Slashdot Mirror
Australia Investigates Peering Practices
Anonymous Sniper writes "The Australian Competition and Consumer Commission today announced that it will hold a public inquiry into whether an Internet interconnection [peering] service should be regulated. This would mean the big National ISPs would have to pay smaller ISPs for traffic originating within their networks, which means everyone's routing tables would become more efficient, and cheaper for the smaller ISPs. This would also set a significant international precedent. Horray for the ACCC and Allan Fels - the same people who made Region-Free DVD players legal here."
Yes indeed
This is just more commie market regulation.
Everyone knows Free Markets means Freedom!
Market regulation is bad right?
I thought it was going to be an article telling me I can't get no more warez
Practicing peering without a license?
Shameful!
I am the nightmare of nightmares.
I wanna poke Dynamic Developer in her curry stankin twat whole.
So long as any regulating does not remove our right to seek and destroy those who run horrendously poor peer's like Sprint.
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I know i didnt get this, so i think this is the important info:
"There are some apparent curiosities with current interconnection arrangements. If I am connected to a smaller ISP and I send an email to my friend at one of the four larger ISPs, the larger ISP will generally charge my smaller ISP for sending the email. However, when my friend at the larger ISP sends me a return email, my smaller ISP will have to pay the larger ISP once again".
ya, that dosnt sound real fair
Anything that goes to help out the smaller guys is a good thing. After all, the big guys gobble the little ones up, and then give crappy service for an ever increasing price.
Perhaps this will let these beloved little IPSs survive just a little bit longer.
Anything to keep the internet how it should be is a good idea, and it is nice to see the Aussie gov't protecting capitolism by leveling the playing field. After all, more compeition = better experience for every consumer.
Hey australia, put down the pipe and step away from the crack.
Nationalize your network and get it over with.
mod down accordingly.
Anything that leads to a more distributed internet is a Good Thing, IMHO. Lack of centralization is the biggest reason why the net has been successful, but recent trends are disturbing (eg: ICANN). OTOH, the US-centeredness of the internet has decreased greatly since the early days, which is good. Another thing: with the growth of permanent connections worldwide as against dialup, more and more of the average Joes will host their webpages on their own machine (like me :)), as against uploading it to some free server, which would typically be in the US. So maybe things are going to get better.
What happens to Slashdot when CmdrTaco dies?
The small ISPs aren't paying for the large ISPs backbone, and the usage flows both ways through it.
:-)
You don't GET PAID driving down a toll road one way, do you?
Fuck Beta. Fuck Dice
Didn't Allan Fells retire sometime at the end of last year?
MOD IT DOWN!
it's a god damn troll mod it down for fucks sake!
What do you get when you cross Kreskin the magician with an insurance-peddling duck? "Hypno Duck" -- The latest AFLAC commercial. This spot received the highest consumer recall score for television ads in the bi-weekly Intermedia consumer survey. Our congratulations to Kreskin, star of AFLAC. Many will recall the Amazing Kreskin as being the omniscient seer who correctly predicted the death of *BSD.
Slashdot poster.... in favor of regulation...... brain melting....
Everything that was once directly lived has receded into a representation. -debord
What's the big deal? Most people pee into a toilet or urinal when they have to go. What they ought to be investigating is why so many people don't wash their hands afterward. Now that's something worth looking into.
Visitors to the website slashdot.org will by now have surely heard of the act of Moderation. This is where a contributor's post can be 'Moderated' either positively or negatively, depending on how the Moderator perceives the value of the post. There is a sliding scale of total moderation points, from -1 to 5, along with snappy summaries of the reason for moderation, such as "Funny", "Insightful", or the ever popular "Troll". An additional benefit offered to Moderators is the ability to ban a poster from contributing, by negatively moderating enough of his postings in a 24 hour period.
In order to retain some level of fairness for the Slashdot population, the Slashdot Editors (adopting the role of 'Benevolent Dictators') have implemented a scheme whereby regular users of Slashdot, chosen essentially at random, are given the ability to act as Moderators.
