Secondly, can't you please take the time to actually break your concerns down into some sort of a rational list of potential problems you foresee
1. Unintended consequences on the market. Will this slow broadband rollout?
2. Going beyond basic, technical, historical neutrality as it existed before this issue even became popular. The initial pinciples as stated by the FCC were good. But we've seen that already grew quite a bit in their first proposed rules, and as you note had exceptions carved out. Keep it going, add lawmakers with their own agendas in it (MAFIAA ass-kissers, fairness doctrine promoters), and it has a good potential to get very scary for the open nature of the Internet. The last head of the FCC was worried about it, the current head of the Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs once proposed an Internet fairness doctrine, full government control of what you read (individual choice on whether to read something is "anti-democratic"). He's since backed off that as impractical -- but that means if it becomes practical he'd love to do it. He's not alone. Waxman's people even met with the FCC over "media diversity," a codeword for fairness doctrine.
My problem with any variant of a fairness doctrine is, of course, who decides what's fair.
I would contend that given how we've managed to eventually get the hang of this whole phone system
That one's littered with disasters. Remember the breakup of the Ma Bell monopoly? Did you know the government created that monopoly in the first place?
Wind, waves, currents (differing surface and at depths), it spready pretty far. That teaspon won't distribute throughout the pool either, but in the larger picture it's still not much.
The most damage was done to our economy. The ocean will recover naturally better than we could ever hope to try ourselves. Nature is good at cleaning up natural substances.
Christian Scientists are actually some of the least extremist Christians I know. They have beliefs I consider rather odd, but then so do all other religions.
I calculated the amount of oil once. Based on the size of the Gulf of Mexico, and the high estimate for how much oil was pumped in, IIRC it came out to the equivalent of about a teaspoon or so in an Olympic-sized swimming pool. Not exactly devastating.
Except he's not really in the pocket of the telcos. He takes far more money from Google and others who have an interest in an open Internet.
I think he's doing this on principle. I am for net neutrality, but I am afraid of what our government might do when making laws to supposedly enforce net neutrality -- but will likely be loaded with various partisan interests where only we lose.
It would be good to have a skeptic, someone who won't just dive in with spending trillions and curtailing rights every time someone brings up the climate change bogeyman.
What I am worried about is this guy is in the pocket of the entertainment industry. He wanted to strengthen the DMCA's provision on anti-circumvention software, and this is THE guy who introduced SOPA.
The meat of the bill is the part where it forbids any regulatory agency from creating new rules. Remember, regulatory agencies operate under the authority of Congress, certain functions reserved to Congress under the Constitution being delegated by Congress to that agency under that laws that created it.
But in general, each Congress can make its own rules, and is not restrained by previous Congresses. Usually, they just adopt the previous Congress' rules. But they can make a rule that binds them for the rest of the Congress. Technically the rule can be rescinded, but that can be made much harder to do than simply passing legislation that the rule prohibits. In addition, if the rule has popular support, then those pushing to rescind the rule will be at a political disadvantage.
elected by a gerrymandered minority of House voters
Gerrymandering goes on across the board. Both parties do it as much as they can. Have you seen Jackson Lee's district? Or the Illinois 4th? Those Democrats would not be in office if not for racist carve-outs. Of course some gerrymanders aren't for partisan political reasons. Arizona's famed 2nd looks funny because the Hopis and Navajos didn't want to be represented by the same congresscritter.
Darrell Issa has spent his career investigating and attacking Democrats. It's cost a fortune, halted government action, and turned up nothing but empty headlines and a blowjob.
Well, there is that running guns to Mexico thing. Something's going on, enough for Obama's Attorney General to flat-out lie directly to Congress to cover it up. And then there's the administration's attempt to cover up and stonewall investigation of the the dropping of the Black Panther voting rights case. One DoJ lawyer, a former ACLU lawyer, was ordered not to testify and transferred to make it harder, and he had to eventually do it under whistleblower protection. You don't do things like that unless you're hiding wrongdoing.
The other side always says the investigations are a waste of money and resources -- because they don't like being investigated.
All but the The Daily Show claim to be news. They all have a mix of news and editorial, and the news itself can be heavily biased. For example, near the end of the last election, MSNBC ran no positive news stories about Romney, and no negative news stories about Obama.
But then the owner tells you that up front, unlike mainstream news sources like MSNBC, CBS and Fox.
And unlike them, if want to make up your own mind, Groklaw always has the original documents for you to read for yourself. You don't even have to read the commentary.
