It just goes to show crowd-sourcing only works when you don't melt down the servers. Realistically with the slashdot community we could have had this project finished within the first five minutes, disputed and changed within the next, and finally edited back to some resemblance of validity within about 20 after that. Then again, this is Dr Who, so Steven Moffat episodes would require any visual display of the time line to be four dimensional.
Blizzard really screwed up with the DRM in Starcraft 2. The original just required the CD key to install. It was limited to one battlenet connection at a time, but you could easily create 12 copies and have a lan party. Was this piracy? Sure, but I started playing at a lan party and bought the game because of it. Up until a couple years ago I had my original starcraft key memorized. Now the free publicity feature is gone, and frankly Starcraft 2 is a POS compared to the amount of time it took for it to come out. I was expecting to go WOW, but the graphics mimic the original while maximizing processor load, the gameplay is glitchy and unbalanced, and worst of all they only include a single race campaign. In short I feel ripped off, and having to have an Internet connection to play is just over the top.
That's probably due to the fact that Iran has never invaded another country, while it found itself attacked by Iraq without any valid justification. Back then Iraq was supported by pretty much the entire western world. I won't even go into how the CIA overthrew Iran's elected government to replace it with a dictatorship(the Shah)
End result: Iran has every reason to build up its defences. History has shown Iran that the western world's propaganda about justice and fairness only applies to them, not to other countries, that the western world will support unjustified attacks on Iran and thus they need to be able to defend themselves.
Just one flaw in your logic: How is a UAV bomber a defensive weapon?
There are two contradictory things which must happen for machine voting.
1. Each person must be identifiable as having voted and see the result of the vote.
2. Each vote must be anonymous.
Machine readable ballots make sense, but they still leave the possibility of simple fraud. Take a stack of ballots and replace them with your own skewed ballots. This means that each ballot must have a unique identification, while at the same time have no way of revealing the name of the voter. I've heard of states allowing mail in ballots, this makes some sense although things do get lost in the mail. The best solution I can come up with is a ballot that you have to pick up in person from the DMV possibly. It has its own serial number and when you pick it up it is entered into the system, not as a vote from you, but simply as a vote. Your information is also entered into the system. Neither is time/date stamped and both are randomized as much as possible to hide voter identity.When you have made your educated vote you return the ballot to the polling station. If there is any doubt then the number of people who voted can be checked against the number of ballots. Also it seems logical that an individual can check to see if he/she voted, for example if I voted in the last presidential election, but I didn't actually vote it would be a sign of fraud.
So instead of having trash on the curb in a can it should sit by my house in a can? Or perhaps in a bag by the door? Garbage does attract animals and disease, but what better alternative is there than putting your can on the curb?
Weighing garbage sounds fair to me. I'd also like a year end statement showing how much the garbage disposal actually cost compared to what I'm paying. I know it sounds odd but I want actual transparency with my government and companies that are acting as public utilities.
We just had a similar thing happen here. The city's waste management company delivered new trash cans and now refuses to take trash unless it is in the cans. These trashcans also came with instructions on when they are allowed to be by the curb which makes it impossible to take out your trash can before work and pick it up after you get home (although they have not yet fined me). If you have more trash then will fit in the can you have to sit on it until the next trash day or pay a couple hundred dollars for an extra can. I pay for my waste disposal. It comes out of my water bill each month regardless of whether I use the service or not. At least here it is not something you can opt out of, and even if you decided to use an alternative you would still be paying for the service. As such when they change their rules I must follow and if they increase their rates I must pay. I do think that is entitlement. The government and in turn the private company they contract to take trash think that they are entitled to do whatever the hell they want to. Could I just vote for a different mayor or city council? Sure, but it's very doubtful anything would change since the waste management companies buy politicians. So forgive me if I am a little peeved at the thought of an expensive program (which I pay for) that makes the city more revenue from trash pickup (which I pay for again). Oh and BTW my town doesn't even have a recycling pickup program. I take my recyclables to the recycling center myself. If they ever do get a recycleable pickup program I shudder to think how much extra that will cost.
