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FTC Says 'Slow Down' on Net Neutrality
Bushido Hacks writes "The Washington Post reports that the Federal Trade Commission has fumbled the Network Neutrality Act, again, as of this past week. However, the FTC defended its actions saying that their decision was not a give-in to the big telecom and cable companies. Instead, the FTC report urges caution on Network Neutrality Regulation. While this news is disappointing, the FTC's decision appears to be thought out and a message to remind people to not let the subject of Net Neutrality be abandoned by the general public so corporations could undermine the interest of consumers. We discussed the row this created, but with constant stalling tactics being employed here how long will it be before net neutrality opponents craft their own legislation?"
Americans are still consumers, and while we may be a largely unthinking purchasing mass, people can quite easily distinguish "shitty" from "awesome" which is exactly the distinction one can make between a mass media run network with terrible latency and low bandwidth and one run by, say, Google.
If the networks go to hell in a flaming hand basket, what would it take for Google to start lighting up fiber they already own? Get a few major metropolitan areas wired up, get word out, and consumers will begin switching in droves. It wouldn't take much pressure beyond that to wake up the telecoms and get them right back into the game.
I'm no free market blind follower, but this seems like a situation when a viable and large enough competitor is sitting in the wings, ready to smack the wannabe monopolists upside the head if they attempt their backwater cousin fucking ideas of raping the connections we pay for.
Look, I know that everyone here gets regular blowjobs from network neutrality, but I'm just wondering. Having looked at the Patriot Act, and the YES-YOU-CAN-SPAM act, and our "healthcare system" (I use the term loosely), and our current, uhm, whatever it is, but it's certainly not a war, over in Iraq...
Are you guys SURE you want the US federal government legislating this?
I have said it before, and I suppose it's time to say it again: Most of the time, when I see someone try to articulate what "network neutrality" means, that they want legislated, they end up with a set of words which, if they were a law, would prevent me from blocking spammers and DDOSers. There are good reasons for which networks are sometimes rather decidedly non-neutral about which traffic they carry, and there are real reasons for which people would like to have the option of paying for guaranteed bandwidth.
Most of the horror stories come down to "what if I only got the sorta dodgy networking I'm currently paying for, but other people were able to buy a better network." Not all; there's real potential for abuse. I just don't think I trust the US federal government to come up with something better, no matter how smart or good the people advocating it are... And honestly, a lot of the advocacy I see is knee-jerk reactions that haven't even bothered to gloss over the question of whether teergrubing should be illegal, or any of the dozens of other technical questions this raises.
My blog: http://www.seebs.net/log/ --- My iPhone/iPad app: http://www.seebs.net/seebsfrac/
The FTC needs to let net neutrality through. If they don't, telecom companies will ruin the Internet.
Yea, because Google, who is in bed with the CIA, would be a MUCH better choice. Google will probably be the Internet 2(read Net Neutralized)bringer of doom. What else would they need all that fiber and all those data centers?
The internet should not be run by a handful of corporations, or one corporation. The Internet should stay the decentralized network that it is.
Simply giving control to a single company, Google(as you seem to be OK with), is not the answer. if anything it is worse than five companies.
Just my two cents.
The Captain
Your idea of the market players regulating each other seems sound enough.
My interest lies elsewhere, though. We have an election coming and numerous candidates have already declared intent, raised millions of dollars, and started building their platforms.
Will one of them have the foresight to make this more than a John-McCain-style-uninformed-soundbyte type issue?
If so, I am ready to start thinking about actually voting in this election. No one candidate can reverse the course of the war in Iraq, no one candidate can fix healthcare/welfare/the educational system. One candidate can, however, help America understand how high the stakes are for this particular issue.
Believe me... I would much rather see some sort of movement by all candidates to drop the party lines and attempt to fix the war and all the other issues I detailed above. Failing that, I guess I will consider voting for any candidate that shows an understanding of this issue because the impact on our future can be so incredibly far reaching.
The candidates now have some added time to weigh in on this issue. I'll be watching.
Regards.
The problem is that "net neutrality" sounds so techie and confusing, and the majority of Americans have no idea what the issue is, nor do they care. This is especially dangerous for consumers because in cases where the public is disineterested, lawyers for corporations, unions or special interest groups usually get to write the legislation nearly verbatim.
