But this is not about homosexuality creeping them out. This is about this men finding sex with other men creepy, which is a totally different thing from what you're talking about.
I don't think it is, really. A "creepy" reaction is still fear. I mean, why the strong reaction? Why does the idea hold so much power over you when it comes up?
Seems to me that this is a conflict - like id vs. superego or something. The strong reaction being the result of an effort to keep the idea out of your mind.
I mean, I don't think a person who reacts to the idea of homosexuality as you describe is necessarily a "bad person" or anything - I think how one treats others is the important criterion there. But I'd still describe it as a kind of homophobia.
Why would I want any "smartphone" without a data plan? What's the point? If that was my goal I'd go back to an iPod and a cheap Nokia
Personally I find the combination of the two devices into one unit more convenient, even without a data plan...
Rather, I don't have that exact combination. I have an old Treo. I discontinued the data plan service after the first year because it was too expensive. But I still like the phone itself. I just like having PDA-style functionality on my phone.
You want the iPhone 4 unlocked, but you don't (I assume) want to pay the full price for it, and you want the government to step in and tell AT&T / Apple to unlock a subsidized phone. Whatever. You are not entitled to an unlocked iPhone for $200.
IMO either people should be allowed to unlock their phones, or else the company "selling" the phone should make it clear that the customer doesn't actually own the phone. You can't have it both ways. Of course, that's my opinion. In fact the current law says otherwise. Companies can sell a product and maintain restrictions over how the hardware is used (DRM, etc.) - and it is illegal to circumvent those restrictions under many circumstances.
Actually you're wrong, there's a large number of heterosexual people who engage in sexual acts with people of the same sex just for physical pleasure or a various number of other reasons. The accepted medical definition of gay is someone who feels an emotional attraction to someone of the same sex. If you're a straight man you can get off with another man, it's just the way human body works, falling in love with that man that's a totally different story.
Wow. You are really confused. If you have consensual homo sex then you are a homo. FULL STOP. The definition of gay is someone who is physically attracted to someone of the same sex you moron. Feelings have nothing to do with it. If you are a guy and you have had sex with another guy then you are a homo. Got it?
This seems awfully silly. I mean, if you dance, does that make you a "dancer"? Does that categorization immediately and irrevocably define you?
Some of what you say makes sense. If someone lives under the pretense of not being gay but engages in homosexual activities, their own claims about their orientation can be overridden by simple observation of fact. But I think one has to be careful of labels in general. Labeling people is not always a bad thing, the practice exists because it's useful. We can understand greater things by thinking of them in terms of broad concepts. But if someone chooses not to define themselves as "straight" or "gay" or "bi", why is it so important to you that they wind up in one of these categories?
And who was it who said "If you label me, you negate me"?
However the death of textual interfaces has long been predicted and I still use a bash shell heavily every day, so I'm not willing to commit 100% to that as THE future.
Talk of "the death of textual interfaces" seems short-sighted to me. It is true that for many, many things, a more GUI-oriented approach is simply better. The days of a textual interface as the primary means of interaction are certainly long gone. However, I believe the value of textual interfaces in the appropriate context is underrated. Finding and running commands (whether at a command line or in an application) is a really valuable feature to have handy in an environment that offers a lot of functionality. GUI structures like menus and cascading menus or button bars are inherently problematic when it comes to presenting a huge feature set. For the sake of clarity, a GUI has to be limited to the set of commands that are most commonly used, so that subset of functionality can be made intuitive and properly streamlined. But how does one access functionality beyond the convenient subset? Activate "off-by-default" toolbars, searching through the various toolbars looking for the particular tool in question? Pop open the help system, search for the command, and read the instructions on how to access it, and then access it?
I think a better approach is to streamline those "help system" steps - make the assumption that finding obscure commands is a reasonably common operation, integrate it into the mainstream UI. Work it so the command can be launched immediately from the context where it's found... and if there's a shortcut for that command, non-obtrusively inform the user as soon as they're done with this long-form invocation.
Where does this get us? The Meta-X interface to "Emacs", basically. You can enter a partial command, tab-complete, invoke the command, and the command window will show you the shortcut if there was one. (Searching for commands could probably be handled better in Emacs, though...) I'm not claiming Emacs is perfect but this is one thing I love about it, and would really like to see incorporated into more "rich functionality" GUI programs. This is one way textual interfaces can continue to serve us well even as we discard more of the ancient relics of command-line computing. Textual interfaces tend to be rather unfriendly at present largely because the current ones are mostly old. Most current UI design focuses on GUI concepts, and the whole idea of a keyboard command interface is all but ignored. I think there's good potential there that's been left largely untapped.
You ever used a multi-axis jetpack with just one switch operated via one's mouth? Didn't think so. Nerds think they been to space just cause they played a space sim...christ.
No, don't think I've been to space. But I do have a basic understanding of the problems involved in trying to control one's movement in a free-fall environment, and how that would be complicated by being unable to use one's arms or legs. I can think, so fuck you.
"Besides, you can't blow up the Earth without an Illudium PU-32 Explosive Space Modulator."
No need for funky fancy toys, when you're sitting higher up the gravity well than your target. From Mars, you don't even have to throw the rocks hard, or fast. Just point them, with the minimal boost necessary to intercept the earth in it's orbit - and wait. What would a rock with a circumference of ten miles do to New York, or London, or Moscow, or Hong Kong? Hell - let's launch 100 rocks that size, targeting each of the earth's 100 largest cities.
If anyone survives, it will be the nomads out in the desert.
It actually takes a tremendous amount of energy to take a significantly large rock in Mars orbit and send it on a collision course with Earth. Even if it takes a lower delta-V to drop something than it takes to boost something up, it's still a huge amount of energy. You're negating a substantial portion of its kinetic energy, after all.. You'd need a very precise shot to hit the Earth, as well.
Bah! He's just another special interest group trying to escape the chains of gravity that hold his paralyzed body to the earth's surface.
Being unable to use his arms and legs, placing him in an (apparent) zero-gravity environment would only create more problems. In an environment with gravity, it's easy to come to a stop - you pretty much just have to stop moving yourself and friction takes care of the rest. In a weightless environment, it's all about controlling inertia. It's harder to control a multi-axis jet pack with just one switch than it is to control a wheelchair, and without working arms or legs, you can't control your impact if you find yourself floating off toward a wall...
Of course, it's also possible that he's hoping the technology developed in the new era of space colonization will lead to advances that could correct his condition... It's not unthinkable - even toasters and cannons have some level of similarity in their underlying technology...
Well, I guess it's something he really believes in... Though I wonder if this is just for the sake of ensuring the human race's survival... Perhaps Hawking expects a new step in our evolution to be triggered once our souls are no longer bound by Earth's gravity?
Nothing short of a earth destroying asteroid/comet hit would render this planet less inhabitable than even the most hospitable other planetary bodies within our reach. Even a Yucatan-sized hit would still leave the earth much more survivable than anywhere else. It would be WAY more practical to design underground bunkers and habitats here on earth than to try to move colonies to the moon or Mars. And nothing short of a hit that tears the planet into pieces is going to make earth less appealing than Mars or the moon.
Underground bunkers... I like it! A quick survey would have to be made of all the available mine sites in the country, but I would guess that dwelling space for several hundred thousands of our people could easily be provided. Animals could be bred and slaughtered! And in order to replenish the population under those harsh conditions, the women will have to be selected for their sexual characteristics which will have to be of a highly stimulating nature...
Even better, build a station on Mars, then personally vet every person you let up there and once you have all the best people, nuke the Earth from orbit - that way you accomplish both goals.
Don't be silly. Mars is no place to raise a kid, and there's no one there to raise 'em if you did...
Besides, you can't blow up the Earth without an Illudium PU-32 Explosive Space Modulator.
Information doesn't want to be free. Some people want other people's information to be free, but that's about as far as it goes.
"Information wants to be free" in the same way that a large rock being rolled up a hill, "wants" to roll down it again. Of course neither the rock, nor the data, actually wants anything - it's just a way of characterizing their typical behavior in those circumstances.
