The problem comes in on what definition of compliance you use. It's as much a legal term as a technical one. A notorious rat hole. How often to people around here debate the various browsers' html compliance? I don't think this would work.
If you think it isn't, then let me ask you this- can you transport food, clothing, fuel, and building materials over the Internet? No. Is a transportation infrastructure necessary for moving those listed goods from their points of production to points of disbursement to consumers? Yes. Is said infrastructure often necessary for transporting consumers of those necessary products to the point of dissemination, too? Sure is.
But how do we decide things like what goods get transported, where do they get tranported, and who is paying for said goods? Before you can do anything, you have to have the information exchange. That's where the importance of the network comes in. Sure, we do it all mostly without the Internet now, but having the Internet gives us the ability to increase our efficiency by orders of magnitude. Our dependency on it is only going to increase.
I don't presume that their is only one way to build roads. It's an interesting question though. Why do you think we've decided to build roads the way we do? I think there are several good reasons but I've already blabbed on enough here so I'll let you think about it.
I have to disagree somewhat about the BBC. I have found that their news coverage at least is superior to that of the US stations. Ironic isn't it? The state controlled news organization seems to be more impartial and professional than the privately owned "independent" ones.
Last point, I promise. I think what it boils down to is who do you want to make the rules for how we access the Internet? Right now, the telecom/cable industry makes the rules. They listen to the people that pay them. We pay them a little, but the content providers and advertisers are a much better long term revenue growth opportunity so eventually we'll get their content, their restrictions and their ads and little else. If the Internet is public then we play by the rules set down in the US Constitution. I like those rules a lot better because they give me, the consumer, a lot more power. That is worth paying for, IMHO.
I guess when I said the Constitution's definition of free and open I was referring to the First Amendment. "Congress shall make no law...abridging the freedom of speech." If I understand correctly (and IA *so* NAL, so I may not), the First Amendment standard of free speech would apply to a publicly owned Internet, but not to a privately owned one.
If that's true, that is a huge win for the publicly owned idea I think because it's speech that's flowing through those wires. A privately owned Internet can, for instance offer firewall rules to the highest bidder. "You wanna block P2P traffic? No problem, $100million/year." But if Senator Lame Brain wants to legislate the same rules into the public Internet, the Constitutional lawyers can take over and slap him down.
The efficiency problem you mention is a biggie, I agree. A couple of points though: First, (and I know I'm beating this analogy to death, but here you go), the roads are built and owned by the government. Now it doesn't have to be that way. There are plenty of industries that have a vested interest in seeing roads built (Ford, Firestone, Amoco, etc.), why not let them pay to build them? We also don't complain about the lack of innovation in road building because of how we build and pay for them. Buliding the Internet infrastructure just feels the same to me as building roads and the way we build roads feels right as well.
Secondly, you still get some of the benefits of free market style competition because you can make contractors bid for the big cable laying projects. It's probably not as good as open competition, because you get price gouging, but it would be *our* network. I think that's worth paying for.
Lastly, I don't agree that government control stifles innovation in this case because the network itself is just dumb wires and fiber. The innovation is layered on top of that physical structure in the software. I think that should remain out of government control. The government's role should be to see that everybody gets access to this public resource and that you don't restrict others from using it.
I totally agree with your statement that "Any step to control this new tool...must not be allowed to happen." The problem is that I think it is happening already. It's just happening behind the scenes. The network builders are free to apply any type of restrictions on our access through usage agreements or by wiring them into the network itself. We have no real redress. Competition, by the nature of architecture of the system is limited, so the normal free market mechanisms are rendered less effective.
If we nationalize (essentially) the internet, what's to stop the government, and therefore the *AA and Microsoft from further dominating our digital freedoms?
Ahh...excellent question! The answer is the Constitution. That part where it says "Congress shall make no laws regulating the freedom of speech." Now, what's to prevent Verizon or Qwest of Comcast from dominating our digital freedoms with their networks? The Constitition doesn't say "Quest shall make no laws regulating..." anything.
