Heh - I remember back in my Windows lUser days all my geek friends and I switching over from Windows 95/98 to NT 4, and what a huge boost in performance we got.
Windows isn't that bad as operating systems go, if you just remove most of it.:)
Blizzard owns a valid copyright in the game client software, Blizzard has granted a limited license for WoW players to use the software, use of the software with Glider falls outside the scope of the license established in section 4 of the TOU, use of Glider includes copying to RAM within the meaning of section 106 of the Copyright Act, users of WoW and Glider are not entitled to a section 117 defense, and Glider users therefore infringe Blizzard's copyright. MDY does not dispute that the other requirements for contributory and vicarious copyright infringement are met, nor has MDY established a misuse defense. The Court accordingly will grant summary judgment in favor of Blizzard with respect to liability on the contributory and vicarious copyright infringement claims in Counts II and III.
I think this means that TOUs/TOSs/EULAs now have the full force of copyright law, if a copyrightable portion of the media reaches your computer.
The section 117 defense is this:
that such a new copy or adaptation is created as an essential step in the utilization of the computer program in conjunction with a machine and that it is used in no other manner
If you're violating the EULA, it is "used in an other manner".
You know that tiny little link, "terms of use", at the bottom of every web page you visit? Better read that 20 page document behind that link, or you could be infringing copyright without even knowing it.
I did it. Split the contribution between the EFF and ACLU. I have been planning on a fairly substantial contribution to Obama's election campaign (as opposed to the primary) since Super Tuesday. In one vote (the cloture vote - by the time he voted for passage my decision had been made), he moved that money to the EFF and ACLU.
Infringement of the 4th is bad, and unauthorized. The law cannot stand because the just powers of government do not include the authority to infringe that inalienable right. But it is being handled (at least in part), in the way that it should be handled - the courts are now obligated to strike down the portions which violate the 4th. I say "in part" because I do not yet know what the punishment will be for those who voted to pass the law. I think censure is the minimum that can be accepted.
But the 4th is not the worst thing in this bill. The worst thing in this bill is the retroactive immunity.
Congress shall make no law... abridging... the right of the people... to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.
Here's a snippet from Obama's response:
[The FISA Bill]... removes an important tool for the American people to demand accountability for past abuses.
Let me rephrase that: "removes an important tool for the American people to petition for redress of grievances."
Here is a snippet from Senator Maria Cantwell's response:
Congress should respect judicial review and not take away the only opportunity for redress available to American citizens for potential overreaching by this Administration.
Petition for redress is a right. Our rights come before the authority of the government and cannot be infringed by it. It is a right which the just powers of government do not authorize them to infringe. Hence these 73 people (69 Senators against, 3 not voting, and The President) have failed in their oath to defend The Constitution.
But what is worse is the particular right that was infringed. The right to petition for redress is the last peaceful step we are allowed for correcting our government. The largest group by an enormous margin on Obama's site is the anti-FISA group. That's the soapbox. We nominated a person who promised to fight immunity. That's the ballot box. And this retroactive immunity removed the jury box. There is time for this to be corrected, but it is an incredibly dangerous place for us to be. It is like the old DEFCON rating from the cold war. We are hanging at the last peaceful step. With every fiber of my being I hope that we can find a peaceful way out of this, because I cannot bear the thought of the next responsibility with which our founders charged us.
What "The Linux Desktop" are you talking about? Yours? It should be whatever you want it to be. Mine? It should be whatever I want it to be. RedHat's, Debian's, KDE's, Gnome's, XFCE's, Linus's, RMS's - they should each be what they want it to be.
What kind of bizarro world is this guy living in where an operating system's desktop has one official version? How could you stand limiting yourself like that? It would be... well it would be like running Windows or Mac, and what madman would choose that tortured fate?
Furthermore, the researchers created a fictitious administrator and company name and were able to lease a server and get it listed as an official mirror for all the distributions they tried (Ubuntu, Debian, Fedora, CentOS, and OpenSUSE). What keeps you up at night, the thought of attacks on your package manager or previously discussed and patched vulnerability in DNS?
