It isn't just a conservative or liberal issue. Camps on both sides seem to go both ways about it. Granted, traditional Corporatists want to abolish Net neutrality as they see it as getting in the way of more money to the Communications Corporations.
on DOJ refusing the Net Neutrality but that made it seem like the Net Neutrality is some commie scheme.
Can someone here explain the concept briefly because until then the whole Net Neutrality scheme seems absurd. Of course companies should be able to charge whatever they wish for parts of the Net that they own/provide access to. What am I missing?
"To discuss evil in a manner implying neutrality, is to sanction it." AR
that's the whole point. An ISP is just a gateway, they don't own the content of the web. Net neutrality means that an ISP treats all packet data the same regardless of where it is coming from.
The issue is simply that if ISPs are allowed to carve out their own little fiefdoms you can kiss the net as we know it goodbye. Given that ISPs are already parasites on a system that should by all rights be a national utility their protestations are rather nauseating.
provide a service. They often also provide tangible hardware service. If it costs an ISP a lot of money to upgrade to lets say fiber optics, why can't they make up that money in fees?
Or am I missing something?
"To discuss evil in a manner implying neutrality, is to sanction it." AR
Let's take it out of the internet and make it a phone call instead. Suppose you pay your phone bill every month, but the phone company starts giving you a crappy connection (remember, you are paying for the call) whenever you call someone not on their preferred list?
The problem is that you are getting degraded service despite paying for full service. The data provider is paying per volume over that infrastructure (Bandwidth). Now, if they made internet access free for consumers and charged for volume and QoS from the providers, then I wouldn't have as much of an issue with it.
Remember, much of that infrastructure is publicly funded as well.
Given that ISPs are already parasites on a system that should by all rights be a national utility their protestations are rather nauseating.
Uh, ISPs *are* the system.
What a joke that you demonize companies like Level 3 Communications, who borrowed billions on the credit markets and have taken great risks in order to create the broadband internet that we have today, just in the hopes of someday making a profit, because they have never done so yet. Some "parasite".
If it weren't for "parasites"-- otherwise known as entrepreneurs willing to take risks-- there wouldn't be an internet, or at least it would be nothing like what it is.
What's nauseating is your lack of appreciation for the way that things get accomplished in the real world, and your propensity to demonize the achievements of others. You can easily make arguments for net neutrality without resorting to this kind of ridiculousness.
Look at the history of the internet some time. It existed before the ISPs were ever concieved of. Whether you want to talk about the original DARPA project or the university expansion used to allow professionals to communicate they existed long before the AOLs of the world came to be.
If it weren't for "parasites"-- otherwise known as entrepreneurs willing to take risks-- there wouldn't be an internet, or at least it would be nothing like what it is.
Correct, it wouldn't be like it is now. Of course the part you leave out is that would be a good thing. Have you liooked at the internet recently?
Here's an example:
google "paris hilton" and you get 43 million hits
Now google "Winston Churchill" and you get 3 million hits
Take one guess as to whom has driven that. Hint- its the very same people you are defending. They're the ones that have to a great degree trivialized and sensationalized what was the greatest human endeavor in the fields of knowledge and communication. By making the internet simply another commodity they have had to fill it with crap in order to encourage click throughs.
There were no pop ups back when the internet was used by academcians exclusively. The ISPs have contributed to a dumbing down of another aspect of american life. And you want to congratulate them for it.
The internet backbone providers such as Level 3, AT & T, etc. don't have ANYTHING TO DO with the content on the internet. It's THE PEOPLE and the MEDIA that have everything to do with the overexposure of the Paris Hiltons of the world.
And as far as the origins of the internet, that's all fine and good-- but the fact was that it was tiny, limited, and prohibitively expensive for a private citizen back in the day-- if you could get access at all. The infrastructure was sufficient to handle the traffic of a slice of academia, and that was about it. What they were operating on back in that "golden age" in terms of infrastructure bears little resemblance to the fiber-optic marvels of today. Bottom line, the public (i.e myself) only got access after private industry got involved.
I don't know where you were. I paid my phone bill, I got to use my phone line for my internet usage. I do the same thing now, just with a DSL line.
I'm not getting where your anger is coming from. None of us are trying to take anything away from you that you already have and use. But some companies want to charge you more to use it. What's so difficult about that?
First of all, modem + phone line does not equal internet. I bet you connected to bulletin boards in the 80's, or maybe in the early 90's to services such as Prodigy or CompuServe. That ain't the internet IMO. Bulletin boards aren't the internet, and services like Prodigy meted out tiny portions of the internet like a soup line. Very little comparison to the internet access of today, where everybody can access basically everything.
When I was going to school in the late 80's/early 90s I got assigned an internet account thru school. At that time, it was a new thing for an undergrad to have such a "free" account. Obviously, the cost of the service was subisidised by public funding. There was no equivalent private service.
You also misunderstand my problem, it seems. I'm for net neutrality-- I think it's in the best interests of the public, and still allows for business to make a reasonable profit. But I'm not opposed to business trying to make its case in its own interest, even though I ultimately believe that that case should be rejected.
Some areas of Lawrence Livermore Labs were open through my school account. But this was when it was all completely character driven. There were no graphics.....at all. Most people didn't even own a mouse. The 286 had just come out and I couldn't afford it so I got an 8088 PC with a monochrome moniter. You could get an EGA or CGA moniter, but I was a poor college student.
There is some talk that universities (along with heavy government involvement) may create a new and improved internet . (The article seems to be unstable when pulled up at times and shuts down IE--I am still at my office so I have to use IE. Sorry if the link causes problems but I warned you).
The article predicts that commercial interests and the police will butt in soon enough, but the prospects sound interesting right now.
Got it. I switch back and forth. Opera is better, quicker, but their suggested spellchecker is from the world of Linux (command line) and too clunky for me to handle. My bad. It also doesn't integrate.
It must work well enough, or their own community would have written another one.
I know, I know, I should use firefox JUST for the spellchecker!
[How good is Opera? A couple of years ago, Opera found out that Microsoft had written code into its pages so that they would not render correctly on Opera. Note that i am not saying that it was the result of MS non-standard coding, but an actual code that queried the browser, and sent it to a subroutine if it was Opera. MS also leaned on banks in Europe where Opera is popular to make their pages unrenderable by Opera!]
Thanks for clearing that up. Most of the conveniences people take for granted today are the direct result of wonderful industry achievements. Kudos to them for making awesome technology available to us, and I am glad they made good money off of it.
"To discuss evil in a manner implying neutrality, is to sanction it." AR
Actually most of the internet technologies, routers, switches, protocols etc were government funded research in support of the military. i.e. Tax Payer based.
Net neutrality, at its heart is purely an anti-trust issue.
Actually most of the internet technologies, routers, switches, protocols etc were government funded research in support of the military. i.e. Tax Payer based.
And the private sector has taken that start and improved and refined those technologies beyond the imagination of their original inventors in government and academia. If Entity A invents something, and Entity B makes it 100,000 times faster, better, and more robust, at what point do you start giving credit to Entity B?
Net neutrality, at its heart is purely an anti-trust issue.
