Queue the climate change deniers, who will try to skew this as meaning it's geothermal activity and not our CO2 contributions that are causing ice melt, not realizing that this really means curbing CO2 emissions is that much more important so we don't accelerate it.
Its also, as a fairly experienced network engineer, very very very difficult, borderline impossible, to accomplish.
Is it really that difficult to slow down all traffic except traffic coming from a list of IP addresses that are paying you off? Comcast didn't seem to have a problem throttling Netflix for a few months until Netflix paid up. Also, if you wanted to target video streaming, wouldn't it be easy to specify after X bits or Y packets then slow it down? That would obviously cover more than just video, but would be most noticeable to most people with video. You can start there and get more intelligent, and as you get more intelligent, the shinier the equipment you'll want to buy from Cisco. You really don't need to do MiTM to come up with a good extortion scheme.
I'm not sure that I like having my web pages load slowly so that somebody else can watch Keeping Up With The Kardashians jitter-free.
And without net neutrality, those web pages will load even slower unless they are coming from somebody who has given your ISP extortion money (in addition to the money you're already giving them each month) to not slow them down.
This means Comcast & TWC will be purchasing more network equipment from Cisco. They won't upgrade infrastructure to deliver better service, but they'll happily buy equipment that prioritizes traffic (slows down traffic coming from non-paying sources) for the purpose of double dipping by charging both you and Netflix/Amazon/Google/etc.
- "Public" wifi bandwidth will not affect the bandwidth of the home router (so says Comcast).
Comcast also tells customers it delivers X Mbps of bandwidth. While some lucky customers in certain areas do get that, a vast majority don't. So, it might not affect what they call the maximum bandwidth, but for a majority of users it will affect their actual bandwidth.
There should be a process of discipline and removal for poor teachers. It should be as objective as possible so as to avoid undue parental pressure.
Therein lies the problem. What should it be based on? How many students pass? Standardized test scores? How about teachers that are good but get a job at a school whose students are generally poorer-performing vs teachers that aren't as good but work at a school with a higher caliber of students?
there sure is a lot of paranoid stupidity about how tech works.
I assume you're implying that it's stupid to assume that this will degrade service. If, currently, I can barely stream Netflix (stops/spins frequently, lowers quality, sometimes to the point of being unwatchable), then when somebody else hops on my connection and starts downloading porn or watching silly cat videos, what do you think is going to happen? I haven't seen anything about Comcast upgrading their other infrastructure to compensate for this and give me double the current actual bandwidth, which would still be a fraction of what I'm paying for as the "up to" speed.
*This was my experience when I had cable when I lived in a suburban ticky tacky neighborhood. I moved a bit further out and happen to be pretty close to the telco now. I have DSL which is rated at 1/3 of what my cable was, but I have no problem streaming Netflix & Hulu to 3 different TVs/computers at a time with no noticeable degradation. I realize that in some limited areas cable gives much better actual speeds, so please realize that if you have plenty of speed on your cable connection, consider yourself lucky because most people don't.
welcome to ridiculously marked up pdfs of textbooks
From the article about Sunward Park:
“Parents were already spending an average of R1 800 on textbooks every year anyway,” explains Thango, “We were able to sell two different tablets at the start, a seven inch one for R1 000 and a 10inch one for R2 000. Most of our textbooks come from MacMillan or Pearsons, and we were able to negotiate a big discount on three year licences for ebook versions, so it only costs R300 per learner per year.”
So, if the tablet only lasts 1 year and they get the 7-inch, they save R300 (US$28). If they have it for 4 years, they save R5000 (US$470)if they get the 7-inch or R4000 (US$375) if they get the 10-inch.
This also gives them the opportunity to evolve into not using e-books, perhaps at least for some classes. My daughter went to a charter school for middle school that doesn't use textbooks. They didn't get tablets but their classrooms had computers, and they had to have a computer at home. The teachers did an excellent job of finding resources that were IMO better than most textbooks. She also gained great skills in finding info on the web and assessing its reliability. It was more work for the teachers though than just using a chapter in their preassigned textbook, so that might not work so well for many underpaid/disgruntled teachers in the public school system (I am not, by any means, saying that all teachers in the public school system have an "I give up" attitude, but an unfortunate majority of the ones around here do).
According to the article, the new part is recurring payments...it's just one new feature of the already-existing Amazon Payments. What a horrible summary. I get users not reading the article. I even get submitters only reading the first part of an article. But for this one, it seems like he would have had to put some real effort into it making it so wrong.