We actually do have "White Spirit" Clubs: you can see them in the US as "Scottish-American Club", "Polish-American Club", "Italian-Amerian Club", etc. and they have been in existence a helluva lot longer than the NAACP.
References please. How long have they been in existence. Are they specifically for the advancement of their own race? And if so, do they exist on high school/college campuses?
We already have White Entertainment Television. It's called "the vast majority of TV shows ever made".
Ahh, so if I started a network named White Entertainment Television it would be ok because it's already the status quo?
We already have the National Association for the Advancement of White People. It's called "the status quo".
Listen to yourself. Doesn't that sound the least bit racist to you? Tell me how 'white people' get better chances in life. Tell me how 'white people' from poor families have it any better than minorities from the same circumstances. If there is any status quo it is due to education and values not skin color.
The problem with cases like these is that the politician distances himself from the actual wrongdoing. It's the aids and other staffers that are making the deals, because they are both less likely to be prosecuted and easier to throw under the bus. It's not that surprising that Blagojevich was only convicted of one charge, it was the one charge he could not completely distance himself from. It's hard to prove someone was lying unless you have proof that they know the truth.So a politician can be dirty as sin, but so long as he has plausable deniability about the actions going on in his office he is still squeaky clean at trial.
You can most certainly use weapons grade uranium in a reactor. The Navy does it right now, that's how they have 20 years between refueling. Uranium fuel does easily convert into small amounts of plutonium. All you need is a reactor. A breeder reactor is designed to convert LARGE amounts of uranium into plutonium. Yes there are fear mongerers, but to completely dismiss any fears is just as foolish.
While the plant does use low enrichment uranium, it produces among other things plutonium. And although not a breeder reactor to my knowledge, it still should produce enough plutonium every fuel cycle to make several bombs. Uranium enrichment to produce nuclear weapons is very difficult, plutonium extraction isn't. So all that is left of your argument is the Russian security over the fuel. If we were making this kind of deal with one of our allies would we be preventing them from obtaining nuclear weapons or would we covertly be helping them?
I do find this news worrisome but they still have a ways to go before they actually have nuclear weapons and every step of the way can be thwarted either by covert action or by their own mistakes. Radiated fuel is not fun stuff to play with, and that alone will hopefully be enough of a deterrent.
Actually it's a little of both. From what I saw on ship in the Navy both rape and made up accusations of rape happen more often then anyone wants to admit. The problem is that true rape is emotionally traumatizing where made up accusations are not for the accuser. When the victim is questioned it can be heavy handed, but the intent is to prevent innocent people from being convicted of a crime; however, the result is that the real rape gets swept under the rug and the fake accusation on the other hand stays strong. What's the solution? I have no idea. What I do know is that there were a lot of male sailors I worked with who would never in any circumstance be in the same room with a woman with the door shut. Could be the divisional office and if there were three of us and I walked out the other male sailor walked out too. It just wasn't worth the possibility of a false accusation.
If this were true then high schools or colleges would have no problem establishing "White spirit" clubs. Also I would be able to start the Nation Association for the Advancement of White People, or White Entertainment Television. There is a double standard, and it is very slanted.
This is a side effect of "hate speech" laws that have come about.
In the US, there is no hate speech laws, the 1st amendment of the US constitution broadly prohibits regulation of the content of speech.
It's called "hate crime" not "hate speech". And yes something you say can be counted as a "hate crime".
"The 1964 Federal Civil Rights Law, 18 U.S.C. 245(b)(2), permits federal prosecution of anyone who "willingly injures, intimidates or interferes with another person, or attempts to do so, by force because of the other person's race, color, religion or national origin" [1] because of the victim's attempt to engage in one of six types of federally protected activities, such as attending school, patronizing a public place/facility, applying for employment, acting as a juror in a state court or voting."
