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It looks like congress had a hearing about net neutrality and they still don’t understand the issue: http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/news/2011/05/a-rube-goldberg-theory-of-regulation-net-neutrality-hearing-gets-testy.ars. What options do you have with limited options or in some cases a monopoly? How can you say one doesn’t exist when your DSL provider is limited to 256k upload download and the only cable company in town caps your monthly internet usage at 50GB? I’m fortunate to live in an area with Fios, with a pretty damn speedy 15mbps/5mbps connection for a reasonable price. But my parents are limited to Time Warner Cable and DSL clocked at 1.5mbps/256k for the same price I pay for my internet. I keep reading stories about the caps in Canada, as low as 50GB and in New Zealand, as low as 50GB. How can we have another Apple of internet services that starts in the garage if our home broadband is so expensive? And we’re still behind some other countries like South Korea where you can get a 100mbit/100mbit connection for US $30/month. But there is still hope! If only each city would invest like it does for water and sewer systems and bring in Fiber to the Home where an ISP can hook you up for no or minimal cost? And finally treat the internet like it is, a utility and not a service. Its the future for heaven’s sake! Just look at companies like Facebook, Google, Yahoo, Netflix, and Amazon. If we allow the ISPs to do what they want with the monopolies they have where we don’t have any options of anything comparably different we’re screwed. I like what some cities in Utah have banded together to do, which is what I said before, that the internet should be a utility and open to competition. The city invests in the infrastructure and leases it out to ISPs when someone signs up: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Utah_Telecommunication_Open_Infrastructure_Agency. Or is that too close to socialism or some other stupid argument?

Of course when you propose competition, the current monopoly steps up: http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/news/2009/10/want-50mbps-internet-in-your-town-threaten-to-roll-out-your-own.ars

I'm still in the process of getting a house, so I thought I'd provide some insight into how I see the market since I'm in the thick of it. I'd like to start by saying that what the news says is false, with a little bit of truth. It is true that the housing prices have dropped a lot, which is mainly due to the amount of foreclosed homes on the market. But homes in the low range (<400k) are selling like mad, especially in Ventura County (California). So the market is still moving, except house prices have dropped. In my mind it is a good thing that the price of homes has dropped, as it allows more people to move into homes they can afford. The market the past couple of years has been insane with homes in the 500k+ range, even for small homes. Thats a half-million dollar home. How can someone who makes even 100k a year afford that type of home? Well you finance it at a low rate, with nothing down, which will adjust at some point to a higher rate. Thats why the market crashed, the high price of homes that was out of proportion to incomes in California, it couldn't go on forever. Now we're here.

There are a few problems that we've encountered while looking for a home. One is that there are now a lot of sharks in the market. We've seen people out looking for an investment property since houses are much cheaper now. When we submit an offer there are usually multiple offers, some of them cash offers. It makes it hard for us to get something within our price range and it just plain sucks. But these people have been doing this even in the higher-priced market, so its expected. Another problem we've hit is pre-approvals. I have preapproval from americorp financing, but apparently that isn't enough. We're bidding on foreclosed homes, owned by banks. So what do they want us to do? Get pre-approved through them! On the outside they want preapproval so they can ensure the property will close escrow, so if your financing goes through you have them to finance through. But I have another theory. The big one I've had trouble with is Countrywide, the leader in foreclosed homes. So much so that they have their own marketplace set up to sell their newly acquired assets. Plus they want you to get approval through them… so you might end up getting a loan from them… so they keep the property under their title (or lien, or whatever) and let you rent. If you're lucky and you pay off your loan, they get income from the interest on the loan. If you don't, they repocess the property, still getting something from the interest and resell to another chum. Sounds like a profitable business. But thats just a theory. More updates when they happen.

I just noticed this little trick of Microsoft to push its apps, here goes: I run OpenOffice Writer instead of Microsoft's Word because of the equation editor. The equation editor in openoffice lets me take notes in math class, thats how cool it is. With Microsoft's Equation Editor I spend all my time with my mouse, click click clicking my life away trying to build simple equations. In any event, I just popped open my start menu to open it again and walaa, I have an entry for Microsoft Word and Openoffice.org Writer. Hold on, you might be saying, isn't that normal? Well, this is in the most recently used section of the Start Menu, not the programs folder that I'm seeing this. And oddly, even though I use OpenOffice way more than I have used Word in the past, Windows decided to put Microsoft Word on top. I guess its more important than these other applications I have. Hell, I pull open Internet Explorer once in a blue moon and it jumps up to #2 or #3 in this list. So, I really do think that Microsoft is pushing their applications, by weighting them higher, than other applications that you use more often.

(They're out to get us all!)