Net Neutrality – Not a fan.

A layman’s thoughts on Net Neutrality.

I am no expert in this, and I’m probably wrong on many points here, if so – consider this a chance to set the record straight. But here’s why I am fundamentally against Net Neutrality laws.

First, what is it? As I understand it the argument boils down to this – it’s a law that tells internet access providers that they must treat all data equally. Sounds good. I’ve also heard the term “dumb pipes”, which I really like because it’s intuitive.

But here’s my problem. I’m inherently libertarian. Why do we need laws around this? The most common answer I’ve heard is, “because Comcast and AT&T and others will abuse it to promote their own data services and throttle or limit access to sites/technologies they don’t like.”

Let’s get this straight right now – yes. They definitely will. I can’t argue with that. They have before, and they will again.

1. Monopoly practices.
So you pay Comcast or AT&T to connect you to the internet, but they start messing with your data. So what’s to stop them?

Solution: Competition.

“But I can only get reliable internet from one of them. I have no other alternative.”

Why do you think that is? Why don’t you have an alternative?

“Because there isn’t any.”

Why isn’t there any?

“There just isn’t.”

Wrong. There is, but they are too slow or otherwise can’t compete. However, if AT&T or Comcast starts their shenanigans (and they will anyway, Net Neutrality or not), then suddenly the ‘others’ become more competitive.

The problem here is not Net Neutrality, it’s Monopoly. The answer is Competition. It’s as pure as that. If you legislate this, you give more Monopoly power to the existing large providers. There is no incentive to switch off of them. It’s like gasoline. Want to reduce use of gasoline? Make it so expensive that other alternatives become attractive. There needs to be a pain point to get people to look for alternatives. Sure it hurts you in the short run. But in the long run, if that’s your goal, that’s your solution. Net Neutrality is a short term solution to a long term problem of lack of competition.

2. How ‘dumb’ is that pipe anyway?

How’s this for an analogy… Traffic signals. IMHO a ‘dumb pipe’ analogy isn’t the best. I see it more like a traffic system. We don’t want our traffic system to be ‘dumb’. Coordinated traffic signals allow smoother traffic flow than non-coordinated or non-existant traffic signals. This is already being done I’m quite sure. Take Netflix or any other streaming service. That’s a TON of data. Then compare it to your Overwatch game. Though I’ve no direct evidence, I’m quite sure your Overwatch data pales in comparison to a single Netflix movie over the same time period. What your Overwatch data needs is raw turnaround speed.

If every ma and pa is watching Netflix (and I’m completely sure that in a few short years they effectively will be) and Dumb Pipes were in place, your Overwatch data is going to be toast. It’s going to be a trickle in the ocean of video data. If true Net Neutrality was in place even now, you’d never manage to get a playable ping rate on any interactive game like that. So give up the concept of Dumb Pipes – the pipes are already smart, and we’re damned glad they are even if we don’t know it.

3. Lexus Lanes?

Currently it appears that Internet providers base their pricing solely on total throughput. How many gigs of data can you get over X period of time. Upload speed is not even part of the equation, but that’s okay for most people. But what would make more sense IMHO is that people who watch a lot of Netflix (and other video sources) should take a different path. To go back to the traffic analogy, get the damn 14 wheelers off the highway and put them onto their own highway. So if you want Netflix high-volume data, you pay a different price than if you want low-volume, low-latency. And that’s not possible with Net Neutrality. ISPs are specifically PROHIBITED from treating different data differently.

Now I grant you immediately that this sort of innovation is NOT what large ISPs will try to do. They’ll do exactly what you fear they’ll do. And it will sort itself out as more and more people come to hate the Comcasts and AT&Ts and switch to alternatives. A government-sponsored monopoly is what got us here in the first place. Net Neutrality enforces that monopoly by not giving consumers any incentive to investigate alternate providers.

At least, that’s my opinion at the moment. Change it for me.

Be careful of the tags you use!

I posted that Fitia image that I colored yesterday on my personal ‘bluedraggy’ tumblr blog instead of bdprequel blog. I just reblogged when I realized it so no sweat there. (pun not intended).

But I noticed I suddenly began getting a lot of new followers! (Why not? Who doesn’t like a goofy anthropomorphic cat with big boobs in workout clothes right?)

But then I started noticing a trend. A lot of the new followers had names that indicated particular interest in exercise and fitness. Then I realized… I’d put ‘fitness’ in for a tag!

So sorry all you exercise fans! I’m afraid this blog is most certainly NOT the blog you’re looking for. You can go about your business. Move along.