The Violent Crime Control and Law Enforcement Act, enacted in 28 U.S.C. 994 note Sec. 280003, requires the United States Sentencing Commission to increase the penalties for hate crimes committed on the basis of the actual or perceived race, color, religion, national origin, ethnicity, or gender of any person. In 1995, the Sentencing Commission implemented these guidelines, which only apply to federal crimes.
On October 28, 2009 President Obama, signed the Matthew Shepard and James Byrd, Jr. Hate Crimes Prevention Act (attached to the National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2010), which expanded existing United States federal hate crime law to include crimes motivated by a victim's actual or perceived gender, sexual orientation, gender identity, or disability, and which dropped the prerequisite that the victim be engaging in a federally protected activity.
So if you combine all these, you end up with intimidation being a severely punishable offence if the person is a minority. Since 'intimidation' is extremely vague the law can punish you for libel or slander if it is 'intimidating' in nature. Bye freedom of speech.
The news does this already. Years ago journalists went from wanting to "Deliver the news" to "Change the world" Scandal sells, rebutting a scandal not so much. Cue Fox News jokes, but all the outlets are guilty the only difference is the slant.
This isn't a free speech issue as much as it is a free market issue. On one hand I'd like to support the company in charging for whatever they want to, it's their company so they can make whatever rules they want. On the other hand removing inappropriate content is not so much a service that the company provides to the community, but a service the community provides to the company. So the practice is in poor taste, but what is the problem? If you think posting on someone else's website is EVER free speech then you need to have your head checked. Slashdot is a fairly open community, but it's still possible to have your voice silenced quickly if you post something that disagrees with the status quo.
Netbooks have their own flaws, but they are really apples and oranges compared to the Ipad or any tablet. I would love to have a usable tablet PC, but the software implimentation sucks. Now we have splinter groups trying to get good software implimentation like Android or I-anything. The only way a touch screen system is going to work is if there is some sort of standard for applications. People want something that just works, and although Apple products are limited in what they do, they do "just work".
Often technology takes a step back to take a step forward. Remember when CDs-DVDs replaced floppies? Suddenly you either had to burn a -rw or waste a -r to copy files. Then USB drives hit the market and you had the best of both worlds, the size and the usability. Look at the Ipad as a stepping stone, once users see its flaws they will be ready to accept something that lacks those flaws.
The US Government plays dirty when you expose their secrets
There is no proof who made the accusations. (not the accuser, but the backer.) Or even if this is some sort of fabricated plot. That being said, the timing is suspicious. Just be careful you don't throw wild accusations aimed at discrediting someone or something you dislike.
Ok, so there is no enforcement for the laws in place, but a citizen wants to start his own enforcement. Yeah, I see this working out. It's not like there are no laws, then ignorance or naivety on the part of the government could be claimed, but there are laws that are ignored. This means the government willfully ignores the laws, and as such has something to gain by ignoring them. Could be laziness, could be corruption, could be any number of reasons, but in the end if they cared about the laws enough to let someone else enforce them then they would be enforcing them in the first place.
And wold renown chefs are slowly perfecting tastier and tastier things causing obesity. It is time for us to draw a line and submit lawsuits to make everything taste horrible again.
Reality check: If you are fat it's because you lack self control. If you are addicted to MMOs it's because you lack self control. It seems the one thing we are not promoting as a positive value in society right now is self control. It doesn't matter if the games suck, people will become addicted! For the first time in the history of man we have much more free time than we spend working, and are we going through a new renaissance? Nope, where sitting in front of screens clacking keys for no good reason. Hmm... Guess I better go cure cancer now.
Makes me miss the days when Wal-Mart broke the back of the CD market by forcing labels to sell CDs at rational prices. Consumers do control producers when we actually choose to use that power. Wal-Mart just exemplifies (and sometimes vilifies) that point. If you don't like the service Amazon in providing then buy from someone else. If there is nobody else, then start your own business.
