There was no scientifically valid survey, obviously, smart-ass.
But if you read history books about the era, the "rule of thumb" (and you'll note that I used that same phrase in my original post) most books seem to use is that it was about 1/3 each of "loyalist", "revolutionary", and "just wanna do my thing". "The Long Fuse" is a great book on this topic, because it delves deeply into all the things the Brits screwed up that could've won over the necessary folks to make a revolution simply not viable, but egos got in the way and it didn't happen.
My point is simply that "enough people wanting to vote for change" is a meaningless statistic when it comes to revolution. People often give up on the political process and don't bother voting right before they decide to find a wall to start lining people up in front of.:-)
In the latter half of the 18th Century, only about 33% of the Colonial population supported overthrowing the chains of British rule. As a rule of thumb, 1/3 were happy, 1/3 were mad, 1/3 didn't give a shit.
You don't need a plurality of motivated people to have a successful revolution.
Two people who made my first forays into silicon valley interesting retiring in the scope of 24 hours, Jobs and Malda. Now, admittedly, I'm not in any way trying to put them both on the same scale at all, but for a lot of geeks who around in the late 90s, the rise of Slashdot, and the resurgence of Apple as a viable entity are sort of "the defining moments" as it were of those heady days.
I may have drifted away from Slashdot over the years, but it still holds a special place in my heart, and Rob's efforts have a lot to do with that.
Enjoy your sabbatical, dude. Check out of technology and go somewhere nice... get a cabin in the mountains for a while, experience all of that sort of thing again free of the shackles of 'being reachable'. You'll be amazed at how much it reinvigorates you when you finally return to civilization.
The reason a lot of these things will never be open sourced is simply because the technology is still economically viable, and will be used for other things, even if the PRODUCT involved isn't. The AIBOs and Deep Blues of the world aren't the "endgame", they're a way of getting the tires on a given technology to be kicked for a bit.
You can break up the duopolies starting TOMORROW. Go run for your local town board and wait for the Franchise Agreement to come up for renewal. Insist that they allow competitors access to the outside plant at a wholesale/cost-basis if they want a renewal.
You have freedom to use what you paid for within the terms of the usage agreement you've got with your provider. If they say "we may filter or traffic shape your traffic", then you're free to accept that or find some other carrier with preferable terms.
As for "built with your tax money". Not really. The network that was "built with your tax money" was a whole mess of 128kbps links that wouldn't even handle your iPad's traffic demands, let alone be a "network backbone".
And besides, EVEN IF there were subsidies, etc., (as the other AC replier mentioned), blame your congress-critters for not negotiating better terms before they gave your money away. EVEN IF your local municipality is granting a monopoly, blame your local town-board for doing so and not insisting that the cable provider accommodate competitive content providers on the outside plant.
This is a vote for freedom. Freedom of the organizations that INVEST in the infrastructure to be the ones who get to decide how that infrastructure is used. Freedom for you to set the rules for the use of the thing which you built with your money and sweat.
Or, as I said, to draft the agreement such that, if there is a de facto monopoly, that the incumbent has to give XX years of wholesale service to competitive providers.
Well, first off, I'm not sure I agree with you about them not being willing to cut defense (note the recent defunding of the F-35 project). Second, the legislative branch was given appropriations power for precisely the reason of having the ability to ensure which things got funded during tough times.
There's a lot of folks (myself included) who actually wouldn't consider a "government shutdown" to be a bad thing. There's plenty of people who think the government is way too big, has its fingers way too deep into every aspect of American life, and that shutting down the government is a forcible extraction of those fingers.
The sentiment today is a whole lot different than it was the last time around. Sure, there was some small-government opining, but it was nowhere near as prevalent as it is today.
Or, alternatively, we need to banish the idea of allowing municipalities to bestow monopolies on last-mile providers and say that "anyone can be a cable provider" or "anyone can be a telco provider" in any given town. And that where towns have bestowed monopolies in the past, those incumbent folks must provide wholesale-cost use of their outside plant for the next, say, 25 years, enough time for other folks to invest and deploy parallel infrastructure to support their own business.
You're right. It's crazy talk, sneaking an amendment that addresses "whether or not to spend money on PROJECT_X" into an appropriations bill. Because if there's one thing that shouldn't be part of an appropriations bill, it's decisions about what we do and do not spend money on.
When TiVo was first coming out on the scene, there was talk that there was, hidden deep in the code, a "boat-anchor" mode, which Tivo assured the faithful (which at the time were typically bleeding-edge technology hounds) that if TiVo ever went belly-up, their boxes wouldn't be useless, that there was a mode which they could push to all the units that essentially said "We're going off the air now, open yourself up for use however the owner wants", and that it would offer up some alternative options for shoving EPG data into it gathered from other sources.