The man-in-the-middle attack is valid enough - particularly with ISPs now regularly committing that kind of attack (under the guise of traffic shaping and ad injection attacks) and not being cruelly and unusually punished.
As for the fictitious company? I'm going to go with option 3: Thank you, Debian, for not wasting money on something I can do myself.
It is not Debian's job to vet the sources.list. For me, it's my job. I use U.C. Berkeley's repositories, because I personally trust UCB. Some people hire systems administrators to do the vetting. Others buy commercial distros like RHEL. Lots of freedom of choice - that is a feature, not a bug.
It is the beautiful world of FLOSS - where self-reliance, personal accountability, and Darwinian smackdowns are available for free. The water is absolutely sublime - but be careful not to attempt to breath while your head is under water, as you will drown (or give it a try if you like - you are free to do so if you wish). If you are not sure that you know how to avoid breathing while under water, you may wish to hire a personal lifeguard, or join a fitness club that provides communal lifeguards. You may even want to write your city council person and ask them to provide a public distribution, akin to a public swimming pool. The opportunities are endless. This is Free. This is beautiful.
>> Given the choice between sacrificing the 4th amendment and losing surveillance tools of questionable usefulness, I've chosen to support the current compromise. -- Obama
The ability to monitor and track individuals who want to attack the United States is a vital counter-terrorism tool, and I'm persuaded that it is necessary to keep the American people safe -- particularly since certain electronic surveillance orders will begin to expire later this summer. Given the choice between voting for an improved yet imperfect bill, and losing important surveillance tools, I've chosen to support the current compromise. -- Obama
Hang on - typo in there...
Given the choice between sacrificing the 4th amendment and losing important surveillance tools, I've chosen to support the current compromise. -- Obama
There, fixed that for ya.
Thanks for the run Obama, it was nice to have six months to believe there could be a principled President.
Now, let's all drop the depression, disappointment, and bargaining. And for damned sure let's not slip into acceptance. Let's focus on the right phase of grief for this ongoing usurpation of our nation; anger.
Isn't it nice to have the power to define your enemy? Given a sufficiently inaccurate definition, anyone can be reviled. It's called "Straw Man."
Where I would scoff at a piece of code, call it utter garbage, and rewrite the damn thing from scratch, a GPL advocate would probably wrap the garbage in another API that he finds more palatable.
Wow, kicking the article off with an unsupported ad hominem attack. You're really not seeking common ground here, are you?
I'm not going to analyze the whole piece, because this emotional little rant doesn't warrant it. But the ending is just as illuminating:
I will never agree with your philosophy, but at least you'll know you were understood.
"I will never agree with your philosophy" is the sure sign of a zealot. "At least you'll know you were understood" implies that blame for the vitriol between the contemptable jihadists on both sides can be layed entirely at the feet of your enemy.
This is not a religious war except for those who make it one. Don't frame your argument against the least rational or most distasteful (to you) of your enemy's positions. Seek the most rational, most appealing, positions and try to agree with them first. Then frame a discussion around why a rationally self-interested individual would choose each proposition. It will make a more interesting article, not add to the stick-throwing and name-calling, and as a result you will look less like Bill O'Reilly and more like Socrates.
All that said, the fact that you made an attempt at all and were willing to put it out there to be scrutinized at all is commendable.
>> I'm sure that is exactly what Adam Smith had in mind for free market competition.
> Do not be so quick to pin this one on Adam Smith and the free market.
My apologies - I was being sarcastic. I'm a very big fan of capitalism and of Adam Smith, and only a foe of the perversion of it that we have built in The States.
Google could run a simple select * or equivalent, changing each name to a guid of some kind. This would allow analysis of all users, per user, if necessary (which is doubtful anyway), without revealing any identifying info.
That wouldn't do it. At the very least, everyone who has ever posted a video on YouTube would be identifiable. The first person to view each video is the uploader.
Unique identifiers associated with a collection of personal information will leak actual identities for any sufficiently large collection of personal information.