Part of the variety we see on cable TV is due to the advertising. Without ads a lot of networks would not have the funding to put on the shows we enjoy. With books though this doesn't quite apply. There are a lot of crappy books that already do get published, and I don't see the quality going up with ad revenue. The cost of producing a book is relatively low compared to producing a TV show. Optimally ads in e-books would allow the price to decrease possibly opening up the world to truly free ebooks, but in reality it would probably mean a new standard where all books have ads and still cost nearly the same. With ads appearing on everything these days it makes me wonder what will be the last product we purchase? You can't subsidize the price of everything with advertisements without actually selling something in the end.
I decide to have a neutral pay scale group. Your in the group. Unfortunately everyone else in the group is unemployed. Now we will take your money and divide it up equally among everyone in the group. Fair right? Oh no, I'm not in your group. I make the rules so I'm in a different group which is also neutral.
Net neutrality in my eyes either means that we will have basic freedom of speech rules for Internet access precluding censorship by ISPs or on the other hand that we will have a everybody equal system of connecting where NOBODY will be able to get a better connection because all the bandwidth hogs will be set free. Neutral is in the eye of the beholder, and everyone pushing this issue has something to gain or lose.
Right, because I should be able to order something called Internet. It should be the Internet, all of it, however much bandwidth I choose to use, and it should be one low price. Yes ISPs do charge more to have unrestricted access, but it also means the user is probably using more bandwidth. If they were charging sanely by ammount uploaded/downloaded then this would be a reasonable thing to ask of them. As it is now, I do understand why my ISP will not let me run a web server from home unless I pay the commercial rate. Acting like this is some kind of corporate conspiracy doesn't solve the basic problem. ISPs pay for a set ammount of bandwidth and then distribute the cost among the users. If you think you can do better then start your own ISP. Otherwise stop acting like bit-torrent/web servers are basic Internet rights. If you want more pay more.
Slashdot Mirror
It just goes to show crowd-sourcing only works when you don't melt down the servers. Realistically with the slashdot community we could have had this project finished within the first five minutes, disputed and changed within the next, and finally edited back to some resemblance of validity within about 20 after that. Then again, this is Dr Who, so Steven Moffat episodes would require any visual display of the time line to be four dimensional.
Blizzard really screwed up with the DRM in Starcraft 2. The original just required the CD key to install. It was limited to one battlenet connection at a time, but you could easily create 12 copies and have a lan party. Was this piracy? Sure, but I started playing at a lan party and bought the game because of it. Up until a couple years ago I had my original starcraft key memorized. Now the free publicity feature is gone, and frankly Starcraft 2 is a POS compared to the amount of time it took for it to come out. I was expecting to go WOW, but the graphics mimic the original while maximizing processor load, the gameplay is glitchy and unbalanced, and worst of all they only include a single race campaign. In short I feel ripped off, and having to have an Internet connection to play is just over the top.
That's probably due to the fact that Iran has never invaded another country, while it found itself attacked by Iraq without any valid justification. Back then Iraq was supported by pretty much the entire western world. I won't even go into how the CIA overthrew Iran's elected government to replace it with a dictatorship(the Shah)
End result: Iran has every reason to build up its defences. History has shown Iran that the western world's propaganda about justice and fairness only applies to them, not to other countries, that the western world will support unjustified attacks on Iran and thus they need to be able to defend themselves.
Just one flaw in your logic: How is a UAV bomber a defensive weapon?
There are two contradictory things which must happen for machine voting.