Who defines free and open? All the companies that provide backbone data service are (to my knowledge) publically held companies; they are subject to regulation from the FCC and the federal government.
I prefer the Constitution's definition of free and open to that of the FCC or the corporate shareholder's. That's all I'm saying.
A lot. And yet their taxes are still used to pay for roads. Doesn't seem fair, does it?
While the internet is nice, its defintely something I could live without
I'm sure people said the same thing about electricity back in the early 20th century and about municipal plumbing/sewage systems in some earlier era. Don't you think it's possible that future generations will be just as dependant on the information infrastructure?
Lemme see if I can catch a clue here. When I get in my car tonight to drive home, I will drive on "free" roads to get there. Free in the Bill of Rights kinda way. Of course it isn't free in the monetary sense. I and others pay for the roads via taxes. Nobody's saying that the Internet can be costless. The question is what kind of pricing model should it be. Internet bandwidth is more like a road then it is like a house, a car or food.
Another thing to consider: a publically owned network is subject to the Constitution ("Congress shall make no law restricting the freedom of speech, blah, blah blah"). Private networks aren't subject to those oh so inconvenient for business restrictions so they are free to deal with the MPAAs and RIAAs of the world to restrict your access.
I agree. The information infrastructure (and the freedom thereof) is too important to leave to publically unaccountable entities. Before you respond, think about this: You already pay for your government to build the public freely accessible roads whether you drive on them or not. Isn't a free and open connection to the Internet at least as important as your roads?
When trying to convince the Powers That Be that FreeBSD is the way however, it is extremely easy when you point out most ISPs (especially the larger ones) run it in large scale systems without problem.
Which would be very convincing if the Powers That Be run an ISP business. If they don't...not so convincing.
We have to understand that, for better or worse, the CIO is happiest when all of us sys admins and developers are replaceable cogs in the Big Machine. Easy to install/configure/maintain software is a means to this end. I'm not sure I like that, but I'm also not sure I can do much about it assuming I want to continue to pay the rent.
Seriously, if you don't need Redhat support and don't want their Enterprise features, why would you use Redhat on a server? *BSD or Debian would be more reliable, and Gentoo, LFS, or Debian would be much more customizable.
While I agree with this sentiment mostly, you have to realize that to the people that are paid to make these decisions (The Boss, the CIO, whatever) customizable == bad, at least as far as operating system decisions are concerned.
It's impossible to know if you'll always have the expertise to maintain all your wonderful customizations and since, if the operating system can't be made to work, everything fails, it's extremely important that your os configuration be very transparent.
Of course there are sacrifices in power, flexibility and so forth that you make when you choose this route, but to the CIO, ease of maintanence (not to mention replacability of maintenance staff) tends to trump those considerations.
Redhat realizes this and I think this is the source of their success.
You misunderstand the intent. The dollar amount is immaterial.
Here's an analogy. Say I have an application that connects to a database. The database will drop connections after a certain timeout period has expired. So if my application wants to keep the connection to the database, I have to put code in that periodically sends a keep alive signal to the database.
The keep alive signal can be a huge honkin' query (dumb idea), but or a tiny ping type query (better idea), but the point is the client application is in charge of maintaining the connection because by default it gets dropped after a timeout period.
The Eldred Act set it up so that copyright owners must send a keep alive signal periodically to keep the material under copyright. Otherwise, it gets dropped into the public domain. It frees up resources for everybody to use that would otherwise be held up by law.
For telephone, Verizon are already required to interconnect with other telcos, at regulated rates: the only monopoly element would be line rental/local calls.
Internet/data traffic: Not regulated per se, but if Verizon change their peering arrangements it'll be big news. Until then, you're free to access anything you want over it.
This is true, but (correct me if I'm wrong here) aren't the telcos demanding an end to this arrangement as a condition for the expense of improving the infrastructure? That's the "big news" you're talking about and it's what I'm afraid the FCC will give them.