That was the lesson of the AOL search history release.
Nice to see that we're developing another system whereby giant corporations are free to operate, and smaller enterprises are barred from entry. I'm sure that is exactly what Adam Smith had in mind for free market competition.
It comes with two books, one on digital and one on analog circuits. I outgrew it quickly, but it got me far enough along to step up to a breadboard and raw parts. The circuits cover extreme beginner to, say, apprentice - so it's not going to last long if it appeals to you. But that was great for me as it completely evaporated any fear I had of the complexity. I like to be a tough guy as much as anyone else, but sometimes it's nice not to be in over your head.
The next step I took was "The Art of Electronics" (brilliant book) and a breadboard. That was a bit of a leap, but very good for analog circuits. On the digial side, check out Lady Ada and Evil Mad Scientist:
More likely he will say that, "Nuclear is an important part of our national ongoing energy strategy, along with clean, renewable energy in the form of wind and solar and whatever."
Means the same thing really; McCain pushed so-called "clean coal" at the same time as he pushed Nuclear,
Actually I just saw a YouTube clip of Obama saying that he wants to increase investment in all alternatives to oil, including wind, solar, nuclear (he said "safe" is where the research is needed), and clean coal.
I think it's the right approach, and both of them should be commended for it. It's not a hard position to take, of course, but that doesn't make it any less right. Energy price is an excellent leading indicator of economic growth, and more, cleaner, safer options in our toolbox is good.
Here's my suggestion: Any piece of personal data that is allowed to be shared without restriction between entities, or read by the government without a warrant (a real warrant, the way the founders intended), shall be classified as "privacy excluded data."
Then, for any level of government that authorizes "privacy excluded data", every elected official at that level will have that data published. Any data which is not published about the appropriate elected officials is considered private data, and breach of privacy will have severe enforcement.
If you want to know it about me, or will not prevent others from sharing it about me, then I get to know it about you while you are a public servant. You want to read my email without a warrant? Fine - all your email goes up on public servers (with reasonable restrictions, subject to FISA oversight, for national security).
Simple accountability. If I've got nothing to hide, you've got nothing to hide.
Here in Belgium and other European countries, bandwidth is not throttled but capped. I can Bittorrent as much as I want, but I fall back to 1-3 kB/s as soon as I hit the 100 gigabyte barrier. This system is waaaay less underhand or hypocrite. FYI, I'm at 30.7 GB this month. It resets the day after tomorrow.
Free market capitalism, eh? It's just crazy enough to work. We should try that here.:)
I'm not saying they have to provide something that cannot be provided. I'm saying they need to stop lying about the product and blaming the customer. If it is 50 megabits shared (or whatever it is), then sell it as 50 megabits shared. Or sell metered access. Or sell tiered access. But don't call it 5 megabit unlimited unless that is what the SLA specifies. Can't explain what you are selling to the customer? Well, then hire better advertising people. Or change the product. Or tell the truth and let the customer figure it out. But you can't lie - not if you want to claim you are a capitalist.
I am a capitalist. I don't believe in something for nothing, and that is not what I am proposing. But I am a real capitalist. Real capitalists love competition. Real capitalists know that real competition cannot exist without an informed consumer. Real capitalists want to succeed by selling a better product for less money to an informed consumer. But real capitalists cannot compete with snake-oil salesmen when the snake-oil vendors are not punished for deceiving the customer. Real capitalists cannot compete when the consumer is punished for the lies told by the snake-oil vendor.
Real capitalists love perfect information. It allows those who know how to maximize the wealth(*) production of capital to succeed, and it drives snake-oil salesmen to flip burgers. That is what makes capitalism a socially positive system. And while the US one of the best experiments in capitalism, we are drifting. One of the many steps we must take to get back in the throttle is to eliminate deception - and cable is built on deception.
* economic wealth - ie: the ability to satisfy wants
This is just the fundamental flaw with cable that has been waiting to expose itself since day 1:
Cable uses a shared local loop, and they advertise it as unlimited, and they advertise it as having 5 megabits. That math does not work. It is a lie. It is false advertising. They've only been getting away with it because most customers don't use what they've been sold.