It's simply the natural behavior of the thing in the environment in which it resides. Information "wants" to be free because, despite efforts to restrict the flow of information, it only takes a relatively small effort to get that information out. Information tends toward freedom because it's in an environment full of people who would be happy to disperse it. Information tends toward low economic value because it's trivial to copy it. The original meaning of the phrase was more along the lines of the latter - describing how "information wants to be expensive" because it's useful, but "information wants to be free" because it's easy to disperse. Both affect the dynamic "value" of the information in an economic sense.
What happened to the tilde (~), I thought that was pretty universal as sarcasm.
Seems a lot more practical than an all-new proprietary mark for sarcasm, and also a lot clearer than the "open sarcasm" Ethiopian option, which kind of looks a lot like a lower-case "I"...
So, yeah, I'm totally on board with the whole idea of adopting the SarcMark@ (At-sign is the closest thing I've got to a spiral around a dot...) And I think the Open Sarcasm thing is gonna work out really, really welli Jokes really out to be marked so there's no question you're joking around~
When did liberals start listening to comedians for their politics.... oh guess that been every sense pelsoi and friends have been a joke of a government.
You know, it took me a second to even register Al Franken as a comedian. I mean, mostly I remember him from old SNL episodes, "Weekend Update" (or whatever they called it at that point) where he mostly seemed to talk about himself. I was a kid last time I watched that bit so I don't know if I didn't get it or it just wasn't funny. Though, I guess (thinking back) he also wrote those polarized-partisan-pundit books - "Lying liars" and so on. He must have done other stuff as well <shrug>...
So reading your comment I thought you were bringing Jon Stewart into this discussion. I was a bit confused as to why.:)
And, I have to point out that both "sides of the aisle" have their favorite pundit clowns. They write books, host radio or TV shows, and just generally spit venom of such potency that, listening to them, you'd hardly think the proponents of the opposing viewpoint were human, let alone intelligent or sensible. I hate it. All that garbage has about as much resemblance to actual, productive debate as a brawl between Red Sox and Yankees fans. People pick their team and then switch their brains off - it's probably the worst thing that could happen to democracy as a viable way of directing a government... Unless you take a cynical approach, in which you suppose that all the political show serves an important "Bread and Circuses"-type role and that most of the population isn't really qualified to make decisions about how the government should operate...
Net neutrality is best ensured by competition. If the environment is right for ISP competition, then you'll get net neutrality.
Well, no, you won't.
Let's suppose there are five major players in a given area for "last mile" ISP service. (If you think about home-installed internet, this is a pretty generous estimate... But if you consider wireless service, there's probably more than that in many areas...) Anyway, one or two of these players is bound to have at least 1/5 of the overall local subscriber base under their influence. What's more, these subscribers may be under a multi-year service contract with penalty for early termination. (This is true of many wireless subscribers in the US of course - I even had such a contract for my home internet...) So if a site performs badly on FIOS or iPhone/AT&T or whatever, the user may not notice that it's only on their carrier, and even if they do many of them will not consider "jumping ship" to another carrier to be an option. To this customer, site A simply performs worse than site B.
Now, if one ISP has the ability to selectively throttle traffic for their entire customer base, that gives them the ability to extort* money from companies that do business on the internet. Pay us money, or all of our subscribers will think your service is slow and shitty. This kind of action won't change the landscape overnight, but it can make major players lose ground and bolster others. If 20% of the market starts thinking that Youtube's streaming isn't adequate for high-definition content, but that another site's streaming is, Youtube will start to decline in popularity (and thus lose advertising revenue). Without Net Neutrality rules in place, any kind of internet operation is to some degree at the mercy of any operation that relays their traffic, because anybody along the line can choose to degrade the service. Thus, internet operations need to negotiate with (and pay) any ISP with a reasonable degree of influence.
