A good use of time at work

I kind of love the internet.

Let me tell you why.  It's because people, when blessed with complete anonymity, create some pretty fantastic things.  Not fantastic in that they're aesthetically pleasing or helpful to anyone, but fantastic in that they're gut-wrenchingly hilarious.

Behold, a timeline of memes.

Memes, by the way, are those things the media picks up every so often.  They are hilarious things that are readily available for free on the internet, therefore it's a pretty awesome investment for any media outlet.  They're little cute trends that spread around the internet and usually make absolutely no sense.  Which is why they're funny.  Anyone who tries to make a more scientific explanation of this is wasting their time.

I might, from time to time, talk about one or the other of these memes, just because they're amusing to me, which means they're amusing to everyone else.

This little foray into internet culture comes from a bit of research into Net Neutrality.  Prompted by this article in the National Journal.  Apparently Congress is aiming to take away the FCC's ability to keep ISPs from having even MORE control over a commodity they're already ripping everyone off for.  It's funny because, kind of like the media reporting on memes, they develop none of the content that people want to access, yet they make money off people accessing it.

I'm not going to get long-winded about this, because it's unnecesary.  Congress has tried this before.  The RIAA has tried this before.  Microsoft has tried this before.  No matter what they try and do, the elements these people are trying to suppress are a lot smarter and a lot more numerous than them. 

Whether or not Net Neutrality gets preserved, it will be preserved.  If you have any doubts about that, I'd recommend you ask Apple how many iPhones have been jailbroken.  Or Microsoft how many illegal copies of Windows are out there.

In the words of Al Gore: