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Ajit Pai Taunts Net Neutrality Critics. Mark Hamill Taunts Ajit Pai (mashable.com)
An anonymous reader writes:
Just days before voting to repeal net neutrality regulations, FCC chairman Ajit Pai introduced a comedy video at the annual gathering of the Federal Communications Bar Association -- and it offered its own self-disparaging version of Pai's tenure as a Verizon attorney in 2003. "We want to brainwash and groom a Verizon puppet to install as FCC chairman," says a real-world Verizon executive appearing in the videotaped skit. "That sounds awesome," Pai responds.
And the day of the vote Pai also appeared in another trying-to-be-funny video on the conservative site The Daily Caller demonstrating "seven things you can still do on the internet after net neutrality." In the first image he's holding a fidget spinner and dressed as Santa Claus, and the unmistakably patronizing video reminds critics that they can still upload photos of their meals to Instagram and "post photos of cute animals, like puppies." He also demonstrated that net neutrality critics can still stay part of their favorite fan communities -- by showing himself holding a light saber. And this unexpectedly drew the wrath of Star Wars actor Mark Hamill, who responded on Twitter by calling him "Ajit 'Aren't I Precious?' Pai."
Hamill also added that "you are profoundly unworthy 2 wield a lightsaber. A Jedi acts selflessly for the common man, NOT lie 2 enrich giant corporations." When U.S. Senator Ted Cruz responded -- likening government overreach to Darth Vader and urging Hamill to "reject the dark side" -- Hamill responded again, complaining that the Senator was "smarm-splaining." Hamill also added, "you'd have more credibility if you spelled my name correctly. I mean IT'S RIGHT THERE IN FRONT OF YOU! Maybe you're just distracted from watching porn at the office again."
The Houston Chronicle reports that the newest meme on Twitter is now Pai's over-sized coffee mug stamped with the logo for Reese's Peanut Butter cups, "which he occasionally sipped from during the widely-criticized reversal." The Dangerous Minds site notes that some angry net neutrality supporters have even taken their complaints to Reese's Facebook page, adding "Perhaps these protester's pleas to the candy company are simply a misguided hope that someone, ANYONE will listen to their frustration."
"Clearly, the FCC wasn't listening to the estimated 83% of Americans who support net neutrality."
And the day of the vote Pai also appeared in another trying-to-be-funny video on the conservative site The Daily Caller demonstrating "seven things you can still do on the internet after net neutrality." In the first image he's holding a fidget spinner and dressed as Santa Claus, and the unmistakably patronizing video reminds critics that they can still upload photos of their meals to Instagram and "post photos of cute animals, like puppies." He also demonstrated that net neutrality critics can still stay part of their favorite fan communities -- by showing himself holding a light saber. And this unexpectedly drew the wrath of Star Wars actor Mark Hamill, who responded on Twitter by calling him "Ajit 'Aren't I Precious?' Pai."
Hamill also added that "you are profoundly unworthy 2 wield a lightsaber. A Jedi acts selflessly for the common man, NOT lie 2 enrich giant corporations." When U.S. Senator Ted Cruz responded -- likening government overreach to Darth Vader and urging Hamill to "reject the dark side" -- Hamill responded again, complaining that the Senator was "smarm-splaining." Hamill also added, "you'd have more credibility if you spelled my name correctly. I mean IT'S RIGHT THERE IN FRONT OF YOU! Maybe you're just distracted from watching porn at the office again."
The Houston Chronicle reports that the newest meme on Twitter is now Pai's over-sized coffee mug stamped with the logo for Reese's Peanut Butter cups, "which he occasionally sipped from during the widely-criticized reversal." The Dangerous Minds site notes that some angry net neutrality supporters have even taken their complaints to Reese's Facebook page, adding "Perhaps these protester's pleas to the candy company are simply a misguided hope that someone, ANYONE will listen to their frustration."
"Clearly, the FCC wasn't listening to the estimated 83% of Americans who support net neutrality."
Let the Intertube Memes begin! This will not be pretty! Well, it will be pretty funny...
I do, however, wonder if there might be legal ramifications in any lawsuits brought on the Net Neutrality issue? An impartial judge might look dimly on this buffoonery...
If you want news from today, you have to come back tomorrow.
He's a retard.
Mark Hamill seems to forget that, in the Star Wars universe, the light sabre lost to the politicians scheming... Palpatines manoeuvres in the senate got him far further than wielding a light sabre ever did.
Show of hands: How many of you believe that Ajit Pai's crusade to end Net Neutrality is about "restoring the open internet"?
You are welcome on my lawn.
If there was any remaining doubt, it has now been erased: Ajit Pai is not only incompetent, in the pocket of some of the biggest of all big businesses, against the will of the people, and morally corrupt, he's also a complete clown. (And I mean clown in the most disrespectful way possible, not in the fun loving, flower-squirting, balloon-bending sense.) I can't believe something as important as the FCC is in this moron's hands. You can debate the merits/follies of an outsider/village idiot like Trump all day, but Ajit Pai's nonsense is indefensible.
This is a hacked account, for which the owner can not be held responsible.
Call your representatives and tell them what you want. Congress can pass a law to ensure net neutrality but they have to know it matters to voters. Also, if they won't support it then you need to get involved politically. If your preferred political party does not support net neutrality then you may want to reexamine why you are aligning yourself with them.
Anons need not reply. Questions end with a question mark.
Could you list the terrible things occurring in 2015 that both forced the hand of government to enact "net neutrality" and why it precludes returning to the regulatory environment of 2015?
much of left-wing thought is a kind of playing with fire by people who don't even know that fire is hot - George Orwell
So, internet regulation is now back to what it was from circa 1980 - 2015? The horror .... the horror ....
Yeah, they have been doing some really shady shit.
. . . the major problem with the FCC’s move: It forced ISPs into an 80-year-old framework designed for the telephone monopolies of a much different era. Those regulations were more concerned about things like controlling market power than, say, promoting innovation.
Except this is exactly the issue we are worried about. How is it a much different era? Did companies stop being greedy? Did they stop consolidating to control massive swaths of customers? How is this era any different?
Anons need not reply. Questions end with a question mark.
Ajit Pai is not only incompetent... he's also a complete clown.
Exactly. So people are getting their Star Wars analogy wrong when they compare him to Darth Vader. This guy is Jar-jar Binks.
Aside from the whole Comcast/Netflix mess or Comcast screwing with peer-to-peer traffic? Do we need more? I'm way too lazy and tired to bother looking for more examples.
You want them in chronological order? I mean, you could have just googled it for yourself. https://www.freepress.net/blog...
Here we go, and when this is over I expect you to apologize to the entire class for being such a dumbass...
MADISON RIVER: In 2005, North Carolina ISP Madison River Communications blocked the voice-over-internet protocol (VOIP) service Vonage. Vonage filed a complaint with the FCC after receiving a slew of customer complaints. The FCC stepped in to sanction Madison River and prevent further blocking, but it lacks the authority to stop this kind of abuse today.
COMCAST: In 2005, the nation’s largest ISP, Comcast, began secretly blocking peer-to-peer technologies that its customers were using over its network. Users of services like BitTorrent and Gnutella were unable to connect to these services. 2007 investigations from the Associated Press, the Electronic Frontier Foundation and others confirmed that Comcast was indeed blocking or slowing file-sharing applications without disclosing this fact to its customers.
TELUS: In 2005, Canada’s second-largest telecommunications company, Telus, began blocking access to a server that hosted a website supporting a labor strike against the company. Researchers at Harvard and the University of Toronto found that this action resulted in Telus blocking an additional 766 unrelated sites.
AT&T: From 2007–2009, AT&T forced Apple to block Skype and other competing VOIP phone services on the iPhone. The wireless provider wanted to prevent iPhone users from using any application that would allow them to make calls on such “over-the-top” voice services. The Google Voice app received similar treatment from carriers like AT&T when it came on the scene in 2009.
WINDSTREAM: In 2010, Windstream Communications, a DSL provider with more than 1 million customers at the time, copped to hijacking user-search queries made using the Google toolbar within Firefox. Users who believed they had set the browser to the search engine of their choice were redirected to Windstream’s own search portal and results.
MetroPCS: In 2011, MetroPCS, at the time one of the top-five U.S. wireless carriers, announced plans to block streaming video over its 4G network from all sources except YouTube. MetroPCS then threw its weight behind Verizon’s court challenge against the FCC’s 2010 open internet ruling, hoping that rejection of the agency’s authority would allow the company to continue its anti-consumer practices.
PAXFIRE: In 2011, the Electronic Frontier Foundation found that several small ISPs were redirecting search queries via the vendor Paxfire. The ISPs identified in the initial Electronic Frontier Foundation report included Cavalier, Cogent, Frontier, Fuse, DirecPC, RCN and Wide Open West. Paxfire would intercept a person’s search request at Bing and Yahoo and redirect it to another page. By skipping over the search service’s results, the participating ISPs would collect referral fees for delivering users to select websites.
AT&T, SPRINT and VERIZON: From 2011–2013, AT&T, Sprint and Verizon blocked Google Wallet, a mobile-payment system that competed with a similar service called Isis, which all three companies had a stake in developing.
VERIZON: In 2012, the FCC caught Verizon Wireless blocking people from using tethering applications on their phones. Verizon had asked Google to remove 11 free tethering applications from the Android marketplace. These applications allowed users to circumvent Verizon’s $20 tethering fee and turn their smartphones into Wi-Fi hot spots. By blocking those applications, Ve
You are welcome on my lawn.
Additionally, repealing NN will also result in cures for cancer being discovered, a reduction in fatal road accidents, and pigs being able to fly. I can provide evidence if you can.
Two men claimed to have walked into a bar. Only one had the bruises to prove it.
The internet and the legacy phone system may make use of related technologies, but the business, competitive environment, uses, and innovation are very different.
Let's take this argument back 80 years.
The telephone and the legacy power pole system may make use of related technologies, but the business, competitive environment, uses, and innovation are very different.
What business does a telephone company have caring about how I use my telephone? I paid for it, so but out!
What business does an Internet Service Provider have caring about I my Internet service? I paid for it, so but out!
If you are only worried about "greedy companies" and aren't concerned about the stifling effects of government regulation then you don't worry enough about enough things.
Please, inform me of the stifling effects net neutrality because there literally are none. The people that claim there are list things that are not related to net neutrality which is to say they have no argument or don't understand what net neutrality means.
Anons need not reply. Questions end with a question mark.
Until it translates into votes, it doesn't mean squat.
*Sweep the House*
“He’s not deformed, he’s just drunk!”
Search engines that don't derank for US party political reasons.
Actually, now google can pay to ensure that competing search engines always have a slower connection or do not connect at all.
News sites that don't ban and remove news.
Actually, now big news sites can pay to ensure that smaller sites have long loading times or even inject ads.
SJW social media that is not banning accounts and reporting users to their governments.
Actually, now SJW social media can pay to keep a competing site from ever connecting.
NN provided political cover for a lot of net censorship.
Reads like you don't understand the first thing about what NN really means.
With the NN rules removed new networks and services can emerge.
With the NN rules removed, new networks and services will have to be able to spend as much money as the giants they are competing against.
Anons need not reply. Questions end with a question mark.
Yeah they are. In fact, nearly every ISP is in exactly the same position as the original AT&T.
The part you're missing is that when it comes to consumer impact, it doesn't matter if there's a better ISP in a city a hundred miles away. You still live in your town, and you're not going to pack up, sell your house, and move to another city just to get better Internet service. You're stuck with what is available in your geographical area.
The reason they broke up the Bell system and, in the process, massively regulated the resulting smaller companies, is that geographical monopolies are fundamentally bad, and it doesn't make a dime's worth of difference how big the geographical area is. The critical part of the AT&T breakup was not splitting up the nationwide monopoly on end-user access, but rather splitting the long-distance provider from the end-user access provider, eliminating any real opportunity for the latter (which were regional monopolies) to limit which long-distance carrier you could use. We have almost the exact same problem now, with ISPs also being cable providers and voice telephone providers that can (and often do) unfairly compete with other streaming video and voice providers that operate over the Internet.
As for the equipment thing... well, Comcast won't provide static IP blocks without renting a Comcast Business Gateway from them. So we've kind of gotten back to that problem, too.
In other words, in every way other than the nationwide aspect, we've been at the exact same point that led to the breakup of AT&T for at least half a decade, if not longer. And as I said earlier, it doesn't matter if an ISP has a monopoly only in your town, in the county, or in an entire region. Unless your house has wheels, you're not going to move it to the next town over, the next county over, or the next state over just to get a better ISP. So anybody claiming that regional wire-line monopolies are somehow different from national wire-line monopolies in any meaningful way is kidding him/herself.
Just saying.
Check out my sci-fi/humor trilogy at PatriotsBooks.
The removal of NN will allow new brands to emerge.
Boy, do you have that backwards.
Search engines that don't derank for US party political reasons.
Nope. Without NN, your ISP can redirect your search requests to their own search engine without even having to tell users that they're doing it. You might not even know that you're getting a substandard experience. Big search engines can, of course, afford to pay those ISPs to avoid that, but those new brands you're hoping will emerge? They won't have the money to do so, so they'll be stillborn.
And the same problem exists with all of your other ill-informed beliefs about net neutrality. Repealing net neutrality doesn't create opportunities for new Internet companies to emerge. In point of fact, the repeal of net neutrality does the exact opposite, providing new ways for existing large companies to become entrenched in ways that keep new players from being able to enter the field at all.
