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FCC Chairman Will Reportedly Revise Broadband Proposal
An anonymous reader writes "FCC Chairman Tom Wheeler has said he will revise proposed rules for regulating broadband Internet, and is offering assurances that the agency won't allow companies to segregate Web traffic into fast and slow lanes. From the article: 'The new language by FCC Chairman Tom Wheeler to be circulated as early as Monday is an attempt to address criticism of his proposal unveiled last month that would ban broadband providers from blocking or slowing down websites but allow them to strike deals in which content companies could pay them for faster delivery of Web content to customers.'"
The language is too carefully chosen. I expect the same old sheet.
Wheeler seems too anxious to move fast."won't allow companies to segregate Web traffic into fast and slow lanes" is a matter of interpretation. If you insist the slow lane is really not a slow lane, it is a meaningless statement.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
And we all know it. Nobody gets to be head of the FCC and is so stupid they cannot understand how ANY PAID PRIORITY invalidates the whole concept of network neutrality. We need to keep hammering on these fuckers until we have (at least) retail ISPs under Title II and that's ALL there is to it.
"Malo periculosam, libertatem quam quietam servitutem." -- Jefferson
The design of TCP is such that the way you throttle a connection is to drop packets. Therefore, isn't throttling just a measured block?
I choose to take this at face value, that he really has seen that We The People want net neutrality.
And that is because of you. You who signed the petition, sent letters to your legislators, sent comments to the FCC, emailed your friends, posted the issue on your social networks, wrote letters to the editor, and everything else you did. You did this. You saved the Internet from this attack by greedy cynics who would turn the Internet into TV for a few pieces of silver. You protected the most important advance our generation has built. Thank you, and congratulations!
Stop-Prism.org: Opt Out of Surveillance
When half the people stopped voting and much of the other half got so poor an education that they can't distinguish between truth and bullshit.
"Malo periculosam, libertatem quam quietam servitutem." -- Jefferson
Al Franken has earned my vote for pretty much any office he ever runs for, ever.
It dawned on me how they could work a fast lane within net neutrality rules. They don't even need to change anything.
It goes like this: Hey, we're douchebags and like to bleed our customers dry for slow Internet. We do this by overselling our transit capacity. But, if you want our customers to be able to use your service, our peering prices are $100/MB/month.
That's why Level 3 Wants To Make Peering a Net Neutrality Issue I guess. But should peering be a net neutrality issue? On the Internet, different pathways have different speeds. Your LAN and ISP network are usually a lot faster than general Internet access, and nobody said Netflix can't pay a premium to plug straight into your LAN.
In Romania you get gigabit links within RDS - a nationwide ISP, and if you run Linux, you're in luck because they peer with RoEdu (the Romanian education network), who mirror a lot of stuff, and that peer is fast as lightning if RDS is your provider. But mirrors who are in the country but not peered get Internet speeds - which are still faster than what I generally get in the UK mind.
Question for religious people: where do unrepentant masochists go when they die?
Don't forget the "I'm too cool to vote" mentality you hear around here ("both parties are the same", blah, blah, blah.)
Most of those folks don't advocate not voting - they just advocate for voting for somebody who isn't associated with the major parties.
What other choice do they have? Do we think the FCC would be doing the right thing if only a Republican were president?
From the synopsis:
FCC Chairman Tom Wheeler has said he will revise proposed rules for regulating broadband Internet, and is offering assurances that the agency won't allow companies to segregate Web traffic into fast and slow lanes.
Hooray! Same thing it says at the beginning of the article, same thing that made me prematurely celebrate. You see, a bit further down in the WSJ article:
The new proposal will also seek comment on whether such "paid prioritization" should be prohibited altogether.
What? WTF do you think we mean when we say we want net neutrality? Yes, you idiot, we want paid prioritization to be prohibited altogether. ISPs should deliver every packet the customer asks for with the same diligence, without preference. Not delivering some packets faster. Not delivering some packets slower. Handing every packet the same regardless of the content or source. That is what net neutrality is. Are you stupid, or just pretending to be so you can keep doing what your lobby tells you to do?
Stop-Prism.org: Opt Out of Surveillance
Revised proposal from FCC:
We have heard your concerns and being the responsible and responsive agency that we are, we have revised our proposal. Companies like Netflix can now pay companies like Comcast to degrade data delivery for everyone else. See, we've completely reversed course. Thank you for expressing your concern. See what a difference you can make when you stay informed and involved?
We can look to the post office to see that neutrality does not limit a provider to one tier of service.
The standard post office service will get my letter across the country to another major urban centre in a few days for the price of a first class stamp. If I want to speed things up I can pay for expedited delivery to get it there tomorrow. It's increased service for an increased price but those tiers of service are still neutral. Anyone can walk in and get the same expedited service for the same price.
For me the important thing about net neutrality is not that all data is equal, it's that data is transmitted in a uniform and non-discriminatory fashion. Hello Netflix, looking for enhanced video service? Here's the pricing chart. No, we won't block your competitors, and they'll be paying exactly the same price as you.