Totally agreed. And anti-trust issues need not be about arguing how bad and evil big business is. It should merely being about addressing some of the problems created by monopolies, and doing what is in the interests of the country and the people without taking a punitive attitude. There is nothing inherently evil about a business becoming a monopoly, quite the opposite in fact-- the best, most innovative, most efficient companies are the ones who tend to become monopolies.
And the private sector has taken that start and improved and refined those technologies beyond the imagination of their original inventors in government and academia. If Entity A invents something, and Entity B makes it 100,000 times faster, better, and more robust, at what point do you start giving credit to Entity B?
I mean entity A has been around all this time and arguably with more resources than entity B could have ever dreamed of, right?
So what we have witnessed, in effect, is a head to head race between entity A and entity B in terms of building the infrastructure required. If you don't like entity B's infrastructure why don't you just go back to using entity A's?
Republican Maverick at Large
-4:Strongly Disagree; 0:Meh; +4:Strongly Agree
They've kept several networks completely cut off from the Internet, see NIPRNET, SIPRNET and JWICS.
They just let industry take over maintenance and growth of the original network (that was originally set up mostly by educational institutions.)
As to why they did this, lobbying efforts perhaps? I've noticed a lot of cities that have tried to make their entire area a WiFi hotspot have been shut down by state legislatures who have received a lot of telecommunication lobbying funds.
I think we agree. I don't find it inherently evil for a company to WANT to create another cash cow. I'm just saying that because their business is in fact based on something that the public paid for, it isn't inherently evil for those that helped fund its creation continue to maintain some control over it.
This is more of a pre-emptive response to the libertarian "Regulation of Free Market = Bad" statements. Which is really what the bulk of the anti-net-neutrality arguements have been about. I haven't seen any discussion as to why it would be good to let the companies do this, just "It is Their business, they should run it however they want no matter if it turns into a horizontal and vertical monopoly that can, and will, be used to stifle competition"
Sure ARPANET set the base but things have evolved tremendously since then. They are no longer really comparable IMHO. I don't mean to demean the tremendous accomplishment that was ARPANET, but neither should you seek to demean the vast accomplishment that is the internet which was prodominantly put in place by private interests in terms of actual hardware that costs actual money.
Republican Maverick at Large
-4:Strongly Disagree; 0:Meh; +4:Strongly Agree
And so on. To say that these ISPs have nothing to do with content is bull. I used to work for @home doing technical support, skymutt. I had a first hand view of how the ISP tried to push it's own content.
And as far as the origins of the internet, that's all fine and good-- but the fact was that it was tiny, limited, and prohibitively expensive for a private citizen back in the day-- if you could get access at all. The infrastructure was sufficient to handle the traffic of a slice of academia, and that was about it. What they were operating on back in that "golden age" in terms of infrastructure bears little resemblance to the fiber-optic marvels of today. Bottom line, the public (i.e myself) only got access after private industry got involved.
All true, but again something is left out. You say you only got involved after priate industry, but that's not the same as saying that you could only get involved after private indusrty. See all the issues you mention above could have been solved without giving business any control of the network. Infrastructure could have been expanded in the same manner as the power grid or water supply- as a public utility. Technology would have advanced whether or not the ISP's were handed the keys to the kingdom.
Yes, AT&T is a horizontally integrated company with some content. But that's really beside the point. Why not look at Level 3 then, since it's more of a pure commercial ISP? I don't see Paris Hilton on thier home page.
And it's the commercial ISPs who are the companies at the center of the Net Neutrality issue, not end-consumer ISPs such as MSN. You only are using MSN's network infrastructure if you're an MSN customer. OTOH, very single one of us uses Level 3's network.
No doubt about that. My point is just that the commercialization of the net hasn't exactly been a stellar success except for people who measure success by seeing who wins the race to the bottom.
on this one. Depending on the people to make their own choices is always going to lead to bottom feeding, least-comon denominator mass culture.
I'll join Tlaloc in wistful rememberence of the good old days of the USSR, when a person turning on his Tele for a musical program could be sure he wasn't going to get Capitalist decadence like jazz or (shudder) Rock & Roll. More likely, uplifting Tschikovsky would be on the bill. Something that betters the soul.
Wouldn't we all have been better off if the government, which owned the airwaves, had stomped on that (shudder) Rock & Roll stuff when we were children. I remember listening to a radio preacher, way back in the fifties, predict that if that stuff was allowed to fester, our children would lose their morals, their would be no respect for elders, sexuality would run rampant, babies born to unwed mothers would increase.....
So, pleaze, let's admit that we would all be better off if the government appointed an internet czar to get rid of bottom feeding crap, and that czar were me.
Like Mustapha Mond (arcane reference), I would keep all that stuff, like pictures and stories of crazy and comely young actresses safely locked away from you ordinary and vulnerable citizens in my safe. No Lindsay Lohan stuff for you, my good citizens!
Now, proof of how bad it is, after the googlers:
A google search for "Elvis Presley" yields 3,740,000 hits.
A google search for "Lukas Foss" yields a mere 200,000 hits.
A google search for "Are You Lonesome Tonight," a 1920s era song covered by Presley, and not one of his big hits, garners 473,000 hits, most seemingly referring directly to Presley.
A google search for "Time Cycle," a Foss composition for singer and orchestra, with text from Houseman, Auden, Kafka, and Nietzsche, yeilds no hits that i can find. This song cycle was debuted by the NY Philharmonic in 1961, with an absolute improvisational group led by Foss at the piano providing interludes between the four song pieces. It was so well received that the audience demanded that the entire piece be replayed before the concert proceeded. Bernstein fulfilled the wish of the audience. This is said to be the only time in the history of the NY Philharmonic that this has happened. Yet this gargantuan composition cannot be found on the net directly, as opposed to all thos hits for a (shudder) Rock & Roll singer working at the same time.
You can bet it would be different if i ran the internet for the good of the people!!!
(I bet at least some people will think I am not serious here.)
Just for fun, the A. E. Houseman text:
When the bells justle in the tower
The hollow night amid,
Then on my tongue the taste is sour
Of all I ever did.
You have my vote. If there's one thing I've noticed about the internet, it's that there's not nearly enough free porn. I would expect you'll make quick work of this problem in particular. Additionally, I don't believe my company allows porn to be accessed at work. Whatever you can do in this regard would be appreciated. Thanks.
probably as a first act, make it a capital crime to be able to advertiser "free porn" in a searchh when the link leads on to a pay site. A couple of free samples just wont do the trick.
At least tht's what i've been told about porn on the net.
Take out a sheet of paper. Divide into ten collumns. Number one to ten in each column. GBetter call this sheet "A."......
Most important to me is that it is, generally speaking, musically and especially rhythmically uninteresting. Even when it thinks it is interesting, it is old hat. for instance, in the 60s, we had a spater of performers who destroyed their instruments. In the 30s, a classical composer wrote a piano piece that called on the performer to set the piano on fire to c0onclude the piece.
In a word, boring.
After years of discussion and people sharing their favourites with me and telling me what they like, I've come to the conclusion that Rockj & Roll isn't about music, it's about the show. Maybe this true quote sums it up. The year before I moved to Phoenix, Pink Floyd played there. A year later, the city was still abuzz. So I asked someone who had been to the concert what was great about the music, and he spat out this classic:
Well, I don't remember much about the music, man, like, I didn't really go there for the music. But that pink pig floating down over the audience, that was far out, man. That was great!