I for one welcome this move. Many many problems have been caused by quick to act not very well thought out actions on the part of our government. The FTC said slow down lets make sure we don't fuck this up, that doesn't happen very often these days and should be welcomed with open arms. As a member of the US military I can say I am being directly effected by one of these rushes to judgment, maybe if the morons in the Hill had thought about shit first and made the intelligent rational choice instead of the "patriotic" one we wouldn't be in this mess. Just for the record I'm net neutral by leaning but I understand why they corporations want what they do. Here's the catch though they're very often regional monopolies. I've lived and live in a place where there are one or if you're lucky two broadband providers. If backbone and distribution access was free and open then we wouldn't be having this issue. Time Warner and Verizon etc.. would have already tried this and failed when many of their subscribers moved onto providers that didn't restrict their access.
I'll meet you at the intersection of "Should be" and "Reality"
I completely agree with urging caution when it comes to regulation. However, the fact that they urge caution with network neutrality, but pretty much nothing else, suggests that they are singling out network neutrality.
Write your own Choose Your Own Adventure. http://www.freegameengines.org/gamebook-engine/
I don't think you understood his point. Google wouldn't take over the internet, they would provide a net-neutral alternative. And, given their history, it would be low cost as well.
So, it plays out like this: Major players start degrading service of non-paying services, Google enters the market and starts providing service that people expect, gaining them an immediate large share of the market. After the major players get told that it's too bad, and that Google isn't violating any anti trust laws, they have no choice but to move to a network neutral policy just to compete.
That's the hope at least, if the government isn't willing to look out for it's own citizens.
There is nothing wrong with At&t or verizon doing anything they want. As long as they don't deliver less then what the consumer is paying for. Then it becomes fraud, bait and switch or whatever else you can think of.
There are a few other restrictions, but letting them charge more for faster service isn't necessarily bad. It is just charging more for the same service and not delivering their promised speeds based on a third party payment that it the real problem.
And it isn't just the conservatives you have to watch out for either.
Have Rush and O'Reilly defend him, and all the conservatives will understand just how evil and anti-American having a free liberal-loving internet is.
Bill O'Reilly's "Radio Factor" program just became available in my area and, out of curiosity, I wanted to hear what all of the fuss was about. From the writings/rantings here on slashdot, I expected to someone who--like GOP talking point readers Rush Limbaugh and Sean Hannity--seems to be merely a mouthpiece for Conservatives and Republicans, but I just can't reconcile that with what I've been hearing.
While O'Reilly does seem to me to be quite arrogant and a demagogue on certain morality issues, he's hardly a shill for GWB, the Neocons, corporate interests or the Republican Party. Within the last month, he has:
--called for greater regulation of the Airline Industry and Big Oil
--defended Bill & Hillary Clinton on numerous occasions, including claiming that Bill governed more conservatively tha GWB
--lambasted the Bush administration's handling of the war in Iraq, immigration, the selection of Michael Chertoff as head of Homeland security
--called for more environmental regulations
--criticized the Republicans for helping destroy the middle class
Admittedly, I haven't seen his TV show, but, from what I've heard, I would have a hard time lumping him in with Limbaugh, Hannity, Laura Ingraham, G Gordon Liddy and Neil Boortz. I guess the point is that just because you disagree with someone, it doesn't make them an ideologue.
I was not interested in voting this coming election generally disgusted with the current state of politics in general, Then I stumbled upon a certain congressman who is running for president. You my friend need to check out Ron Paul.
Visit youtube and search for Ron Paul.
Google Ron Paul.
The more you find out about Ron Paul the more you will regain hope in restoring the Republic and participating in our democracy.
Lurking at the bottom of the gravity well, getting old
And just who will "net neutrality" laws benefit besides lawyers and those that can afford them?
Because the thousands and thousands of pages of rules that will have to be written to define "net neutrality" will NOT aid the consumer. Oh, they'll claim to do just that. But it'll be just like the old AT&T monopoly.
Anyone think today's telcom industry is worse for the consumer than the government-regulated days? Why is there such a push to regulate the fastest-growing part of the US economy?
Most people do NOT have a choice when it comes to broadband. In many areas with relatively dense populations, the local cable/telco provider is given a monopoly, either by the town or the developer.
Ontop of that, the Internet as we know it, is an oligopoly run by a handful of national providers who get their bandwidth from a cartel of 9 Tier 1 ISPs and half-a-dozen or so important Tier 2 ISPs.