Except that is changing. Video is exposing the lies of cable, and they're proposed solution is screwing the customer. Since they've been getting away with it for so long, they believe they are entitled to continue lying and to screw their customers to protect their lies. This is false advertising that has not been painful enough to result in a lawsuit. Now it is going to get there real fast unless they do something. So they are trying to convince the world that the customers are at fault. That is another lie. Don't buy it.
Stop lying about the product. False advertising is the problem here. People expect their cable to support 5 megabits unlimited because that's what they were sold. Degrading the service to those who consume what they were sold isn't just ethically reprehensible, it is (or at least should be) illegal.
There is no question of whether protocol throttling or customer throttling is the solution to the problem. There is no problem with the product. The problem is the false advertising.
As an aside; I don't mean P2P like Bittorrent. I mean peer-to-peer like what ARPAnet was initially - every server is treated as an equal participant, limited only by the size of the pipe to which it is connected.
>> lacks the degree of barriers to entry that corporations need to "create" wealth.
> Your anti-corporate rant
Much as I hate to give a rational response to a troll, I am concerned that you are simply young and have yourself been mislead.
Let's see - I've been involved in the planning of four startups. Two of which I was a significant equity participant. In all four cases, one of the first and most persistent questions (in one case first raised by a Columbia MBA) has been, "What are the barriers to entry - how do we protect our market." The fact that businesses seek barriers to entry is neither opinion nor debatable, it is one of the principle objectives of business developers.
If you claim that businesses do not seek barriers to entry, either you do not understand business, or you are choosing to mislead.
I think (and correct me if I'm wrong - though I'm sure the invitation is not necessary) that this is just the fundamental difference between cable and DSL finally rearing its head.
When DSL was king and cable started to take over, the big win for cable was the maximum bandwidth. DSL to a typical home (ie: not close to the central office) tops out somewhere around 1 megabit. Cable uses a shared local loop - so maximum bandwidth is enormous, far exceeding DSL. The only problem with cable is saturation resulting from many customers attempting to get that peak bandwidth. Cable has been touting their peak bandwidth as what you are buying, and has been claiming unlimited. DSL can provide unlimited at their peak bandwidth, cable cannot. (DSL may also have unstated or explicit rate caps, but that is not a technical limitation of the local loop).
Cable has been fundamentally lying to the customer since the very first days that they began to compete with DSL. And now that the average joe is actually using a significant portion of the promised bandwidth, the local loop is becoming saturated. You've all probably experienced this - get home from work, hit YouTube, and the performance is degraded compared to late at night.
All of which implies a very simple economic dynamic is at work; cable providers have been selling a falsely advertised product, and now are facing the fact that they cannot provide what they've sold. They're trying BT throttling, and want to start throttling YouTube, but know they can't fight that gorilla. So they are being forced to tell the truth about their product.
There's no mystery here, and the new solution is not screwing you - the old lies are simply coming home to roost.
So the question is not whether you should get unlimited 5 megabit for $50 per month. You can't have that with cable if everyone wants it. The cake is a lie. This new approach by TW is neither more nor less than them telling you what you really had all along. The only difference is you're no longer able to use the bandwidth your neighbor didn't know how to use five years ago.
Slashdot Mirror
Heh - I remember back in my Windows lUser days all my geek friends and I switching over from Windows 95/98 to NT 4, and what a huge boost in performance we got.
Windows isn't that bad as operating systems go, if you just remove most of it. :)
Blizzard owns a valid copyright in the game client software, Blizzard has granted a limited license for WoW players to use the software, use of the software with Glider falls outside the scope of the license established in section 4 of the TOU, use of Glider includes copying to RAM within the meaning of section 106 of the Copyright Act, users of WoW and Glider are not entitled to a section 117 defense, and Glider users therefore infringe Blizzard's copyright. MDY does not dispute that the other requirements for contributory and vicarious copyright infringement are met, nor has MDY established a misuse defense. The Court accordingly will grant summary judgment in favor of Blizzard with respect to liability on the contributory and vicarious copyright infringement claims in Counts II and III.