Mad, have you listened to some of the newer stuff? They're more direct and, um, specific than Rock N Roll ever dreamed of. Does that make it good or bad? Dunno, but it's mighty interesting, and generally, the back beat is still good. . .
I'd link but what I'm thinking of would violate the site standards. It's the 21st century version of burning the piano.
And, btw, the pig was indeed cool. Meaningless, but still cool. Might just have been the, ah, atmosphere, though. The reborn versions for the Pulse tour were even better.
But the shows were just icing. It was always about the music. As it is for every generation. We all have our own burning pianos.
"Perplexity is the beginning of knowledge" -- Kahlil Gibran
What strikes me most about this whole thing is why people train themselves to be all RA-RA about the government and over-congradulate it all the time while minimizing the multiple and the aggregate of compounding efforts of private innovation, investment and trial-n-error. It truly boggles the mind.
These people are like a caricature of some biased, wicked step-mother who over-showers praise on a worthless and spoiled child for the ever-so-slightest positive result while dissing remarkable and constant accomplishments and great qualities of the red-headed step-child.
Oh, my flesh and blood, you got a C+ in remedial math! YOU'RE SOOO SMART...my little EINSTEIN!!!
meanwhile, to the red-headed step child....
Oh, you got an A- on your calculus final? Pff, big whoop, you're so stupid, you couldn't even get an A+. I see wasting $7 on that used Calculus Study Guide you begged me to get you at that garage sale was a total waste!! You failure!! And that's another thing, WHY didn't help, you help your step-sister do better on remedial math test?!?! I made you quit that silly AP college class and volunteer work for a reason!! You're sister needs good grades so she can pass her GRE!!! YOU'RE GROUNDED!!!!
Just look at the reality. The reality is the government made a system that was fantastic. Private industry has at best made a neutral contribution. For every good thing private industry contributed they contributed something bad as well. It's pretty easy to see where in the light of such facts the government is trusted a great deal more than private industry.
besides which with private industry we are constantly fighting these battles where they try to take eeverything they can, where they insist on screwing everyone else just because greed is their raison d'etre. the government at times certainly has civil liberties issues but A) it isn't as often a problem as the with Private industry and B) it is easier to control because we have checks and balances built in.
If people don't trust private industry there's a very good reason- precedent.
you seem often to be speechless in these cases. I think you might consider whether your inability to form a counterargument should suggest something to you.
The reality is the government made a system that was fantastic.
The government makes things that are fantastic for itself (at best). The government never created an internet for the people, just for government institutions.
When I think of government providing a mass consumer service, I think Post Office. Not fantastic, and not profitable either. You can throw in Amtrak there as well. Hardly a success story.
Private industry has at best made a neutral contribution. For every good thing private industry contributed they contributed something bad as well. It's pretty easy to see where in the light of such facts the government is trusted a great deal more than private industry.
Government-- trusted? What planet are you living on, man?
You just tipped the iceberg but it's far more than I could conjure up into words at the moment.
Whenever I start to lose faith and shutter at some of the crazy stuff that comes out the Economic "government-is-great-and-wise" Left of the divide, I think of you and feel better....realizing that you most likely represent the far more numerous and far less vocal sphere of Democratic economic opinion.
The government makes things that are fantastic for itself (at best). The government never created an internet for the people, just for government institutions.
Certainly. I'm hardly going to argue that the US government is altruistic. We conducted the space race because it was a way of gaining prestige. But as a spin off a whole hell of a lot of advancements were made. Same thing with DARPA's distributed computing infrastructure.
When I think of government providing a mass consumer service, I think Post Office. Not fantastic, and not profitable either. You can throw in Amtrak there as well. Hardly a success story.
The post office was pretty remarkable in it's day. Even today it is well nigh indespensible. All of it's competitors (UPS, Fedex, etc) combined only handle a fraction of what it moves in one day. It is the 3rd largest employer in the US (after the DoD and Walmart).
As for Amtrak, well the failure of rail in the US has an awful lot to do with sabotage by auto manufacturers. You're right that it isn't a success story but that can;t be laid on the government.
Government-- trusted? What planet are you living on, man?
notice I said "more than." It's a relative thing, not an absolute. I don't trust government. But between government and private industry I certainly know which I can trust more.
The post office was pretty remarkable in it's day.
It's not the Post Office's "day" anymore? I just got a bunch of mail in my mailbox today, and *some* of it was even mine!
I don't mean to hate on the Post Office. It's still pretty cheap, all said, to send a letter cross-country. It's not a total failure. But that being said, private business could never get away with the sloppiness of the postal service. I seriously get mail addressed to someone else almost daily.
I have another example of a government-run consumer "service": the lottery. And it doesn't get much more parasitic than that.
that the post office has become somewhat antiquated. It's had its day although it reamins an important institution.
As far as sloppiness, well I've had much better luck with the USPS than with any phone or cable company customer support, personally. Verizon for years was trying to double bill me. They'd disconnect me for nonpayment of some bill I'd call up and they'd say I was all paid up to date that I only was listed in one database and that they'd put a note in my file to that effect and have my service restored. Then four months later it'd happen again. At the same time I moved more than once a year over the course of about six years and every time the USPS got my mail forwarded correctly.
I do get the occasional letter meant for someone else but not that often.
The old withered lady wrapped in a shawl at the desk was eating frickin Cheez Its and seemed more interested in them than helping me! It wasn't just the cheezits, it was how she was eating them-- she'd stcik her tongue out, place the cracker on her tongue, then reel the tongue into her mouth like a chameleon.
You are complaining about an added benefit, entertainment?
I'll bet you don't get circus acts down at FedEx.
Personally, I always went when I knew that Lydia the Tattooed Lady would be on duty. I always enjoyed the round the world tour, although she was reluctant to instruct us about the Panama Canal.
The reality is the government made a system that was fantastic.
Just how many private homes did ARPANET serve?
If my choices are what I had in my home under ARPANET versus what I have in my home under the internet, well I guess I prefer the internet.
For every good thing private industry contributed they contributed something bad as well.
And just who gets to be the arbiter of "good and bad" here? I suspect that every item or issue that you term "bad" someone else terms "good". We should let you be judge and jury why?
besides which with private industry we are constantly fighting these battles where they try to take eeverything they can, where they insist on screwing everyone else just because greed is their raison d'etre. the government at times certainly has civil liberties issues but A) it isn't as often a problem as the with Private industry and B) it is easier to control because we have checks and balances built in.
If people don't trust private industry there's a very good reason- precedent.
And here we see the common theme with Tlolac. Control. It is always about control. And from a supposed Anarchist no less.
So, Tlolac, you say you are only about control as a means of getting to socially responsible freedom only anarchy can provide (admittedly paraphrased here), right?
Well after you get everyone marching to your tune and then you turn them loose, what makes you think that we won't end up right back where we are today? How will you know it is time to abolish those state imposed controls in favor of the freedom offered in the Anarchist's nirvana?
Sorry, but from my perspective your proposals continue to look more like something out of Stalin than an Anarchist.