Because of this, no matter what you & the GP seem to think will happen, Google can't fly in and save the day by lighting up dark fiber. The "free" market is not so free.
[Fuck Beta]
o0t!
The market is perfectly free. It's just expensive to provide the service. I personally think the government should take it over. I'd have a never-ending stream of laughs at how badly they would bobble the whole thing.
Slashdot - where whining about luck is the new way to make the world you want.
That seems like wishful thinking to me. People aren't stupid, but these companies play dirty. You won't want to switch your ISP because you get it at a discount from the same people you get your cable from, who in turn use said cable to tell you that your other options suck (and, coincidentally, that net neutrality is evil). These ISPs already only give, like, what, 60% of their advertised speed? If a "good" company wanted to step up, the situation for that kind of competition is pretty much as good as it ever would be with a non-neutral net. No one's doing so in my area, so I'd hardly count on it. I'd feel safer with the legislation...
Sendou Wave Kick!!
I didn't suggest Google could fly in, only that the major players will continue to battle each other whatever happens. The OP put forward one way in which he thought another player could change the scenario. Really, there are many. Major companies who are in the middle of the pack with regard to market share are not going to stop fighting the dominance of the other players. I just don't want to see this situation go down. There are better ways... like voter education.
If the networks go to hell in a flaming hand basket, what would it take for Google to start lighting up fiber they already own? Get a few major metropolitan areas wired up, get word out, and consumers will begin switching in droves. It wouldn't take much pressure beyond that to wake up the telecoms and get them right back into the game.
What would it take? Well, a hell of a lot more money and influence than Google or any other company has.
Light up some fibers? You think that is all that it takes? It appears you have a poor understanding of the telecommunications infrastructure. Since the telcos and cable companies are no longer required to share their lines, Google (or whoever) would have to dig up every street and yard in the United States to offer a competing service. Google doesn't have that kind of money, the cities wouldn't let them do it and granny wouldn't let them dig up her rose garden. Furthermore, there is currently no wireless technology that can provide competitive bandwidth on a large scale.
While it's true that Google has bought up some dark fiber, that only allows them to bypass the core network to a certain extent. The key is the last mile and it's locked-up in the hands of the telcos and the cable companies.
It is very naive to believe there is a viable competitor waiting in the wings. There isn't one. There isn't going to be one tomorrow, next year or anytime in the foreseeable future. No company has the money and influence to duplicate the infrastructure and there are no viable wireless technologies available to bypass the last mile. It's going to be a duopoly for the foreseeable future and free market economics don't apply.
I thought the same way as you several years ago when OReilly first entered my area, but he eventually changed my mind. The problem is that, right now, you are listening to what he says, and not paying attention to the way he frames his show.
Once you become familiar with his show, a few things start to become apparent. First, Bill is not only intellectually dishonest, but is violently opposed to the concept of intellectually honest. Second, Bill is a religious fanatic- he is the kind of conservative who dreams of a Theocratic corporate police state.
The problem, as I see it, with OReilly's brand of hate-speech is that casual listeners might buy into his claims of being "a centrist". For example, Bill was one of the chief propagandists assisting the Swift Boat Vets, but he was really really slick about it: he would have them on, show after show, for weeks, and the whole time claim he didn't agree with them. He never really did much to articulate this disagreement, however, because most of the time he would simply read off their points or let them take over the show for a few hours... then every so often he would offer the disclaimer that he, being a centrist, didn't really agree with what they were saying... but he thought what they say needed to be given an outlet.
So you don't have to agree with me right now, but just bear it in mind while listening to him. You will start seeing his true agenda leak in through his own words. Because OReilly's true dishonesty isn't so much in what he says, but in what he doesn't say. He may claim he doesn't like Bush, but he will never actually say anything tangibly bad about him. Whether he claims to like Bush or not, he is still carrying water for him, and that's how you see where his real beliefs lie.
I would have expected they would have gotten a clue that people are being abused these last few years by companies such as Comcast. We can't trust them to do the right thing. So why do politicians think the market will make sure it's ok? After all, we have very few options unless you live in SunnyVale California.
Most states don't have 20 or 30 options for highspeed Internet. If a company goes nuts you have to put up or go dial up (like that's an option these days).
I urge people to contact the FTC and let them know what's on you mind. This needs to be dealt with before Telco's make their own laws.