It's worth considering what this does to competition as well. Powerful ISPs will have more influence, and therefore more leverage when negotiating how much a popular site should pay them to have their traffic carried without degradation over their network. They will therefore be able to extract more money than a smaller ISP would, allowing them to extend their reach further by improving their network or reducing (visible) fees to the end-user and so on. The large players will get larger, the small players will get smaller.
It seems to me, therefore, that Net Neutrality is a prerequisite for (continued) ISP competition, and not something that can emerge from it. If you consider ISP competition + (unregulated) net neutrality as a "point of equilibrium" - it's not a stable one.
(* I want to emphasize that the word choice here, "extortion", represents my own interpretation of these activities. It is somewhat a loaded word, which carries its own judgment of the legitimacy of these actions.)
Last night i was told by my ISP that they would charge extra to get fast access to hulu.com
Oh wait no.... no they didn't
In all likelihood, they're not going to charge you extra for this access, they're going to charge Hulu - who will then pass the cost on to you in one form or another.
Basically this is ISPs trying to wring more money out of the system. They've already got you paying for service, and now they want a slice of the revenue from anybody who's doing a lot of business on the network - under the threat of degrading the performance of those sites in a way that looks (to the customer) just like a badly-performing server.
I can't say that they're wrong to do this necessarily - that question won't be settled until the decision is set into law, of whether this is an acceptable business practice. Personally, however, this is not how I want to see things work.
Slashdot Mirror
I was born in 1984, so I wasn't even alive when the first trilogy started.
None of us were:
A long time ago, in a galaxy far, far away...
Hey, there were people alive "A long time ago"... And some of them are still alive today. My grandma, for instance.
Despite what you may have learned in junior high, "Put the bong down and step away slowly," is not a cogent counter argument.
Dang... If only I'd known that earlier, I would still have my bong!
But this is not about homosexuality creeping them out. This is about this men finding sex with other men creepy, which is a totally different thing from what you're talking about.
I don't think it is, really. A "creepy" reaction is still fear. I mean, why the strong reaction? Why does the idea hold so much power over you when it comes up?
Seems to me that this is a conflict - like id vs. superego or something. The strong reaction being the result of an effort to keep the idea out of your mind.
I mean, I don't think a person who reacts to the idea of homosexuality as you describe is necessarily a "bad person" or anything - I think how one treats others is the important criterion there. But I'd still describe it as a kind of homophobia.
You know smart-phones can do more then go onto the internet right? Not everybody who wants one wants it for web access.
This may seem like an insane idea, but can they somehow be used to make phone calls?
As long as you don't hold them the way you'd hold a phone, yes.
Yeah, I went there.
Why would I want any "smartphone" without a data plan? What's the point? If that was my goal I'd go back to an iPod and a cheap Nokia
Personally I find the combination of the two devices into one unit more convenient, even without a data plan...
Rather, I don't have that exact combination. I have an old Treo. I discontinued the data plan service after the first year because it was too expensive. But I still like the phone itself. I just like having PDA-style functionality on my phone.
You want the iPhone 4 unlocked, but you don't (I assume) want to pay the full price for it, and you want the government to step in and tell AT&T / Apple to unlock a subsidized phone. Whatever. You are not entitled to an unlocked iPhone for $200.
IMO either people should be allowed to unlock their phones, or else the company "selling" the phone should make it clear that the customer doesn't actually own the phone. You can't have it both ways. Of course, that's my opinion. In fact the current law says otherwise. Companies can sell a product and maintain restrictions over how the hardware is used (DRM, etc.) - and it is illegal to circumvent those restrictions under many circumstances.
Actually you're wrong, there's a large number of heterosexual people who engage in sexual acts with people of the same sex just for physical pleasure or a various number of other reasons. The accepted medical definition of gay is someone who feels an emotional attraction to someone of the same sex. If you're a straight man you can get off with another man, it's just the way human body works, falling in love with that man that's a totally different story.
Wow. You are really confused. If you have consensual homo sex then you are a homo. FULL STOP. The definition of gay is someone who is physically attracted to someone of the same sex you moron. Feelings have nothing to do with it. If you are a guy and you have had sex with another guy then you are a homo. Got it?