Republican Maverick at Large
-4:Strongly Disagree; 0:Meh; +4:Strongly Agree
Oh, you got an A- on your calculus final? Pff, big whoop, you're so stupid, you couldn't even get an A+. I see wasting $7 on that used Calculus Study Guide you begged me to get you at that garage sale was a total waste!! You failure!! And that's another thing, WHY didn't help, you help your step-sister do better on remedial math test?!?! I made you quit that silly AP college class and volunteer work for a reason!! You're sister needs good grades so she can pass her GRE!!! YOU'RE GROUNDED!!!!
Cinderella anyone??"
Again, it shows just how much intellectualism is despised and looked down upon with contempt here in the United States. Intelligent people who really know how to read and write are actively disliked by many, if not most Americans.
Moreover, the fact that a person such as Tonya Harding, who's basically a stupid, unattractive, sex-obsessed, beer-swilling ignoramous, gets such an incredible amount of sympathy and support is strongly indicative of that.
The term "White Trash rules", I'm afraid, is all too accurate.
it shows just how much intellectualism is despised and looked down upon with contempt here in the United States. Intelligent people who really know how to read and write are actively disliked by many, if not most Americans.
What exactly do you mean by that? Please elaborate.
And I don't know where you get your info but I never saw Harding getting much sympathy from anyone. A classless brute she was (and described as such) and a brute she remains in the eyes of many (myself included).
"What exactly do you mean by that? Please elaborate."
for one thing, there always has been a strong streak of anti-intellectualism here in the United States, because the U. S. A. was founded on
a certain work ethic of really producing the work and getting it out. Also, people who worked with their hands and their backs were, for whatever reason, more respected.
You're right about Tonya Harding not getting sympathy from the majority of people here in the United States or elsewhere, but if you take a look at her website (www.tonyaharding.com ), it's like she's somewhat of a cult--with a network of people who are her supporters.
You're also right about her being a brute. Tonya Harding is a thuggish woman who was an extremely talented skater.
Look at the history of the internet some time. It existed before the ISPs were ever concieved of. Whether you want to talk about the original DARPA project or the university expansion used to allow professionals to communicate they existed long before the AOLs of the world came to be.
Umm, this is just a little bit diengenuous don't you think? Do you honestly think that we could have actually run anything that even resembles the capacity we have today over the DARPA project or USENET?
I remember what it was like. UUCP based e-mail, rlogin, rcopy, that was about it. And maintaining it was a constant struggle. So yea, these things existed but it was never a workable infrastructure for anything the size of the current internet.
Here's an example: google "paris hilton" and you get 43 million hits Now google "Winston Churchill" and you get 3 million hits
Take one guess as to whom has driven that. Hint- its the very same people you are defending. They're the ones that have to a great degree trivialized and sensationalized what was the greatest human endeavor in the fields of knowledge and communication. By making the internet simply another commodity they have had to fill it with crap in order to encourage click throughs.
Your complaint here is what? That there are more people in the world that care about Paris Hilton that Winston Churchill? So what? It's not like to have to visit those 43 million hits to find your Winston Churchill hits, is it? So what's the complaint?
Oh, I distinctly remember back in the DARPA days trying to do this very same query (go figure). The response?
Error: google not found.
So even though the blood sucking parasites have created 43 million places to read about Paris Hilton, you also have 3 million where you can read about Winston Churchill. You should be thankful for that and the infrastructure that was put in place to provide it. If paying for that infrastructure means that we have to ignore 43 million Paris Hilton sites well, then so be it.
There were no pop ups back when the internet was used by academcians exclusively.
Nor was there the wealth and breadth of information that is available today either. And don't call that time period the internet. It wasn't the internet. It was ARPANET. And about the only thing you could do at the time was copy files, send e-mail, and read USENET.
If the academics don't like the current internet, well there is nothing stopping them from going back to what they had before is there? Let them put in their own backbone using their own money and setup all the uucp conncetions they want.
Republican Maverick at Large
-4:Strongly Disagree; 0:Meh; +4:Strongly Agree
CAN Swords Crossed compete on the same level as Amazon.com? You'd have to. They'd force you to pay big dollars or this site might never be found by anyone who didn't already know about it. Links from other more popular sites might generate traffic? How many folks are going to wait a half hour to bring up the initial page when they link over? Many you think?
It wouldn't make any sense for ISPs to charge such prices that we wouldn't be able to host SC. If an ISP however can offer to provide us 100x the current bandwidth for our site, then sure they can charge a lil extra for that because it is their infrastructure, but it's not going to slow us down beyond what we already have.
"To discuss evil in a manner implying neutrality, is to sanction it." AR
It wouldn't make any sense for ISPs to charge such prices that we wouldn't be able to host SC.
Of course it does, because when you don;t pay they make sure their customers can't easily get to your site. What good does that do them? Well it creates a market for their customers for a SC like site that will pay.
Of course SC doesn't really matter (no offense just talking about size) but now consider Ebay. Ebay has something like a million dollars a day in transactions closing. You really think ISPs won't use their levarage to extort Ebay? Amazon? Google?
ISPs are gateways, and they're trying to fit the gates with locks.
At the heart of the net neutrality debate lies the question of whether or not the companies who own the access, or pipes, to the internet, have the right to segregate that access, or if the internet's onramps should be considered more like a public utility that everyone should have access to. The way things stand now, once you pay the toll, you get to ride the information superhighway anywhere, at whatever speed you paid for. You can also set up a roadside lemonade stand and sell to as many people as you want, provided you paid for a big enough parking lot.
The service providers argue that, since they built much of the infrastructure for moving information around on the internet, they should be able to take a bigger piece of the pie. They'd like to charge for access to get on the internet, and then throw up additional toll booths everywhere. Internet surfers would have to pay again to access certain lanes of content, and content providers would also pay again, so that when people pulled into a company's little spot in cyberspace, they wouldn't find a bottleneck reminiscent of a 1973 gas line. And everyone would pay yet again for using disruptive technologies like voip internet phone service. And once more, through the taxes that fund those fat subsidies that help offset losses in the phone companies' ledgers.
OK, to continue the analogy: What business justification is being put forth for the additional toll booths?
Assuming it's a cost issue, why can't the additional costs created by the behemoths be handled via direct agreements with the behemoths without some umbrella action such as the net neutrality debate? Or, conversely, be included in the normal cost calculation for what we pay our ISPs today?
(I could do the research, but I'd prefer a filtered synopsis. We have expertise here and I'd like to leverage that ;})
"Perplexity is the beginning of knowledge" -- Kahlil Gibran
The ISPs are saying, "hey, we built this fiber-optic pipeline, we dug the trenches, we laid this cable, we installed all these fancy million dollar routers-- we have every right to charge for usage of these facilities in any way that we want." Those who are for net neutrality are basically saying that the ISPs must be regulated in terms of how they can charge for utilization of something they own.
". . .we have every right to charge for usage of these facilities in any way that we want." Those who are for net neutrality are basically saying that the ISPs must be regulated in terms of how they can charge for utilization of something they own.
Comments :
Thanks for the thread....Net neutrality....
It isn't just a conservative or liberal issue. Camps on both sides seem to go both ways about it. Granted, traditional Corporatists want to abolish Net neutrality as they see it as getting in the way of more money to the Communications Corporations.