1. Each person must be identifiable as having voted and see the result of the vote.
2. Each vote must be anonymous.
Machine readable ballots make sense, but they still leave the possibility of simple fraud. Take a stack of ballots and replace them with your own skewed ballots. This means that each ballot must have a unique identification, while at the same time have no way of revealing the name of the voter. I've heard of states allowing mail in ballots, this makes some sense although things do get lost in the mail. The best solution I can come up with is a ballot that you have to pick up in person from the DMV possibly. It has its own serial number and when you pick it up it is entered into the system, not as a vote from you, but simply as a vote. Your information is also entered into the system. Neither is time/date stamped and both are randomized as much as possible to hide voter identity.When you have made your educated vote you return the ballot to the polling station. If there is any doubt then the number of people who voted can be checked against the number of ballots. Also it seems logical that an individual can check to see if he/she voted, for example if I voted in the last presidential election, but I didn't actually vote it would be a sign of fraud.
So instead of having trash on the curb in a can it should sit by my house in a can? Or perhaps in a bag by the door? Garbage does attract animals and disease, but what better alternative is there than putting your can on the curb?
Weighing garbage sounds fair to me. I'd also like a year end statement showing how much the garbage disposal actually cost compared to what I'm paying. I know it sounds odd but I want actual transparency with my government and companies that are acting as public utilities.
We just had a similar thing happen here. The city's waste management company delivered new trash cans and now refuses to take trash unless it is in the cans. These trashcans also came with instructions on when they are allowed to be by the curb which makes it impossible to take out your trash can before work and pick it up after you get home (although they have not yet fined me). If you have more trash then will fit in the can you have to sit on it until the next trash day or pay a couple hundred dollars for an extra can. I pay for my waste disposal. It comes out of my water bill each month regardless of whether I use the service or not. At least here it is not something you can opt out of, and even if you decided to use an alternative you would still be paying for the service. As such when they change their rules I must follow and if they increase their rates I must pay. I do think that is entitlement. The government and in turn the private company they contract to take trash think that they are entitled to do whatever the hell they want to. Could I just vote for a different mayor or city council? Sure, but it's very doubtful anything would change since the waste management companies buy politicians. So forgive me if I am a little peeved at the thought of an expensive program (which I pay for) that makes the city more revenue from trash pickup (which I pay for again). Oh and BTW my town doesn't even have a recycling pickup program. I take my recyclables to the recycling center myself. If they ever do get a recycleable pickup program I shudder to think how much extra that will cost.
References please. How long have they been in existence. Are they specifically for the advancement of their own race? And if so, do they exist on high school/college campuses?
We already have White Entertainment Television. It's called "the vast majority of TV shows ever made".
Ahh, so if I started a network named White Entertainment Television it would be ok because it's already the status quo?
We already have the National Association for the Advancement of White People. It's called "the status quo".
Listen to yourself. Doesn't that sound the least bit racist to you? Tell me how 'white people' get better chances in life. Tell me how 'white people' from poor families have it any better than minorities from the same circumstances. If there is any status quo it is due to education and values not skin color.
The problem with cases like these is that the politician distances himself from the actual wrongdoing. It's the aids and other staffers that are making the deals, because they are both less likely to be prosecuted and easier to throw under the bus. It's not that surprising that Blagojevich was only convicted of one charge, it was the one charge he could not completely distance himself from. It's hard to prove someone was lying unless you have proof that they know the truth.So a politician can be dirty as sin, but so long as he has plausable deniability about the actions going on in his office he is still squeaky clean at trial.
You can most certainly use weapons grade uranium in a reactor. The Navy does it right now, that's how they have 20 years between refueling. Uranium fuel does easily convert into small amounts of plutonium. All you need is a reactor. A breeder reactor is designed to convert LARGE amounts of uranium into plutonium. Yes there are fear mongerers, but to completely dismiss any fears is just as foolish.
While the plant does use low enrichment uranium, it produces among other things plutonium. And although not a breeder reactor to my knowledge, it still should produce enough plutonium every fuel cycle to make several bombs. Uranium enrichment to produce nuclear weapons is very difficult, plutonium extraction isn't. So all that is left of your argument is the Russian security over the fuel. If we were making this kind of deal with one of our allies would we be preventing them from obtaining nuclear weapons or would we covertly be helping them?