This seems awfully silly. I mean, if you dance, does that make you a "dancer"? Does that categorization immediately and irrevocably define you?
Some of what you say makes sense. If someone lives under the pretense of not being gay but engages in homosexual activities, their own claims about their orientation can be overridden by simple observation of fact. But I think one has to be careful of labels in general. Labeling people is not always a bad thing, the practice exists because it's useful. We can understand greater things by thinking of them in terms of broad concepts. But if someone chooses not to define themselves as "straight" or "gay" or "bi", why is it so important to you that they wind up in one of these categories?
And who was it who said "If you label me, you negate me"?
So... if I fail to find males sexually arousing, I'm a homophobic?
No. But if homosexuality creeps you out, you're demonstrating that you can't cope with the idea of homosexuality. That's phobia.
Thus everyone who has down-modded it sees the concept of being gay as something negative.
Oh, wow... Logic fallacy much?
Since it's gay, maybe it's phallusy?
However the death of textual interfaces has long been predicted and I still use a bash shell heavily every day, so I'm not willing to commit 100% to that as THE future.
Talk of "the death of textual interfaces" seems short-sighted to me. It is true that for many, many things, a more GUI-oriented approach is simply better. The days of a textual interface as the primary means of interaction are certainly long gone. However, I believe the value of textual interfaces in the appropriate context is underrated. Finding and running commands (whether at a command line or in an application) is a really valuable feature to have handy in an environment that offers a lot of functionality. GUI structures like menus and cascading menus or button bars are inherently problematic when it comes to presenting a huge feature set. For the sake of clarity, a GUI has to be limited to the set of commands that are most commonly used, so that subset of functionality can be made intuitive and properly streamlined. But how does one access functionality beyond the convenient subset? Activate "off-by-default" toolbars, searching through the various toolbars looking for the particular tool in question? Pop open the help system, search for the command, and read the instructions on how to access it, and then access it?
I think a better approach is to streamline those "help system" steps - make the assumption that finding obscure commands is a reasonably common operation, integrate it into the mainstream UI. Work it so the command can be launched immediately from the context where it's found... and if there's a shortcut for that command, non-obtrusively inform the user as soon as they're done with this long-form invocation.
Where does this get us? The Meta-X interface to "Emacs", basically. You can enter a partial command, tab-complete, invoke the command, and the command window will show you the shortcut if there was one. (Searching for commands could probably be handled better in Emacs, though...) I'm not claiming Emacs is perfect but this is one thing I love about it, and would really like to see incorporated into more "rich functionality" GUI programs. This is one way textual interfaces can continue to serve us well even as we discard more of the ancient relics of command-line computing. Textual interfaces tend to be rather unfriendly at present largely because the current ones are mostly old. Most current UI design focuses on GUI concepts, and the whole idea of a keyboard command interface is all but ignored. I think there's good potential there that's been left largely untapped.
You ever used a multi-axis jetpack with just one switch operated via one's mouth? Didn't think so. Nerds think they been to space just cause they played a space sim...christ.
No, don't think I've been to space. But I do have a basic understanding of the problems involved in trying to control one's movement in a free-fall environment, and how that would be complicated by being unable to use one's arms or legs. I can think, so fuck you.
Yes, children are pretty much the world's biggest market.
Only because there's such a supply.
... and it only requires unskilled labor to produce more.
Tell that to my obstetrician.
"Besides, you can't blow up the Earth without an Illudium PU-32 Explosive Space Modulator."
No need for funky fancy toys, when you're sitting higher up the gravity well than your target. From Mars, you don't even have to throw the rocks hard, or fast. Just point them, with the minimal boost necessary to intercept the earth in it's orbit - and wait. What would a rock with a circumference of ten miles do to New York, or London, or Moscow, or Hong Kong? Hell - let's launch 100 rocks that size, targeting each of the earth's 100 largest cities.
If anyone survives, it will be the nomads out in the desert.
It actually takes a tremendous amount of energy to take a significantly large rock in Mars orbit and send it on a collision course with Earth. Even if it takes a lower delta-V to drop something than it takes to boost something up, it's still a huge amount of energy. You're negating a substantial portion of its kinetic energy, after all.. You'd need a very precise shot to hit the Earth, as well.
