Off on a Tangent’s live election coverage has concluded, as all races I am following have projected winners. The Washington Post reports that the Democratic Party has gained a majority in the Virginia Senate, while the Republican Party maintains a narrow majority in the Virginia House of Delegates. All signs in Northern Virginia point to sweeping local gains by the Democratic Party. Nearly all Democratic incumbents have retained their seats in the region, while many incumbent Republicans have lost their seats to Democratic challengers. The Democratic Party, however, did not make strong gains outside of the urban/suburban areas of the Commonwealth.
The Great Week of Upgrades
Happy Upgrade Week! Due to a number of unrelated events, much of my technology world saw major changes and upgrades over the last week or so. My main computer and my phone both saw major operating system upgrades, and my iPod was replaced entirely. Following are my (very brief) impressions of Max OS X 10.5 ‘Leopard’, the iPod Classic 80gb, and Windows Mobile 6 Professional. . . .
Apple iTunes & Amazon MP3
Overview
I purchase my music legally. My collection—over 4,200 songs—has been laboriously obtained over many years through legitimate music retailers, and I allow myself a monthly budget of about $20 for buying music (sometimes more, sometimes less depending on my other, more important financial obligations). I am, needless to say, a music lover. Pink Floyd, the Beatles, Aerosmith, Matchbox Twenty, Yo-Yo Ma, the Bee Gees, Stevie Wonder, Chicago, Maroon 5, Eminem, Metallica, John Denver, the Eagles, and Vladamir Horowitz are just a few of the names in my collection—I have fairly eclectic and wide-ranging taste.
Website 19.1 Revision
Today I lunched a minor revision to Off on a Tangent, bringing the version to 19.1. This is a relatively minor update, as I am generally very happy with the look and functionality of v19. The only big change is that the site now spans to the width of your browser window, which will make the big-screeners happy, and a spiffy little JavaScript I wrote automatically decides how many pictures of me to display in the header bar to fill the variable space. I also made the name of the site a bit bigger. As an aside, the Joomla 1.5 release is [finally] approaching, so I’m starting to give some thought to Website 20. If you have ideas, send them in soon!
Comcast Blocks Some Internet Traffic
This, my friends, is why we need laws about Net Neutrality. Independent testing shows that Comcast, the second largest Internet service provider, actively interferes with BitTorrent file sharing by its customers. BitTorrent, while sometimes used for the illegal transfer of copyrighted material, is also used by hundreds of legitimate companies and organizations to quickly distribute large files. For example, OpenOffice.org, Ubuntu Linux, and other organizations with large downloadable products each offer and encourage downloading with BitTorrent. I’d bet that Verizon and other ISPs discriminate against BitTorrent traffic too (I am starting to have strange issues sharing legal ‘torrents’ myself). I have a right to use my Internet connection for whatever kind of legal data traffic I want, and it is time to protect that right by law.
- Comcast Blocks Some Internet Traffic (AP via MSNBC).
The views expressed in this post are mine and mine alone. They do not necessarily reflect the views of my employer, Web.com.
Scott Bradford is a writer and technologist who has been putting his opinions online since 1995. He believes in three inviolable human rights: life, liberty, and property. He is a Catholic Christian who worships the trinitarian God described in the Nicene Creed. Scott is a husband, nerd, pet lover, and AMC/Jeep enthusiast with a B.S. degree in public administration from George Mason University.