Exactly. Once you get caught brazenly lying your ass off the Fool me twice, shame on me rule kicks in.
All of these guys get caught over and over cooking data and not only keep their jobs, the media expect us to actually listen to the crooks and liars. Not that the legacy media don't also get caught lying, fabricating evidence, exhibiting outragous biases and pretty much the same litany of sins against the Truth the Warmers are guilty of.
Yea it is going to always be the wireless link. Unless we end up with microcells the size of WiFi access points. There are hard limits on bits per Hz of radio spectrum and there just ain't no way around it.
Hard wired we can always just go with fiber to the premises and there ain't muc of an upper limit anymmore. With radio that just isn't possib;e. And no matter how fast the cell network if you stick enough people using ever more bandwidth you hit the wall. It hits the dense urban areas first but sooner or later even flyover country saturates.... in the few areas where the cell companies even bother installing the current tech.
I seriously doubt any mobile operator will be able to satisfy smart phone usage long term. They build out a new generation of towers with a higher data rate, then people buy new phones and saturate it.
As soon as smartphones stopped being $500 up front + $100/mo yuppie and power user toys and aspired to become mainstream products the math of wireless bandwidth simply must be taken into account.
Now if someone would tell the marketing depts at the mobile operators so they stop running endless ads showing users watching movies and music videos on their phones.... and video chatting. And downloading huge attachments.
Then we need to get busy with the cultural imperialism, fast. Only two known methods to being a society's birth rate under replacement, the wealth associated iwth classical capitialism and the horrors of Communist China's One Child policy. So pick one. I think most people would prefer to be free and wealthy vs ground under the heels of Communist oppression.
Seriously, look up the stats, no Free Society with a well functioning, wealth creating (ignore the current recession) economy, is currently growing with the exception of the US and that is due to immigration. Take out the higher birth rates among the 1st generation immigrants and the US birthrate really sucks. The red states are outbreeding the blue states but they ain't exactly exploding anymore. Europe and Japan are on the verge of democide.
So yes a modern society has a higher per capita impact on the environment but there are upsides to balance it out. Not to mention that wealthy countries have the excess wealth to worry about environmental concerns. Note the cleaner air and water in western societies. The US actually has more trees than when the first European set foot here. Yes many are farm trees now, but that just means we can plan ahead and replant when we harvest unlike more lawless countries who just slash em down.
> Had they done that then they wouldn't have had the issues with Intel > back stabbing them nor Microsoft wasting their time.
Did you read the press release? It's thank you sir, may I have another! They cite Microsoft's (likely vaporware or App store locked down) porting of Windows to ARM as being the reason the ARM version is now a viable notion. They still can't imagine a world without teaching the kids to be good Microsoft Office Users.
> They should have started with ARM to begin with.
No that would have been pointless at the time. If it isn't apparent by now their whole plan was to wave the penguin flag until Microsoft came through with a cheap enough deal you haven't been paying attention. ARM would have made that plan impossible. Besides, they had AMD in as a partner at the beginning... until they used them as a lever to force Intel to give em a sweet deal. Problem was once Intel got AMD out they stopped giving em free stuff because by then it was clear there was zero chance Negroponte was actually going to be able to deliver on any of his promises.
Seriously, every once in a while I pop in a DVD, just for giggles. Very few play all the way through without error. Not new stuff mind you, OLD crap fails. National Lampoon's Christmas Vacation crashes the player a few chapters in. An ancient print, not a fresh copy.
So I don't expect BluRay to work before it becomes obsolete.
I do love my MythTV though, still trying to get the g-ddamned cable company to tell me how many channels I would actually get when the HD Homerun Prime eventually ships. If they can't get it together guess it is Hauppage HD-PVR + DirecTV.
> There's an astounding amount of assets that comprise internet backbone, and if we wanted a forked internet, > we'd need all new backbone (or to purchase existing backbone) in order to prevent private interests from > exerting control over some portion of the forked internet.
Yup. So a million people get together and purchase a new backbone. It would have to be owned by something.... lemme guess, a corporate entity. A private interest. Meet the new boss, same as the old boss.
> You claim that "IF" the law makes private interconnecting networks between two people without prior legal authorization, > we will not be able to form a second Internet. What a huge If!
Really? Have you ever stopped to consider the existing list of things you and your neighbor cannot do without prior legal authorization? Then consider the things you can't youself do without the government's permission. And they already regulate communications in a heavy handed way. Everything from your local town granting the local cable company a franchise (read as monopoly) to the FCC regulating everything that uses, produces or receives RF energy.
If your block setup a local net you would probably get away with it, especially if wireless. A lot of groups start doing it and eventually governments will regulate it. If there are enough people doing it to matter market share wise you have become yet another service that the government will 'need' to regulate.
> I will sure wait for while before getting myself a 3D TV just to better evaluate its effects on the human brain.
There are certain to be some effects, the only question is how bad are they?