In todays SF Chronicle, there was an article saying that now the DOJ has determined that Net Neutrality is evil and that AT&T SHOULD be able to extort money from websites or threaten them with backwater, 3rd world communication conditions on the web
. Ahem......I suspect that even Swords Crossed would be destined to dial up speeds. Now that in and of itself wouldn't always be bad, especially when the Bickersons go at it (that includes me on occasion).
I've read the article
on DOJ refusing the Net Neutrality but that made it seem like the Net Neutrality is some commie scheme.
Can someone here explain the concept briefly because until then the whole Net Neutrality scheme seems absurd. Of course companies should be able to charge whatever they wish for parts of the Net that they own/provide access to. What am I missing?
"To discuss evil in a manner implying neutrality, is to sanction it." AR
They don't own it
that's the whole point. An ISP is just a gateway, they don't own the content of the web. Net neutrality means that an ISP treats all packet data the same regardless of where it is coming from.
The issue is simply that if ISPs are allowed to carve out their own little fiefdoms you can kiss the net as we know it goodbye. Given that ISPs are already parasites on a system that should by all rights be a national utility their protestations are rather nauseating.
I came. I saw. I posted.
Veni, Vidi, Bitchy.
ISPs
provide a service. They often also provide tangible hardware service. If it costs an ISP a lot of money to upgrade to lets say fiber optics, why can't they make up that money in fees?
Or am I missing something?
"To discuss evil in a manner implying neutrality, is to sanction it." AR
fees
that are equally applied are one thing. That's fine. But net neutrality has nothing to do with upgrading infrastructure so the point is moot.
I came. I saw. I posted.
Veni, Vidi, Bitchy.
Who is paying for that service?
Let's take it out of the internet and make it a phone call instead. Suppose you pay your phone bill every month, but the phone company starts giving you a crappy connection (remember, you are paying for the call) whenever you call someone not on their preferred list?
The problem is that you are getting degraded service despite paying for full service. The data provider is paying per volume over that infrastructure (Bandwidth). Now, if they made internet access free for consumers and charged for volume and QoS from the providers, then I wouldn't have as much of an issue with it.
Remember, much of that infrastructure is publicly funded as well.
ugh
Uh, ISPs *are* the system.
What a joke that you demonize companies like Level 3 Communications, who borrowed billions on the credit markets and have taken great risks in order to create the broadband internet that we have today, just in the hopes of someday making a profit, because they have never done so yet. Some "parasite".
If it weren't for "parasites"-- otherwise known as entrepreneurs willing to take risks-- there wouldn't be an internet, or at least it would be nothing like what it is.
What's nauseating is your lack of appreciation for the way that things get accomplished in the real world, and your propensity to demonize the achievements of others. You can easily make arguments for net neutrality without resorting to this kind of ridiculousness.
skymutt: wise and powerful... enlightened...
Uh no.
Look at the history of the internet some time. It existed before the ISPs were ever concieved of. Whether you want to talk about the original DARPA project or the university expansion used to allow professionals to communicate they existed long before the AOLs of the world came to be.
I came. I saw. I posted.
Veni, Vidi, Bitchy.
Enough horse pucky to generate biofuels for a decade
The internet backbone providers such as Level 3, AT & T, etc. don't have ANYTHING TO DO with the content on the internet. It's THE PEOPLE and the MEDIA that have everything to do with the overexposure of the Paris Hiltons of the world.
And as far as the origins of the internet, that's all fine and good-- but the fact was that it was tiny, limited, and prohibitively expensive for a private citizen back in the day-- if you could get access at all. The infrastructure was sufficient to handle the traffic of a slice of academia, and that was about it. What they were operating on back in that "golden age" in terms of infrastructure bears little resemblance to the fiber-optic marvels of today. Bottom line, the public (i.e myself) only got access after private industry got involved.
skymutt: wise and powerful... enlightened...
I had a modem in the 80's.
I don't know where you were. I paid my phone bill, I got to use my phone line for my internet usage. I do the same thing now, just with a DSL line.
I'm not getting where your anger is coming from. None of us are trying to take anything away from you that you already have and use. But some companies want to charge you more to use it. What's so difficult about that?
Misconceptions
First of all, modem + phone line does not equal internet. I bet you connected to bulletin boards in the 80's, or maybe in the early 90's to services such as Prodigy or CompuServe. That ain't the internet IMO. Bulletin boards aren't the internet, and services like Prodigy meted out tiny portions of the internet like a soup line. Very little comparison to the internet access of today, where everybody can access basically everything.
When I was going to school in the late 80's/early 90s I got assigned an internet account thru school. At that time, it was a new thing for an undergrad to have such a "free" account. Obviously, the cost of the service was subisidised by public funding. There was no equivalent private service.
You also misunderstand my problem, it seems. I'm for net neutrality-- I think it's in the best interests of the public, and still allows for business to make a reasonable profit. But I'm not opposed to business trying to make its case in its own interest, even though I ultimately believe that that case should be rejected.
skymutt: wise and powerful... enlightened...
I mostly connected to Universities,
Some areas of Lawrence Livermore Labs were open through my school account. But this was when it was all completely character driven. There were no graphics.....at all. Most people didn't even own a mouse. The 286 had just come out and I couldn't afford it so I got an 8088 PC with a monochrome moniter. You could get an EGA or CGA moniter, but I was a poor college student.
A new internet
There is some talk that universities (along with heavy government involvement) may create a new and improved internet
. (The article seems to be unstable when pulled up at times and shuts down IE--I am still at my office so I have to use IE. Sorry if the link causes problems but I warned you).
The article predicts that commercial interests and the police will butt in soon enough, but the prospects sound interesting right now.
Nice article
OK on Opera.
Now if i could only find a spellchecker that works with Opera......
use firefox 2.0
has a spellchecker and everything. And a very good browser at that.
"To discuss evil in a manner implying neutrality, is to sanction it." AR
Firefox
Got it. I switch back and forth. Opera is better, quicker, but their suggested spellchecker is from the world of Linux (command line) and too clunky for me to handle. My bad. It also doesn't integrate.
It must work well enough, or their own community would have written another one.
I know, I know, I should use firefox JUST for the spellchecker!
[How good is Opera? A couple of years ago, Opera found out that Microsoft had written code into its pages so that they would not render correctly on Opera. Note that i am not saying that it was the result of MS non-standard coding, but an actual code that queried the browser, and sent it to a subroutine if it was Opera. MS also leaned on banks in Europe where Opera is popular to make their pages unrenderable by Opera!]
excellent responses skymutt
Thanks for clearing that up. Most of the conveniences people take for granted today are the direct result of wonderful industry achievements. Kudos to them for making awesome technology available to us, and I am glad they made good money off of it.
"To discuss evil in a manner implying neutrality, is to sanction it." AR
Industry funded by the government
Actually most of the internet technologies, routers, switches, protocols etc were government funded research in support of the military. i.e. Tax Payer based.
Net neutrality, at its heart is purely an anti-trust issue.
Actually most of the
And the private sector has taken that start and improved and refined those technologies beyond the imagination of their original inventors in government and academia. If Entity A invents something, and Entity B makes it 100,000 times faster, better, and more robust, at what point do you start giving credit to Entity B?