I think this means that TOUs/TOSs/EULAs now have the full force of copyright law, if a copyrightable portion of the media reaches your computer.
The section 117 defense is this:
that such a new copy or adaptation is created as an essential step in the utilization of the computer program in conjunction with a machine and that it is used in no other manner
If you're violating the EULA, it is "used in an other manner".
You know that tiny little link, "terms of use", at the bottom of every web page you visit? Better read that 20 page document behind that link, or you could be infringing copyright without even knowing it.
I did it. Split the contribution between the EFF and ACLU. I have been planning on a fairly substantial contribution to Obama's election campaign (as opposed to the primary) since Super Tuesday. In one vote (the cloture vote - by the time he voted for passage my decision had been made), he moved that money to the EFF and ACLU.
Infringement of the 4th is bad, and unauthorized. The law cannot stand because the just powers of government do not include the authority to infringe that inalienable right. But it is being handled (at least in part), in the way that it should be handled - the courts are now obligated to strike down the portions which violate the 4th. I say "in part" because I do not yet know what the punishment will be for those who voted to pass the law. I think censure is the minimum that can be accepted.
But the 4th is not the worst thing in this bill. The worst thing in this bill is the retroactive immunity.
Congress shall make no law ... abridging ... the right of the people ... to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.
Here's a snippet from Obama's response:
[The FISA Bill] ... removes an important tool for the American people to demand accountability for past abuses.
Let me rephrase that: "removes an important tool for the American people to petition for redress of grievances."
Here is a snippet from Senator Maria Cantwell's response:
Congress should respect judicial review and not take away the only opportunity for redress available to American citizens for potential overreaching by this Administration.
Petition for redress is a right. Our rights come before the authority of the government and cannot be infringed by it. It is a right which the just powers of government do not authorize them to infringe. Hence these 73 people (69 Senators against, 3 not voting, and The President) have failed in their oath to defend The Constitution.
But what is worse is the particular right that was infringed. The right to petition for redress is the last peaceful step we are allowed for correcting our government. The largest group by an enormous margin on Obama's site is the anti-FISA group. That's the soapbox. We nominated a person who promised to fight immunity. That's the ballot box. And this retroactive immunity removed the jury box. There is time for this to be corrected, but it is an incredibly dangerous place for us to be. It is like the old DEFCON rating from the cold war. We are hanging at the last peaceful step. With every fiber of my being I hope that we can find a peaceful way out of this, because I cannot bear the thought of the next responsibility with which our founders charged us.
Should the Linux Desktop Be "Pure?"
What "The Linux Desktop" are you talking about? Yours? It should be whatever you want it to be. Mine? It should be whatever I want it to be. RedHat's, Debian's, KDE's, Gnome's, XFCE's, Linus's, RMS's - they should each be what they want it to be.
What kind of bizarro world is this guy living in where an operating system's desktop has one official version? How could you stand limiting yourself like that? It would be... well it would be like running Windows or Mac, and what madman would choose that tortured fate?
This is Free. Do whatcha like. Pretty cool, huh?
To paraphrase ISO's response: "We're still relevant!!!"
No, you are not.
Given that, there is no real reason for him to shift to the center. He seems to be doing fine right where he is.
Hrm - typo:
He seems to have been doing fine right where he was. :(
Furthermore, the researchers created a fictitious administrator and company name and were able to lease a server and get it listed as an official mirror for all the distributions they tried (Ubuntu, Debian, Fedora, CentOS, and OpenSUSE). What keeps you up at night, the thought of attacks on your package manager or previously discussed and patched vulnerability in DNS?
The man-in-the-middle attack is valid enough - particularly with ISPs now regularly committing that kind of attack (under the guise of traffic shaping and ad injection attacks) and not being cruelly and unusually punished.