The fundamental problem is 3D isn't reality. In the end it is just a pair of 2D images. We get depth information via both parallax and focus and 3D images only provide one of those sources of information. So you are watching a 3D movie, an object moves closer to the viewer according to the parallax information while both eyes are saying, no way, I'm still focused 100' out. But then as you look at what appears to be a near or far object your brain commands the focus mechanism in your eye to adjust and the picture becomes blurry. Until your brain retrains to kill the autofocus and stay on the one fixed focus that works. The movie ends, the house lights come up and now everything is blurry again until your brain switches the original autofocus back on. It is a veritable certainty that some people are going to have problems with making that adjustment, especially in a home environment where you aren't watching in the dark and some things carry focus information and other objects do not. Where you are immersed in a movie, jump up to go tinkle and smack into something and have a lawyer on speed dial.
And I'd hate to see a 3D converted movie that tried focus pulls. Nice trick to lead the viewer's attention to the important part of the scene in a 2D film but almost certain to cause chaos in 3D.
> Were they to bow to the pressure then it would potentially lead to a > situation where a website or newspaper could be held liable...
Strawman if I ever saw one. Look at copyrights, a site isn't liable for user contributed content until the rights holder files a DMCA takedown notice. Only if the site then refuses is it possible to hold it liable. Exception being when a judge rules your site is nothing but a warez operation like in the recent Limewire fracus.
In this case we aren't talking about something so abusable as a DMCA takedown, we are talking about a real court order issued by a real judge. So if you are running a site and you get a court order you simple verify the authenticity of it and then replace the content with a link to a scan of the order. Since the order usually includes enough of the content in dispute... so unless there is a specific gag order included it can't be a crime to display a public document.:)
Again, we are talking about court orders here. Unless you want to go full anarchist and declare no judge anywhere has a right to stop anyone from printing anything whatsoever there are going to be limits and judges are the part of our system of government empowered to exercise that power. If you don't like the libel or defamation laws make it a voting issue and push to get the law changed.
Reread the summary. They claim the 1st Amendment 'requires' them to fight this case. No it doesn't. The 1st Amendment would remain perfectly intact had they exercised some responsibility and allowed the original poster to remove or at least add a disclaimer. Everything doesn't have to be a multi-year Federal case.
And unless you are a total anarchist, we have laws against libel and defamation, etc. and we agree that Congress (and State legislatures) are within their lawful authority to make those laws. When a court issues a ruling (well after the appeals are done) all are bound by that. And again, no 1st Amendment issues remain after the lawsuits are done.
The 1st Amendment has never been understood to be an absolute right to say anything with no possibility of consequences. There is a big difference between one Citizen using the Courts to seek redress of a wrong and the State telling you what you can and cannot say. But there are (and/or should be) exceptions even there.
The 1st Amendment is so misunderstood. Yes you have a right to speak. Yes the GOVERNMENT is forbidden from censoring speech in most cases. But the 1st Amendment is entirely concerned with what the Federal (and some say it extends to the states now by the 14th Amendment) can't do to you. A private entity is perfectly within their rights to censor itself, what it transmits, retransmits, etc. The right to speak is not a requirement to speak. Remember that the 5th Amendment is clear that we have an equal right to remain silent.
So this website isn't 'protecting the 1st Amendment' or 'required by the 1st Amendment' to leave a post up, especially if they know it is false. CAN they leave it up? Sure. SHOULD they? Perhaps, but at a minimum a modicum of responsibility should require they edit the post in question to include (even a small link) to the truth. That isn't censorship, it is seeking the Truth.
This is certain to be a winner, look how well the lnguage purity laws have worked out in France.
This sort of thing is a sign of desperation, they see their culture being eroded by Western ideas and being a dictatorship use the one tool at thier disposal, tyranny and top down rules. Thomas Friedman is probably in a state of ectasy ut everyone else should either denouce them or just hope they someday collapse like the other communist hellholes are in the process of doing.
China, and their pet Norks are about the last final sad devotees of their failed religion. When Castro finally starts transitioning to a more open society the great battle of ideas is pretty much over. Now if somebody could tell the sad holdouts in out current administration before they finish off our country.
> However, you can replicate over and over a nuclear explosion with > Science. Try to do that through prayer.
So, you think that the power to build a nuke is all that? Try building a civilization without religion. So far every attempt has ended in Horrors far worse than any nuke unleashed to date. Worse than any Crusade or Inquisition even.
Not saying I believe in religion exactly (I'd describe myself as an agnostic) but more that our Reason isn't nearly perfected enough to challenge Religion as an organizing basis for a civilization yet. That doesn't bother me overly much when I consider we have only been using Science to look for answers to the big questions for such a short time.
Plus it's kinda like the Matrix, trying to Free a mind from Religion after a certain point in it's development is dangerous, far more likely to result in a Monster than an Enlightened Human.
History also tells us that is entirely possible to be a rational, enlightened person who can contribute to the advancement of human knowledge, be an effective leader, exhibit a good moral compass, etc while being religious. Very few examples of good Atheist role models, even in the sciences. Hopefully that changes eventually, but hope ain't science either.