This underlines an inherent flaw in the system. Psychological studies have shown that in any community, no matter how small, should a random sampling of people be given the slightest grasp of power, they will immediately abuse it. There is a primal, evolutionary desire in Man to place himself higher than his peers by whatever measurement they can muster. Slashdot Moderation provides the ideal means for which a man can prove himself more equal than others.
At the risk of invoking Godwin's Law at such an early point in my thesis, I have no choice but to compare Slashdot Moderation to the systematic genocide of the Jewish community in 1930's Germany.
A bold statement, I admit, and deliberately designed to shock, but I feel the statement is necessary. I shall now offer a more rational explanation, as well as a comparison of the parallels between Slashdot Culture, and the National Socialist regime.
First, some history. National Socialism did not spring up overnight. It grew from a feeling of national bitterness and resentment at the war reparations Germany was forced to make after World War One. Germany was a broken country, populated by desperate starving people. And to the desperate, an extreme ideology begins to seem like a rational choice.
The advent of new technology forces a paradigm shift in the way the beholders of that technology think. The Christianity Meme was made wide spread by the invention of the Gutenberg press. And the rise of National Socialism was made popular because of the invention of Cinema. Here we had a new means to control the flow of information to the populace, that they are willing to unquestioningly listen to due to the 'novelty factor' of moving pictures. It is no coincidence that some of the best Cinematography of the early 20th Century came out of the National Socialist propaganda machine.
Why is this the case? It is yet another fault of man that a new means of distributing memes is perceived, due to the 'newness' of the medium, to have a greater 'validity' than older media. Those harnessing new inventions have the power to win control of the hearts and minds of others.
With the tools in place, who should the National Socialists target? Clearly, as a counterpoint to Man's desire to hold power over others, there is also a desire to resent the success of others. If someone is successful, they reduce the self-worth of their beholders. Although times were harsh in Germany in the prelude to World War II, there were still successful inhabitants of that country. Possessing shrewd business acumen as well as the contacts in other countries needed to maintain support in such a poverty stricken and broken land, who else should deserve the wrath of the populace more than the Jews?
Fast-forward to the latter quarter of the 20th Century. Computing technology is focused in niche markets, and limited to big successful companies like IBM and Microsoft. As the markets were limited, there were also limited opportunities for employment. This gave rise to a rising number of college dropouts, seething with resentment and unable to relate to society beyond the staccato clatter of keyboards and the pallid green glow of an 80x24 text display, and lacking the basic business skills (and a smart suit) needed to secure employment at one of these companies.
At this time, a new invention was beginning to take hold in College campuses throughout the world. The Internet. As with the Gutenberg press and Cinema beforehand, this new technology would grow to spread one of the most virulent memes of the modern age - Open Source Software, created as the antithesis of successful business practise.
So, the parallels between the birth of Anti-Semetic National Socialism and the birth of Open Source Software have been made. Of course, it is easy to claim that A=B without providing further logical evidence in support. So, the next task of my thesis is to provide further parallels, and bring this discourse back to the initial focus on Slashdot Moderation.
Slashdot was conceived, in it's original 'Chips 'n' Dips' incarnation, as a vehemently anti-corporate Open Source website. Roughly 10-15 years down the line from the birth of Open Source, it has become saturated with propaganda, and now forms the centrepiece of the Open Source Development Network. An authority in it's field, Slashdot's success is in no small part due to the ability of the editors to 'pick and choose' valid news articles submitted by users, and present the same old tired "Open Source Good / Closed Source Bad" rhetoric time and time again, dabbling with anti-copyright and the right of the 'common man' to remove an artist's ability to gain compensation for the work. In essence, this is similar to the 'paring down' of artistic worth in 1930's Germany. If no-one is willing to contribute valid and vibrant art to the community, then all art shall become harsh and functional, possessing a certain intimidating aesthetic.
Which leads onto Open Source's shining achievement - Linux. This diatribe is not aimed towards Linux in particular, as it is a well-oiled, well-tuned machine. A technically adept Operating System, it is worthy of admiration by any rational man. The point of this thesis is not to attack the art produced by Open Source coders, which in itself is worthy, but to enlighten all as to the political processes behind the OSS movement.
