newly ancient

The Justice Department has committed a blow to the internet by coming out against Net Neutrality. For those of you who do not know what net neutrality is, it is the preservation of the internet in its current state - where all providers are given equal access. Currently, you have equal opportunity to access a teenager’s blog and Fox News online. Unfortunately, broadband operators are pushing for the ability to offer “tiered service” in which websites could pay for priority access, meaning their pages would be accessed faster. Meanwhile, those who could not afford it would be forced to wait for long times to load pages. If this were to happen, we would lose a lot of the greatness and freedom surrounding the internet. The ‘net would essentially become a mirror of print media - which gives large corporations far more access to consumers but keeps small publishers from entering the game. The most interesting part of this is the fact that those who oppose net neutrality are often free market idealists. Well, the internet is the last truly free market and I certainly hope we don’t lose it to corporate interests intent upon monopolizing out lives. Speak out against censorship today.

Today, the final lost packed broke the geek’s patience. After about a years worth of problems, errors, confusion I finally got sick of using Linksys’ (hide me from the grammar police) firmware on the WRT54GS and decided to convert to the wonderful world of open source. After digging around a bit, I decided that DD-WRT would be the best solution for me. I have to admit, the real reason I chose DD-WRT was because I could actually understand how to use their website - and there is active support. After downloading the standard, generic version I was able to install it relatively easily using help from their forum, wiki, and extremely active IRC Channel. And boy am I happy I did. The web GUI is great - it uses , XHTML, and JS to create a powerful and user friendly interface that even I can use. Grab some eggnog, make excuses for not attending parties, and install DD-WRT on your wireless router.