As for the fictitious company? I'm going to go with option 3: Thank you, Debian, for not wasting money on something I can do myself.
It is not Debian's job to vet the sources.list. For me, it's my job. I use U.C. Berkeley's repositories, because I personally trust UCB. Some people hire systems administrators to do the vetting. Others buy commercial distros like RHEL. Lots of freedom of choice - that is a feature, not a bug.
It is the beautiful world of FLOSS - where self-reliance, personal accountability, and Darwinian smackdowns are available for free. The water is absolutely sublime - but be careful not to attempt to breath while your head is under water, as you will drown (or give it a try if you like - you are free to do so if you wish). If you are not sure that you know how to avoid breathing while under water, you may wish to hire a personal lifeguard, or join a fitness club that provides communal lifeguards. You may even want to write your city council person and ask them to provide a public distribution, akin to a public swimming pool. The opportunities are endless. This is Free. This is beautiful.
As bad as this is, it is likely necessary. It is called moving to the center.
If I wanted someone willing to sacrifice core principles of the union in order to win office, I would have voted for Clinton in the primary.
>> Given the choice between sacrificing the 4th amendment and losing surveillance tools of questionable usefulness, I've chosen to support the current compromise. -- Obama
> There, fixed that for ya.
hahaha - well played. :)
The ability to monitor and track individuals who want to attack the United States is a vital counter-terrorism tool, and I'm persuaded that it is necessary to keep the American people safe -- particularly since certain electronic surveillance orders will begin to expire later this summer. Given the choice between voting for an improved yet imperfect bill, and losing important surveillance tools, I've chosen to support the current compromise. -- Obama
Hang on - typo in there...
Given the choice between sacrificing the 4th amendment and losing important surveillance tools, I've chosen to support the current compromise. -- Obama
There, fixed that for ya.
Thanks for the run Obama, it was nice to have six months to believe there could be a principled President.
Now, let's all drop the depression, disappointment, and bargaining. And for damned sure let's not slip into acceptance. Let's focus on the right phase of grief for this ongoing usurpation of our nation; anger.
Isn't it nice to have the power to define your enemy? Given a sufficiently inaccurate definition, anyone can be reviled. It's called "Straw Man."
Where I would scoff at a piece of code, call it utter garbage, and rewrite the damn thing from scratch, a GPL advocate would probably wrap the garbage in another API that he finds more palatable.
Wow, kicking the article off with an unsupported ad hominem attack. You're really not seeking common ground here, are you?
I'm not going to analyze the whole piece, because this emotional little rant doesn't warrant it. But the ending is just as illuminating:
I will never agree with your philosophy, but at least you'll know you were understood.
"I will never agree with your philosophy" is the sure sign of a zealot. "At least you'll know you were understood" implies that blame for the vitriol between the contemptable jihadists on both sides can be layed entirely at the feet of your enemy.
This is not a religious war except for those who make it one. Don't frame your argument against the least rational or most distasteful (to you) of your enemy's positions. Seek the most rational, most appealing, positions and try to agree with them first. Then frame a discussion around why a rationally self-interested individual would choose each proposition. It will make a more interesting article, not add to the stick-throwing and name-calling, and as a result you will look less like Bill O'Reilly and more like Socrates.
All that said, the fact that you made an attempt at all and were willing to put it out there to be scrutinized at all is commendable.
>> I'm sure that is exactly what Adam Smith had in mind for free market competition.
> Do not be so quick to pin this one on Adam Smith and the free market.
My apologies - I was being sarcastic. I'm a very big fan of capitalism and of Adam Smith, and only a foe of the perversion of it that we have built in The States.
Google could run a simple select * or equivalent, changing each name to a guid of some kind. This would allow analysis of all users, per user, if necessary (which is doubtful anyway), without revealing any identifying info.
That wouldn't do it. At the very least, everyone who has ever posted a video on YouTube would be identifiable. The first person to view each video is the uploader.
Unique identifiers associated with a collection of personal information will leak actual identities for any sufficiently large collection of personal information.