It seems that maybe this is what TiVo should be doing with these UK Series1 units, even if they're not technically "going off the air".
Once the gov't gave them the money without any strings attached it became theirs to do with as they will. If you don't the like stupid shit your congressmen are doing, take it up with them.:-P
As for competition and traffic-blocking : maybe it's because it's a really viable business model. Don't like it, and your market is open to competition? Start up and compete against them, and may the best business model win. If customers REALLY care, they'll flock to your unblocked ISP and you'll be printing money.
That comes back to my other statement which is that if your local ordinance is using Franchise Agreements to enforce a monopoly by saying only they can bring out wire on poles or underground, to vote the bastards out.
No. anyone can start an ISP. It's trivial to do. If the municipalities have locked competition out of an individual city's marketplace, that's for their constituents to sort out.
As it stands at this very moment, I have an entitlement with AT&T for data carriage services from my smart phone to any site I so desire. That entitlement remains as long as my check cashes.
Your ATTW terms of service includes plenty of provisions in there to let them traffic-shape at will, so it's not quite the "any site I so desire" you make it out to be. And they can certainly charge a content-provider for access to their network. They're not restricting YOUR right to access on the network, just that other guy (who you may want to talk to, but who ATTW is unwilling to talk to).
Yes, there are higher barriers to entry in the wireless industry than in the wireline industry, but if you think your business model is superior to the existing carriers, find yourself some investors who agree and start investing in that infrastructure. If your business model truly is superior, you shouldn't have any trouble finding investors who want to make money! That's what investors live for, after all, is cold hard cash.
Slashdot Mirror
Yeah, I meant majority there. :-)
There was no scientifically valid survey, obviously, smart-ass.
But if you read history books about the era, the "rule of thumb" (and you'll note that I used that same phrase in my original post) most books seem to use is that it was about 1/3 each of "loyalist", "revolutionary", and "just wanna do my thing". "The Long Fuse" is a great book on this topic, because it delves deeply into all the things the Brits screwed up that could've won over the necessary folks to make a revolution simply not viable, but egos got in the way and it didn't happen.
My point is simply that "enough people wanting to vote for change" is a meaningless statistic when it comes to revolution. People often give up on the political process and don't bother voting right before they decide to find a wall to start lining people up in front of. :-)
In the latter half of the 18th Century, only about 33% of the Colonial population supported overthrowing the chains of British rule. As a rule of thumb, 1/3 were happy, 1/3 were mad, 1/3 didn't give a shit.
You don't need a plurality of motivated people to have a successful revolution.
Almost certainly. I'd be really curious to see if someone calculates that. :-)
Two people who made my first forays into silicon valley interesting retiring in the scope of 24 hours, Jobs and Malda. Now, admittedly, I'm not in any way trying to put them both on the same scale at all, but for a lot of geeks who around in the late 90s, the rise of Slashdot, and the resurgence of Apple as a viable entity are sort of "the defining moments" as it were of those heady days.
I may have drifted away from Slashdot over the years, but it still holds a special place in my heart, and Rob's efforts have a lot to do with that.
Enjoy your sabbatical, dude. Check out of technology and go somewhere nice... get a cabin in the mountains for a while, experience all of that sort of thing again free of the shackles of 'being reachable'. You'll be amazed at how much it reinvigorates you when you finally return to civilization.
But that's THEIR decision to make, not yours or mine.
The reason a lot of these things will never be open sourced is simply because the technology is still economically viable, and will be used for other things, even if the PRODUCT involved isn't. The AIBOs and Deep Blues of the world aren't the "endgame", they're a way of getting the tires on a given technology to be kicked for a bit.
If your local town board has sold your free-market up the river by granting someone a monopoly, bring that up at your next town board meeting.
You can break up the duopolies starting TOMORROW. Go run for your local town board and wait for the Franchise Agreement to come up for renewal. Insist that they allow competitors access to the outside plant at a wholesale/cost-basis if they want a renewal.
It really is that simple.
You have freedom to use what you paid for within the terms of the usage agreement you've got with your provider. If they say "we may filter or traffic shape your traffic", then you're free to accept that or find some other carrier with preferable terms.
As for "built with your tax money". Not really. The network that was "built with your tax money" was a whole mess of 128kbps links that wouldn't even handle your iPad's traffic demands, let alone be a "network backbone".