TV: Cable and satellite companies are required to carry all the local channels, as well as carrying "community access" programming.
That's a pretty wimpy requirement and one that will mean a whole lot less if the FCC does its expected deregulation on Monday. Right now, we get effectively no choice of channels, which is mostly merely inconvenient, but has the potential to be much worse. How likely is it that a cable company, would continue to carry a channel that ran documentaries critical of their sponsors for instance? That's wielding too much power in my book.
If you want to see a truly failed regulator, look at the FCC's UK counterpart, Oftel...
Ugh, yes! No argument here. And the television tax? Who came up with that one? I guess we should count our blessings, eh?;-)
Company #1 spends BIG MONEY to physically lay tons of wire. You then force that company to give away their hardwork - for sometime for a fee and then eventually for FREE - as soon as its done?
I'm not suggesting they give it away. I'm saying they must be prevented from locking out competition. Competition is good, right?
Verizon is proposing a big fiber network. Lots of expense. Lots of money. This time around with this telecom network there isn't the government granting them automatic monopolies. If Company Y wants to create a competing network, LET THEM INVEST THEIR OWN MONEY.
We're talking fiber to the home networks here. Are you proposing that company Y run a second line into my house to compete with Verizon's line? That is stupid.
Forcing companies to materially help and support the competition is wrong, immoral, and bad for commerce AND the consumer. It forces higher costs, discourages innovation and risk taking, and stigmatizes the development of new technology. Who wants to create something new and exciting if the government is just going to force you to give it away before you recoup your investment?
I'm curious to know how allowing a single company to dictate the terms of my connection to the Internet is good for me, good for competition or good for commerce. There's no doubt it would be good for Verizon.
Again, I'm not saying the Verizon shouldn't be compensated for their efforts to connect us with a high speed network, that's why others should be forced to license the lines from Verizon to use them, but neither should they be entitled to recoup that investment in perpetuity. Nor should they be allowed to selectively lock out whoever doesn't play by their rules simply becase at one time they invested in laying some fiber.
We must realize that Verizon (or any one company) is not going to act in the interest of the public good. If we want the Internet to remain the medium of openess and innovation that it is, we must demand that those interests be balanced with those of the companies that build the infrastructure. Otherwise the Internet just becomes a world wide shopping mall.
Another option is to set up a compulsory licensure for the lines. Anyone is allowed to use the fiber that Verizon lays, but they must pay Verizon (for some *limited* time, mind you) for access. That way, Verizon is not allowed to lock out their competitors to establish a monopoly and the public interest is served because anyone is free to develop new and better uses for the lines, but Verizon still gets some compensation for the expense of laying the fiber.
Verizon isn't likely to agree to this though, nor (sadly) is butt kissing Powell at the FCC. That's why the public (i.e. you and me) must hold their feet to the fire.
When code gets into Microsoft Windows, it is clearly due to the deliberate action of someone at Microsoft; as a result, Microsoft has a very good reason to make sure "tainted" code doesn't get included.
I think Linus has just as good reasons to make sure "tainted" code doesn't get into Linux. Just because he doesn't make money from his development and management of the project doesn't mean that he isn't interested in the quality of the code that goes in.
With a project which accepts code contributions from around the world, there is both less accountability -- Linus can say "I didn't know that code came from SCO" far more convincingly than Microsoft ever could -- and less traceability -- past experiences with license shifts have demonstrated that it is very hard for an open source project to track down its contributors.
I just don't think this is true. Linus can't absolve himself of responsibility (nor, I suspect, would he want to) for what goes into the kernel any more than Microsoft can for their code. And Microsoft could just as easily claim something like, "Well, that code was produced by Joe (aside: and he always was a little shifty), but we fired him years ago."
I don't know about you, but I don't care if someone presents an obviously biased view. I just care if they can back up their bias with good arguments and data.