The problematic thing here is that copyright is one thing. What's next? When you can break copyright laws, why not other laws?
Exactly. The slippery slope argument. The exact same thing has happened with other laws. A remember when little Bobby down the street got his driver's license. He noticed that everyone broke the speed limit law by 5mph.
He thought, "if everyone can break the speed limit law by 5mph, why can't I break the no-stealing law by 5 candy bars?" So he stole 5 candy bars, and there was no consequence, society didn't care because it was okay to break the speed limit by 5mph.
So then he thought, "if it's okay to steal 5 candy bars, why can't I rob 5 banks? " So he went and robbed 5 banks, and there was no consequence, society didn't care because it was okay to steal 5 candy bars.
So then little Bobby thought, "if it's okay to rob 5 banks, why can't I murder 5 people?" So he murdered 5 people, and there was no consequence, society didn't care because it was okay to rob 5 banks.
So you see, thanks to the slippery slope, that's why murder became legal: Because people started going 5 mph over the speed limit without getting a speeding ticket.
I think you're referring to a wheat allergy which is entirely different from a "gluten allergy." You can get gluten-free wheat products, and there are grains other than wheat that contain gluten. A few hints to know if somebody is a kook, if any of the following are true: 1. They say that have a "gluten allergy." Anybody with celiac wouldn't call it an allergy, and anybody with a wheat allergy would call it a wheat allergy. 2. They say they are "gluten intolerant" but claim they don't have celiac. 3. They claim to have any form of gluten intolerance that they recently discovered, but they don't look malnourished. 4. They claim that eating gluten gives them indigestion. That's not how celiac works. 5. They say eating a gluten free diet just makes them feel better. (although in reality this can be true, but it's not because they cut out gluten, it's that as a result they are eating fewer calories and/or paying more attention to what they're eating).
Now if only we could get names of lawbreakers out of government agencies. I know it will be a cold day in Hell before that happens, but it would be nice
One thing I am certain about: It's a mistake to try to replace the A-10 Warthog with F-35s. I don't even understand how the F-35 is supposed to do the same mission.
The F-35's primary mission is to make Lockheed Martin shitloads of money (the secondary missions being to make its subcontractors shitloads of money, and get politicians shitloads of campaign contributions). Since the A-10 is not made by Lockheed Martin (or anybody else anymore), the F-35 will be infinitely more successful at its mission.
Are they somehow brave enough to take on an armed criminal yet too cowardly to refuse bullshit orders?
Absolutely. The probably of something bad happening to them when they take on an armed criminal is actually quite low, and if something bad does happen to them they will be hailed as a hero. When refusing an order to violate the constitution, however, they will not be hailed as a hero and their decision will not be respected by their peers. Their superiors will likely find a way to get them fired and possibly lose their pension to set an example, regardless of whether or not they would be able to prove their orders were illegal.
What exactly goes through their minds?
Usually something like, "I know better than the law and constitution. The laws are just red tape written to protect criminals. If we think somebody is guilty, then they absolutely are, judges and juries are just more red tape and technicalities. If I don't like something somebody is doing, then this badge and job title give me the authority to do as I please to them."
Not even that. In this case all it means is an updated EULA, where buried on page 15 will be a statement about their collection of location data, which everyone will simply click "agree" to. There will be a few stories about it on/. ("So-and-so big company collecting all your location data!"), and nobody but/. readers will care so long as the app continues to let them put fish-faced selfies somewhere that their "friends" (really their friend's friend's older cousin's barista's little sister) can see it and comment on it.
You're (probably intentionally) ignoring a huge point. As pointed out in the summary, the agreements also prohibit the leasing of the already existing fiber lines:
and prohibit municipalities from selling or leasing their fiber to local startups who would compete with these huge corporations.
So it's not just that the government can't operate an ISP, it's that nobody else can. And before you try and say it's not fair that the cable company had to run their own lines, while the government ran them for these other ISPs, keep in mind these points: 1. The competing ISPs would still have to pay for the lines. 2. The cable companies have received huge subsidies from the government.
Personally, I *want* "fast lanes" because they remove popular traffic off the main transit links.
Okay, now I know something's up. I also see that all of your recent comments pro-big-corporate-ISP. What you're pretending to not understand is that "fast lane" doesn't mean fast lane, it means everything else is slow lane. They're not talking about building out new faster infrastructure. And it's not simply about peering, it's about charging providers extra to provide this "fast lane" which amounts to "give us money or we're gonna slow you down."