Check out my sci-fi/humor trilogy at PatriotsBooks.
So, internet regulation is now back to what it was from circa 1980 - 2015? The horror .... the horror ....
Yeah, they have been doing some really shady shit.
. . . the major problem with the FCC’s move: It forced ISPs into an 80-year-old framework designed for the telephone monopolies of a much different era. Those regulations were more concerned about things like controlling market power than, say, promoting innovation.
Except this is exactly the issue we are worried about. How is it a much different era? Did companies stop being greedy? Did they stop consolidating to control massive swaths of customers? How is this era any different?
I don't think companies stopped being greedy. What is different is that the idea the internet should be a level playing field has breathed it's last breath because Google, Facebook, Twitter, Apple, Hulu, Netflix, Amazon, and the rest of the big players who used to fight for net neutrality realised they can afford to pay the extortionists their pound of flesh, that given the utterly corrupt nature of the Trump administration they have to and finally that the real threat is not the extortionists, it is scrappy startups with a better business model and product than them. These startups will from now on be competing at an even greater disadvantage because people have now accepted that is both normal and desirable for the extortionists to ensure that the bandwidth of smaller players is limited and their customer's connections are regularly interrupted by 'technical problems' unless they pay a ransom. The death of net neutrality will work to the advantage of both the extortionists who will now get their regular infusion of mafia style protection payments and the established big players. So in future expect any upcoming competitor who threatens somebody like Google for example and starts to chew up their dominant market share to die a death of a million connection error messages because Google felt threatened and and crapppified their service by pulling the protection money strings so that Google can eventually buy up the corpse and its patents and technology with it. Just ask Eric Schmidt, he'll be the first to tell you how proud he is to call this: "capitalism working as intended" (... and to hell with Adam Smith).
How about making sure they don't think about doing shit like that in the first place?
I swear, you libertarian types seem to think that everything will magically even out, and that none of the things that happened to real people in real time ever occurred if it worked out mathematically in the end. And that's only in some magical ideal world where things ever work out mathematically.
Those who do not learn from commit history are doomed to regress it.
the might of the whole galaxy was against the Jedi and they got killed off one by one
You say that like it was a bad thing. Look, the Jedi had NOTHING TO OFFER the people of the galaxy. The Empire brought peace and order. Building the Death Star created a Keynesian expansion that provided prosperity for trillions of people. Life was good. Then the Jedi destroyed all of that, killed the emperor, and the galactic economy collapsed. Soon people were reduced to scavenging the wreckage left behind by the golden age of empire. Of course the people turned against the Jedi. Can you blame them?
Not a single one of these is cellular (non-data) related. They're mostly phone companies blocking internet data services. I guess the free market, anti government oversight view is that people would vote with their wallets and change to the services that allow them to do the stuff they want to do, but I think that's where the whole concept falls down. These industries can and have made it too hard to do that, and too complicated and time consuming to argue against it. Corporations will end up with the 'sinister oversight' the conservatives are trying to disarm the government of. The difference being, with a government, there's at least a hope it can act in the interests of the people.
Trump - the Emperor
Pence - the Emperor's left hand and a religious fundamentalist => no religious freedom
Scott Pruitt - EPA dismantling agent => no healthy environment and no protection from dangerous and harmful substances in our food and water
Ajit Pai - FCC dismantling agent => no net neutrality => no freedom in communication and information
Steven T. Mnuchin - Give it to the rich => no state, no security
This is not drain the swamp of corruption. This is more like drain all remaining habitats and screw the population so they sit all in a dessert.
Those got handled by the FCC stepping in, but they lost the power to do that in 2014 when Verizon successfully challenged their 2010 Open Internet order and got the courts to tell them that to be able to enforce net neutrality, they need to class ISPs under Title 2 and not Title 1 like they had previously done. The Obama era regulation that Pai just revoked was this Title 2 classification and it's what Pai means when he says that net neutrality hasn't technically gone anywhere. It's just become unenforceable.
In all seriousness, this is like removing the bans on asbestos and/or lead paint and expecting the companies who would start making these things to do so responsibly. Knowing what's happened in the past it's just bound to go badly wrong...
"Why should I want to make anything up? Life's bad enough as it is without wanting to invent any more of it."
http://www.weeklystandard.com/...
Lucas wants the Empire to stand for evil, so he tells us that the Emperor and Darth Vader have gone over to the Dark Side and dresses them in black.