That was the lesson of the AOL search history release.
Nice to see that we're developing another system whereby giant corporations are free to operate, and smaller enterprises are barred from entry. I'm sure that is exactly what Adam Smith had in mind for free market competition.
OK, this is totally not the cool answer, but I started with this one:
http://www.radioshack.com/product/index.jsp?productId=2102913&cp=2032062.2032398&parentPage=family
It comes with two books, one on digital and one on analog circuits. I outgrew it quickly, but it got me far enough along to step up to a breadboard and raw parts. The circuits cover extreme beginner to, say, apprentice - so it's not going to last long if it appeals to you. But that was great for me as it completely evaporated any fear I had of the complexity. I like to be a tough guy as much as anyone else, but sometimes it's nice not to be in over your head.
The next step I took was "The Art of Electronics" (brilliant book) and a breadboard. That was a bit of a leap, but very good for analog circuits. On the digial side, check out Lady Ada and Evil Mad Scientist:
http://www.adafruit.com/
http://www.evilmadscientist.com/
More likely he will say that, "Nuclear is an important part of our national ongoing energy strategy, along with clean, renewable energy in the form of wind and solar and whatever."
Means the same thing really; McCain pushed so-called "clean coal" at the same time as he pushed Nuclear,
Actually I just saw a YouTube clip of Obama saying that he wants to increase investment in all alternatives to oil, including wind, solar, nuclear (he said "safe" is where the research is needed), and clean coal.
I think it's the right approach, and both of them should be commended for it. It's not a hard position to take, of course, but that doesn't make it any less right. Energy price is an excellent leading indicator of economic growth, and more, cleaner, safer options in our toolbox is good.
Here's my suggestion: Any piece of personal data that is allowed to be shared without restriction between entities, or read by the government without a warrant (a real warrant, the way the founders intended), shall be classified as "privacy excluded data."
Then, for any level of government that authorizes "privacy excluded data", every elected official at that level will have that data published. Any data which is not published about the appropriate elected officials is considered private data, and breach of privacy will have severe enforcement.
If you want to know it about me, or will not prevent others from sharing it about me, then I get to know it about you while you are a public servant. You want to read my email without a warrant? Fine - all your email goes up on public servers (with reasonable restrictions, subject to FISA oversight, for national security).
Simple accountability. If I've got nothing to hide, you've got nothing to hide.
768 Kbps are considered 'First-Generation' broadband, and speeds up to 1.5 Mbps are considered 'Basic' broadband.
Hello, cable operators, how you doin? I see the FCC is still fondling your genitals.
So - is that maximum speed? Typical speed at peak time? How about sustained speed before you get your account cancelled?
How about this - is that up or down? It's the friggin' Internet - it's supposed to be bidirectional, remember?
Good to see the FCC was willing to look past all that and just write what the cable operators told them to write.
Here in Belgium and other European countries, bandwidth is not throttled but capped. I can Bittorrent as much as I want, but I fall back to 1-3 kB/s as soon as I hit the 100 gigabyte barrier. This system is waaaay less underhand or hypocrite. FYI, I'm at 30.7 GB this month. It resets the day after tomorrow.
:)
Free market capitalism, eh? It's just crazy enough to work. We should try that here.
I'm not saying they have to provide something that cannot be provided. I'm saying they need to stop lying about the product and blaming the customer. If it is 50 megabits shared (or whatever it is), then sell it as 50 megabits shared. Or sell metered access. Or sell tiered access. But don't call it 5 megabit unlimited unless that is what the SLA specifies. Can't explain what you are selling to the customer? Well, then hire better advertising people. Or change the product. Or tell the truth and let the customer figure it out. But you can't lie - not if you want to claim you are a capitalist.
I am a capitalist. I don't believe in something for nothing, and that is not what I am proposing. But I am a real capitalist. Real capitalists love competition. Real capitalists know that real competition cannot exist without an informed consumer. Real capitalists want to succeed by selling a better product for less money to an informed consumer. But real capitalists cannot compete with snake-oil salesmen when the snake-oil vendors are not punished for deceiving the customer. Real capitalists cannot compete when the consumer is punished for the lies told by the snake-oil vendor.