No you were correct. Apple is just integrating two different sections of the supply chain. Comcast will be integrating NBC/Universal content with their distribution network but only lightly since Comcast has nowhere the footprint required for doing it like they would want to.
Now look at Apple. They have very stongly integrated the hardware and condent distribution. If you have Apple hardware you are pretty locked to their CDN. Yes us nerds know how to put 3rd party content on an i* product but for most end users Apple product == iTunes Store. And unlike Comcast Apple does have the market dominence in BOTH of their integrated segments to raise abuse potential. i* products are a huge percentage of the player space and iTunes is the 800 pound gorilla in online content distribution.
So why is Apple seen as a good thing and unmolested by regulators while Comcast/NBC's deal is being reviled? Is it just the RDF or is it Apple's prog friendly politics?
What is wrong with shareholders in large corporations making money? Odds are YOU are one of those people even if you don't realize it. Own a 401k? Have a pension plan of some other type? Guess what, you are invested in large corporations and depend on their stock price increasing and/or them paying dividends.
> The problem is much broader: our government has forgotten that it is supposed to do what is best for all its citizens
Wrong. The government we were given is supposed to provide for a basic "Rule of Law" environment and prevent one Citizen (or group) from causing direct harm to other Citizens (or groups) of same. They aren't supposed to be DOing much of anything FOR us. The Constitution and Bill of Rights was all about circumscribing the power of the Federal Government with all sorts of "Thou Shalt Not..." type rules about what they could not do to or for us capped off by the 9th and 10th Amendments providing a final exclamation point on that whole "Thou Shalt Not.." theme. Revive the most "Federalist" Founding Father and their response upon seeing what had become of their creation would be to journey to Washington DC and register their opinion with a musket to the junk of the first Congresscritter they met. Even Ron Paul, because while he hasn't directly violated his Oath of Office he hasn't had the courage to disagree with the daily rampant violations with a musket.
> The head of the FCC has just said, "We know this merger could > be bad for consumers in several ways.
Uh huh. NBC/Universal owned by Comcast is just so much worse than being owned by GE. How?
The public concerns are just a smokescreen anyway. I'd bet the real dealing is between Apple/Amazon and Comcast to make sure content, doesn't get locked to cable as stated, but to Hulu. Apple/Amazon have a lot of lobbying power and ain't afraid of using it. Then the Progs at the FCC/Administration are wanting assurances Comcast will continue to allow MCNBC to lose money being the Party's official mouthpiece.
> Why not? It's C++ code and runs on x86-32, so it will > almost certainly run on ARM with a straight recompile.
And you would be wrong. Microsoft has done ports to MIPS, PPC, Alpha, Itanium and X86_64. The only ports that have been able to run Office is x86_64 because it can run the x86 version and Alpha because that bad bitch kitty had enough advantage over Intel parts of it's day it could run an emulator for x86 at a good enough clip to let folks run Office. ARM can run in the same weight class with Intel parts but has nowhere the performance advantage to consider emulation. So no, it is doubtful Office is going to be up on ARM anytime soon unless MS has been running a secret project for the last few years.
Besides, forget an ARM port of Windows. Ain't happening. Any future commercial OSes are going to be Xbox/iPad lockdowns, not the more open environments we grew up thinking of as operating systems. Once Apple proved 3rd party vendors would give up a non-trivial percentage of all sales the days of allowing customers to install anything they want was dead. Ya want that freedom back? Come to the Penguin.
> I have an even better idea: keep the physical lines as government-owned utility,
We don't have many totally government owned utilities and most suck. More typically we have the government grant a monopoly to a company then regulate the hell out of it. A utility stock is known for fairly flat share prices but reliable dividends. This gives the utility easier access to the private capital markets.
> There's no benefit to be had from having companies act as middlemen > between a regulated monopoly and users.
But therre is. There is a big difference between a naked pipe and Internet service. Wile the last mile is a natural monopoly the rest of the Internet Service isn't a natural monopoly so the Free market should be leveraged to provide it's magic of plenty.
Imagine a mid size market supporting the following competitors:
1. An AOL like provider pushing an Internet Plus experience based on robust customer service, lots of internal content, etc.
2. A Full Premium Internet Provider (think Speakeasy) charging a really premium price but providing web space, lots of email accounts, a full Usenet server and good phat pipes to the wider Internet and no bandwidth caps.
3. A budget provider with an overloaded upstream, bandwidth caps to try to keep things flowing enough to keep people leaving in droves, no frills and pricing cheap enough the poor will put up with it.
4. A triple play provider. They have local steaming/multicast servers, a full telco switch and provide cable tv, telephone service and Internet.
All built on leasing access to the last mile to get to to their customers from a regulated utility. Some of those suggested providers would probably end up failing and other I didn't think of in a minute or two of pondering might pop up and thrive. Can YOU say which ONE set of services the government should provide to everyone? Do you really believe that if the government did decide that you would like their choice?
> This was pretty much the case during the dial-up era, but the capital > demands for high-speed service makes it difficult to get a true > competitive marketplace.