I do find this news worrisome but they still have a ways to go before they actually have nuclear weapons and every step of the way can be thwarted either by covert action or by their own mistakes. Radiated fuel is not fun stuff to play with, and that alone will hopefully be enough of a deterrent.
Actually it's a little of both. From what I saw on ship in the Navy both rape and made up accusations of rape happen more often then anyone wants to admit. The problem is that true rape is emotionally traumatizing where made up accusations are not for the accuser. When the victim is questioned it can be heavy handed, but the intent is to prevent innocent people from being convicted of a crime; however, the result is that the real rape gets swept under the rug and the fake accusation on the other hand stays strong. What's the solution? I have no idea. What I do know is that there were a lot of male sailors I worked with who would never in any circumstance be in the same room with a woman with the door shut. Could be the divisional office and if there were three of us and I walked out the other male sailor walked out too. It just wasn't worth the possibility of a false accusation.
If this were true then high schools or colleges would have no problem establishing "White spirit" clubs. Also I would be able to start the Nation Association for the Advancement of White People, or White Entertainment Television. There is a double standard, and it is very slanted.
This is a side effect of "hate speech" laws that have come about.
In the US, there is no hate speech laws, the 1st amendment of the US constitution broadly prohibits regulation of the content of speech.
It's called "hate crime" not "hate speech". And yes something you say can be counted as a "hate crime".
"The 1964 Federal Civil Rights Law, 18 U.S.C. 245(b)(2), permits federal prosecution of anyone who "willingly injures, intimidates or interferes with another person, or attempts to do so, by force because of the other person's race, color, religion or national origin" [1] because of the victim's attempt to engage in one of six types of federally protected activities, such as attending school, patronizing a public place/facility, applying for employment, acting as a juror in a state court or voting."
The Violent Crime Control and Law Enforcement Act, enacted in 28 U.S.C. 994 note Sec. 280003, requires the United States Sentencing Commission to increase the penalties for hate crimes committed on the basis of the actual or perceived race, color, religion, national origin, ethnicity, or gender of any person. In 1995, the Sentencing Commission implemented these guidelines, which only apply to federal crimes.
On October 28, 2009 President Obama, signed the Matthew Shepard and James Byrd, Jr. Hate Crimes Prevention Act (attached to the National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2010), which expanded existing United States federal hate crime law to include crimes motivated by a victim's actual or perceived gender, sexual orientation, gender identity, or disability, and which dropped the prerequisite that the victim be engaging in a federally protected activity.
So if you combine all these, you end up with intimidation being a severely punishable offence if the person is a minority. Since 'intimidation' is extremely vague the law can punish you for libel or slander if it is 'intimidating' in nature. Bye freedom of speech.
This doesn't even include state laws
The news does this already. Years ago journalists went from wanting to "Deliver the news" to "Change the world" Scandal sells, rebutting a scandal not so much. Cue Fox News jokes, but all the outlets are guilty the only difference is the slant.
Land of the fee and home of the brave indeed..
Fixed that for ya.
This isn't a free speech issue as much as it is a free market issue. On one hand I'd like to support the company in charging for whatever they want to, it's their company so they can make whatever rules they want. On the other hand removing inappropriate content is not so much a service that the company provides to the community, but a service the community provides to the company. So the practice is in poor taste, but what is the problem? If you think posting on someone else's website is EVER free speech then you need to have your head checked. Slashdot is a fairly open community, but it's still possible to have your voice silenced quickly if you post something that disagrees with the status quo.
Netbooks have their own flaws, but they are really apples and oranges compared to the Ipad or any tablet. I would love to have a usable tablet PC, but the software implimentation sucks. Now we have splinter groups trying to get good software implimentation like Android or I-anything. The only way a touch screen system is going to work is if there is some sort of standard for applications. People want something that just works, and although Apple products are limited in what they do, they do "just work".