My home town, Burbank, CA has metro fiber for businesses. Studios love it. The fiber is actually owned by the cable company. Heh!
See! You think fiber is okay if it's the cable company making a profit on it, but not if it's a competing ISP.
The point at which they stop giving campaign contributions and spending so much on lobbying. Unfortunately, that will never happen. We've passed the point where the influence public opinion could outweigh the influence of campaign contributions.
And on that note, why should civilians need a warrant? We should just start following their lead and perform our own mass spying... Well, not really, because I know what kinds of things they do to mere peons with the CFAA.
Because individual citizens have no power. If the police decide what you did is illegal, then they'll persecute/prosecute you. Especially if you're spying on them (even videoing them in a public place) or a person or organization with power.
If you're a large corporation though, you have an army of lawyers and you can do whatever you want. Remember the case when Microsoft stole email form a journalist's hotmail account without a warrant? Their excuse was they could do it because they wouldn't have been able to get a warrant, both because that's law enforcement's role and because law enforcement wouldn't have been able to get a warrant anyway. That translates to, "we know what we're doing is totally illegal because the courts would never let us, but we're doing it anyway because nobody gives a shit about the judicial branch."
Despite being modded funny, the part about the judicial branch being obsolete was entirely serious.
Because the important thing is to focus on whether Snowden followed proper procedure. Forget about what he exposed, all those gross violations of the constitution are completely irrelevant if he didn't follow procedure when exposing them.
If the federal government doesn't need a warrant, why should local law enforcement? OTOH, the federal government uses "national security" as an excuse to violate the constitution. What's local law enforcement's excuse?
a move that is making some courts uneasy
The judicial branch is obsolete, a relic from some past time when The Constitution of the United States was the highest law of the land.
Slashdot Mirror
Just because you are an existing player doesn't mean you get state sponsored protection...
It does if you have enough money to spend on lobbying and brib^H^H^H^H campaign contributions.
While true, Verizon doesn't come to all neighborhoods - and there's no way I'm doing business with Comcast.
So, if only Comcast were available (as it is to many people in certain areas), would you use dial-up instead?
Queue the climate change deniers, who will try to skew this as meaning it's geothermal activity and not our CO2 contributions that are causing ice melt, not realizing that this really means curbing CO2 emissions is that much more important so we don't accelerate it.
Its also, as a fairly experienced network engineer, very very very difficult, borderline impossible, to accomplish.
Is it really that difficult to slow down all traffic except traffic coming from a list of IP addresses that are paying you off? Comcast didn't seem to have a problem throttling Netflix for a few months until Netflix paid up. Also, if you wanted to target video streaming, wouldn't it be easy to specify after X bits or Y packets then slow it down? That would obviously cover more than just video, but would be most noticeable to most people with video. You can start there and get more intelligent, and as you get more intelligent, the shinier the equipment you'll want to buy from Cisco. You really don't need to do MiTM to come up with a good extortion scheme.
I'm not sure that I like having my web pages load slowly so that somebody else can watch Keeping Up With The Kardashians jitter-free.
And without net neutrality, those web pages will load even slower unless they are coming from somebody who has given your ISP extortion money (in addition to the money you're already giving them each month) to not slow them down.
All your bits are belong to Comcast.
This means Comcast & TWC will be purchasing more network equipment from Cisco. They won't upgrade infrastructure to deliver better service, but they'll happily buy equipment that prioritizes traffic (slows down traffic coming from non-paying sources) for the purpose of double dipping by charging both you and Netflix/Amazon/Google/etc.
- "Public" wifi bandwidth will not affect the bandwidth of the home router (so says Comcast).
Comcast also tells customers it delivers X Mbps of bandwidth. While some lucky customers in certain areas do get that, a vast majority don't. So, it might not affect what they call the maximum bandwidth, but for a majority of users it will affect their actual bandwidth.
Goodbye Older, Higher-Paid Teachers!
You forget that teachers still have a strong union with strong union contracts that will make firing a teacher without a damn good reason difficult.
There should be a process of discipline and removal for poor teachers. It should be as objective as possible so as to avoid undue parental pressure.
Therein lies the problem. What should it be based on? How many students pass? Standardized test scores? How about teachers that are good but get a job at a school whose students are generally poorer-performing vs teachers that aren't as good but work at a school with a higher caliber of students?
there sure is a lot of paranoid stupidity about how tech works.