Java is still strongly typed, but weak typing is good now in large part because of test driven development. Unit tests that you design yourself and run as part of the build process enforce your constraints much more effectively than strong typing does.
Fine. Lock and load! Thus begins our inexorable slide into anarchy.
Let me ask you something. Do you think the cause of the anti-abortion people is furthered by the people that kill abortion doctors? Or do you think the environmentalists gain support when the ELF torches a ski lodge? Or is the cause of liberation for the Palestinians advanced by the suicide bombers of Hamas? I vote no, that's all I'm saying.
If our little excursion into Iraq last month taught us anything, it was that no matter how many AK-47's we might have stashed away in the basement, our government is always going to seriously out gun us (both physically and in the court of public opinion). Let's face it, if it gets to the point where we're defending our individual houses against government intrusion, we will have already lost the war. The US wasn't afraid of Saddam Hussein's macho posturing, it's not going to care any more about yours or mine.
Slashdot Mirror
Free cookies to the first person that sees what's wrong with this sentence.
BillG's plan is to "embrace and extend" spam into a new, more user friendly and innovative form. He's calling it MSpam (TM).
Your average driver != NASCAR driver
...despite whatever delusions they may harbor to the contrary.
The problem comes in on what definition of compliance you use. It's as much a legal term as a technical one. A notorious rat hole. How often to people around here debate the various browsers' html compliance? I don't think this would work.
But how do we decide things like what goods get transported, where do they get tranported, and who is paying for said goods? Before you can do anything, you have to have the information exchange. That's where the importance of the network comes in. Sure, we do it all mostly without the Internet now, but having the Internet gives us the ability to increase our efficiency by orders of magnitude. Our dependency on it is only going to increase.
I don't presume that their is only one way to build roads. It's an interesting question though. Why do you think we've decided to build roads the way we do? I think there are several good reasons but I've already blabbed on enough here so I'll let you think about it.
I have to disagree somewhat about the BBC. I have found that their news coverage at least is superior to that of the US stations. Ironic isn't it? The state controlled news organization seems to be more impartial and professional than the privately owned "independent" ones.
Last point, I promise. I think what it boils down to is who do you want to make the rules for how we access the Internet? Right now, the telecom/cable industry makes the rules. They listen to the people that pay them. We pay them a little, but the content providers and advertisers are a much better long term revenue growth opportunity so eventually we'll get their content, their restrictions and their ads and little else. If the Internet is public then we play by the rules set down in the US Constitution. I like those rules a lot better because they give me, the consumer, a lot more power. That is worth paying for, IMHO.
Dude, you need to install the latest sarcasm detector. Maybe I should've put one of those smiley thingies in there.
I guess when I said the Constitution's definition of free and open I was referring to the First Amendment. "Congress shall make no law...abridging the freedom of speech." If I understand correctly (and IA *so* NAL, so I may not), the First Amendment standard of free speech would apply to a publicly owned Internet, but not to a privately owned one.
If that's true, that is a huge win for the publicly owned idea I think because it's speech that's flowing through those wires. A privately owned Internet can, for instance offer firewall rules to the highest bidder. "You wanna block P2P traffic? No problem, $100million/year." But if Senator Lame Brain wants to legislate the same rules into the public Internet, the Constitutional lawyers can take over and slap him down.
The efficiency problem you mention is a biggie, I agree. A couple of points though: First, (and I know I'm beating this analogy to death, but here you go), the roads are built and owned by the government. Now it doesn't have to be that way. There are plenty of industries that have a vested interest in seeing roads built (Ford, Firestone, Amoco, etc.), why not let them pay to build them? We also don't complain about the lack of innovation in road building because of how we build and pay for them. Buliding the Internet infrastructure just feels the same to me as building roads and the way we build roads feels right as well.
Secondly, you still get some of the benefits of free market style competition because you can make contractors bid for the big cable laying projects. It's probably not as good as open competition, because you get price gouging, but it would be *our* network. I think that's worth paying for.