Totally agreed. And anti-trust issues need not be about arguing how bad and evil big business is. It should merely being about addressing some of the problems created by monopolies, and doing what is in the interests of the country and the people without taking a punitive attitude. There is nothing inherently evil about a business becoming a monopoly, quite the opposite in fact-- the best, most innovative, most efficient companies are the ones who tend to become monopolies.
skymutt: wise and powerful... enlightened...
answer
When you prove entity A wouldn't have done it.
I came. I saw. I posted.
Veni, Vidi, Bitchy.
Well, in actuality, what stopped entity A from doing it?
I mean entity A has been around all this time and arguably with more resources than entity B could have ever dreamed of, right?
So what we have witnessed, in effect, is a head to head race between entity A and entity B in terms of building the infrastructure required. If you don't like entity B's infrastructure why don't you just go back to using entity A's?
Republican Maverick at Large
-4:Strongly Disagree; 0:Meh; +4:Strongly Agree
What stopped them
was the voluntary choice to turn it over to entity B (private industry).
I came. I saw. I posted.
Veni, Vidi, Bitchy.
And why did they do that?
They could have kept control of their own network and industry could have created a separate parallel network.
Republican Maverick at Large
-4:Strongly Disagree; 0:Meh; +4:Strongly Agree
GoRight, that is pretty much what happened
They've kept several networks completely cut off from the Internet, see NIPRNET, SIPRNET and JWICS.
They just let industry take over maintenance and growth of the original network (that was originally set up mostly by educational institutions.)
As to why they did this, lobbying efforts perhaps? I've noticed a lot of cities that have tried to make their entire area a WiFi hotspot have been shut down by state legislatures who have received a lot of telecommunication lobbying funds.
Net Neutrality - Anti-Trust
I think we agree. I don't find it inherently evil for a company to WANT to create another cash cow. I'm just saying that because their business is in fact based on something that the public paid for, it isn't inherently evil for those that helped fund its creation continue to maintain some control over it.
This is more of a pre-emptive response to the libertarian "Regulation of Free Market = Bad" statements. Which is really what the bulk of the anti-net-neutrality arguements have been about. I haven't seen any discussion as to why it would be good to let the companies do this, just "It is Their business, they should run it however they want no matter if it turns into a horizontal and vertical monopoly that can, and will, be used to stifle competition"
The internet is NOT your dad's ARPANET.
Sure ARPANET set the base but things have evolved tremendously since then. They are no longer really comparable IMHO. I don't mean to demean the tremendous accomplishment that was ARPANET, but neither should you seek to demean the vast accomplishment that is the internet which was prodominantly put in place by private interests in terms of actual hardware that costs actual money.
Republican Maverick at Large
-4:Strongly Disagree; 0:Meh; +4:Strongly Agree
You're ignoring the reality
Let's take a look, huh?
First we have MSN. It's an ISP. It's also a news service. Oh and an email service. And a messenger service.
Here's the home page
take a look at that and tell me MSN has nothing to do with content.
Or look at AT&T
And so on. To say that these ISPs have nothing to do with content is bull. I used to work for @home doing technical support, skymutt. I had a first hand view of how the ISP tried to push it's own content.
All true, but again something is left out. You say you only got involved after priate industry, but that's not the same as saying that you could only get involved after private indusrty. See all the issues you mention above could have been solved without giving business any control of the network. Infrastructure could have been expanded in the same manner as the power grid or water supply- as a public utility. Technology would have advanced whether or not the ISP's were handed the keys to the kingdom.
I came. I saw. I posted.
Veni, Vidi, Bitchy.
Yeah,well, we're talking about the backbone here
Yes, AT&T is a horizontally integrated company with some content. But that's really beside the point. Why not look at Level 3 then, since it's more of a pure commercial ISP? I don't see Paris Hilton on thier home page.
And it's the commercial ISPs who are the companies at the center of the Net Neutrality issue, not end-consumer ISPs such as MSN. You only are using MSN's network infrastructure if you're an MSN customer. OTOH, very single one of us uses Level 3's network.
skymutt: wise and powerful... enlightened...
L3 is certainly a different beast
No doubt about that. My point is just that the commercialization of the net hasn't exactly been a stellar success except for people who measure success by seeing who wins the race to the bottom.
I came. I saw. I posted.
Veni, Vidi, Bitchy.
E.G.O
(Eyes Glazed Over)
You really frighten me sometimes.
I'm sure
and I previously explained to you why that happens, psychologically.
I came. I saw. I posted.
Veni, Vidi, Bitchy.
Agreed.
Maybe Tlolac is just an Artifical Intelligence experiment gone bad?
Republican Maverick at Large
-4:Strongly Disagree; 0:Meh; +4:Strongly Agree
John, I'm with Tlaloc
on this one. Depending on the people to make their own choices is always going to lead to bottom feeding, least-comon denominator mass culture.
I'll join Tlaloc in wistful rememberence of the good old days of the USSR, when a person turning on his Tele for a musical program could be sure he wasn't going to get Capitalist decadence like jazz or (shudder) Rock & Roll. More likely, uplifting Tschikovsky would be on the bill. Something that betters the soul.
Wouldn't we all have been better off if the government, which owned the airwaves, had stomped on that (shudder) Rock & Roll stuff when we were children. I remember listening to a radio preacher, way back in the fifties, predict that if that stuff was allowed to fester, our children would lose their morals, their would be no respect for elders, sexuality would run rampant, babies born to unwed mothers would increase.....
So, pleaze, let's admit that we would all be better off if the government appointed an internet czar to get rid of bottom feeding crap, and that czar were me.
Like Mustapha Mond (arcane reference), I would keep all that stuff, like pictures and stories of crazy and comely young actresses safely locked away from you ordinary and vulnerable citizens in my safe. No Lindsay Lohan stuff for you, my good citizens!
Now, proof of how bad it is, after the googlers:
A google search for "Elvis Presley" yields 3,740,000 hits.
A google search for "Lukas Foss" yields a mere 200,000 hits.
A google search for "Are You Lonesome Tonight," a 1920s era song covered by Presley, and not one of his big hits, garners 473,000 hits, most seemingly referring directly to Presley.
A google search for "Time Cycle," a Foss composition for singer and orchestra, with text from Houseman, Auden, Kafka, and Nietzsche, yeilds no hits that i can find. This song cycle was debuted by the NY Philharmonic in 1961, with an absolute improvisational group led by Foss at the piano providing interludes between the four song pieces. It was so well received that the audience demanded that the entire piece be replayed before the concert proceeded. Bernstein fulfilled the wish of the audience. This is said to be the only time in the history of the NY Philharmonic that this has happened. Yet this gargantuan composition cannot be found on the net directly, as opposed to all thos hits for a (shudder) Rock & Roll singer working at the same time.
You can bet it would be different if i ran the internet for the good of the people!!!
(I bet at least some people will think I am not serious here.)
Just for fun, the A. E. Houseman text:
When the bells justle in the tower
The hollow night amid,
Then on my tongue the taste is sour
Of all I ever did.
Frightening, and the music is perfect.
Madscientist....
You have my vote. If there's one thing I've noticed about the internet, it's that there's not nearly enough free porn. I would expect you'll make quick work of this problem in particular. Additionally, I don't believe my company allows porn to be accessed at work. Whatever you can do in this regard would be appreciated. Thanks.