I assume you're implying that it's stupid to assume that this will degrade service. If, currently, I can barely stream Netflix (stops/spins frequently, lowers quality, sometimes to the point of being unwatchable), then when somebody else hops on my connection and starts downloading porn or watching silly cat videos, what do you think is going to happen? I haven't seen anything about Comcast upgrading their other infrastructure to compensate for this and give me double the current actual bandwidth, which would still be a fraction of what I'm paying for as the "up to" speed.
*This was my experience when I had cable when I lived in a suburban ticky tacky neighborhood. I moved a bit further out and happen to be pretty close to the telco now. I have DSL which is rated at 1/3 of what my cable was, but I have no problem streaming Netflix & Hulu to 3 different TVs/computers at a time with no noticeable degradation. I realize that in some limited areas cable gives much better actual speeds, so please realize that if you have plenty of speed on your cable connection, consider yourself lucky because most people don't.
welcome to ridiculously marked up pdfs of textbooks
From the article about Sunward Park:
“Parents were already spending an average of R1 800 on textbooks every year anyway,” explains Thango, “We were able to sell two different tablets at the start, a seven inch one for R1 000 and a 10inch one for R2 000. Most of our textbooks come from MacMillan or Pearsons, and we were able to negotiate a big discount on three year licences for ebook versions, so it only costs R300 per learner per year.”
So, if the tablet only lasts 1 year and they get the 7-inch, they save R300 (US$28). If they have it for 4 years, they save R5000 (US$470)if they get the 7-inch or R4000 (US$375) if they get the 10-inch.
This also gives them the opportunity to evolve into not using e-books, perhaps at least for some classes. My daughter went to a charter school for middle school that doesn't use textbooks. They didn't get tablets but their classrooms had computers, and they had to have a computer at home. The teachers did an excellent job of finding resources that were IMO better than most textbooks. She also gained great skills in finding info on the web and assessing its reliability. It was more work for the teachers though than just using a chapter in their preassigned textbook, so that might not work so well for many underpaid/disgruntled teachers in the public school system (I am not, by any means, saying that all teachers in the public school system have an "I give up" attitude, but an unfortunate majority of the ones around here do).
According to the article, the new part is recurring payments...it's just one new feature of the already-existing Amazon Payments. What a horrible summary. I get users not reading the article. I even get submitters only reading the first part of an article. But for this one, it seems like he would have had to put some real effort into it making it so wrong.
The problematic thing here is that copyright is one thing. What's next? When you can break copyright laws, why not other laws?
Exactly. The slippery slope argument. The exact same thing has happened with other laws. A remember when little Bobby down the street got his driver's license. He noticed that everyone broke the speed limit law by 5mph.
He thought, "if everyone can break the speed limit law by 5mph, why can't I break the no-stealing law by 5 candy bars?" So he stole 5 candy bars, and there was no consequence, society didn't care because it was okay to break the speed limit by 5mph.
So then he thought, "if it's okay to steal 5 candy bars, why can't I rob 5 banks? " So he went and robbed 5 banks, and there was no consequence, society didn't care because it was okay to steal 5 candy bars.
So then little Bobby thought, "if it's okay to rob 5 banks, why can't I murder 5 people?" So he murdered 5 people, and there was no consequence, society didn't care because it was okay to rob 5 banks.
So you see, thanks to the slippery slope, that's why murder became legal: Because people started going 5 mph over the speed limit without getting a speeding ticket.
I think you're referring to a wheat allergy which is entirely different from a "gluten allergy." You can get gluten-free wheat products, and there are grains other than wheat that contain gluten. A few hints to know if somebody is a kook, if any of the following are true:
1. They say that have a "gluten allergy." Anybody with celiac wouldn't call it an allergy, and anybody with a wheat allergy would call it a wheat allergy.
2. They say they are "gluten intolerant" but claim they don't have celiac.
3. They claim to have any form of gluten intolerance that they recently discovered, but they don't look malnourished.
4. They claim that eating gluten gives them indigestion. That's not how celiac works.
5. They say eating a gluten free diet just makes them feel better. (although in reality this can be true, but it's not because they cut out gluten, it's that as a result they are eating fewer calories and/or paying more attention to what they're eating).
The question is whether it's worth the money
To a politician, the definition of "worth the money" means how much of those taxpayer dollars will be given back to them as campaign contributions.
Now if only we could get names of lawbreakers out of government agencies. I know it will be a cold day in Hell before that happens, but it would be nice
For starters:
http://www.house.gov/represent...
http://www.senate.gov/general/...
