Month: June 2019

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The Trump FCC Always Says It Wants Broadband Competition But Now It’s Considering Reducing Competition By Law

Whether intentional or not, the FCC will give landlords and their cable financiers grounds to reject competitive entry that did not exist prior to the FCC’s preemption. This also appears to prohibit cities from adopting forward-thinking open access fiber policies in the future through city code and other local laws. Not to mention, the FCC’s intervention in San Francisco doesn’t fulfill the agency’s actual job description: to promote competition.

Source: The FCC Is Siding With Landlords and Comcast Over Tenants Who Want Broadband Choices | Electronic Frontier Foundation

Update July 10, 2019

The FCC’s Office of Economics and Analytics released a paper titled “An Empirical Analysis of Broadband Access in Residential Multi-Tenant Environments.” on Monday. This report appears to give strong backup to EFF’s position on this issue. Hopefully the commission will now drop it’s plan to boost ISP’s monopoly status by preventing competition.

Study: Mandatory Broadband Access Laws in Multi-Tenant Environments

 

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Disable Serial Mouse Detection

Microsoft Windows’ backwards compatibility with ancient hardware is usually nice to have but sometimes it detects other serial devices as a serial mouse. This happens whether the device is connected to a real TIA-232 port or a Universal Serial Bus (USB) to TIA-232 adapter. Some USB connected devices, e.g. GPS receivers, have USB to TIA-232 convertors built right into the device.

  1. Tap the Windows key to begin a start menu search
  2. Start typing regedit and when the menu entry for Registry Editor App appears
  3. Right click the menu entry and choose Run as administrator
  4. When the, Do you want this app to make changes to your device?, prompt appears choose the Yes button
  5. Go to HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Services\sermouse
  6. Since Windows 10 updates will sometimes change this value back to the default, bookmark this entry so you can get back to it easily in the future.
  7. Change the value of the Start key from 3 to 4
  8. Close Registry Editor and reboot the PC

I learned which registry key to change and its setting options from here and here.

If you want to retain the capability of using a serial mouse and just disable it for on one port see here.

 

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Uxbridge Police Chief making excuses for the kids as he tries to downplay town’s racial problems

Source: Family decries ‘subculture of racism’ at Uxbridge High School – MetroWest Daily News bolding mine

Uxbridge Police Chief Marc Montminy said he heard from the school resource officer in early June that the school was handling the situation internally. The chief spoke to Darius’ family recently, though.

The town hasn’t had much experience with racial bias, said the chief, who came to Uxbridge last year from Manchester, Connecticut.

He also raised the possibility that the offending students might have acted more out of jealousy or rivalry toward the newcomer.

“We haven’t determined yet whether there’s intent behind it,” Montminy said. “My question, is this a racist vein that runs through the town or more likely an attempt to get under the skin of an individual?”

Classic excuse for racism, maybe it was some other factor that caused the people to use clearly racist language. Yeah right, the reality is you only use racist language when you are making racist comments, period.

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Microsoft Needs to to stop their Vice Presidents from Spreading Misinformation.

This morning I read an update of a How-To Geek article on the Windows 1903 update. It said that Microsoft’s Mike Ybarra posted that everyone can get 1903 now. Clicking the link I saw that three days ago the VP of Gaming @ Microsoft posted this:

Mike Ybarra (Verified account)
@XboxQwik
If you want Windows 10’s latest update, 1903, as of today all users can go to Windows Update and get it. Variable refresh rate and exciting news at e3 – you’ll want to have this! #XboxE3

Since Mike is Corporate Vice President – Gaming for Microsoft I thought this must be true. I checked the two Win10 PC’s in my home office (one Win10 Pro and the other Win10 Home) and the update is NOT yet available. Microsoft really needs to prevent it’s VP’s of other divisions from spreading misinformation about Windows 10 updates. It is not helpful and perpetuates the impression that Microsoft can’t be relied on for accurate information.