Almost nothing I do on the ‘Net can be done in a reasonable fashion on dial-up speeds, and I almost never stream anything or watch video. Every site I check has so much graphic content that it just oozes and seeps across the screen when I try to load the pages. Just a like to YouTube brings the entire process to a screeching halt as you wait for the still frame to load. I don’t pay the extra bucks for DSL to sit here and wait.

This has been going on since 8AM and I haven’t even finished my normal blog run, much less grab the stuff I want for what I’m doing for a client. Why, whatever the problem is would affect my service on the Panhandle and the service in Hardee County in Southwest Florida is beyond me.

On Sunday, Keith at The Invisible Library celebrated his fourth blogiversary™. It was a quiet affair as befits a library.

August J. Pollak at Some Guy With A Website has provided a simple way of consolidating and capsulizing the Internet Argument. Just save the link and the next time there’s a flair up, post it.

Update: Apparently some guy calling himself Atrios at Eschaton is celebrating his fifth blogiversary™ today. [see “Internet Argument” above.]

Update: It’s my DSL, which is now working at about 28.8Kbps. Embarq/Sprint/whatever they call themselves these days is “aware of the problem” and their “engineers are working on it.” But no one bothered to tell the people who are paying for it. To find out you have to call and navigate the pinball phone system and rack up enough points to hear a recording. Telecoms and banks change their names more often than drug dealers.

It may be my DSL connection, but the ‘Net is extremely slow this morning. It acts like a Denial-Of-Service [DOS] attack. This really impacts my ability to work on my current project.

It could be related to all the people trying to file their taxes on this, the last day. Since the 15^th fell on the weekend, and the 16^th is a holiday in DC, people have until midnight tonight to file without penalty.

There is also a lot of traffic because of the Virginia shooting, but the information is flowing like cold oatmeal.

Things should speed up after all of the ‘Net music radio stations go out of business, thanks to the RIAA [Internet radio broadcasters dealt setback]. I have never seen an industry more hellbent on their own destruction. They are destroying their markets with greed. I don’t understand why people who “pay” terrestrial radio to play their music, want to gouge all other sources. If people don’t know your product exists, they are not apt to buy it. Too bad the large record record companies have not figured out that everyone else isn’t in their criminal class. Just because they’ve been “stealing” from artists for years doesn’t mean that everyone else is stealing from them. I don’t guess it occurs to them that if they cleaned up the way they dealt with performers, a lot of people would be more willing to deal with them. There are a lot of people who don’t look on stealing from thieves as a crime. A clue for record company executives: Charles Dickens died a while ago, so you can stop trying out for his latest novel.