As someone who was there, yes the capital demands ramped up with the move to 56K and DSL (Go lookup the price of a fully loaded Portmaster 3 in 1996/7 vs a Portmaster 2 and a sack of modems) but that wasn't what changed. In that era the telcos were mostly out of the picture, selling (raping) the ISPs for dialup lines on a even basis. Then they realized the Internet wasn't just a passing fad and got in bigtime at prices nobody could hope to compete with. The head of AT&T was on the tube saying things like "Yea we expect to lose money for five plus years but we can afford it." Small 'Mom & Pop' operations started dying left and right about then as the price for 'unlimited' dialup fell through the $19.95/month level and started toward $9.99/month. Those prices were lower than the cost of telco service to handle a customer and that wasn't even taking into account the leased circuit upstream, normal business costs, etc.
But there were still big players capitalized well enough to stay in the game and the laws were on their side. Then Rep Tauzin (R-BellSouth) spearheaded the effort to gut the CLECs, the markets panicked, the equipment makers were left with worthless paper for the equipment they had been self financing to the CLECs and before anyone realized what was happening it had spread throughout the Internet and the.bomb was in full swing.
> Maybe the solution is for a municipal utility to provide a > fiber optic line from the residence to a C.O.
That is one way. A better way would be to revisit the AT&T breakup and this time do it right. A regulated monopoly with the part that is a natural monopoly, the physical plant comprising the CO and the wires/fibers/right of ways and the rest a totally unregulated entity who buys access to an equal footing with as many additional players wish to enter the market.
> South Park never once ridiculed Mohammad or Allah.
That was what made it so powerful as political commentary, they hammered home in an unmistakable way that it is now unalllowed for us infidels to even mention their Prophet. That they have a ironclad veto going beyond garden variety political correctness because the networks are in fear.
And no South Park doesn't just go after "Christian extremists" or "Jewish extremists" They have gleefully attacked and ridiculed pretty much every philosophical system with the notable exception of Islam. From Objectivism (Chickenlover), Anarchists, Truthers(Mystery of the Urinal Deuce), Mormons (All about the Mormons), Christians in general, Catholics (Red Hot Catholic Love) in specific, Budda, Jesus, Christmas (Woodland Critter Christmas anyone? Mr. Hankey?), Scientology (Out of the Closet), Democrats, Republicans, nobody has been safe from their humor. Fer crying out loud Jesus Christ was a regular character for years, usually portrayed as a hapless and ineffectual cable access talk show host. Then one of Saddam's guards killed him off. That was not just aimed at extremists. And the episode "Jewbilee" didn't cut Moses much more slack. But it was good clean "South Park" style fun and no Christians threatened to cut off their heads. Isaac Hayes did quit the show when they put his sacred cow on the grill though. Hypocrite.
But make a joke about the idiocy of being censored for showing Mo and Comedy Central actually censors you. Which made the satire turn in on itself and become even more hilarious. Matt and Trey totally trolled their own network. And the central park (attempted) bomber may have been trying to exact 'revenge' against Comedy Central anyway which turns the comedy to full circle to tragedy.
> Discrimating by site. Non-DDoS traffic to site "A" should > not cost more than going to site "B".
Really? Imagine this scenario. ISP does the sane thing and begins charging by the megabyte plus a small base fee, i.e. exactly the same way every other utility charges for service. Now imagine they add another layer and charge for that traffic by band based on their costs. So purely internal traffic is free (or dirt cheap) traffic to providers they can get to over peering agreements are almost as cheap as internal and traffic going over links the ISP pays for per MB gets billed at an even higher rate.
Now in this environment it would make a lot of sense for content providers to take steps to get their traffic out of that highest rate band, by buying pipe that gets them into peered links or co-locating servers in that ISP's internal net. P2P clients would have a big incentive to get smart enough to keep as much traffic as possible inside the local net. In other words it would lead to a more efficient net. But in your ignorant (and Obama's) world all of this would be illegal.
> Add/modifying/deleting in flight traffic... Phorm, etc.
100% agreement here, no different than than if the Phone Company started snooping your calls and inserting ads, marketing based on who you call and what you say, etc. It is just wrong. But in the Internet we have ssl and that gives us a powerful weapon.
> We never see Japanese ISPs wringing their hands..
Plus mentions of Korea and Singapore... notice anything common about these? All are very compact in geography and easy to wire up with fiber. The US, not so much. We have urban sprawl to contend with. It is all a matter of customers per mile of wire. Combine that with the fact the same progs pushing network neutrality also dominate the corrupt political machines controlling every one of the high population density areas in the US that would otherwise be good candidates for high speed Internet deployments and it is clear we aren't going to compete with Japan on this front.
But that is the future of electric service, or haven't you heard of the smart grid? They want to charge different rates based on their costs, in the case of electricity they want to charge by time of day. ISPs are talking about charging based on their costs, which vary by time, destination and QoS.
Slashdot Mirror
Exactly. Once you get caught brazenly lying your ass off the Fool me twice, shame on me rule kicks in.
