PROTECT IP / SOPA Breaks The Internet from Fight for the Future on Vimeo.

Tell Congress not to censor the internet NOW! – http://www.fightforthefuture.org/pipa

PROTECT-IP is a bill that has been introduced in the Senate and the House and is moving quickly through Congress. It gives the government and corporations the ability to censor the net, in the name of protecting “creativity”. The law would let the government or corporations censor entire sites– they just have to convince a judge that the site is “dedicated to copyright infringement.”

The government has already wrongly shut down sites without any recourse to the site owner. Under this bill, sharing a video with anything copyrighted in it, or what sites like Youtube and Twitter do, would be considered illegal behavior according to this bill.

According to the Congressional Budget Office, this bill would cost us $47 million tax dollars a year — that’s for a fix that won’t work, disrupts the internet, stifles innovation, shuts out diverse voices, and censors the internet. This bill is bad for creativity and does not protect your rights.

The coat I bought doubles as a farm coat and an office coat. When funds are spare, you quickly learn to make your clothes multi-task. Thanks to a lovely Christmas donation from my sister-in-law (and a 15% manager’s sale), what I ended up with is a nice, heavy-weight coat from Tractor Supply.

For those not familiar, TSC typically deals in two brands of winter work gear — Carhartt and Schmidt. Now, I’m a fan of Carhartt. My in-laws gave me a nice set of heavy bib coveralls a couple of years back, and after wearing them for an hour or two of barn work in January, I’m typically drenched in sweat. Saying they keep me warm is a bit of an understatement.

The trouble with Carhartt is that all their stuff is expensive. They are to farm winter wear what Levi or Abercrombie are to blue jeans. This time around, I decided to go with TSC’s other brand, Schmidt. I picked the heaviest weight coat I could find and brought it home.

I’ve been exceptionally happy with it already.

Which begs the question in the title of this post — what’s in a name brand? If this sample is representative, then both Carhartt and Schmidt are effectively equivalent in terms of quality. The only difference I see between the two is the name of the brand — and the price tag. I don’t really think, given my experience so far, that Carhartt merits paying twice as much as for Schmidt products, but then again I also won’t pay twice as much for my blue jeans when a product half the cost will do just as well, especially since all my clothes end ultimately end up in the barnyard anyway.

There are some products in which I am name-brand loyal, but Carhartt is not one of them. I’d much rather make every dollar in my wallet as far as I can. Hopefully, this coat will last for several years — and I suspect my next cost will also be a Schmidt.

Regardless of what the OWS movement is actually about and regardless of what your personal opinion of the movement is, it’s become rather clear that the OWS movement is making a definitive point, and that point is a wee bit unsettling. What has become evident is that the various government entities in the US, whether it be at the city, state, or federal levels, don’t actually value and protect a citizen’s right to free speech nearly as much as they claim to. It’s interesting to me that what the OWS movement has succeeded in doing, more than anything at this point, is drawing out corruption in certain authoritative bodies and driving the rest to silence.

As a spectator it’s frustrating to watch because I’d like to believe that we live in a country where people have the right to gather peacefully and protest, whether or not you agree with the cause. It’s disheartening to see those rights being trampled almost every day and to realize that the only people standing up for civil rights seem to be bloggers and protest groups in other countries. It feels a little bit like the US has taken a step backwards these last few weeks — or maybe it’s really just that I’m discovering we aren’t really as progressive and enlightened as I thought.

I don’t know if the Occupy movement will ever accomplish its original purpose of weeding out corruption and greed in corporate America, but I do hope that, if nothing else, it wakes people up to the fact that many of our government officials are just as corrupt and tyrannical. Hopefully, people are paying attention, and with any luck, the Occupy movement will accomplish some good on more than one front.

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Our little ship coasted on the rough turbulence around Yvonne’s Delight. We were five days out from the Hydras, running a shipload of tetrahydride to Phis Minor. The pilots up front yelled incomprehensible vectors at each other, every now and then passing me a new set of data. I was too busy to notice, fingers tapping away in a frenzy at the holographic keyboard.

“We’re going to need the routing code quick, Carto!”

“Carto, estimate time is four-half seconds!”

“No way, four-half secs? The fastest record is four-two!”

“No choice, four-five is the best we can do. Leave it.”

“Coming up! Lock and load!”

I looked up calmly, fingers still flying over the surface in front of me.

“Code ready. Move into position Five-Five-Nine-Delta-Five.”

“Roger that, Carto. T-minus five seconds!”

“Routing code ready. Extend vector array.”

“Array’s up, hurry!”

“Code base logic written.”

“Come on!”

The instability changed to smooth running.

“My god. That…”

“Was three-nine. Our carto’s broken the record!”

Everyone’s seen them. You load the page for the latest viral video or the most recent update to your favorite web series, and the video player loads a screen similar to the one above. You have to provide the information requested to view the video, and you do so at once because the video is just that friggin’ awesome.

But you have to wonder — what’s the point of the age gate? I mean, I get the point. In theory, it’s supposed to weed out viewers who aren’t considered “mature” enough to view the media in question. At least, I think that’s the point. The thing I keep tripping over in my logical analysis, though, is the fact that age gates are pretty easy to subvert. Heck, it’s like they don’t even try to do anything more than put up token resistance, y’know? It’s almost like age gates throw up their hands and back away slowly, saying, “Hey, we know you’re not an adult and you’re just going to enter a false birthdate into the form so you can watch this video. And really, we’re not going to try to stop you. We just have to play a little CYA, y’know? We were never designed to be a serious security measure.”

Then again, maybe I’m wrong. Maybe age gates exist just so publishers can collect a little demographic data on their viewers. That, at least, would make the silly things at least a little worthwhile.