Lastly, I don't agree that government control stifles innovation in this case because the network itself is just dumb wires and fiber. The innovation is layered on top of that physical structure in the software. I think that should remain out of government control. The government's role should be to see that everybody gets access to this public resource and that you don't restrict others from using it.
I totally agree with your statement that "Any step to control this new tool...must not be allowed to happen." The problem is that I think it is happening already. It's just happening behind the scenes. The network builders are free to apply any type of restrictions on our access through usage agreements or by wiring them into the network itself. We have no real redress. Competition, by the nature of architecture of the system is limited, so the normal free market mechanisms are rendered less effective.
Ahh...excellent question! The answer is the Constitution. That part where it says "Congress shall make no laws regulating the freedom of speech." Now, what's to prevent Verizon or Qwest of Comcast from dominating our digital freedoms with their networks? The Constitition doesn't say "Quest shall make no laws regulating..." anything.
I prefer the Constitution's definition of free and open to that of the FCC or the corporate shareholder's. That's all I'm saying.
A lot. And yet their taxes are still used to pay for roads. Doesn't seem fair, does it?
I'm sure people said the same thing about electricity back in the early 20th century and about municipal plumbing/sewage systems in some earlier era. Don't you think it's possible that future generations will be just as dependant on the information infrastructure?
Lemme see if I can catch a clue here. When I get in my car tonight to drive home, I will drive on "free" roads to get there. Free in the Bill of Rights kinda way. Of course it isn't free in the monetary sense. I and others pay for the roads via taxes. Nobody's saying that the Internet can be costless. The question is what kind of pricing model should it be. Internet bandwidth is more like a road then it is like a house, a car or food.
Another thing to consider: a publically owned network is subject to the Constitution ("Congress shall make no law restricting the freedom of speech, blah, blah blah"). Private networks aren't subject to those oh so inconvenient for business restrictions so they are free to deal with the MPAAs and RIAAs of the world to restrict your access.
I agree. The information infrastructure (and the freedom thereof) is too important to leave to publically unaccountable entities. Before you respond, think about this: You already pay for your government to build the public freely accessible roads whether you drive on them or not. Isn't a free and open connection to the Internet at least as important as your roads?
Which would be very convincing if the Powers That Be run an ISP business. If they don't...not so convincing.
We have to understand that, for better or worse, the CIO is happiest when all of us sys admins and developers are replaceable cogs in the Big Machine. Easy to install/configure/maintain software is a means to this end. I'm not sure I like that, but I'm also not sure I can do much about it assuming I want to continue to pay the rent.
What, you've never signed your name before?
;-)
While I agree with this sentiment mostly, you have to realize that to the people that are paid to make these decisions (The Boss, the CIO, whatever) customizable == bad, at least as far as operating system decisions are concerned.
It's impossible to know if you'll always have the expertise to maintain all your wonderful customizations and since, if the operating system can't be made to work, everything fails, it's extremely important that your os configuration be very transparent.
Of course there are sacrifices in power, flexibility and so forth that you make when you choose this route, but to the CIO, ease of maintanence (not to mention replacability of maintenance staff) tends to trump those considerations.
Redhat realizes this and I think this is the source of their success.
You misunderstand the intent. The dollar amount is immaterial.
Here's an analogy. Say I have an application that connects to a database. The database will drop connections after a certain timeout period has expired. So if my application wants to keep the connection to the database, I have to put code in that periodically sends a keep alive signal to the database.
The keep alive signal can be a huge honkin' query (dumb idea), but or a tiny ping type query (better idea), but the point is the client application is in charge of maintaining the connection because by default it gets dropped after a timeout period.
The Eldred Act set it up so that copyright owners must send a keep alive signal periodically to keep the material under copyright. Otherwise, it gets dropped into the public domain. It frees up resources for everybody to use that would otherwise be held up by law.