By the same scale, it is hard to fault Mercedes for the technical excellence of the vehicles which were used by the National Socialist party. But the politics behind the party are what taint the image of Mercedes' vehicles of the era. The Swastika itself is a benign symbol, found this day in such diverse locations as Pokemon cards, but is permanently tainted with the history of the acts made under its auspice. In the same way, companies switching to Open Source solutions will begin to regard the Penguin with the same trepidation as their profits fall.
It should be worth noting at this point that IBM, previously one of the world's greatest companies, has begun reporting servere financial losses, no doubt due to its adoption of Open Source practises. This epoch-making event was NOT reported on Slashdot, even though articles were submitted.
And what of the other great company mentioned above? Microsoft, aka Micro$oft, Mickeysoft, Microshaft, Kro$oft, and many other derogatory and undeserved names. Throughout the previous 25 years, Microsoft has grown from strength to strength, again possessing shrewd business acumen as well as providing products that people want. This makes them the number one target for the OSS movement. Incapable of standing by their own merits, the OSS zealot would rather attack Microsoft as a priority than produce anything of worth for their community.
Slashdot Moderators, crazed with their limited new-found power, exhibit this behavior. It is a sad state of affairs that the majority of article moderations are negative. Where is the positive feedback and sense of social contribution? Nowhere to be found. Moderators are too focused on putting their peers down to make themselves appear superior, rather than doing the hard work and becoming better on their own terms.
As the National Socialists required a scapegoat, Slashdot Moderators require a constant stream of Postings to label '-1, Inferior'. Once a posting is reduced to the score of -1, it becomes invisible to the casual user. Again, this is a parallel to the Ghettoization of Germany upon the election of Hitler.
In essence this would not be so bad, were postings to be evaluated on their own terms. However, alongside the moderation of their postings, each user has a 'Karma' value, namely the sum of their worth to the Slashdot community. As a user's posts are moderated up or down, so their Karma fluctuates. As Karma becomes negative, a user's default posting score is reduced, until they are posting at a default of -1. Again, ghettoizing PEOPLE, not just their opinions.
This ghettoization is reinforced with the often fake belief that a negatively moderated post, and therefore the poster, is a "Troll". (Is it any wonder that such a name has been chosen to describe these people, invoking mental imagery of facial disfigurement and hooked noses?) As the Jews were accused of fraud, dishonesty and being subhuman animals, so too are Trolls accused of FUD, Crapflooding, and obfuscated goatse.cx links. Quite often, these 'undesirables' are capable of providing a valid insightful comment on a topic, but because it is in opposition to the Political dogma of Slashdot they are moderated back into their ghetto. The person becomes moderated, not their opinion.
This is just the thin end of the wedge. Although, as memes are transient, it is difficult to silence an opinion, it is trivial to silence a person. Upon the rise of National Socialism in Germany, the populace were motivated by propaganda into entering the Jewish Ghettos en masse with the sole purpose of causing as much damage as possible to Jewish businesses and residences. The infamous Krystalnacht. This parallels far too accurately with the Slashdot Editor's non-discouragement of the act of IP-banning. As mentioned above, this occurs when an individual user's postings are repeatedly moderated down in a short period. They then become incapable of posting any contributions themselves. In essence, they have been silenced, regardless of the worth of their postings.
Of course, the editors claim that Meta-Moderation is the panacea to solve this clear abuse of moderating privledge. But if a Meta Moderator is presented with a list of moderations that they disagree with, such as this targetted 'silencing' mentioned above, they cannot note them as such without in turn becoming an 'Undesirable' themselves, as too many Disagreements with the Moderation groupthink also result in loss of Karma.
Throughout all of this, the Editors have claimed a false level of detachment from the acts of moderation. In a same way, as the National Socialists gathered their power and began working on their Elite Political wing, The SS, they too remained detached from the civilians working in their name. Why? Because after inspiring the populace to such acts of violence through their propaganda, they could then claim that they were only giving the people what they want.
