Malta (although that was a case of reposting by a third party).  

Of Questionable Taste

Other selfie phenomena that have manifested in our digital age are funeral selfies, including selfies with the deceased, homeless selfies in which one intentionally captures a homeless person in the background, and accident selfies in which one captures oneself in the aftermath of tragedy. One woman even captured a selfie with a man attempting to commit suicide off the Brooklyn Bridge.

J.N.L

Internet Anonymity

Progressives grasp at any opportunity to quash free speech.  The internet and the anonymity it provides is a fat target for them.  How can internet speech be "managed," they ask?

Stanley Fish explores this subject in his NY Times piece, Anonymity and the Dark Side of the Internet.  He employs the work of liberal thinkers who claim to be for free speech but then start throwing around concepts like "managing free speech" and coining terms like "low-value speech."  When you hear Sunsteinian progressives talk like this, watch out! 

"What is remarkable about this volume is that the legal academics who make the arguments I have rehearsed are by and large strong free-speech advocates.

Yet faced with the problems posed by the Internet, they start talking about “low value” speech (a concept strong first-amendment doctrine rejects) and saying things like “autonomy resides not in free choice per se but in choosing wisely” and “society needs not an absence of ‘chill,’ but an optimal level.”(In short, let’s figure out which forms of speech we should discourage.)"

How does "society" establish an "optimal level" of "chill?"  Who decides just what that optimal level is, and how do you impose it?  I am chilled just reading these clawing control freaks.

This issue, like all progressive baloney, springs from a manufactured dilemma built upon a false premise.  Here's what it's really all about:  Stopping those accursed rightwing bloggers!

The practice of withholding the identity of the speaker is strategic, and one purpose of the strategy (this is the second problem with anonymity) is to avoid responsibility and accountability for what one is saying.

Anonymity, Martha Nussbaum, a professor of law and philosophy at the University of Chicago observes, allows Internet bloggers “to create for themselves a shame-free zone in which they can inflict shame on others.” The power of the bloggers, she continues, “depends on their ability to insulate their Internet selves from responsibility in the real world, while ensuring real-world consequences” for those they injure.

There are a few problems with this...

First, Silverfiddle's blog does not carry the same weight as the NY Times.  I can level the most outrageous of charges and barely cause a ripple.  The New York Times can end careers with a single sentence.   

Second, the author can produce no instance where bloggers in this "shame free zone" injured anyone.  Why not?  Because it's never happened!  The few attempts I remember fell pretty flat.  Palin rumors, Obama cocaine and gay sex stories, Christine O'Donnell's halloween sex adventure, Nikki Haley adultery...  It's all been thrown out there, and there was no "there" there.  None of these people were destroyed by anonymous, unsubstantiated claims.

Anonymity is Overblown

Not all of us are so stupid as to ingest and regurgitate whatever someone pukes out.  Responsible people do some homework and demand evidence.  A scandalous broadside may garner attention, but the accuser must eventually put up or shut up.  Failure of the accuser to pop his head up and provide proof discredits him.

Anonymity is overblown anyway.  A skeptical Daniel Solove at Concurring Opinions ask, Is Anonymous Blogging Possible?  The answer is no, it is not.  If they want you, they can come and get you.

An anonymous person simply does not have the power the hysterical progressives claim he does.  This is a crisis invented by big government statists as a pretext for them to take even more power and control over our lives.