This is true, but (correct me if I'm wrong here) aren't the telcos demanding an end to this arrangement as a condition for the expense of improving the infrastructure? That's the "big news" you're talking about and it's what I'm afraid the FCC will give them.
That's a pretty wimpy requirement and one that will mean a whole lot less if the FCC does its expected deregulation on Monday. Right now, we get effectively no choice of channels, which is mostly merely inconvenient, but has the potential to be much worse. How likely is it that a cable company, would continue to carry a channel that ran documentaries critical of their sponsors for instance? That's wielding too much power in my book.
Ugh, yes! No argument here. And the television tax? Who came up with that one? I guess we should count our blessings, eh? ;-)
I'm not suggesting they give it away. I'm saying they must be prevented from locking out competition. Competition is good, right?
We're talking fiber to the home networks here. Are you proposing that company Y run a second line into my house to compete with Verizon's line? That is stupid.
I'm curious to know how allowing a single company to dictate the terms of my connection to the Internet is good for me, good for competition or good for commerce. There's no doubt it would be good for Verizon.
Again, I'm not saying the Verizon shouldn't be compensated for their efforts to connect us with a high speed network, that's why others should be forced to license the lines from Verizon to use them, but neither should they be entitled to recoup that investment in perpetuity. Nor should they be allowed to selectively lock out whoever doesn't play by their rules simply becase at one time they invested in laying some fiber.
We must realize that Verizon (or any one company) is not going to act in the interest of the public good. If we want the Internet to remain the medium of openess and innovation that it is, we must demand that those interests be balanced with those of the companies that build the infrastructure. Otherwise the Internet just becomes a world wide shopping mall.
Another option is to set up a compulsory licensure for the lines. Anyone is allowed to use the fiber that Verizon lays, but they must pay Verizon (for some *limited* time, mind you) for access. That way, Verizon is not allowed to lock out their competitors to establish a monopoly and the public interest is served because anyone is free to develop new and better uses for the lines, but Verizon still gets some compensation for the expense of laying the fiber.
Verizon isn't likely to agree to this though, nor (sadly) is butt kissing Powell at the FCC. That's why the public (i.e. you and me) must hold their feet to the fire.
[Jack Nicolson voice]
I want you to take the keyboard and hold it between your knees!
I think Linus has just as good reasons to make sure "tainted" code doesn't get into Linux. Just because he doesn't make money from his development and management of the project doesn't mean that he isn't interested in the quality of the code that goes in.
I just don't think this is true. Linus can't absolve himself of responsibility (nor, I suspect, would he want to) for what goes into the kernel any more than Microsoft can for their code. And Microsoft could just as easily claim something like, "Well, that code was produced by Joe (aside: and he always was a little shifty), but we fired him years ago."
I don't know about you, but I don't care if someone presents an obviously biased view. I just care if they can back up their bias with good arguments and data.
Well, your cogent, well articulated argument has convinced me. I guess I won't bother reading the rest of Lessig's book.
Java is still strongly typed, but weak typing is good now in large part because of test driven development. Unit tests that you design yourself and run as part of the build process enforce your constraints much more effectively than strong typing does.
For more, read Tim Bray's piece on this.
Fine. Lock and load! Thus begins our inexorable slide into anarchy.
Let me ask you something. Do you think the cause of the anti-abortion people is furthered by the people that kill abortion doctors? Or do you think the environmentalists gain support when the ELF torches a ski lodge? Or is the cause of liberation for the Palestinians advanced by the suicide bombers of Hamas? I vote no, that's all I'm saying.
If our little excursion into Iraq last month taught us anything, it was that no matter how many AK-47's we might have stashed away in the basement, our government is always going to seriously out gun us (both physically and in the court of public opinion). Let's face it, if it gets to the point where we're defending our individual houses against government intrusion, we will have already lost the war. The US wasn't afraid of Saddam Hussein's macho posturing, it's not going to care any more about yours or mine.