Has Comcast disconnected your Internet account? Same here. You can read about it at http://comcastissue.blogspot.com
Don't get me wrong, Google does some cool stuff (gmail, google maps (I really like the hybrid setting), picasa, etc), but at the massive ammount of information they log on everyone is very scary.
"The Federal Reserve is a fraudulent system."--Lew Rockwell
End The FED. -
so why not do this:
Allow a tiered Internet to be created, but the Telecomms, by regulation, must keep a certain level of quality of service to the most basic of tiers, and if the market will bear increasing costs of the higher tiers, allow that to take place. Those that want that higher tier of service will subsidize those of you who prefer the usual way of getting your bits across.
We're all hypocrites. We all have hidden parts, it's the contrast between them that make us more a hypocrite than others
If you'd heard that phony clown over the long run, you'd know he's just know jumping off the ship - like the rat he is - or jumping aboard the proper vessel -- either way, it's waaaay tooo little, and waaay tooo late. KEither Olbermann rules, and O'Really's ratings are plummeting faster than Dick Cheney's unit after being confronted by Ann Coulter......Can't talk any further, Billy boy's just killed my mike....
If American's cannot distinguish between "awesome" and "shitty" governments, how can they possibly distinguish the difference between high and low latency connections?
80% of the Americans on the internet would probably still be happy on dialup. The only reason they all have broadband is because advertising told them to like it.
The "let the mraket decide" in this case is fundamentally flawed if not just stupid. I live in the suburbs of a major city, and we've only had "high-speed" for 5-6 years. And even so, there is only one provider, so if I don't like comcast my only other choice is dial-up (which would suck since I don't have a phone). All the fiber/cable is on public property, I don't see anything wrong with saying, if you use public property you have to follow net neutrality.
...the FTC defended its actions saying that their decision was not a give-in to the big telecom and cable companies....the FTC's decision appears to be thought out... Given that the overwhelming majority of the public is for net neutrality, of course the decision has to have the appearance of being well thought out. Like duh!But make no mistake about it, this is the FCC -- once again -- caving into the large corporations that fund politicians and who more-or-less run the US gov't.
There are many?
Name some.
...
The only viable way to seriously change the market is wireless... because it will break the physical monopoly on the last-mile. However, this assumes that the existing telecom/cable giants aren't the ones rolling this tech out, which isn't a safe assumption to make.
We can discuss spectrum allocations - part of the spectrum is unlicensed, the rest is mostly assigned to Sprint/Nextel, who also happen to be a Tier 1 carrier. Which brings me to my final point, even WiMAX won't resolve the ultimate fact that once you've dealt with the last mile, you run into another not-so-free market: the Tier 1 carriers (many of which are big telecoms).
My hope is that some long reange wireless technology will help reshape the internet's ownership. Unfortunately, I remain pessimistic because someone still has to build out that wireless infrastructure and my guess is that it'll be the companies with the budget to do it.
[Fuck Beta]
o0t!
Just not in the next 5-10 years.
Even if Google implemented it tomorrow at the endpoints of their fiber network (to bypass the last-mile), they'll still have to essentially become a Tier 1 ISP with peering agreements to the other big players... and to do so, Google will have to play by their rules.
I'd love to hear how someone can come in and change the nature of the industry, but like you, I don't really see how that can happen.
[Fuck Beta]
o0t!
I have a job site currently that is fed T1 speeds over a wireless signal because the wired infrastructure doesn't exist there. The fact of the matter is that no local companies have the resources to put up transmission towers or get licensing for use of water towers to provide the signal because the costs are to high and the demand is too low. The wireless hardware available today can provide amazing back haul speeds and can produce signals up to 30 miles LOS. If Google has enough dark fiber all you need to do is give them transmission towers, wireless hardware, and a public tired of poor Internet access and I'm sure that's enough incentive to light some up and make some money off the Tel Cos mistakes.
You won't want to switch your ISP because you get it at a discount from the same people you get your cable from
No I don't, I get my net access from a different company than I get my cable from. And when WiMax is widely available and relatively cheap I may switch my isp. Also I don't get my phone service from either one either.
FalconShould there be a Law?
One side wants to rape the principle that made the Internet great, the other wants to save it. Compromising with evil doesn't stop it, it emboldens it and only delays the inevitable confrontation.