And then began the next stage of the atrocities. The Gestapo, Germany's secret police, were recruited from the best and the brightest of Germany's elite. As is the case now, the best and the brightest of society were often shunned and ostracized in society. In essence, the Gestapo were a tightly controlled 'Geek Army' of intelligent young men with a burning, seething resentment of normal society. The perfect psychological profile for the cause.
After all, give a normal man (with an active sex life) a gun and he will use it responsibly in self defence. Give a geek a gun and he will behave according to his sociopathic logic and hatred of the world he arrogantly presumes to be distant from. Ask yourself why Slashdot flat-out justified the murder of innocents at Columbine. And then ask yourself why, even for a brief moment, you almost began to sympathize with the killers after Jon Katz' manipulative and pseudo-emotive Hellmouth articles.
How this relates to Slashdot is clear. The majority of Slashdot posters are Sociopathic OSS zealots, unable through lack of social finesse or personal hygiene to mate regularly. Sexually and emotionally frustrated and with grudges to bear, incapable in their blinkered sense of self-righteousness of accepting any dissenting opinion than the OSS cause. Now give these people the opportunity to Moderate these dissenting opinions. Of course they are going to want to silence them, by any means necessary.
Now, the Slashdot Editors have admitted taking this silence of opinion into the next stage, by moderating whole swathes of 'undesirable' posts negatively. And then permanently banning anyone who moderates said posts back up from moderating EVER again! The result of this new policy? The few Moderators with any sense of fairness and decency are removed from the moderation pool, leaving the power ENTIRELY in the hands of the zealots. Clearly, positive moderation is discouraged under this regime, which is a direct parallel with the way the National Socialists moved their own sympathisers into positions of power throughout Europe.
So how does this compare to the genocide performed in Auschwitz and their ilk? I would like at this point to explain that in NO way do I wish to belittle the horrors that were performed in the name of National Socialism. The six million innocents killed were a cry of anguish from which humanity may never recover. And a vast distance in time and scope from a few banned posters on some shitty "My Favourite Links - now with comments" website. But these stories need to be retold before the horror is lost forever.
For the only thing that we learn from history is that we never learn anything from history. Time and time again, the St. Vitus dance is played out, we make the same mistakes, and we perpetually fail to see the warning signs.
So, moderators, the next time you moderate a rational, insightful post down, maybe because you disagree with it or because it's posted by a 'Known Troll', just ask yourself this...
You get run over on the toll road because you are an idiot.
is the find out why the internet costs $75 a month and why commercial ad-free cable tv isnt so ad-free anymore.
I know you are psychotic, but please make an effort.
Australia investigates PIERCEING activities....
The lunatic is in my head
Remember the slashdot story on African ISPs having to foot the connection bill? The fundamental problem is that peripheral networks foot the bill to connect to larger networks, which foot the bill to connect to themselves (via backbones) and which connect to yet larger networks.
So why should governments regulate this? What kind of abuse is going on? If the edge players did not buy the connection, they would die.
Large players (e.g. AOL and MCI) are the ones vulnerable to bankruptcy for spending too heavily on infrastructure, that is quickly out of date.
Mac Refugee, paper MCSE, linux wanna be
Consumer Lapdog, not watchdog.
Does this mean that ISP's with a huge number of Geek users will try null-routing slashdot and sites like it to prevent having to pay the cost when someone elses site gets slashdotted?
Australia really needs some not-for-profit (government sponsored?) peering points (IX's) like they do here in the UK (Linx, Lipex). Having large ISP's in control of the peering game will inevitably make the rules unfair.
...National ISP pays YOU!
...Michael pays to reject better stories in favor of Australian ones!
BGP already provides some of these benefits for smaller ISPs by allowing peering relationships. Let's say there is a parent ISP A, with smaller ISPs B and C in a transit relationship to A (in other words, they pay A). If B wants to send to C, it normally has to go through A, and both B and C end up paying for it. If there is significant traffic between B and C, they may decide to set up a peering relationship, sending packets directly between one another and bypassing A. Many peering relationships are set up such that B and C don't pay each other anything, since they both end up saving money by bypassing A.