All of these guys get caught over and over cooking data and not only keep their jobs, the media expect us to actually listen to the crooks and liars. Not that the legacy media don't also get caught lying, fabricating evidence, exhibiting outragous biases and pretty much the same litany of sins against the Truth the Warmers are guilty of.
Yea it is going to always be the wireless link. Unless we end up with microcells the size of WiFi access points. There are hard limits on bits per Hz of radio spectrum and there just ain't no way around it.
Hard wired we can always just go with fiber to the premises and there ain't muc of an upper limit anymmore. With radio that just isn't possib;e. And no matter how fast the cell network if you stick enough people using ever more bandwidth you hit the wall. It hits the dense urban areas first but sooner or later even flyover country saturates.... in the few areas where the cell companies even bother installing the current tech.
I seriously doubt any mobile operator will be able to satisfy smart phone usage long term. They build out a new generation of towers with a higher data rate, then people buy new phones and saturate it.
As soon as smartphones stopped being $500 up front + $100/mo yuppie and power user toys and aspired to become mainstream products the math of wireless bandwidth simply must be taken into account.
Now if someone would tell the marketing depts at the mobile operators so they stop running endless ads showing users watching movies and music videos on their phones.... and video chatting. And downloading huge attachments.
Then we need to get busy with the cultural imperialism, fast. Only two known methods to being a society's birth rate under replacement, the wealth associated iwth classical capitialism and the horrors of Communist China's One Child policy. So pick one. I think most people would prefer to be free and wealthy vs ground under the heels of Communist oppression.
Seriously, look up the stats, no Free Society with a well functioning, wealth creating (ignore the current recession) economy, is currently growing with the exception of the US and that is due to immigration. Take out the higher birth rates among the 1st generation immigrants and the US birthrate really sucks. The red states are outbreeding the blue states but they ain't exactly exploding anymore. Europe and Japan are on the verge of democide.
So yes a modern society has a higher per capita impact on the environment but there are upsides to balance it out. Not to mention that wealthy countries have the excess wealth to worry about environmental concerns. Note the cleaner air and water in western societies. The US actually has more trees than when the first European set foot here. Yes many are farm trees now, but that just means we can plan ahead and replant when we harvest unlike more lawless countries who just slash em down.
> Had they done that then they wouldn't have had the issues with Intel
> back stabbing them nor Microsoft wasting their time.
Did you read the press release? It's thank you sir, may I have another! They cite Microsoft's (likely vaporware or App store locked down) porting of Windows to ARM as being the reason the ARM version is now a viable notion. They still can't imagine a world without teaching the kids to be good Microsoft Office Users.
> They should have started with ARM to begin with.
No that would have been pointless at the time. If it isn't apparent by now their whole plan was to wave the penguin flag until Microsoft came through with a cheap enough deal you haven't been paying attention. ARM would have made that plan impossible. Besides, they had AMD in as a partner at the beginning... until they used them as a lever to force Intel to give em a sweet deal. Problem was once Intel got AMD out they stopped giving em free stuff because by then it was clear there was zero chance Negroponte was actually going to be able to deliver on any of his promises.
I'd settle for DVD support, I ain't greedy.
Seriously, every once in a while I pop in a DVD, just for giggles. Very few play all the way through without error. Not new stuff mind you, OLD crap fails. National Lampoon's Christmas Vacation crashes the player a few chapters in. An ancient print, not a fresh copy.
So I don't expect BluRay to work before it becomes obsolete.
I do love my MythTV though, still trying to get the g-ddamned cable company to tell me how many channels I would actually get when the HD Homerun Prime eventually ships. If they can't get it together guess it is Hauppage HD-PVR + DirecTV.
> There's an astounding amount of assets that comprise internet backbone, and if we wanted a forked internet,
> we'd need all new backbone (or to purchase existing backbone) in order to prevent private interests from
> exerting control over some portion of the forked internet.
Yup. So a million people get together and purchase a new backbone. It would have to be owned by something.... lemme guess, a corporate entity. A private interest. Meet the new boss, same as the old boss.
> You claim that "IF" the law makes private interconnecting networks between two people without prior legal authorization,
> we will not be able to form a second Internet. What a huge If!
Really? Have you ever stopped to consider the existing list of things you and your neighbor cannot do without prior legal authorization? Then consider the things you can't youself do without the government's permission. And they already regulate communications in a heavy handed way. Everything from your local town granting the local cable company a franchise (read as monopoly) to the FCC regulating everything that uses, produces or receives RF energy.
If your block setup a local net you would probably get away with it, especially if wireless. A lot of groups start doing it and eventually governments will regulate it. If there are enough people doing it to matter market share wise you have become yet another service that the government will 'need' to regulate.
> Pink Floyd never released singles.
Not correct. Pretty sure I still own a 7" single of Another Brick in the Wall Part II.... somewhere. So yes there were some songs sold as singles.
> I will sure wait for while before getting myself a 3D TV just to better evaluate its effects on the human brain.
There are certain to be some effects, the only question is how bad are they?