Often technology takes a step back to take a step forward. Remember when CDs-DVDs replaced floppies? Suddenly you either had to burn a -rw or waste a -r to copy files. Then USB drives hit the market and you had the best of both worlds, the size and the usability. Look at the Ipad as a stepping stone, once users see its flaws they will be ready to accept something that lacks those flaws.
The US Government plays dirty when you expose their secrets
There is no proof who made the accusations. (not the accuser, but the backer.) Or even if this is some sort of fabricated plot. That being said, the timing is suspicious. Just be careful you don't throw wild accusations aimed at discrediting someone or something you dislike.
Ok, so there is no enforcement for the laws in place, but a citizen wants to start his own enforcement. Yeah, I see this working out. It's not like there are no laws, then ignorance or naivety on the part of the government could be claimed, but there are laws that are ignored. This means the government willfully ignores the laws, and as such has something to gain by ignoring them. Could be laziness, could be corruption, could be any number of reasons, but in the end if they cared about the laws enough to let someone else enforce them then they would be enforcing them in the first place.
And wold renown chefs are slowly perfecting tastier and tastier things causing obesity. It is time for us to draw a line and submit lawsuits to make everything taste horrible again.
Reality check: If you are fat it's because you lack self control. If you are addicted to MMOs it's because you lack self control. It seems the one thing we are not promoting as a positive value in society right now is self control. It doesn't matter if the games suck, people will become addicted! For the first time in the history of man we have much more free time than we spend working, and are we going through a new renaissance? Nope, where sitting in front of screens clacking keys for no good reason. Hmm... Guess I better go cure cancer now.
Makes me miss the days when Wal-Mart broke the back of the CD market by forcing labels to sell CDs at rational prices. Consumers do control producers when we actually choose to use that power. Wal-Mart just exemplifies (and sometimes vilifies) that point. If you don't like the service Amazon in providing then buy from someone else. If there is nobody else, then start your own business.
Part of the variety we see on cable TV is due to the advertising. Without ads a lot of networks would not have the funding to put on the shows we enjoy. With books though this doesn't quite apply. There are a lot of crappy books that already do get published, and I don't see the quality going up with ad revenue. The cost of producing a book is relatively low compared to producing a TV show. Optimally ads in e-books would allow the price to decrease possibly opening up the world to truly free ebooks, but in reality it would probably mean a new standard where all books have ads and still cost nearly the same. With ads appearing on everything these days it makes me wonder what will be the last product we purchase? You can't subsidize the price of everything with advertisements without actually selling something in the end.
This goes hand in hand with the new freedom of speech law I've introduced which makes you free to say anything that doesn't disagree with me.
I decide to have a neutral pay scale group. Your in the group. Unfortunately everyone else in the group is unemployed. Now we will take your money and divide it up equally among everyone in the group. Fair right? Oh no, I'm not in your group. I make the rules so I'm in a different group which is also neutral.
Net neutrality in my eyes either means that we will have basic freedom of speech rules for Internet access precluding censorship by ISPs or on the other hand that we will have a everybody equal system of connecting where NOBODY will be able to get a better connection because all the bandwidth hogs will be set free. Neutral is in the eye of the beholder, and everyone pushing this issue has something to gain or lose.
Right, because I should be able to order something called Internet. It should be the Internet, all of it, however much bandwidth I choose to use, and it should be one low price. Yes ISPs do charge more to have unrestricted access, but it also means the user is probably using more bandwidth. If they were charging sanely by ammount uploaded/downloaded then this would be a reasonable thing to ask of them. As it is now, I do understand why my ISP will not let me run a web server from home unless I pay the commercial rate. Acting like this is some kind of corporate conspiracy doesn't solve the basic problem. ISPs pay for a set ammount of bandwidth and then distribute the cost among the users. If you think you can do better then start your own ISP. Otherwise stop acting like bit-torrent/web servers are basic Internet rights. If you want more pay more.