One thing I am certain about: It's a mistake to try to replace the A-10 Warthog with F-35s. I don't even understand how the F-35 is supposed to do the same mission.
The F-35's primary mission is to make Lockheed Martin shitloads of money (the secondary missions being to make its subcontractors shitloads of money, and get politicians shitloads of campaign contributions). Since the A-10 is not made by Lockheed Martin (or anybody else anymore), the F-35 will be infinitely more successful at its mission.
Are they somehow brave enough to take on an armed criminal yet too cowardly to refuse bullshit orders?
Absolutely. The probably of something bad happening to them when they take on an armed criminal is actually quite low, and if something bad does happen to them they will be hailed as a hero. When refusing an order to violate the constitution, however, they will not be hailed as a hero and their decision will not be respected by their peers. Their superiors will likely find a way to get them fired and possibly lose their pension to set an example, regardless of whether or not they would be able to prove their orders were illegal.
What exactly goes through their minds?
Usually something like, "I know better than the law and constitution. The laws are just red tape written to protect criminals. If we think somebody is guilty, then they absolutely are, judges and juries are just more red tape and technicalities. If I don't like something somebody is doing, then this badge and job title give me the authority to do as I please to them."
Laws don't prevent anything, they discourage it.
Not even that. In this case all it means is an updated EULA, where buried on page 15 will be a statement about their collection of location data, which everyone will simply click "agree" to. There will be a few stories about it on /. ("So-and-so big company collecting all your location data!"), and nobody but /. readers will care so long as the app continues to let them put fish-faced selfies somewhere that their "friends" (really their friend's friend's older cousin's barista's little sister) can see it and comment on it.
I want competition, not government ISP.
You're (probably intentionally) ignoring a huge point. As pointed out in the summary, the agreements also prohibit the leasing of the already existing fiber lines:
and prohibit municipalities from selling or leasing their fiber to local startups who would compete with these huge corporations.
So it's not just that the government can't operate an ISP, it's that nobody else can. And before you try and say it's not fair that the cable company had to run their own lines, while the government ran them for these other ISPs, keep in mind these points:
1. The competing ISPs would still have to pay for the lines.
2. The cable companies have received huge subsidies from the government.
Personally, I *want* "fast lanes" because they remove popular traffic off the main transit links.
Okay, now I know something's up. I also see that all of your recent comments pro-big-corporate-ISP. What you're pretending to not understand is that "fast lane" doesn't mean fast lane, it means everything else is slow lane. They're not talking about building out new faster infrastructure. And it's not simply about peering, it's about charging providers extra to provide this "fast lane" which amounts to "give us money or we're gonna slow you down."
My home town, Burbank, CA has metro fiber for businesses. Studios love it. The fiber is actually owned by the cable company. Heh!
See! You think fiber is okay if it's the cable company making a profit on it, but not if it's a competing ISP.
but at what point does it violate the law?
The point at which they stop giving campaign contributions and spending so much on lobbying. Unfortunately, that will never happen. We've passed the point where the influence public opinion could outweigh the influence of campaign contributions.
And on that note, why should civilians need a warrant? We should just start following their lead and perform our own mass spying... Well, not really, because I know what kinds of things they do to mere peons with the CFAA.
Because individual citizens have no power. If the police decide what you did is illegal, then they'll persecute/prosecute you. Especially if you're spying on them (even videoing them in a public place) or a person or organization with power.
If you're a large corporation though, you have an army of lawyers and you can do whatever you want. Remember the case when Microsoft stole email form a journalist's hotmail account without a warrant? Their excuse was they could do it because they wouldn't have been able to get a warrant, both because that's law enforcement's role and because law enforcement wouldn't have been able to get a warrant anyway. That translates to, "we know what we're doing is totally illegal because the courts would never let us, but we're doing it anyway because nobody gives a shit about the judicial branch."
Despite being modded funny, the part about the judicial branch being obsolete was entirely serious.
Because the important thing is to focus on whether Snowden followed proper procedure. Forget about what he exposed, all those gross violations of the constitution are completely irrelevant if he didn't follow procedure when exposing them.
If the federal government doesn't need a warrant, why should local law enforcement? OTOH, the federal government uses "national security" as an excuse to violate the constitution. What's local law enforcement's excuse?
a move that is making some courts uneasy
The judicial branch is obsolete, a relic from some past time when The Constitution of the United States was the highest law of the land.