-AT QB
I would certainly
probably as a first act, make it a capital crime to be able to advertiser "free porn" in a searchh when the link leads on to a pay site. A couple of free samples just wont do the trick.
At least tht's what i've been told about porn on the net.
Awwwwwww.......what's wrong with rock-n-roll??!?
n/m
Rock & Roll
What's the matter with Rock & Roll?
Take out a sheet of paper. Divide into ten collumns. Number one to ten in each column. GBetter call this sheet "A."......
Most important to me is that it is, generally speaking, musically and especially rhythmically uninteresting. Even when it thinks it is interesting, it is old hat. for instance, in the 60s, we had a spater of performers who destroyed their instruments. In the 30s, a classical composer wrote a piano piece that called on the performer to set the piano on fire to c0onclude the piece.
In a word, boring.
After years of discussion and people sharing their favourites with me and telling me what they like, I've come to the conclusion that Rockj & Roll isn't about music, it's about the show. Maybe this true quote sums it up. The year before I moved to Phoenix, Pink Floyd played there. A year later, the city was still abuzz. So I asked someone who had been to the concert what was great about the music, and he spat out this classic:
Well, I don't remember much about the music, man, like, I didn't really go there for the music. But that pink pig floating down over the audience, that was far out, man. That was great!
I'll stop now....
Off topic, but it's an open thread
Mad, have you listened to some of the newer stuff? They're more direct and, um, specific than Rock N Roll ever dreamed of. Does that make it good or bad? Dunno, but it's mighty interesting, and generally, the back beat is still good. . .
I'd link but what I'm thinking of would violate the site standards. It's the 21st century version of burning the piano.
And, btw, the pig was indeed cool. Meaningless, but still cool. Might just have been the, ah, atmosphere, though. The reborn versions for the Pulse tour were even better.
But the shows were just icing. It was always about the music. As it is for every generation. We all have our own burning pianos.
"Perplexity is the beginning of knowledge" -- Kahlil Gibran
I second that, Skymutt.
What strikes me most about this whole thing is why people train themselves to be all RA-RA about the government and over-congradulate it all the time while minimizing the multiple and the aggregate of compounding efforts of private innovation, investment and trial-n-error. It truly boggles the mind.
These people are like a caricature of some biased, wicked step-mother who over-showers praise on a worthless and spoiled child for the ever-so-slightest positive result while dissing remarkable and constant accomplishments and great qualities of the red-headed step-child.
Oh, my flesh and blood, you got a C+ in remedial math! YOU'RE SOOO SMART...my little EINSTEIN!!!
meanwhile, to the red-headed step child....
Oh, you got an A- on your calculus final? Pff, big whoop, you're so stupid, you couldn't even get an A+. I see wasting $7 on that used Calculus Study Guide you begged me to get you at that garage sale was a total waste!! You failure!! And that's another thing, WHY didn't help, you help your step-sister do better on remedial math test?!?! I made you quit that silly AP college class and volunteer work for a reason!! You're sister needs good grades so she can pass her GRE!!! YOU'RE GROUNDED!!!!
Cinderella anyone??
It's not hard, John
Just look at the reality. The reality is the government made a system that was fantastic. Private industry has at best made a neutral contribution. For every good thing private industry contributed they contributed something bad as well. It's pretty easy to see where in the light of such facts the government is trusted a great deal more than private industry.
besides which with private industry we are constantly fighting these battles where they try to take eeverything they can, where they insist on screwing everyone else just because greed is their raison d'etre. the government at times certainly has civil liberties issues but A) it isn't as often a problem as the with Private industry and B) it is easier to control because we have checks and balances built in.
If people don't trust private industry there's a very good reason- precedent.
I came. I saw. I posted.
Veni, Vidi, Bitchy.
eyes glazed over
I cannot even begin to express....speechless.
A common refrain from you
you seem often to be speechless in these cases. I think you might consider whether your inability to form a counterargument should suggest something to you.
I came. I saw. I posted.
Veni, Vidi, Bitchy.
Not at all,
There's just so much there on so many levels, I get overwhelmed at the prospect of fleshing it all out.
I'm not like MadScientist. I can only write so much at one shot. The value from a dissertation-like response in so small to me.
And a common reaction to your posts!
Republican Maverick at Large
-4:Strongly Disagree; 0:Meh; +4:Strongly Agree
Since this post just about made John pass out i think...
...let me try to find something to respond to...
The government makes things that are fantastic for itself (at best). The government never created an internet for the people, just for government institutions.
When I think of government providing a mass consumer service, I think Post Office. Not fantastic, and not profitable either. You can throw in Amtrak there as well. Hardly a success story.
Government-- trusted? What planet are you living on, man?
skymutt: wise and powerful... enlightened...
Thanks, Skymutt
You just tipped the iceberg but it's far more than I could conjure up into words at the moment.
Whenever I start to lose faith and shutter at some of the crazy stuff that comes out the Economic "government-is-great-and-wise" Left of the divide, I think of you and feel better....realizing that you most likely represent the far more numerous and far less vocal sphere of Democratic economic opinion.
Sure
Certainly. I'm hardly going to argue that the US government is altruistic. We conducted the space race because it was a way of gaining prestige. But as a spin off a whole hell of a lot of advancements were made. Same thing with DARPA's distributed computing infrastructure.
The post office was pretty remarkable in it's day. Even today it is well nigh indespensible. All of it's competitors (UPS, Fedex, etc) combined only handle a fraction of what it moves in one day. It is the 3rd largest employer in the US (after the DoD and Walmart).
As for Amtrak, well the failure of rail in the US has an awful lot to do with sabotage by auto manufacturers. You're right that it isn't a success story but that can;t be laid on the government.
notice I said "more than." It's a relative thing, not an absolute. I don't trust government. But between government and private industry I certainly know which I can trust more.
I came. I saw. I posted.
Veni, Vidi, Bitchy.
Post office
It's not the Post Office's "day" anymore? I just got a bunch of mail in my mailbox today, and *some* of it was even mine!
I don't mean to hate on the Post Office. It's still pretty cheap, all said, to send a letter cross-country. It's not a total failure. But that being said, private business could never get away with the sloppiness of the postal service. I seriously get mail addressed to someone else almost daily.
I have another example of a government-run consumer "service": the lottery. And it doesn't get much more parasitic than that.
skymutt: wise and powerful... enlightened...
I meant
that the post office has become somewhat antiquated. It's had its day although it reamins an important institution.
As far as sloppiness, well I've had much better luck with the USPS than with any phone or cable company customer support, personally. Verizon for years was trying to double bill me. They'd disconnect me for nonpayment of some bill I'd call up and they'd say I was all paid up to date that I only was listed in one database and that they'd put a note in my file to that effect and have my service restored. Then four months later it'd happen again. At the same time I moved more than once a year over the course of about six years and every time the USPS got my mail forwarded correctly.
I do get the occasional letter meant for someone else but not that often.
I came. I saw. I posted.
Veni, Vidi, Bitchy.
I remember going to the post office once...