I'm reminded of a story about a company that made soda vending machines. The company had a new vending machine they were marketing to amusement parks which would raise prices when the temperature got above, say, 80 degrees. A lot of amusement parks liked the idea and started buying the new machines, but the word got out to the public and there was a huge backlash of people complaining about deceptive pricing and basically cheating the customers. In order to save themselves, the vending machine company explained to the public that their machines were really lowering the price of their sodas when the temperature dropped below 80 degrees. Somehow that just sounded better to the general public. This thing with fast and slow lanes sounds a lot like the vending machine company. Allowing fast lanes and allowing slow lanes are the same thing, just worded differently.
For every post, there is an equal and opposite re-post.
Instead of insulting people who ask a legitimate question, we can answer..... sheesh. This is already done. Look up QOS practices. No one has a problem with this. It is a neutral practice.
If a business wants to get "fast lane" access among specific providers, why no co-locate servers at one of that provider's data centers or central offices?
That's exactly what they do. It benefits the ISP because it reduces the data that has to flow across their interconnects, it benefits the provider as they don't need to pay for transit across the internet and it obviously benefits the consumer. The problem Netflix has is that Comcast realizes that it benefits Netflix (plus, they are competing with Netflix) so Comcast said "Yeah, we'll allow you to place caching servers on our network, provided you pay us several million dollars per month". Netflix doesn't really have a choice, Comcast is about half of the US residential internet subscribers.
Comcast's business has long been about selling access to their customers. They sell the service to the customers then they sell the customers to advertisers. They now want to sell their internet customers to providers as well. This is blatant abuse of their monopoly position but since the political system in the US is designed to reward those with the most money nothing all all will come of this, other than the FCC asking Comcast if they should apply lube to the public before Comcast reams them (the answer is "No!").
Enigma
When half the people stopped voting and much of the other half got so poor an education that they can't distinguish between truth and bullshit.
If it was just poor schooling, private groups could step in and do something about that. The problem is that politians are on the payola, and they influence public policy, education, and they can even control the public conversation. People in the US are indoctrinated into "tribes" depending on where they were born and who their parents believe politically. I use the word "tribe" because it is far worse system than having a system of political parties where one can switch or choose. The core conservative "tribe" clings to their beliefs as closely as a religion, and so do the core liberal "tribe". A huge amount of people don't belong to either "tribe" although they may associate with a particular party. The problem is that these "tribes" have gotten so large and the indoctrination is so compelling that people in one tribe won't even talk to the other tribe rationally.
Keep in mind that when we think of the word "propaganda", most people imagine a the propaganda of other countries, and something which they are not susceptible to or influenced by. The more people recognize something as propaganda the less likely they are to believe it. But propaganda can be insidious and undetectable- in fact, that is the best kind. It can take the form of education, or "way of life" or nearly anything. It can originate in the marketing department of large companies, by lobbyists, or by the politicians themselves. Lobbists don't just influence politicians, that is only half their work! They also shape the national conversation and influence average people. We are all influenced by it.
Even those who arrange and design shrubberies are under considerable economic stress at this period in history.
There was no real "tipping point," but rather a gradual erosion:
"[Regarding the 'cloud,'] ownership was what made America different than Russia." -- Woz
People have been conditioned what to believe. Thought has nothing to do with it. People don't think like their parents, they believe what their parents conditioned them to and the defenses etc are just conditioning; not a single thought is required, if anything they are discouraged-- child asks "why isn't there any proof of god?" daring to think something and is immediately told rationalized beliefs to discourage any further thinking. A continued line of questioning leads to "just because" dead ends where faith is the only answer and thinking is wrong. I'm only using religion as an example, it applies similarly elsewhere.
Humans do not scale. Tribalism is inherent to humanity and my theory is that humans evolved BECAUSE of tribalism. We already have most the missing links and they all have tiny brains (except the last few) and dominated the food chain-- a growing population and competition forced tribes to compete with each other for resources and that resulted in evolutionary pressure for bigger brains. (If you are not up on the topic, look into it-- packs of humanoid apes running around in the plains of Africa able to run greater distances than any animal -- just like we can -- all our biological advantages are for running in packs... except our large brains.) Also there is plenty of psychology on how humans only handle a limited number of relationships etc. You are bound to identifying with limited size group; only with the power of abstract thinking can you exceed those tribal limits (but one still tends to think in tribal terms, your tribe is just abstracted into a larger group.)
Problem is what was our advantage is now hindering us. It takes considerable mental training and education to surpass our inherent nature. We also evolved to avoid extra work; hell, even your brain avoids learning by grasping for known patterns to classify stuff under because actual learning takes the whole brain and is an expensive operation (as brain scans prove, plus education research) not to mention if you had to learn everything we'd not be anywhere near as smart. Mapping is essential. Again, this characteristic works against us as we classify others, groups, policies, systems etc. It can help too but it's a double edged sword.
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Can UPS pay extra so their trucks can use the carpool lane? And thus deliver faster than FedEX unless they also pay?