Bah! He's just another special interest group trying to escape the chains of gravity that hold his paralyzed body to the earth's surface.
Being unable to use his arms and legs, placing him in an (apparent) zero-gravity environment would only create more problems. In an environment with gravity, it's easy to come to a stop - you pretty much just have to stop moving yourself and friction takes care of the rest. In a weightless environment, it's all about controlling inertia. It's harder to control a multi-axis jet pack with just one switch than it is to control a wheelchair, and without working arms or legs, you can't control your impact if you find yourself floating off toward a wall...
Of course, it's also possible that he's hoping the technology developed in the new era of space colonization will lead to advances that could correct his condition... It's not unthinkable - even toasters and cannons have some level of similarity in their underlying technology...
It's not worth it. The guys living there are jerks. Trust me on this.
-D. Jackson
Yeah... Fucking Vorlons...
Well, I guess it's something he really believes in... Though I wonder if this is just for the sake of ensuring the human race's survival... Perhaps Hawking expects a new step in our evolution to be triggered once our souls are no longer bound by Earth's gravity?
Nothing short of a earth destroying asteroid/comet hit would render this planet less inhabitable than even the most hospitable other planetary bodies within our reach. Even a Yucatan-sized hit would still leave the earth much more survivable than anywhere else. It would be WAY more practical to design underground bunkers and habitats here on earth than to try to move colonies to the moon or Mars. And nothing short of a hit that tears the planet into pieces is going to make earth less appealing than Mars or the moon.
Underground bunkers... I like it! A quick survey would have to be made of all the available mine sites in the country, but I would guess that dwelling space for several hundred thousands of our people could easily be provided. Animals could be bred and slaughtered! And in order to replenish the population under those harsh conditions, the women will have to be selected for their sexual characteristics which will have to be of a highly stimulating nature...
Even better, build a station on Mars, then personally vet every person you let up there and once you have all the best people, nuke the Earth from orbit - that way you accomplish both goals.
Don't be silly. Mars is no place to raise a kid, and there's no one there to raise 'em if you did...
Besides, you can't blow up the Earth without an Illudium PU-32 Explosive Space Modulator.
I need a car metaphor.
A car is like a house. If you nuke it, people inside die
Interesting. Why can't they build cars out of the same stuff they use to make refrigerators?
Information doesn't want to be free.
Some people want other people's information to be free, but that's about as far as it goes.
"Information wants to be free" in the same way that a large rock being rolled up a hill, "wants" to roll down it again. Of course neither the rock, nor the data, actually wants anything - it's just a way of characterizing their typical behavior in those circumstances.
It's simply the natural behavior of the thing in the environment in which it resides. Information "wants" to be free because, despite efforts to restrict the flow of information, it only takes a relatively small effort to get that information out. Information tends toward freedom because it's in an environment full of people who would be happy to disperse it. Information tends toward low economic value because it's trivial to copy it. The original meaning of the phrase was more along the lines of the latter - describing how "information wants to be expensive" because it's useful, but "information wants to be free" because it's easy to disperse. Both affect the dynamic "value" of the information in an economic sense.
I turned off idle stories, so why am I still seeing them??!?
The real trick to the perfect handshake is getting the hand properly pureed before you add the other ingredients.
What happened to the tilde (~), I thought that was pretty universal as sarcasm.
Seems a lot more practical than an all-new proprietary mark for sarcasm, and also a lot clearer than the "open sarcasm" Ethiopian option, which kind of looks a lot like a lower-case "I"...
So, yeah, I'm totally on board with the whole idea of adopting the SarcMark@ (At-sign is the closest thing I've got to a spiral around a dot...)
And I think the Open Sarcasm thing is gonna work out really, really welli
Jokes really out to be marked so there's no question you're joking around~
When did liberals start listening to comedians for their politics .... oh guess that been every sense pelsoi and friends have been a joke of a government.
