This thing in Virginia is an absolute fucking atrocity. It shouldn’t have happened; it shouldn’t happen. Thing is, it did. Unless we’re completely unwilling to accept reality, it will happen again. It has gone down in schools, shopping malls and post offices. The only thing we can do to is learn from the failure here.

The massive and atrocious failure here is the failure to uphold our 2nd amendment rights. Yes, I’m talking about those rights. The rights that let us keep and bear arms. I absolutely, unequivocally believe that the death toll would have been nowhere near 30+ people if there had been a tiny percentage of students with CCW permits and a weapon. There are about 28k students at VT. Lets call it 30k people for a nice round number. In states with shall-issue permit laws, an average of 1-5% of the population have permits. Had the campus not banned guns for all students (we can clearly see the positive effect that had), we could assume that 1% of students would have a CCW permit. Since college kids are usually in a delusional dream-world of safety and security, its probably generous to assume 1% might carry. Maybe things like this will change that. This guy went into no less than 4 classrooms with probably 30 students in each. In at least ONE of those classrooms (with 1% CCW penetration), there would have been an armed civilian who could have put a stop to this insanity. One kid had the presence of mind to fashion a tourniquet out of an electrical cord. Thats heads up thinking. That kid, armed with a CCW could have ended all of this. Maybe not before it started. Maybe not before 5 deaths. Certainly before 30+.

I’ll be surprised if this event doesn’t turn into an all-out attack on guns. People will use this tragedy as an example of how evil guns are and how more guns = more violence. Unfortunately thats absolutely the opposite of how we should be looking at this. No one stood up to stop this guy. He managed to shoot 60 people with no resistance. Its pretty hard to fight back against a gunman with a textbook, but at least if all these victims hadn’t been disarmed someone would have been able to fight back on an even playing field.

Lets say tonight I find a magic lamp. I rub the lamp and a genie pops out. The genie says “Listen, I’m going to offer you something. I’ll make all the guns in the United States disappear. No gun will be able to enter the US without vanishing. The only place you’ll be able to shoot a gun is at a shooting range for entertainment only.” What would I do? I’d have to say I could maybe get on board with that. Except that over here in the REAL WORLD its not going to happen. Bans guns, and only bad people will have them. Then deranged people like Cho Senghwhogivesashit will be able to carry out a massacre like this, with 100% certainty that the victims won’t be armed.

I was reading and noticed this article purportedly supporting non-net-neutrality. Intrigued, I read the excerpt which cited Akamai as an example of non-net-neutrality. I have a few friends at Akamai (well, less now) and I understand what they do pretty well. Unfortunately, this clown, Professor Yoo does not.

In case you haven’t kept up on net politics. Network neutrality is probably the most important issue the net has faced. The elevator explanation is that with network neutrality (as it is now) every packet has the same priority. This is a good thing. I can be assured that while my data might hit some congestion, at least everyone else will hit the same congestion. In a non-net-neutral scenario, traffic priority is up for the highest bidder. This is something the big ISPs and traffic providers are trying to push. They see dollar signs with big companies who are pushing a lot of traffic. Apparently its not enough that both you and I as a consumer pay for bandwith, as well as the providers like Google or CNN.

Where does Akamai fit in? As Yoo-hoo explains in his article, Akamai provides a content-caching infrastructure that puts content closer to end users, rather than having all traffic go to one end point. Most of the major web sites (Amazon, Apple, CNN, MSNBC) use Akamai’s services. In essence, they are paying more to provide a higher quality of service to their end user.

The difference that Professor Yoo doesn’t understand is this. Without Akamai, CNN and MSNBC have the same priority level. In utterly-too-simple terms, they have the same chance of getting traffic to their consumers in a timely fashion. If net-neutrality were to come to an end, that neutral level of services goes away. Thats the rub. The traffic priority goes to the highest bidder. What if CNN goes to all the major ISPs and says “Listen, we want you to put our traffic above MSBNC at any cost.” No matter how much they bid, MSNBC is screwed.

Thats not to say there isn’t a case for a totally non-neutral Internet. For example, Voice-over-IP traffic is generally very small in size but demands low delays. Peer-to-peer file sharing is massive in size, and not as delay (or latency) critical. If we could legitimately prioritize traffic, and even charge people for using services like P2P that might be ok. Unfortunately there are technical reasons that make this effectively impossible.

Yoo has other flaws in his argument. This one is the only one that is glaring enough that I care to respond to.

Well, I guess placing images next to ads is no more. I’m not surprised by this, but it will be interesting to see where to go next.  If the argument is that “your visitors believe that the images and the ads are directly associated, or that the advertiser is offering the exact item found in the neighboring image, they may click the ad expecting to find something that isn’t actually being offered”, then what if I place Flash-based animations there, that couldn’t possibly be a representative product image?

Sometimes you wake up in the morning and wonder what server has exploded. Sometimes you wake up to discover the blog-o-sphere in a fury. This time it was the latter, and I guess we’re playing an e-mail chain style game. Kris Jones tagged me, and I gotta play. Fair enough. Here’s 5 things you probably didn’t know about me.

1) I was born in Italy and lived there for 18 months before coming to the United States. As a result, I also speak Italian as a native language.

2) Partly because of being born in Europe, I enjoy traveling as much as possible. I’ve traveled extensively in Europe, and at a minimum I try to get back to Italy once a year.

3) Most people think I’m a middle child or something. I’m an only child.

4) I’m an avid reader, and pretty much read anything I can get my hands on.

5) I will obsessively take hold of any new hobby or interest and learn everything I can about as quickly as possible. I have more hobbies than most people have even heard of. Computers, skiing, beer brewing, r/c, shooting, video games, cars, motorcycles and electronics just to name a few.

Here’s the part where I nail 5 other people to do the same. I’ll try not to overlap, but I apologize if I dupe someone. One of the coolest guys I’ve had the pleasure to meet at conferences, Greg Hartnett. Another one of my conference home boys, Adam Sussman (ShandyKing). The crazy german, Marcus Tandler. Since no one else (that I’ve seen) has, and it wouldn’t be fair to let him get away unscathed: Matt Cutts. Last but certainly not least, the Rainbow Six vigilante, Jen Slegg.

Apparently long-time San Diego resident Shawn Hogan has offered a free baby on the popular on-line trade and barter site Craigslist. Rumor has it, eBay feels snubbed, and is planning its own baby auction to drum up some press for itself. Now I didn’t even know Shawn had a kid, but I guess if he wants to put it up for free on Craigslist thats his business. I can see why he wouldn’t want to auction it on eBay, thats doesn’t seem quite morally sound.