Also, if you think about it, if A charges B for anything going from B to A and B charges A for anything going from A to B, you end up cancelling much of the money they make from one another. Granted, the larger ISP will most likely come out ahead, but it still needs to pay its bills. So it raise prices anyway in order to recoup the money that was cancelled out. In effect, the amount that the larger ISP charges will be unchanged, but there is extra work involved in keeping track of all this information. To make an analogy, does it make sense for you to charge your ISP for packets that go one way and not the other? No, you're paying them for the connection that they provide.
Finally, how do we determine in what situations do charges apply? If an e-mail goes from A to B, it seems logical that A should pay. But if B makes a request for a web page and the web page is transferred from A to B, should A still pay? If we make different payment rules for different protocols, this will become a mess.
In summary, I don't see how this regulation will effect anything except to make everyones lives harder.
Complicating things is the fact that probably the biggest content host in Australia (no names, no pack drill) steadfastly refuses to peer. Of course, they're owned by $tier_1_ISP. If they peer, they give away the traffic. If they don't peer, they charge money for the traffic. What do you think they're going to do?
Sounds like a good idea now. I'll have to wait till I'm sober to make a "reasonable" decision.
Kids, when I got on the internet here in Denmark, there was no world wide web. You paid for an expensive account on a unix box you could dial into. You could then access Gopher, Veronica, etc. Not that it made it less interesting, because the noise-floor on the "sigal" was very low
Anyway, there were only one place to get connected in the beginning, then came providers and the problem that our local(inside the country) traffic, got routed half across Europe only to end up on the other side of the street. Then in 1994 came the DIX, Danish Internet eXchange point. Horray. So all a provider has to do, is to get a connection to the DIX and they can make peering agreements with other providers to route to each other networks via the DIX.
Now if you visit their site, you can see the prices clearly stated on the page(divide by 7 to get $(damn is going down)).
I(of course) can't see how the entire network in Australia is built, but I'd say a Exchange point would be good. I can't imagine forcing someone to pay for traffic the way the article mentions here, can be good.
But if you set up a exchange point in a major city where everybody is represented, and the cost to get connected to it, is the cable and a small fee to keep it running. Even smaller ISP's can join.
But then again I can't get the complete picture by just reading one article.
my sig
Oh well
I have mod points and I am not afraid to use them
Jerk off.
Just ask anyone with a deregulated, privatised electricity supply. Adelaide Australia (electricity up by more than 30% for Christmas), and California.
And I don't think deregulating our airlines (Australia) helped either. They're either about to drop out the sky like they do in the USA or we're only going to have Qantas and only football teams are going to be able to afford to fly, because the airline sponsors the competition. The internet tickets may be cheaper but the I have to fly now/tomorrow tickets, which used to be the cheapest are now more expensive than ever before.
And banking, how that has gone to shit in Australia. The banks are making huge profits, laying off lots of staff and slugging the hell out of their customers with less than multimillion turnovers. The only way to get your money out of them is to become a director or exec and then quit. Sigh. Even the shareholders are getting a raw deal out of this highway robbery.
Bring back regulation, I say!
My understanding with Australian internet traffic is that there are already different rates/costs and limits for upload traffic than for download traffic, especially if you have a "permanent" connection. (anyone else get dropouts on their adsl?)
Also when I was in NZ they had a different rate for traffic downloaded from outside the country ie USA or Australia to traffic racked up within the country.
I think some web site hosting cost more if lots of people download (upload from your server)your site too. That's why you see some sites with pleading messages not to directly link to their url, ie they'd prefer you copied their picture to your site and let your website incur the cost of people sucking onto their computers.
actually I'm having a hard time thinking of anything where regulation has made the cost go up, as much as deregulation or privatisation has. Even our bus tickets are more expensive. And don't get me started on the UK Rail system. Yikes.
cost of living up, take home pay down.