Net neutrality legislation is a blunt instrument because nobody has any idea exactly what the Telcos want to do. We don't want a law that's too broad just to stop them from doing something that they have no desire to do because there's always the risk of also preventing perfectly legitimate behaviour.
Well, you are a lot more optimistic than I when it comes to various up-and-coming, point-to-multipoint wireless technologies. Most of the frequencies currently available for these systems are too high and therefore require line-of-sight paths with little to no obstruction. Maybe if the big telcos fail to acquire all that UHF spectrum the government plans to auction off (say, Google ends up the highest bidder) and the wireless equipment vendors can redesign their equipment to use those frequencies, I would be a bit less pessimistic.
Even if that pans out, it's really not equivalent to what the telcos and cable companies can offer in terms of bandwidth. Plus, home owners have to put up with antennas and powered NIDs.
I would love to be proved wrong and be shown that my pessimism is unwarranted. But having spent 20 years in the telecom industry I've seen dozens of over-hyped, supposedly disruptive technologies fail, I'm a bit jaded.
I agree. Widespread deployment of WiMAX or similar technologies is way out in the future. And, I believe these wireless technologies will only succeed if the lower frequency spectrum going up of auction soon ends up in the hands of someone other than than the be telcos. I don't have a lot of confidence that will occur.
But they have a harder time saying or doing something about it.
We've seen how well this works in other areas, say operating systems, energy, and the media
ahem...
You are welcome on my lawn.
'The four simple words "pay up or else" are sufficient to constitute the crime of extortion.'
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Extortion
I would say this is exactly what the consumer telco monopolies are saying when they threaten to throttle bandwidth on any Internet host or service, if some form of additional payment is not provided.
Deleted
How 1890s of you. They'll simply deploy a wireless comm module, run power and fiber to it, and be in service. The module will consist of a big-ass industrial computer, an Akami-style accelerator, perhaps a local Google Apps cache, two or more redundant refrigeration modules, and a fold-up phased array antenna (with clip on facades to meet local zoning ordinances). Every bit of this technology is already available off the shelf--it would not take much to integrate it into a slick, efficient package.
<boggle> This discussion is not about current hardware competing in the current market. It is about what will happen if a cartel starts providing awful service at a ridiculous price, in the face of substantial market pull.
Duopoly? Here in a small city in Oklahoma I have my choice of cable, ILEC, CLEC, satellite, and WiFi.
Any ISP logs every piece of information, remember the AOL search logs?
Yes, the market will regular everything.
And any websites that say different shouldn't be on the web.
We need net neutrality mandated by law. Period. Telecoms are ALREADY censoring union websites, for example. What is to stop them from censoring websites with political opinions that disagree with the corporate position?
It's just expensive to provide the service.
Without government subsidy they'd collapse within days. Why should taxpayers support private enterprise that stay afloat without massive government aid? Is it better to have private for-profit corporations heavily subsidized by the government (airlines for example) or is it better to simply have the government take over the corporations? I personally think the government should take it over. I'd have a never-ending stream of laughs at how badly they would bobble the whole thing. What, like the Post Office, interstate highway system, Social Security, and national parks? And the system we have NOW is run by the government, it's just contracted out to telcoms and cable companies. It's like claiming the US military is a "free market" because their weapons are provided by private contractors.
Google can, however, offer cheap, fast WISP, or Wireless Internet. WISP has been analyzed to hold an additional TRILLION dollars in GNP for the US if it was implemented. WISP is cheap (no wires, no licensing fees, no legislation about right of way), fast, reliable (grid it together and what do you get?), and fast. 802.11 may sound slow, but compared to the pathetic speeds of even metro broadband through cable (which I have) the speed of 802.11 is unbelievable. The average user of broadband gets 600K down and 30K up. 802.11a would be about 1M. That's 500K up and 500K down worst case scenario for traffic. New transmitting/receiving technology (MIMO, phased arrays, etc) are rapidly extending the range. Now we have 802.11g. That's 11M. 5.5M up, 5.5M down. The Internet wouldn't be a tree, it'd be more like a spider's web. Obviously landlines would be needed to distribute load and get servers to transmit further out geographically (otherwise the local transmitters would get overloaded and the web would slow down in the vicinity for everyone and that server would have bad latency times everywhere). It's very secure (read the security papers on the 802.11 standard, what with all the frequency hopping and stuff...).
