In the USA we are having ridiculously cold weather across the eastern two-thirds of the country, north to south. On the west coast side I have the windows open and the fan on. But, only on local stations are you hearing about how extensive and record breaking the cold is. Drudge Report has more of the ‘collected’ headlines today and those stories lead to more stories:
Philosophy
Net Neutrality Ending
The political battle for control of the Internet is being won by politicians, citizens are losing. This loss is very likely to impact everyone in Second Life.
Consider. The news citizens can post on the Internet is mostly uncontrolled, as pure a case of freedom of speech as anyone has. For politicians this a disaster and a threat for their control and power. The Internet gives minorities, crazy or sane, a voice they have never had.
Server Move
Some of you will have noticed the site was a mess for a few hours. I had done an update to WordPress and it did not go well. Go Daddy suggested we move from my Windows Server to Linux to solve some problems. I had been wanting to do that for some time. So, I swallowed and we went for it.
In the move they made a typo. It took a couple of hours to figure out what went wrong.
You’ll notice that most of the images disappeared. I am still sorting that out. I use Shortcodes Ultimate to work with images. Something in that plug-in didn’t work well with the transfer to Linux. So, I’ll have to hunt that change that down.
Plus I have to run through all the ASP pages I used in other sites in this servers and change them out. But, that is another story.
2014 COULD be the Hottest Year on Record
I suspect most of us have heard the statement. I wonder how many actually caught the world ‘could‘? Well, 2014 could be the coldest year. Neither are likely. But, how will we know which? How about looking at the satellite measurement records?
Graph source is from Roy Spencer, Ph.D. He collected data from the source data kept by the two leading groups of researchers; the UAH group, and the Remote Sensing Systems [RSS] group. For details see his write up: Why 2014 Won’t Be.
The Ebola Wars
The New Yorker has an article titled The Ebloa Wars. If you are trying to get perspective on the current epidemic this is a good read.
This article is change from the horrid information about Ebola we are getting from the government and most of the news media. From the US President we are getting a steady stream of lies. His first; no one with Ebola will make it to the US. Oops! He tells us airport screening in the US will stop infected people. Oops! But, he also says we’ll have a few people with Ebola arrive in New York and make it through screening. O.O
Facebook Name Policy
Toysoldier Thor is going activist in an attempt to get Facebook to change their policy on names and allow anonymous users. I doubt such a change can happen because it would damage a successful financial model. But, I could be wrong. So, help him if you think it a good idea.
See: Time Facebook Fixes “Real Names Only” TOS.
I suppose if anonymous activists can figure out a way to have a financial impact on FB then they may be able to affect a change. But, to do that one must understand FB’s financial model.