George Zimmerman Legal Case on Facebook

An odd thing happened to me the other night. I’m surfing around on Facebook and I see an advertisement telling me that one of my friends like GZ Legal Case. Facebook gives me the choice to “Like” it, too.  I’m used to seeing all sorts of things show up in a Facebook ad.  Frosted Flakes, BMW, or stuff like that.  This is the first time that I’ve ever been asked to “Like” an admitted killer, though.

It presents a bit of a dilemma for me, too.  It’s not that I’m either a fan of George Zimmerman or one who thinks he’s a murderer.  I’m content to let that play out in court, as I honestly have no idea if he was justified in the death of Trayvon Martin or not.  Lots of folks have opinions and that’s nice, but it’s not evidence. My dilemma is about the choice between the possibility of getting information updates that may be provided from his legal team’s perspective vs. the social stigma of being seen to “Like”, or support, a person charged with 2nd degree murder.

Apparently, a number of folks don’t have any issue with it.  I took the screen shot of the Facebook cover photo a week ago and it shows 965 Likes.  Having just checked it today, the number is up to 2,414 Likes.  However, I wonder if those folks realize that deciding to Like that page may show up to their friends as a supporter of George Zimmerman?  Perhaps they are.  Maybe I’m the only one who is worried about it.  I’d like to see information and links to news articles, but I don’t want to appear partisan on either side of this case.

This case is a bit close to home for me – literally.  My home is in the same general neighborhood as the condos where the shooting took place. The walk from my house to the condo gate is about the same distance Trayvon walked to the 7-11 that night in February.  Every day, I drive by the gate and see the makeshift memorial left to commemorate Trayvon Martin. It’s a constant reminder of death and tragedy.

Trayvon Martin's Memorial - © Copyright 2012 by Orlando Local

You can see one of the signs that says “Justice for Trayvon.”  I understand the sentiment, but it’s not going to happen. It’s the same as those women who kept chanting “Justice for Caylee” during the Casey Anthony trial.  What these folks don’t understand is that the victim isn’t the one brought to justice.  Both of those children are dead and nothing will change that.  Justice is for the living.  Justice is for the accused.

Zimmerman’s attorney admits that putting up a Facebook page and a web page is a bit uncommon for such a case. I’m not sure if this is meant to sway the public opinion or to generate income for the defense – perhaps both. Otherwise, I don’t understand the point of publicizing the defense online. I just hope this trend doesn’t catch on with other defense attorneys.  Otherwise, we may see just how many of our Facebook friends really like accused criminals.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RXpMzT5yGp8

Four people in Miami were hit with bullets from police officers. After the shooting, police ran around forcing spectators at gunpoint to give up their cell phones and cameras, which were then smashed or stolen confiscated by the officers. The man who shot this video you see was a victim of police who smashed his phone.  Fortunately, he had the presence of mind to take out the SIM card and hide it in his mouth.

A Local 10 News photographer also had his camera stolen confiscated by police, while it was still running. (news report here)

Police claimed the man in the car had fired a weapon.  It took them two and a half days to plant a gun find a gun in the car.

Of course, none of  the Orlando media reported this news, perhaps because it’s not news.  It’s just another day in FLA.

Join the fun! Book signing event – meet author Aya Knight!

Purchase The Chronicles of Kale: A Dragon’s Awakening at a discounted price – or, bring your own copy!  There will be T-Shirt giveaways and free character art prints available to be signed by Aya Knight at no cost.

Stop by and say “Hello!” – Saturday only on Father’s Day weekend! (June 18, 2011)

TIME: 12pm – 4pm

LOCATION:

Sci-Fi City
6006 E Colonial Drive
Orlando, Florida

—-

The Chronicles of Kale: A Dragon’s Awakening is book 1 in a young adult fantasy series.

For more information, please visit the official website of Aya Knight (www.ayaknight.com).
To confirm event details, please contact Sci-Fi City.