Real capitalists love perfect information. It allows those who know how to maximize the wealth(*) production of capital to succeed, and it drives snake-oil salesmen to flip burgers. That is what makes capitalism a socially positive system. And while the US one of the best experiments in capitalism, we are drifting. One of the many steps we must take to get back in the throttle is to eliminate deception - and cable is built on deception.
* economic wealth - ie: the ability to satisfy wants
This is just the fundamental flaw with cable that has been waiting to expose itself since day 1:
Cable uses a shared local loop, and they advertise it as unlimited, and they advertise it as having 5 megabits. That math does not work. It is a lie. It is false advertising. They've only been getting away with it because most customers don't use what they've been sold.
Except that is changing. Video is exposing the lies of cable, and they're proposed solution is screwing the customer. Since they've been getting away with it for so long, they believe they are entitled to continue lying and to screw their customers to protect their lies. This is false advertising that has not been painful enough to result in a lawsuit. Now it is going to get there real fast unless they do something. So they are trying to convince the world that the customers are at fault. That is another lie. Don't buy it.
Stop lying about the product. False advertising is the problem here. People expect their cable to support 5 megabits unlimited because that's what they were sold. Degrading the service to those who consume what they were sold isn't just ethically reprehensible, it is (or at least should be) illegal.
There is no question of whether protocol throttling or customer throttling is the solution to the problem. There is no problem with the product. The problem is the false advertising.
As an aside; I don't mean P2P like Bittorrent. I mean peer-to-peer like what ARPAnet was initially - every server is treated as an equal participant, limited only by the size of the pipe to which it is connected.
>> lacks the degree of barriers to entry that corporations need to "create" wealth.
> Your anti-corporate rant
Much as I hate to give a rational response to a troll, I am concerned that you are simply young and have yourself been mislead.
Let's see - I've been involved in the planning of four startups. Two of which I was a significant equity participant. In all four cases, one of the first and most persistent questions (in one case first raised by a Columbia MBA) has been, "What are the barriers to entry - how do we protect our market." The fact that businesses seek barriers to entry is neither opinion nor debatable, it is one of the principle objectives of business developers.
If you claim that businesses do not seek barriers to entry, either you do not understand business, or you are choosing to mislead.
I think (and correct me if I'm wrong - though I'm sure the invitation is not necessary) that this is just the fundamental difference between cable and DSL finally rearing its head.
When DSL was king and cable started to take over, the big win for cable was the maximum bandwidth. DSL to a typical home (ie: not close to the central office) tops out somewhere around 1 megabit. Cable uses a shared local loop - so maximum bandwidth is enormous, far exceeding DSL. The only problem with cable is saturation resulting from many customers attempting to get that peak bandwidth. Cable has been touting their peak bandwidth as what you are buying, and has been claiming unlimited. DSL can provide unlimited at their peak bandwidth, cable cannot. (DSL may also have unstated or explicit rate caps, but that is not a technical limitation of the local loop).
Cable has been fundamentally lying to the customer since the very first days that they began to compete with DSL. And now that the average joe is actually using a significant portion of the promised bandwidth, the local loop is becoming saturated. You've all probably experienced this - get home from work, hit YouTube, and the performance is degraded compared to late at night.
All of which implies a very simple economic dynamic is at work; cable providers have been selling a falsely advertised product, and now are facing the fact that they cannot provide what they've sold. They're trying BT throttling, and want to start throttling YouTube, but know they can't fight that gorilla. So they are being forced to tell the truth about their product.
There's no mystery here, and the new solution is not screwing you - the old lies are simply coming home to roost.
So the question is not whether you should get unlimited 5 megabit for $50 per month. You can't have that with cable if everyone wants it. The cake is a lie. This new approach by TW is neither more nor less than them telling you what you really had all along. The only difference is you're no longer able to use the bandwidth your neighbor didn't know how to use five years ago.