And besides, EVEN IF there were subsidies, etc., (as the other AC replier mentioned), blame your congress-critters for not negotiating better terms before they gave your money away. EVEN IF your local municipality is granting a monopoly, blame your local town-board for doing so and not insisting that the cable provider accommodate competitive content providers on the outside plant.
This is a vote for freedom. Freedom of the organizations that INVEST in the infrastructure to be the ones who get to decide how that infrastructure is used. Freedom for you to set the rules for the use of the thing which you built with your money and sweat.
Or, as I said, to draft the agreement such that, if there is a de facto monopoly, that the incumbent has to give XX years of wholesale service to competitive providers.
Well, first off, I'm not sure I agree with you about them not being willing to cut defense (note the recent defunding of the F-35 project). Second, the legislative branch was given appropriations power for precisely the reason of having the ability to ensure which things got funded during tough times.
There's a lot of folks (myself included) who actually wouldn't consider a "government shutdown" to be a bad thing. There's plenty of people who think the government is way too big, has its fingers way too deep into every aspect of American life, and that shutting down the government is a forcible extraction of those fingers.
The sentiment today is a whole lot different than it was the last time around. Sure, there was some small-government opining, but it was nowhere near as prevalent as it is today.
Or, alternatively, we need to banish the idea of allowing municipalities to bestow monopolies on last-mile providers and say that "anyone can be a cable provider" or "anyone can be a telco provider" in any given town. And that where towns have bestowed monopolies in the past, those incumbent folks must provide wholesale-cost use of their outside plant for the next, say, 25 years, enough time for other folks to invest and deploy parallel infrastructure to support their own business.
You're right. It's crazy talk, sneaking an amendment that addresses "whether or not to spend money on PROJECT_X" into an appropriations bill. Because if there's one thing that shouldn't be part of an appropriations bill, it's decisions about what we do and do not spend money on.
Er, wait a minute....
When TiVo was first coming out on the scene, there was talk that there was, hidden deep in the code, a "boat-anchor" mode, which Tivo assured the faithful (which at the time were typically bleeding-edge technology hounds) that if TiVo ever went belly-up, their boxes wouldn't be useless, that there was a mode which they could push to all the units that essentially said "We're going off the air now, open yourself up for use however the owner wants", and that it would offer up some alternative options for shoving EPG data into it gathered from other sources.
It seems that maybe this is what TiVo should be doing with these UK Series1 units, even if they're not technically "going off the air".
Once the gov't gave them the money without any strings attached it became theirs to do with as they will. If you don't the like stupid shit your congressmen are doing, take it up with them. :-P
As for competition and traffic-blocking : maybe it's because it's a really viable business model. Don't like it, and your market is open to competition? Start up and compete against them, and may the best business model win. If customers REALLY care, they'll flock to your unblocked ISP and you'll be printing money.
That comes back to my other statement which is that if your local ordinance is using Franchise Agreements to enforce a monopoly by saying only they can bring out wire on poles or underground, to vote the bastards out.
We've come a long way since the original ARPAnet my friend, and most of that innovation that got us here didn't come off the government teat.
Alright, now you're just being obtuse.
Because I think that it's fairly easy to build an ISP? Why is that obtuse. It's true, it is pretty easy.
No. anyone can start an ISP. It's trivial to do. If the municipalities have locked competition out of an individual city's marketplace, that's for their constituents to sort out.
Does the government get to decide on what you can use your electrical power?
In many parts of the country, during peak usage periods, the answer is "yes", unfortunately.
Do they get to decide which plants you can water?
In many parts of the country, specifically the western portion of the US, the answer is most definitely "yes", again, unfortunately.
You people need to nationalize the internet.
Yeah, because the government does such a great job of innovation. They're definitely who we should have running the show.
Or, maybe, not.
As it stands at this very moment, I have an entitlement with AT&T for data carriage services from my smart phone to any site I so desire. That entitlement remains as long as my check cashes.
Your ATTW terms of service includes plenty of provisions in there to let them traffic-shape at will, so it's not quite the "any site I so desire" you make it out to be. And they can certainly charge a content-provider for access to their network. They're not restricting YOUR right to access on the network, just that other guy (who you may want to talk to, but who ATTW is unwilling to talk to).
Yes, there are higher barriers to entry in the wireless industry than in the wireline industry, but if you think your business model is superior to the existing carriers, find yourself some investors who agree and start investing in that infrastructure. If your business model truly is superior, you shouldn't have any trouble finding investors who want to make money! That's what investors live for, after all, is cold hard cash.
Dozens of carriers have "internet backbones" and independent ISPs and content providers pay them for access to it every day.