Over a year ago, Bright House Networks started telling people in Orlando that RoadRunner Lightning was coming. The promise with this Internet provider service was faster speed – up to 40 Mb downloads and up to 5 Mb uploads. I’ve used RoadRunner as my cable service for years and had already upgraded to RoadRunner Turbo – up to 20 Mb downloads and up to 2 Mb uploads. Quite honestly, I never expected to upgrade to Lightning.

My reasoning was pretty simple. Why pay more for a network upgrade when your overall speed is dependent upon other network providers to transmit content? Yes, RoadRunner may have a fast pipe for its customers, but that doesn’t help a bit if you’re trying to stream online from a constrained server elsewhere on the Internet.

Why I Got RoadRunner Lightning

As with most of my life, things didn’t turn out quite the way I anticipated. With three services (Phone, Cable TV & Internet), my Bright House bill was killing me. I figured it was time to call and cancel the landline phone service. It’s not that I wanted to give it up. Plenty of folks live just fine with their cell phone, but I still prefer having a landline and the number that goes with it. However, I didn’t prefer it enough to keep paying the total of my bill.

After some games and number crunching that I still don’t understand, the customer service rep found a way to meet the monthly bill that I was willing to pay without canceling my VOIP phone service. I had to upgrade to RoadRunner Lightning to save money.

Had I called and requested this on my own, I’d be paying even more. With the prospect of losing business, they found a way to give me more for less. I asked if this was a promotional price that would expire and was told that wasn’t the case. The price I received would be my regular bill. Seemed good enough to me.

The Internet Speed Test

After having this for a month, my gut feeling is hit & miss. Sometimes it truly does feel like I’m downloading faster than using RoadRunner Turbo, but other times I can’t see any difference. Gut feelings don’t cut it, though. I put the network to the test using two different services – Bright House Network’s internal speedtest and also SpeedTest.Net’s service. Both were captured on video, so you can see what I saw. Take a look at the results:

Bright House Network Speed Test Results

SpeedTest.Net Results

Evaluating the Results

When running the test, I ensured that there was no other network traffic coming from my home. I didn’t have any other computers on or additional web browsers or services generating traffic. This was as clean as I can get in a home environment.

The good news is that the download speeds are real. I expected good results on the Bright House Networks speedtest, as they control the bandwidth and it should be evenly distributed. By that, I mean they packets should reflect only the speed of the internal RoadRunner network and not be affected by a slower external network. What I didn’t expect was to find the external speed tests to be just about as good as the internal network. It’s still possible that some external force won’t be able to keep up with the Lightning speed, but this was a pretty good result. As you can see in the chart below, it hasn’t always been that good. In fact, it’s been less than half the speed being marketed on a couple of occasions, and I fully expect to see the speed drop down on some occasions again.

Unfortunately, the upload speeds weren’t even close to the expectations set for RoadRunner Lightning. I understand that there are a lot of factors that can interfere with network transmissions, but I had higher expectations for the internal network upload tests. As it stands, it didn’t even crack the 1 Mb market. External testing was about half that speed. It may prove faster when testing at different times or conditions, but I don’t expect significant changes. That’s why the marketing is very careful to include “speeds up to” in the text. They can’t promise to deliver 40 Mb down or 5 Mb up. The uploads started off very strong when I got the service, but it’s just gotten worse over time.

The download speed delivers as close to the promise as one can realistically expect. That part of the service is great. Uploads, however, have steadily declined since I got the service. Here are the results from my previous tests with SpeedTest.net – click to expand:

speedtest results

If you want occasionally faster downloads, RoadRunner Lightning can occasionally deliver. Don’t expect any shocking upload times, though. If Bright House Networks hadn’t offered it to me as a way to save money, I wouldn’t have ordered the service.

UPDATE:

I received a comment from Chris at Bright House Networks offering to help with the performance issues cited in the speed tests here. Bright House performed some tests from their end, and then sent a couple of techs out to do more trouble-shooting. They found some noise on a coupler that was installed when I received my Lightning upgrade. The new Lightning cable modem doesn’t support my VOIP phone service from Bright House, so the technician who installed it had to create a coupler for both of them to connect.

The gentlemen who came out today discovered some noise on the line that seems to emanate from that coupler.  They replaced it and I’ll continue to measure my bandwidth on the various speed test services.