The fundamental problem is 3D isn't reality. In the end it is just a pair of 2D images. We get depth information via both parallax and focus and 3D images only provide one of those sources of information. So you are watching a 3D movie, an object moves closer to the viewer according to the parallax information while both eyes are saying, no way, I'm still focused 100' out. But then as you look at what appears to be a near or far object your brain commands the focus mechanism in your eye to adjust and the picture becomes blurry. Until your brain retrains to kill the autofocus and stay on the one fixed focus that works. The movie ends, the house lights come up and now everything is blurry again until your brain switches the original autofocus back on. It is a veritable certainty that some people are going to have problems with making that adjustment, especially in a home environment where you aren't watching in the dark and some things carry focus information and other objects do not. Where you are immersed in a movie, jump up to go tinkle and smack into something and have a lawyer on speed dial.
And I'd hate to see a 3D converted movie that tried focus pulls. Nice trick to lead the viewer's attention to the important part of the scene in a 2D film but almost certain to cause chaos in 3D.
> Were they to bow to the pressure then it would potentially lead to a
> situation where a website or newspaper could be held liable...
Strawman if I ever saw one. Look at copyrights, a site isn't liable for user contributed content until the rights holder files a DMCA takedown notice. Only if the site then refuses is it possible to hold it liable. Exception being when a judge rules your site is nothing but a warez operation like in the recent Limewire fracus.
In this case we aren't talking about something so abusable as a DMCA takedown, we are talking about a real court order issued by a real judge. So if you are running a site and you get a court order you simple verify the authenticity of it and then replace the content with a link to a scan of the order. Since the order usually includes enough of the content in dispute... so unless there is a specific gag order included it can't be a crime to display a public document. :)
Again, we are talking about court orders here. Unless you want to go full anarchist and declare no judge anywhere has a right to stop anyone from printing anything whatsoever there are going to be limits and judges are the part of our system of government empowered to exercise that power. If you don't like the libel or defamation laws make it a voting issue and push to get the law changed.
Reread the summary. They claim the 1st Amendment 'requires' them to fight this case. No it doesn't. The 1st Amendment would remain perfectly intact had they exercised some responsibility and allowed the original poster to remove or at least add a disclaimer. Everything doesn't have to be a multi-year Federal case.
And unless you are a total anarchist, we have laws against libel and defamation, etc. and we agree that Congress (and State legislatures) are within their lawful authority to make those laws. When a court issues a ruling (well after the appeals are done) all are bound by that. And again, no 1st Amendment issues remain after the lawsuits are done.
The 1st Amendment has never been understood to be an absolute right to say anything with no possibility of consequences. There is a big difference between one Citizen using the Courts to seek redress of a wrong and the State telling you what you can and cannot say. But there are (and/or should be) exceptions even there.
The 1st Amendment is so misunderstood. Yes you have a right to speak. Yes the GOVERNMENT is forbidden from censoring speech in most cases. But the 1st Amendment is entirely concerned with what the Federal (and some say it extends to the states now by the 14th Amendment) can't do to you. A private entity is perfectly within their rights to censor itself, what it transmits, retransmits, etc. The right to speak is not a requirement to speak. Remember that the 5th Amendment is clear that we have an equal right to remain silent.
So this website isn't 'protecting the 1st Amendment' or 'required by the 1st Amendment' to leave a post up, especially if they know it is false. CAN they leave it up? Sure. SHOULD they? Perhaps, but at a minimum a modicum of responsibility should require they edit the post in question to include (even a small link) to the truth. That isn't censorship, it is seeking the Truth.
This is certain to be a winner, look how well the lnguage purity laws have worked out in France.
This sort of thing is a sign of desperation, they see their culture being eroded by Western ideas and being a dictatorship use the one tool at thier disposal, tyranny and top down rules. Thomas Friedman is probably in a state of ectasy ut everyone else should either denouce them or just hope they someday collapse like the other communist hellholes are in the process of doing.
China, and their pet Norks are about the last final sad devotees of their failed religion. When Castro finally starts transitioning to a more open society the great battle of ideas is pretty much over. Now if somebody could tell the sad holdouts in out current administration before they finish off our country.
> However, you can replicate over and over a nuclear explosion with
> Science. Try to do that through prayer.
So, you think that the power to build a nuke is all that? Try building a civilization without religion. So far every attempt has ended in Horrors far worse than any nuke unleashed to date. Worse than any Crusade or Inquisition even.
Not saying I believe in religion exactly (I'd describe myself as an agnostic) but more that our Reason isn't nearly perfected enough to challenge Religion as an organizing basis for a civilization yet. That doesn't bother me overly much when I consider we have only been using Science to look for answers to the big questions for such a short time.
Plus it's kinda like the Matrix, trying to Free a mind from Religion after a certain point in it's development is dangerous, far more likely to result in a Monster than an Enlightened Human.
History also tells us that is entirely possible to be a rational, enlightened person who can contribute to the advancement of human knowledge, be an effective leader, exhibit a good moral compass, etc while being religious. Very few examples of good Atheist role models, even in the sciences. Hopefully that changes eventually, but hope ain't science either.