-- it must be true, it's on the internet.
As to pork barrelling, that still occurs, but pork is aimed differently to that in the US. Our arliamentary system, particularly when you throw in proportional representation in the Senate and IRV in the lower house, are quite different to the US's presidential system, and trying to explain the different dynamics to people who've never had exposure to it is kind of complex.
Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from a rigged demo
--Andy Finkel (J. Klass?)
When it comes to using a monopoly position to screw competitors out of the market, Telstra makes Microsoft look like an amateur. About the only difference is that rather than Microsoft buying politicians, the government owns 51% of Telstra.
And like Microsoft, the only way it's ever going to improve is if somebody takes a hacksaw to Telstra. They should seperate the retail business into a seperate entity, which pays the network provider just like all the other telcos.
Labor actually suggested this on the quiet (after they got themselves into a horrible mess over telecommunications policy) but I doubt they'll ever actually implement it.
Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from a rigged demo
--Andy Finkel (J. Klass?)
And there are many regional IXes, besides things like the AUSBONE. WAIX, the Western Australian IX, is a good example of this done fairly well. Almost every ISP with a presence in the state has a presence, as well as several other big transport providers (Singtel, Comindico, etc).
:) is difficult at best. The WAIX has several fairly well maintained lists of resources, many which local ISPs list on their websites. This provides user incentive.
... and that is pretty much Australian Internet Exchanges 101... from my uneducated point of view of course :)
There are a few main problems with Australian peering. First, certain big, nasty corporations profit too much from providing rip-off transit services by refusing to peer with IXs. Secondly, said companies have really stupidly designed broadband solutions involving tunneling most traffic interstate -before- providing endpoint connectivity. Thus local peering is impossible thanks to stupid design. Minus one for incentive.
The second issue is one that this will hopefully help address - BGP size. Unfortunatly, Australian BGP feeds are notoriously poluted thanks to various hacks and tricks in our national transit networks. This causes everyone a headache, as keeping a full BGP feed on a router (for both routing -and- accounting puposes) is expensive. Route tables are pretty memory hungry, and most backbone infrastructure is still driven by Cisco routers. Extra ram is not cheap, assuming you have the grunt to hold the table anyway.
The third problem is consumer oriented. Australian ISPs -have- to make money currently because Transit is expensive here. Even with this change, transit will still be far more expensive than in most other places in the world. While solutions to this are being worked on (new links and companies trying to bypass the traditional monopolies), this means Australian consumers are almost always traffic capped and either shaped or billed after a 3-6gb allowance.
It's not 1gb, but it's still a pain. Now, the problem is that in Western Australia we are lucky. Most ISPs give free access to the WAIX for their customers. This is fast and a major cost cutter for everybody. The IX has a lot of excellent resources - mirrors abound for everything.
However this does not happen in most other states. Or to a limited extent. Part of this is the age-old ingress/egress problem (just because a traceroute going OUT, eg a http -request- goes via a IX, the charged incoming data usually won't) presenting both confusion and billing problems. This leads to the second part, where most IXs, eg AusBone, do -not have a well maintained list of freely peered resources available-.
Billing is a pain for ISPs in other states as it's very hard to tell if something is freely available, and providing this as a marketing ploy (technically IXes are good... netadmins will be happy, finance may be happy - but given the outlay for ram for BGP, etc, -somebody- has to convince marketing it's a good idea
AND A MAJOR GROWTH POINT. Users, if provided with a list of resources available at a freely exchanging peering point, are more likely to try and convince their providers to participate. It's simply.
Unfortunately, Allan Fels announced a while ago that he will not be seeking another term at the end of this year (it is a rather demanding job). The Liberal (i.e., pro-corporate Reaganite/Thatcherite, "what's good for big business is good for Australia") government announced its candidate for his replacement, a former leader of a business organisation. It remains to be seen just how much the new tory ACCC will champion the little guy, or whether it will adopt a more "laissez-faire" approach.