But for your time and effort, here, have another anthropomorphic cat doing deep knee bends. (Sorry, no exercise outfit here. This should scare them off!)

Katia Managan – Seeing Red

Cider drew it as a commission for Shoka. Shoka asked me if I would color it. In fact, I already had! I had been looking to find him to give me permission! Well today we connected, I did some little cleanup and can finally post this.

Original sketch:

With flat colors:

Shading. Which of course includes a little bit of chest enhancement. Sorry, it’s just what I do…

I went a bit farther on the next step. Rather than just draw eyelights, I added another layer of shading (that’s actually pretty normal) but also a bit of leg muscle enhancement.

I knew I had something good when I put those eyes in. No, her eyes aren’t red normally. But she’s pissed off. At what? Well, being trapped in a cage by Sigrid in an underground cave for one. OH! So guess what the background needs to be?

So this is Katia Managan – UNCAGED! (in her dreams at least).

a-m-kitsune:

Just thought I’d share a little something that I worked on for the prequel infiltrate update. It’s been a little while since the update came out and Makkon’s been showing of some of his contributions, so I think I’ll do the same.

Along with the fire and smoke particles on the burning torches, the 3 different rain tiles, the clouds/mist texture, the floating dust motes (wherever it’s dusty and there’s dust dancing in beams of light) and the ‘poof’ of dust when Katia lands in the cavern, Kazerad asked me if I could turn 3 static, painted frames into a smooth animation.

http://fav.me/dbda0rr

To begin with, I honestly thought he was joking as I thought that it was a ridiculous thing to ask. A smooth(ish) animated video out of 3 frames? How the hell was I going to do that? Well, it turns out that adobe after effects (the program that I use for this kind of thing) has this nifty feature where you can tell it to try to draw in new additional frames between the existing frames of any video you give it (essentially increasing the total number of frames, resulting in a smoother/longer animation). To begin with, I tried seeing how it fared adding in frames to video made of just the 3 original frames. It didn’t look good. It didn’t look good at all.

The way it tries to generate these new frames is by analyzing the pixel data of the two frames either side of what it’s trying to fill in and then drawing a sort of ‘middle ground’ between the two images. Having only frames of ‘eye’s completely open, eye’s closed and glowing, open eyes, the program made a bit of a garbled mess of the in-between frames, so I had to try something else.

Going back to photoshop (where I cut the original image up into the original 3 frame animation), I duplicated some of the layers, merged them together and used the liguify tool to roughly ‘smudge’ together some believable frames of blink animation between her eyes being fully open and fully closed.

I can’t remember exactly how many new frames I created this way, but I suspect it was 4 in total. 2 additional ‘eyes closing’ frames and 2 for opening.

Assuming those numbers are somewhat accurate, that left me with 7 frames of animation for after effects to try to extrapolate a smooth animation from as opposed to only 3. Thankfully, while not an absolutely perfect result, it worked well enough.

From there, I just had to tinker with the timing of the frames to make the motion feel like it had some weight to it, add in a little bit of additional movement (that slight head dip and raise) and create a subtle blue ‘flash’ effect to help mask the transition of the ‘normal coloured’ scene to the ‘night vision coloured’ scene (also to try to give a bit of additional ‘punch’ to the eyes opening).

There were actually numerous versions of this animation with some being flashier than others with more overt visual effects. At the end of the day though, Kazerad wanted something not too over the top, so we settled with the version you see before you.

Just bare in mind that this video version doesn’t show the pauses before the animation and between the blink and disappearing as that was added by Kazerad by simply displaying specific frames in game for longer than the others to save file space.

So there you go. that’s how a small part of the introduction to the flash that took nearly two years to complete was made.

Oh, and one final, important thing. All the things Kaz asked me to help with were generally finished and delivered within a day or so of him asking, so I’m in no way responsible for the hiatus, ok? Glad we clarified that.

Somehow I’m not surprised you did this. It is, of course, quite awesome.

Philosophical Thought

Something occurred to me yesterday and I wanted to sort of jot it down somewhere before I forgot it. It seems at once trivial and somehow significant. It’s totally not what you’d expect of me but I want to get it down anyway.

Ever sit in an old, abandoned car? I lived in very rural S. Illinois and spent hours wandering around farmland woods there as a young man, and I’ve done this before. This thought struck me yesterday:

“When you sit in an old abandoned car, there’s a feeling of melancholy and sadness. Abandoned cars are haunted, but you bring the ghosts in with you.”

No idea why that thought struck me or why it seemed so important, but it did.