The FTC is Lame

I think that today was like my fastest day of work. It really flew by, and I ended up staying until 6PM without getting the feeling that I was working late. I needed a power nap around 4:30, but that was about it. I have a design review meeting tomorrow and need to get some more work done tonight for it so I'm wanting to blaze through this post. I know that the title is a little childish, but I just couldn't come up with anything better. The Federal Trade Commission is saying that this whole net neutrality thing is exaggerated and legislation isn't really necessary to preserve it. This is just a report, so it has no legal binding to it, but I'm sure Congress will put a lot of stock into it since they are the freaking FTC, after all. I don't know if they've been bribed or anything by the telcos, I think that they probably see it as a far-fetched threat rather than the pressing issue that most geeks see it as. Personally, I think that the Internet does need serious protection from the government, even though I'm usually not big on government intervention, because it's a freedom that we're trying to protect; the freedom to view the Internet without censorship or discrimination of content providers. The FTC didn't totally roll over though, they do state provisions to revise this report should the situation become more dire, but by then I fear it may be too late.

Apple put up another great iPhone video, and this one outlines the usability of the on-screen keyboard. The word completion is nice, but what's much nicer is the correction of mistypings on-the-fly and more likely letters becoming larger on the keyboard dynamically. Once again, very cool stuff from this device, but let's not forget its downfalls. Consider those before you stand in line on Friday at an official AT&T retailer.

Supposedly, iTunes 7.3, the version required by the iPhone but not out yet, will allow you to create ringtones from your iTunes purchases. The price of this conversion will be $1 apiece, but no word on whether your ripped songs will be compatible with this service or not (I doubt it).

Kevin Rose has been working on another web 2.0 startup called Pownce, and it's just kind of a sharing network. I requested to be in the beta, but it really doesn't look all that exciting. It almost looks like it wants to be a more elegant, better-backed Facebook. We'll see what comes of it; it was just a pet project, after all.

I just installed this Firefox extension called PicLens that displays the pictures on sites like Flickr and Google Images and such in a slideshow-like fullscreen format for easy viewing and navigation. I highly recommend it because it's one of the most visually appealing and usable Firefox extensions I've ever used.

Now for a couple of one-liners. If you're a cheap bastard like me and shop online for your travel needs then check out this short article pointing out the best steps to take to find cheap flights. The other thing is Time's list of 25 sites we can't live without, and my bread and butter, Amazon, tops the list. Just had to plug that.

We have a trailer for David Cronenberg's Eastern Promises, and I like it, but it seems a little dry. I'm a sucker for mob movies, but I don't know how compelling the plot will end up being.

AICN has plot details from the Harold and Kumar sequel, and they're spoilerific and still not funny. I'm sure it'll look better than it sounds though, so I'll hold off on passing judgement for now.