Whichever way it works out, I have to say that I’m impressed with the service I received from Bright House Networks today. They reached out to help and everyone I spoke with was great. I’m really impressed by that effort.

When location-based social media started happening, a lot of people figured it was only good for letting people know that you weren’t home, and therefore exposed you to crime. That was about a year ago. People love to warn you about the dire consequences of your actions.

You know what?  I haven’t really heard about these dire predictions coming true. The evening news reports would love to scare us with details of burglary, muggings or rape caused by Foursquare, but it just isn’t happening as those naysayers predicted. More or less, people are using Foursquare without coming home to an empty house.

That’s not to say some folks haven’t been pretty stupid about it. Once I activated the account, I was kind of surprised at the number of people who created a check-in at their house. Then again, these were people who referred to their residence as a “crib”, so I’m not assuming any great level of intelligence on their part. Here’s why I think it’s a bad idea to check-in at your residence. People nearby can see those locations and who checked-in. They can also see when you check-in elsewhere, and that’s the kind of behavior that could lead to a burglary. Most of us have patterns. We get up at the same time, go to work at the same time, come home at the same time, etc. One of my worries with the app would be that people could use it to locate you, even if you hadn’t checked-in at a specific location. That doesn’t seem to be the case.  If any of you are planning to rob me while I’m away, please know that my home address is 400 S Orange Ave,  Orlando, FL 32801-3360.  There’s a key under the doormat, so you don’t have to break any windows or locks.

One of the other aspects of using this service is trying to divine how much to share vs. how much sharing annoys other people. I connected it to my Twitter account, but I’m already re-considering that decision. By default, Foursquare wants to broadcast a lot of stuff that most people don’t care about. This morning, I checked-in for the first time and unlocked the Newbie badge. Do you care? Of course not. It may be of interest to some if we visit the same places, hence the broadcast of where I am. However, the badges are just superfluous crap and I have that stuff disabled for Twitter. I may disable the check-in updates, too.  Not so much that I’m worried about people knowing where I am (isn’t that the point of the service?), but more because I’m worried about being an annoying prick who spams people with meaningless updates. If you have any thoughts on the matter, please let me know in the comments.

At any rate, I’ve made the plunge and I’ll see what happens. If you’re interested in stalking me online, you know where to look.

• Each dot represents 25 people
• Red dots represent White people
• Blue dots represent Black people
• Green dots represent Asian people
• Orange dots represent Hispanic people
• Grey dots represent people of other ethnicities

You can find his entire collection of cities on this Flickr Set.

I suspect that this is due to the way Bright House compressed the digital signal and tries to shove ten pounds of electronic shit into a five pound sack. It doesn’t matter what channel I choose. The problem exists on all of them, so I can’t blame any particular network. No, this is Bright House’s ability to suck on on its own.

Do you live in a Bright House? Yeah, neither do I. More like a Blight House.

Brrrr.

Each photograph comes with a standard disclaimer:

These photographs and charges are provided by the Orange County Sheriff’s Office of people booked into the Orange County Jail during the past 30 days. They have not been convicted of the charges listed and are presumed innocent. The charges listed were current as of the time the photo was taken. OrlandoSentinel.com will not update the status of these cases.

That’s right, we presume that everyone here is innocent with a wink and a nod, but we’re still going to post these photos in an attempt to drive advertising revenue and shame them at the same time. It doesn’t matter that some of these people may actually be innocent. Just the fact that they’re accused of a crime is enough to do whatever we want. After all, those images are public property. We have a right!

My gut tells me that a larger percentage of the people arrested probably are guilty, but so what? Posting photos of those arrested isn’t relevant news. If it’s an attempt to change behavior through shame, then it’s misguided and ineffective. For those who truly are innocent, posting their photo only adds to their burden.

What stands out to me is the large advertisement displayed by each photograph. I suspect that this is just a business decision. It appeals to the morbid curiosity of people and allows the Orlando Sentinel to profit from anything that draws a reader’s eyes to the page. It seems the real shame here is on the Orlando Sentinel for participating in the misery of others for its own benefit.