The old withered lady wrapped in a shawl at the desk was eating frickin Cheez Its and seemed more interested in them than helping me! It wasn't just the cheezits, it was how she was eating them-- she'd stcik her tongue out, place the cracker on her tongue, then reel the tongue into her mouth like a chameleon.
skymutt: wise and powerful... enlightened...
skymutt
You are complaining about an added benefit, entertainment?
I'll bet you don't get circus acts down at FedEx.
Personally, I always went when I knew that Lydia the Tattooed Lady would be on duty. I always enjoyed the round the world tour, although she was reluctant to instruct us about the Panama Canal.
Pfft. Ridiculous.
Just how many private homes did ARPANET serve?
If my choices are what I had in my home under ARPANET versus what I have in my home under the internet, well I guess I prefer the internet.
And just who gets to be the arbiter of "good and bad" here? I suspect that every item or issue that you term "bad" someone else terms "good". We should let you be judge and jury why?
And here we see the common theme with Tlolac. Control. It is always about control. And from a supposed Anarchist no less.
So, Tlolac, you say you are only about control as a means of getting to socially responsible freedom only anarchy can provide (admittedly paraphrased here), right?
Well after you get everyone marching to your tune and then you turn them loose, what makes you think that we won't end up right back where we are today? How will you know it is time to abolish those state imposed controls in favor of the freedom offered in the Anarchist's nirvana?
Sorry, but from my perspective your proposals continue to look more like something out of Stalin than an Anarchist.
Republican Maverick at Large
-4:Strongly Disagree; 0:Meh; +4:Strongly Agree
*shrug*
I'm unconcerned by your inability to understand.
I came. I saw. I posted.
Veni, Vidi, Bitchy.
My inability to understand your nonsense, you mean.
Republican Maverick at Large
-4:Strongly Disagree; 0:Meh; +4:Strongly Agree
The non-dissertation response
If people don't trust government, there's a very good reason- precedent.
Here's the reality of it:
Again, it shows just how much intellectualism is despised and looked down upon with contempt here in the United States. Intelligent people who really know how to read and write are actively disliked by many, if not most Americans.
Moreover, the fact that a person such as Tonya Harding, who's basically a stupid, unattractive, sex-obsessed, beer-swilling ignoramous, gets such an incredible amount of sympathy and support is strongly indicative of that.
The term "White Trash rules", I'm afraid, is all too accurate.
where did all that come from???
What exactly do you mean by that? Please elaborate.
And I don't know where you get your info but I never saw Harding getting much sympathy from anyone. A classless brute she was (and described as such) and a brute she remains in the eyes of many (myself included).
Well,
for one thing, there always has been a strong streak of anti-intellectualism here in the United States, because the U. S. A. was founded on
a certain work ethic of really producing the work and getting it out. Also, people who worked with their hands and their backs were, for whatever reason, more respected.
You're right about Tonya Harding not getting sympathy from the majority of people here in the United States or elsewhere, but if you take a look at her website (www.tonyaharding.com
), it's like she's somewhat of a cult--with a network of people who are her supporters.
You're also right about her being a brute. Tonya Harding is a thuggish woman who was an extremely talented skater.
You may be right, I-Minded
My note on Rock & Roll supports this view!!!
RE: Uh no.
Umm, this is just a little bit diengenuous don't you think? Do you honestly think that we could have actually run anything that even resembles the capacity we have today over the DARPA project or USENET?
I remember what it was like. UUCP based e-mail, rlogin, rcopy, that was about it. And maintaining it was a constant struggle. So yea, these things existed but it was never a workable infrastructure for anything the size of the current internet.
Your complaint here is what? That there are more people in the world that care about Paris Hilton that Winston Churchill? So what? It's not like to have to visit those 43 million hits to find your Winston Churchill hits, is it? So what's the complaint?
Oh, I distinctly remember back in the DARPA days trying to do this very same query (go figure). The response?
Error: google not found.
So even though the blood sucking parasites have created 43 million places to read about Paris Hilton, you also have 3 million where you can read about Winston Churchill. You should be thankful for that and the infrastructure that was put in place to provide it. If paying for that infrastructure means that we have to ignore 43 million Paris Hilton sites well, then so be it.
Nor was there the wealth and breadth of information that is available today either. And don't call that time period the internet. It wasn't the internet. It was ARPANET. And about the only thing you could do at the time was copy files, send e-mail, and read USENET.
If the academics don't like the current internet, well there is nothing stopping them from going back to what they had before is there? Let them put in their own backbone using their own money and setup all the uucp conncetions they want.
Republican Maverick at Large
-4:Strongly Disagree; 0:Meh; +4:Strongly Agree
Why am I not surprised
that you either missed the point or had to misrepresent it...
I came. I saw. I posted.
Veni, Vidi, Bitchy.
I'm sorry, what have I misunderstood or
misrepresented?
Republican Maverick at Large
-4:Strongly Disagree; 0:Meh; +4:Strongly Agree
Tlaloc answered the principles. I'll sugest the repercussions.
CAN Swords Crossed compete on the same level as Amazon.com? You'd have to. They'd force you to pay big dollars or this site might never be found by anyone who didn't already know about it. Links from other more popular sites might generate traffic? How many folks are going to wait a half hour to bring up the initial page when they link over? Many you think?
what are you talking about???
It wouldn't make any sense for ISPs to charge such prices that we wouldn't be able to host SC. If an ISP however can offer to provide us 100x the current bandwidth for our site, then sure they can charge a lil extra for that because it is their infrastructure, but it's not going to slow us down beyond what we already have.
"To discuss evil in a manner implying neutrality, is to sanction it." AR
Sure it does.
Of course it does, because when you don;t pay they make sure their customers can't easily get to your site. What good does that do them? Well it creates a market for their customers for a SC like site that will pay.
Of course SC doesn't really matter (no offense just talking about size) but now consider Ebay. Ebay has something like a million dollars a day in transactions closing. You really think ISPs won't use their levarage to extort Ebay? Amazon? Google?
ISPs are gateways, and they're trying to fit the gates with locks.
I came. I saw. I posted.
Veni, Vidi, Bitchy.
Cliff Notes version, please
Um, I don't really get it either. I'd appreciate someone taking the time to write up a couple of paragraphs on the "so what" of this issue.
"Perplexity is the beginning of knowledge" -- Kahlil Gibran
How about an article called--
Network Neutrality for Dummies
?
skymutt: wise and powerful... enlightened...
A follow on question
Thank you both for responding. That helps.
OK, to continue the analogy: What business justification is being put forth for the additional toll booths?
Assuming it's a cost issue, why can't the additional costs created by the behemoths be handled via direct agreements with the behemoths without some umbrella action such as the net neutrality debate? Or, conversely, be included in the normal cost calculation for what we pay our ISPs today?
(I could do the research, but I'd prefer a filtered synopsis. We have expertise here and I'd like to leverage that ;})
"Perplexity is the beginning of knowledge" -- Kahlil Gibran
Well, as I understand it--
The ISPs are saying, "hey, we built this fiber-optic pipeline, we dug the trenches, we laid this cable, we installed all these fancy million dollar routers-- we have every right to charge for usage of these facilities in any way that we want." Those who are for net neutrality are basically saying that the ISPs must be regulated in terms of how they can charge for utilization of something they own.
skymutt: wise and powerful... enlightened...
Simplicity is good