This is just what we need! Now, instead of being threatened with de-peering for exceeding their traffic quotas, which is usually due to SPAM, we'll get more spam since the smaller ISP's will now get paid to generate all that traffic.
ACK!!!!
What the hell are you people thinking?????
HDGary secures my bank
I can think of a few right off hand. For example: the UK railways system (brilliant until it was contracted out - now it's unsafe and expensive), the energy market in just about any deregulated market (yay 18% jump in energy costs in Toronto), the Canadian aviation market (when the Fed let AC buy Canadian and didn't bail out C3000, all meaningful competition ended and fares skyrocketed), the payphones (payphones used to cost a quarter when Bell was a regulated monopoly - now they're open and cost up to 40 cents). I could easily go on, but I won't (because it's boring).
And then there's the theoretical reason why prices should go up when unregualted, especially in an industry that requires huge amounts of overhead and capital. Companies are naturally greedy. Their duty to their shareholders/owners is to create the most revenue at the least cost to them. therefore, they raise prices until the market won't hold it anymore, and then they lower them a bit. Sure, competition will try and keep things in check, but in industries where it'd difficult for a new company to break in without sizeable investment, where is the imperitus for the companies to meaningfully compete, and not to just cartel the prices up? Contrast this to a regulated system, who's goal is to ensure a "fair" price for the consumer.
In a privatized/unregulated system, the goal is to make more money at the lowest cost by any means, and the power lies with the corporations. In a regulated system, the goal is to make more money at the lowest cost, while maintaining a "fair" price, and the power lies with the government. While the government may not be "the people," for the most part (Bush excepted, see Chirac or Schroeder for a decent example) they're closer to the wills of "the people" than the mega-corporations are.
Cue The Sun...
Gee i wonder if you're the same exact person, just decided not to sign in, eh?
See, what I wrote is in direct response to the original posting regardless of what the article is about you half-wit. And if you're too damaged to see that then you have no business using a computer.
Now, moron...you better go, your bus is leaving.
why run from Vincenzo?
for one sweet moment there I thought the ozzies were going to research urination style. With their famous appetite for XXXX/Fosters/VB it felt about right.
Maybe you live in interesting times
Geekee
I've been reading Michael Moore's book "stupid white men", and there is a lovely chapter in it for you called "idiot nation" and the supplementatry chapter "Nice planet, nobody home".
From the penguin australia edition c2002 of his book, chapter entitled nice planet nobody home, pg138 he says that (I've paraphrased a bit)
califorinia's electricity was supplied by regional monopolies, rates set by state legislation. Deregulation was proposed as a way for the companies to recoup what they'd spent on nuclear power plants (What? isn't california an earthquake zone, what the hell are nuke power plants doing anywhere near there?)...
Deregulation came into effect in 1996, including a state funded bailout to the electricity companies ($20 billion USA). 4 years prices frozen at above average cost (so you're already paying more). the deregulated companies did not build more power plants but preferred to buy power from interstate at daily spot market. "outrageously inflated prices". If you haven't got a contract for the power, what are you going to say no I don't like the price today, I think I'll turn the state fridges off?
But it gets better: The power was available. The independent (?) system operator had access to 45000 megawatts, more than enough power to cover summer peak (for you northeners, a/c seems to use more power than heating), Power companies hold back 13000 megawatts by going off line. The result is they get more demand and higher prices. Interestingly LA still has public ownership of its electricity supply and they do not go off line (read blackout).
Still I wouldn't want to encourage anyone to use more electricity unless it is generated by a renewable source.
And I can't recommend the book for the faint hearted or for fans of George Bush, it will just frighten you.
-- it must be true, it's on the internet.
Peering practices?
So that's what they call it in Austrailia?
Here in the US we call it Peeping Tom practices.
I'll see your senator, and I'll raise you two judges.
Finally, this should give the smaller ISPs some relief.
Very popular slashdot journal for adul
Conceptual integrity in turn dictates that the design must proceed
from one mind, or from a very small number of agreeing resonant minds.
-- Frederick Brooks Jr., "The Mythical Man Month"
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