No you were correct. Apple is just integrating two different sections of the supply chain. Comcast will be integrating NBC/Universal content with their distribution network but only lightly since Comcast has nowhere the footprint required for doing it like they would want to.
Now look at Apple. They have very stongly integrated the hardware and condent distribution. If you have Apple hardware you are pretty locked to their CDN. Yes us nerds know how to put 3rd party content on an i* product but for most end users Apple product == iTunes Store. And unlike Comcast Apple does have the market dominence in BOTH of their integrated segments to raise abuse potential. i* products are a huge percentage of the player space and iTunes is the 800 pound gorilla in online content distribution.
So why is Apple seen as a good thing and unmolested by regulators while Comcast/NBC's deal is being reviled? Is it just the RDF or is it Apple's prog friendly politics?
What is wrong with shareholders in large corporations making money? Odds are YOU are one of those people even if you don't realize it. Own a 401k? Have a pension plan of some other type? Guess what, you are invested in large corporations and depend on their stock price increasing and/or them paying dividends.
> The problem is much broader: our government has forgotten that it is supposed to do what is best for all its citizens
Wrong. The government we were given is supposed to provide for a basic "Rule of Law" environment and prevent one Citizen (or group) from causing direct harm to other Citizens (or groups) of same. They aren't supposed to be DOing much of anything FOR us. The Constitution and Bill of Rights was all about circumscribing the power of the Federal Government with all sorts of "Thou Shalt Not..." type rules about what they could not do to or for us capped off by the 9th and 10th Amendments providing a final exclamation point on that whole "Thou Shalt Not.." theme. Revive the most "Federalist" Founding Father and their response upon seeing what had become of their creation would be to journey to Washington DC and register their opinion with a musket to the junk of the first Congresscritter they met. Even Ron Paul, because while he hasn't
directly violated his Oath of Office he hasn't had the courage to disagree with the daily rampant violations with a musket.
> The head of the FCC has just said, "We know this merger could
> be bad for consumers in several ways.
Uh huh. NBC/Universal owned by Comcast is just so much worse than being owned by GE. How?
The public concerns are just a smokescreen anyway. I'd bet the real dealing is between Apple/Amazon and Comcast to make sure content, doesn't get locked to cable as stated, but to Hulu. Apple/Amazon have a lot of lobbying power and ain't afraid of using it. Then the Progs at the FCC/Administration are wanting assurances Comcast will continue to allow MCNBC to lose money being the Party's official mouthpiece.
Could be. We know Mr. Sun can take long naps. And the one time we know for sure it happened was also known as the Little Ice Age.
Don't go placing bets yet but hedging against it might be a prudent thing.
> Why not? It's C++ code and runs on x86-32, so it will
> almost certainly run on ARM with a straight recompile.
And you would be wrong. Microsoft has done ports to MIPS, PPC, Alpha, Itanium and X86_64. The only ports that have been able to run Office is x86_64 because it can run the x86 version and Alpha because that bad bitch kitty had enough advantage over Intel parts of it's day it could run an emulator for x86 at a good enough clip to let folks run Office. ARM can run in the same weight class with Intel parts but has nowhere the performance advantage to consider emulation. So no, it is doubtful Office is going to be up on ARM anytime soon unless MS has been running a secret project for the last few years.
Besides, forget an ARM port of Windows. Ain't happening. Any future commercial OSes are going to be Xbox/iPad lockdowns, not the more open environments we grew up thinking of as operating systems. Once Apple proved 3rd party vendors would give up a non-trivial percentage of all sales the days of allowing customers to install anything they want was dead. Ya want that freedom back? Come to the Penguin.
> I have an even better idea: keep the physical lines as government-owned utility,
We don't have many totally government owned utilities and most suck. More typically we have the government grant a monopoly to a company then regulate the hell out of it. A utility stock is known for fairly flat share prices but reliable dividends. This gives the utility easier access to the private capital markets.
> There's no benefit to be had from having companies act as middlemen
> between a regulated monopoly and users.
But therre is. There is a big difference between a naked pipe and Internet service. Wile the last mile is a natural monopoly the rest of the Internet Service isn't a natural monopoly so the Free market should be leveraged to provide it's magic of plenty.
Imagine a mid size market supporting the following competitors:
1. An AOL like provider pushing an Internet Plus experience based on robust customer service, lots of internal content, etc.
2. A Full Premium Internet Provider (think Speakeasy) charging a really premium price but providing web space, lots of email accounts, a full Usenet server and good phat pipes to the wider Internet and no bandwidth caps.
3. A budget provider with an overloaded upstream, bandwidth caps to try to keep things flowing enough to keep people leaving in droves, no frills and pricing cheap enough the poor will put up with it.
4. A triple play provider. They have local steaming/multicast servers, a full telco switch and provide cable tv, telephone service and Internet.
All built on leasing access to the last mile to get to to their customers from a regulated utility. Some of those suggested providers would probably end up failing and other I didn't think of in a minute or two of pondering might pop up and thrive. Can YOU say which ONE set of services the government should provide to everyone? Do you really believe that if the government did decide that you would like their choice?