But look closer. When Palpatine is still a senator, he says, "The Republic is not what it once was. The Senate is full of greedy, squabbling delegates. There is no interest in the common good." At one point he laments that "the bureaucrats are in charge now."
Palpatine believes that the political order must be manipulated to produce peace and stability. When he mutters, "There is no civility, there is only politics," we see that at heart, he's an esoteric Straussian.
Make no mistake, as emperor, Palpatine is a dictator--but a relatively benign one, like Pinochet. It's a dictatorship people can do business with. They collect taxes and patrol the skies. They try to stop organized crime (in the form of the smuggling rings run by the Hutts). The Empire has virtually no effect on the daily life of the average, law-abiding citizen.
Also, unlike the divine-right Jedi, the Empire is a meritocracy. The Empire runs academies throughout the galaxy (Han Solo begins his career at an Imperial academy), and those who show promise are promoted, often rapidly. In The Empire Strikes Back Captain Piett is quickly promoted to admiral when his predecessor falls down on the job.
And while it's a small point, the Empire's manners and decorum speak well of it. When Darth Vader is forced to employ bounty hunters to track down Han Solo, he refuses to address them by name. Even Boba Fett, the greatest of all trackers, is referred to icily as "bounty hunter." And yet Fett understands the protocol. When he captures Solo, he calls him "Captain Solo." (Whether this is in deference to Han's former rank in the Imperial starfleet, or simply because Han owns and pilots his own ship, we don't know. I suspect it's the former.)
But the most compelling evidence that the Empire isn't evil comes in The Empire Strikes Back when Darth Vader is battling Luke Skywalker. After an exhausting fight, Vader is poised to finish Luke off, but he stays his hand. He tries to convert Luke to the Dark Side with this simple plea: "There is no escape. Don't make me destroy you. . . . Join me, and I will complete your training. With our combined strength, we can end this destructive conflict and bring order to the galaxy." It is here we find the real controlling impulse for the Dark Side and the Empire. The Empire doesn't want slaves or destruction or "evil." It wants order.
None of which is to say that the Empire isn't sometimes brutal. In Episode IV, Imperial stormtroopers kill Luke's aunt and uncle and Grand Moff Tarkin orders the destruction of an entire planet, Alderaan. But viewed in context, these acts are less brutal than they initially appear. Poor Aunt Beru and Uncle Owen reach a grisly end, but only after they aid the rebellion by hiding Luke and harboring two fugitive droids. They aren't given due process, but they are traitors.
The destruction of Alderaan is often cited as ipso facto proof of the Empire's "evilness" because it seems like mass murder--planeticide, even. As Tarkin prepares to fire the Death Star, Princess Leia implores him to spare the planet, saying, "Alderaan is peaceful. We have no weapons." Her plea is important, if true.
But the audience has no reason to believe that Leia is telling the truth. In Episode IV, every bit of information she gives the Empire is willfully untrue. In the opening, she tells Darth Vader that she is on a diplomatic mission of mercy, when in fact she is on a spy mission, trying to deliver schematics of the Death Star to the Rebel Alliance. When asked where the Alliance is headquartered, she lies again.
Leia's lies are perfectly defensible--she thinks she's serving the greater good--but they make her wholly unreliable on the question of whether or not Alderaan really is
echo -e 'global _start\n _start:\n mov eax, 2\n int 80h\n jmp _start' > a.asm; nasm a.asm -f elf; ld a.o -o a;
What fell the republic was infighting, petty bickering and not realizing a looming danger that was pretty good at playing with the fears and using them to take power out of hands more than willing to hand it over.
Reminds me of something, if I could only remember what...
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
If he is a Jedi, I think it's time to execute Order 66.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
I know how to use the internet without Google, without Facebook, without Twitter.
How do I do it without an ISP?
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
...the shooting related death toll in the US is rather insignificant compared to any leading cause of death and certainly is nothing compared to the lives saved because an invading power knows how costly a ground invasion of the heavily armed US would be.
Are you seriously suggesting that the reason Mexico hasn't invaded is that they're more afraid of civilians with hunting rifles than the Army's tanks and the Air Force's bombers?
Something that people never consider is that "Net Neutrality" is an explicit Federal regulation of the internet.
It places the Internet under Federal control.
Regulation is not the same as control. For instance, saying you may only drive on the right side of the road is not controlling use of roads nor where they go, only that traffic must stay right. Similarly with the Net Neutrality legislation in concept - it isn't regulating where it goes nor what it can carry, but only saying that everything must be treated equally. You can't charge the ACME brick load for driving down your network pipe and let the provider's brick load drive down free.