This has nothing to do with BitTorrent or illegal file sharing. It has everything to do with people's right to do what they want with the bandwidth that they paid for. Comcast has oversold itself and now it's panicking when people actually use the bandwidth they supposedly bought since this "degrades" the service for other people - ultimately, this is Comcast's fault though, because Comcast divvied up a pipe among too many users, to put it simply. If they provided sufficient infrastructure so that each use could theoretically use the bandwidth they paid for then this wouldn't be an issue - there would be room for everyone on the tube, so to speak. By "traffic shaping" Comcast is limiting people's ability to use bandwidth that they paid for as they please.
BitTorrent traffic doesn't mysteriously take up more bandwidth per bit than any other form of traffic - it costs as much bandwidth as anything else, though people may send or receive more BitTorrent traffic than other forms of traffic. The same bandwidth limit should apply to it however. BitTorrent is not illegal and it's ridiculous for you to assume that just because someone is torrenting that they are downloading copyrighted material. It is certainly not a basis to shape BT traffic, or any other form of traffic for that matter.
No matter how much technology progresses, I don't think there will ever be a good substitute for face-to-face interaction. Having met most of my closest friends in person, it is quite dull and unfulfilling to then have to spend ten or eleven months away from them while I complete another year of high school in America (fortunately, this is my last year). I keep in touch with them constantly with the aid of IM, email, and VoIP (free long-distance calls to Ireland have saved me thousands of dollars!), but even as I talk to them every day, it's nothing compared to actually being able to spend time with them in person, which is part of the reason I'm moving to Dublin this summer.
Despite the fact that face-to-face interaction is so much better, without technology I would hardly keep in touch with these people, let alone on a day-to-day basis. I wouldn't be planning to move to a new country and I most likely wouldn't even be planning to move to a city. I would have forgotten about these people altogether long ago. So yes, I'd say technology has brought me much closer to my friends.
Please take at least an introductory course on philosophy before you say that it is a "flawed way of finding things out". Philosophy is the art of thought, and it has a place in nearly all aspects of life, even if it is not immediately obvious. Science comes from the empiricist school of thought, and the scientific method has strong roots in philosophy. Empiricism essentially states that "reality is what can be perceived", and in turn this is the basis of all science.
Of course, is this truly an infallible answer as to what reality is? Of course it isn't - the reality we perceive and observe may not be reality as it actually exists. We are limited by our perceptions, and our perceptions can very easily lie to us - hallucinations, dreams, et cetera all make that obvious. Science, by its very nature, cannot acknowledge this inherent flaw, as that would destroy the foundation upon which it is built. Philosophy does acknowledge this flaw, though. Practically, science is very useful, but it tells us little that we can be sure about in regards to the true nature of reality.
Philosophy is not just about answering "why" questions, either. There are a huge number of schools of philosophy - epistemology, logic, political philosophy, etc... all ask important questions that are not necessarily unanswerable. Philosophy does sometimes ask questions that cannot be answered in a satisfactory way, but when philosophy asks a question, it doesn't necessarily assume that there is a reason. "No reason" is as valid as any reason.
Slashdot Mirror
This has nothing to do with BitTorrent or illegal file sharing. It has everything to do with people's right to do what they want with the bandwidth that they paid for. Comcast has oversold itself and now it's panicking when people actually use the bandwidth they supposedly bought since this "degrades" the service for other people - ultimately, this is Comcast's fault though, because Comcast divvied up a pipe among too many users, to put it simply. If they provided sufficient infrastructure so that each use could theoretically use the bandwidth they paid for then this wouldn't be an issue - there would be room for everyone on the tube, so to speak. By "traffic shaping" Comcast is limiting people's ability to use bandwidth that they paid for as they please.
BitTorrent traffic doesn't mysteriously take up more bandwidth per bit than any other form of traffic - it costs as much bandwidth as anything else, though people may send or receive more BitTorrent traffic than other forms of traffic. The same bandwidth limit should apply to it however. BitTorrent is not illegal and it's ridiculous for you to assume that just because someone is torrenting that they are downloading copyrighted material. It is certainly not a basis to shape BT traffic, or any other form of traffic for that matter.
No matter how much technology progresses, I don't think there will ever be a good substitute for face-to-face interaction. Having met most of my closest friends in person, it is quite dull and unfulfilling to then have to spend ten or eleven months away from them while I complete another year of high school in America (fortunately, this is my last year). I keep in touch with them constantly with the aid of IM, email, and VoIP (free long-distance calls to Ireland have saved me thousands of dollars!), but even as I talk to them every day, it's nothing compared to actually being able to spend time with them in person, which is part of the reason I'm moving to Dublin this summer.
Despite the fact that face-to-face interaction is so much better, without technology I would hardly keep in touch with these people, let alone on a day-to-day basis. I wouldn't be planning to move to a new country and I most likely wouldn't even be planning to move to a city. I would have forgotten about these people altogether long ago. So yes, I'd say technology has brought me much closer to my friends.
Please take at least an introductory course on philosophy before you say that it is a "flawed way of finding things out". Philosophy is the art of thought, and it has a place in nearly all aspects of life, even if it is not immediately obvious. Science comes from the empiricist school of thought, and the scientific method has strong roots in philosophy. Empiricism essentially states that "reality is what can be perceived", and in turn this is the basis of all science.
Of course, is this truly an infallible answer as to what reality is? Of course it isn't - the reality we perceive and observe may not be reality as it actually exists. We are limited by our perceptions, and our perceptions can very easily lie to us - hallucinations, dreams, et cetera all make that obvious. Science, by its very nature, cannot acknowledge this inherent flaw, as that would destroy the foundation upon which it is built. Philosophy does acknowledge this flaw, though. Practically, science is very useful, but it tells us little that we can be sure about in regards to the true nature of reality.
Philosophy is not just about answering "why" questions, either. There are a huge number of schools of philosophy - epistemology, logic, political philosophy, etc... all ask important questions that are not necessarily unanswerable. Philosophy does sometimes ask questions that cannot be answered in a satisfactory way, but when philosophy asks a question, it doesn't necessarily assume that there is a reason. "No reason" is as valid as any reason.
More like the article itself omitted that little detail.
Clamwin: http://www.clamwin.com/content/view/18/46/