> This was pretty much the case during the dial-up era, but the capital
> demands for high-speed service makes it difficult to get a true
> competitive marketplace.
As someone who was there, yes the capital demands ramped up with the move to 56K and DSL (Go lookup the price of a fully loaded Portmaster 3 in 1996/7 vs a Portmaster 2 and a sack of modems) but that wasn't what changed. In that era the telcos were mostly out of the picture, selling (raping) the ISPs for dialup lines on a even basis. Then they realized the Internet wasn't just a passing fad and got in bigtime at prices nobody could hope to compete with. The head of AT&T was on the tube saying things like "Yea we expect to lose money for five plus years but we can afford it." Small 'Mom & Pop' operations started dying left and right about then as the price for 'unlimited' dialup fell through the $19.95/month level and started toward $9.99/month. Those prices were lower than the cost of telco service to handle a customer and that wasn't even taking into account the leased circuit upstream, normal business costs, etc.
But there were still big players capitalized well enough to stay in the game and the laws were on their side. Then Rep Tauzin (R-BellSouth) spearheaded the effort to gut the CLECs, the markets panicked, the equipment makers were left with worthless paper for the equipment they had been self financing to the CLECs and before anyone realized what was happening it had spread throughout the Internet and the .bomb was in full swing.
> Maybe the solution is for a municipal utility to provide a
> fiber optic line from the residence to a C.O.
That is one way. A better way would be to revisit the AT&T breakup and this time do it right. A regulated monopoly with the part that is a natural monopoly, the physical plant comprising the CO and the wires/fibers/right of ways and the rest a totally unregulated entity who buys access to an equal footing with as many additional players wish to enter the market.
> South Park never once ridiculed Mohammad or Allah.
That was what made it so powerful as political commentary, they hammered home in an unmistakable way that it is now unalllowed for us infidels to even mention their Prophet. That they have a ironclad veto going beyond garden variety political correctness because the networks are in fear.
And no South Park doesn't just go after "Christian extremists" or "Jewish extremists" They have gleefully attacked and ridiculed pretty much every philosophical system with the notable exception of Islam. From Objectivism (Chickenlover), Anarchists, Truthers(Mystery of the Urinal Deuce), Mormons (All about the Mormons), Christians in general, Catholics (Red Hot Catholic Love) in specific, Budda, Jesus, Christmas (Woodland Critter Christmas anyone? Mr. Hankey?), Scientology (Out of the Closet), Democrats, Republicans, nobody has been safe from their humor. Fer crying out loud Jesus Christ was a regular character for years, usually portrayed as a hapless and ineffectual cable access talk show host. Then one of Saddam's guards killed him off. That was not just aimed at extremists. And the episode "Jewbilee" didn't cut Moses much more slack. But it was good clean "South Park" style fun and no Christians threatened to cut off their heads. Isaac Hayes did quit the show when they put his sacred cow on the grill though. Hypocrite.
But make a joke about the idiocy of being censored for showing Mo and Comedy Central actually censors you. Which made the satire turn in on itself and become even more hilarious. Matt and Trey totally trolled their own network. And the central park (attempted) bomber may have been trying to exact 'revenge' against Comedy Central anyway which turns the comedy to full circle to tragedy.
> Discrimating by site. Non-DDoS traffic to site "A" should
> not cost more than going to site "B".
Really? Imagine this scenario. ISP does the sane thing and begins charging by the megabyte plus a small base fee, i.e. exactly the same way every other utility charges for service. Now imagine they add another layer and charge for that traffic by band based on their costs. So purely internal traffic is free (or dirt cheap) traffic to providers they can get to over peering agreements are almost as cheap as internal and traffic going over links the ISP pays for per MB gets billed at an even higher rate.
Now in this environment it would make a lot of sense for content providers to take steps to get their traffic out of that highest rate band, by buying pipe that gets them into peered links or co-locating servers in that ISP's internal net. P2P clients would have a big incentive to get smart enough to keep as much traffic as possible inside the local net. In other words it would lead to a more efficient net. But in your ignorant (and Obama's) world all of this would be illegal.
> Add/modifying/deleting in flight traffic... Phorm, etc.
100% agreement here, no different than than if the Phone Company started snooping your calls and inserting ads, marketing based on who you call and what you say, etc. It is just wrong. But in the Internet we have ssl and that gives us a powerful weapon.
> We never see Japanese ISPs wringing their hands..
Plus mentions of Korea and Singapore... notice anything common about these? All are very compact in geography and easy to wire up with fiber. The US, not so much. We have urban sprawl to contend with. It is all a matter of customers per mile of wire. Combine that with the fact the same progs pushing network neutrality also dominate the corrupt political machines controlling every one of the high population density areas in the US that would otherwise be good candidates for high speed Internet deployments and it is clear we aren't going to compete with Japan on this front.
But that is the future of electric service, or haven't you heard of the smart grid? They want to charge different rates based on their costs, in the case of electricity they want to charge by time of day. ISPs are talking about charging based on their costs, which vary by time, destination and QoS.