The age of wired Internet may fall, but there are more than enough alternatives. Bouncing signals off the moon doesn't work though. Some defense contractors tried it once. The latencies of the time it takes the signals to travel from earth to moon were too high. Just wanted to squash that before it got suggested.
Consider yourself spoken to.
If you think wireless networks will solve the last mile problem, I've got a really nice bridge to sell you.
The problem isn't that wireless network technology doesn't exist (although it's not perfect), or even that it isn't fast enough (it's pretty fast), but that in the current legal situation with licensed spectrum - there simply isn't enough legal wireless bandwidth to go around. Trying to use a single 802.11g network with ten or twenty other people sucks. WiMax isn't much faster, but it sure let's a bunch more people use it at the same time.
If we really want decent internet connections, we need to have neutral connections - and we need to not allow companies with legally granted infrastructure monopolies use that as leverage to expand into extra-fee content delivery. Allowing stuff like Verizon FIOS TV is a horrible mistake.
-- The act of censorship is always worse than whatever is being censored. Always.
They can run their network on private property anyway they like. The second this network is placed on public property it should become subject to certain rules, net neutrality being one of them.
Using openSUSE instead of Windows since 9th of October, 2007 and liking it.
Exactly, which is why I specified a phased-array system, like the ones Vivato makes. Phased-array systems use multiple antennas and mathematical tricks to transmit/receive narrow beams of radio waves. (Each antenna gets a programmable signal delay. Pick the delays right and you can make a flat antenna act like the dish antenna of your choice.) The neat thing is that radio waves don't interact with each other, so you can run many beams on a single antenna array. The number of beams is limited by how many antennas and math chips you can afford, which greatly multiplies the data throughput. The systems would also use small dish antennas for the fixed building customers, meaning the customers don't see each other or other base stations, and nearly eliminating interference with omnidirectional wireless systems on the same frequency.
It would work, and goddamn fucking well. We'd have a new era of blazing fast networks, rapidly improving because of intense capitalistic competition. It would be just like the Alexander Graham Bell era of cowboy telecommunications: whoever can deliver charging whatever the market will bear. Why, within a few years, it will have worked so well that people will forget there was ever a problem, and take the new status quo for granted.
And then the professional administrators will take over the regulatory agency. Just like the post-Bell Great Wars era of telecommunications. They'll have inherited the three-ring binders that tell how to do things, figured out years before by people who actually knew what the hell they were doing, so the system will keep working, a little creakily but not bad enough that the people who could fix it care enough to.
And then the professional administration layer will be captured by the industry that is being regulated. Just like the AT&T era of telecommunications. Gradual consolidation and mission drift will mean the industry becomes dominated by a giant near-monopoly, at both the government and market levels. It will end up running for the benefit of the people running it.
And then a social crusader or a revolution will smash the near-monopoly into bits and pieces. A new era of cowboy whatever will start, bringing cheaper and better whatever to the grateful capitalistic masses.
And so on and so forth.
You see, human enterprise has cycles just like wild things do. Riotous growth, consolidation, stasis, fire and chaos, ash. The wheel turns. People like you come up with these oh-so-clever little plans for perfecting an enterprise, but what you usually end up doing is yanking the wheel around to the stasis phase.
If you should succeed, start planning the anti-trust lawsuit before the network neutrality laws go into effect.
Its not impossible. That's how it got started in the first place. There are other ways to do it, they just require cooperation. And there, I'm afraid, is much of the rub.
Post Office
I've worked there. It's run like a dungeon. But that's neither here nor there, because the Post Office is only quasi-governmental. They have to keep themselves afloat, and as such, they're much more efficient.
interstate highway system
Arguably the biggest cause of the pollution that is causing our home planet to slowly become less and less livable. Not an intended consequence, to be sure, but if you want to make a huge mistake, you need a huge plan.
Social Security
It's hanging on by a thread, barely pays out enough to live, and eats a huge administration cost that comes on the backs of the working man (Yes, the wage cap on the Social Security withholdings means the wealthiest people don't have to support the system).
national parks
They were there, already. Their success is dependant on not doing anything with them. Even the government can handle that, mostly.
Slashdot - where whining about luck is the new way to make the world you want.
The 'dean of western writers,' American Pulitzer prize-winning author Wallace Stegner has written that national parks are 'America's best idea,' - a departure from the royal preserves that Old World sovereigns enjoyed for themselves - inherently democratic, open to all, "they reflect us at our best, not our worst."