You know, it took me a second to even register Al Franken as a comedian. I mean, mostly I remember him from old SNL episodes, "Weekend Update" (or whatever they called it at that point) where he mostly seemed to talk about himself. I was a kid last time I watched that bit so I don't know if I didn't get it or it just wasn't funny. Though, I guess (thinking back) he also wrote those polarized-partisan-pundit books - "Lying liars" and so on. He must have done other stuff as well <shrug>...
So reading your comment I thought you were bringing Jon Stewart into this discussion. I was a bit confused as to why. :)
And, I have to point out that both "sides of the aisle" have their favorite pundit clowns. They write books, host radio or TV shows, and just generally spit venom of such potency that, listening to them, you'd hardly think the proponents of the opposing viewpoint were human, let alone intelligent or sensible. I hate it. All that garbage has about as much resemblance to actual, productive debate as a brawl between Red Sox and Yankees fans. People pick their team and then switch their brains off - it's probably the worst thing that could happen to democracy as a viable way of directing a government... Unless you take a cynical approach, in which you suppose that all the political show serves an important "Bread and Circuses"-type role and that most of the population isn't really qualified to make decisions about how the government should operate...
Net neutrality is best ensured by competition. If the environment is right for ISP competition, then you'll get net neutrality.
Well, no, you won't.
Let's suppose there are five major players in a given area for "last mile" ISP service. (If you think about home-installed internet, this is a pretty generous estimate... But if you consider wireless service, there's probably more than that in many areas...) Anyway, one or two of these players is bound to have at least 1/5 of the overall local subscriber base under their influence. What's more, these subscribers may be under a multi-year service contract with penalty for early termination. (This is true of many wireless subscribers in the US of course - I even had such a contract for my home internet...) So if a site performs badly on FIOS or iPhone/AT&T or whatever, the user may not notice that it's only on their carrier, and even if they do many of them will not consider "jumping ship" to another carrier to be an option. To this customer, site A simply performs worse than site B.
Now, if one ISP has the ability to selectively throttle traffic for their entire customer base, that gives them the ability to extort* money from companies that do business on the internet. Pay us money, or all of our subscribers will think your service is slow and shitty. This kind of action won't change the landscape overnight, but it can make major players lose ground and bolster others. If 20% of the market starts thinking that Youtube's streaming isn't adequate for high-definition content, but that another site's streaming is, Youtube will start to decline in popularity (and thus lose advertising revenue). Without Net Neutrality rules in place, any kind of internet operation is to some degree at the mercy of any operation that relays their traffic, because anybody along the line can choose to degrade the service. Thus, internet operations need to negotiate with (and pay) any ISP with a reasonable degree of influence.
It's worth considering what this does to competition as well. Powerful ISPs will have more influence, and therefore more leverage when negotiating how much a popular site should pay them to have their traffic carried without degradation over their network. They will therefore be able to extract more money than a smaller ISP would, allowing them to extend their reach further by improving their network or reducing (visible) fees to the end-user and so on. The large players will get larger, the small players will get smaller.
It seems to me, therefore, that Net Neutrality is a prerequisite for (continued) ISP competition, and not something that can emerge from it. If you consider ISP competition + (unregulated) net neutrality as a "point of equilibrium" - it's not a stable one.
(* I want to emphasize that the word choice here, "extortion", represents my own interpretation of these activities. It is somewhat a loaded word, which carries its own judgment of the legitimacy of these actions.)
Funny,
Last night i was told by my ISP that they would charge extra to get fast access to hulu.com
Oh wait no .... no they didn't
In all likelihood, they're not going to charge you extra for this access, they're going to charge Hulu - who will then pass the cost on to you in one form or another.
Basically this is ISPs trying to wring more money out of the system. They've already got you paying for service, and now they want a slice of the revenue from anybody who's doing a lot of business on the network - under the threat of degrading the performance of those sites in a way that looks (to the customer) just like a badly-performing server.
I can't say that they're wrong to do this necessarily - that question won't be settled until the decision is set into law, of whether this is an acceptable business practice. Personally, however, this is not how I want to see things work.