I'm a big fan of disproportionate response. If you slap me, I'll fuck you up so bad you'll apologize if you slap me again in your dreams.
That way, I never get slapped again. And that's kind of the point of a response. Right now Israel roughs up Hamas a bit, they spend a couple years rearming, then and it starts all over again.
If they didn't have uncle Sam condoning their every move
If they weren't in between several foreign powers hell-bent on their destruction, suffering constant attacks against their country, usually deliberately aimed at their civilian populations. That kind of thing engenders some sympathy. Israel has survived, what, three attempts to wipe it off the map? The first one was against the combined might of all the surrounding Arab countries.
It's the Democrat politicians who are waging it. And it's not to the benefit of the poor or detriment of the rich, it's just so they can get the votes of the ignorant masses to stay in office. The rich still fund their campaigns, the politicians still loyal to them, not the people.
But in truth there are no black hats or white knights in this tale. It's about shades of gray, where obstinacy, miscalculation, and lousy luck connived to create corporate catastrophe. Almost none of the parties involved would speak on the record. Still, it's clear from court documents and background interviews with a range of sources that practically nobody involved can shoot straight: The Teamsters remain stuck in a time warp, unwilling to sufficiently adapt in a competitive marketplace. The PE firm failed to turn Hostess around after taking it over. The hedgies can't see beyond their internal rates of return. Et cetera, et cetera, et cetera.
Private equity firms like this are not the hostile company busters of the 80s. They buy into failing companies (and Hostess was failing before they came along), and try to return them to profitability. They make the most money when the company turns around and becomes long-term profitable, because then they pull in the return on the investment for years. If they can't turn it around, then they let the company go bankrupt (as it would have anyway) and logically try to cut their losses as much as possible.
Unfortunately, a major obstacle to profitability is often unrealistic deals with unions made by previous management decades ago, deals that in the current environment are bleeding the company dry, leading to inevitable banktupcy. So you have a choice, just let the company die, or everybody work together to salvage something from it.
The only thing typical about "vulture capitalism" is how the term is grossly misued by those promoting class warfare.
Lofgren represents Northern California with the tech and Internet companies. They have a monied interest in an open Internet, naturally you'd think that their paid congresscritter fights for that. This bill falls right into that. However, back in 2002 she introduced a bill that would invalidate EULAs. That would seriously anger this core constituency. It really seems that she's looking out for us.
Well, at least in this one respect (she still promotes institutional racism, unequal protection under the law, and flat-out doesn't believe in three of the ten amendments in the Bill of Rights).
And if I understand bankruptcy right, the purchaser could buy the assets, and then hire on who he wants to run them without any union at all. This is the classic instance of the union being so stubborn it's willing to kill the company, lose people their jobs, and lose even its own union dues.
On its face, the patent never should have been granted, because it was something you would obviously do.
In your opinion. You may be right, may be not. That's why we have this process. Gevo is backed by the megacorporation Virgin Group, so this isn't the poor little guy getting squashed.
Butamax has not tried to engage in commercial production.
Gevo's business plan is to buy plants and convert them. A few years ago, both only had their pilot projects. Gevo just barely went beyond that recently with their first commercial scale plant (easier to do using stolen technology and converting your own plants). Butamax has a different business model, getting ethanol producers to switch to butanol using their technology. Having the weight of BP and DuPont behind it, they have the potential to get far more butanol flowing than the single company Gevo could hope to produce itself.
I was opposing the concept of absolutely no person-equivalent rights for organizations. It would be untenable otherwise. Imagine, prosecution for upsetting the politicians, searches without warrants, shut down and seizure with no due process.
A word processor is not an attempt to communicate, it is a tool. The source code of a word processor, however, most definitely IS a communication
Source code communicates to a compiler how the compiler is supposed to function. But a binary communicates to the operating system and hardware how they are supposed to function. The binary is effectively your original communication interpreted into a different language, which, if it were a book, would be covered. Also, it is possible to write the machine language binary data from scratch, just as values inserted into memory locations, which would make the binary itself your source code. I've written that way.
Under the "organizaitons have no rights" idea, I and my friends can individually spend our money to buy ad time to promote the cause, and we would have the right to do it as individuals. But if we pool our money to buy an ad, we would lose all rights to air it.
Today the greatest threat to democracy is the power of special interest groups. These groups have agendas of their own, and they act in ways that their individual members might not
Like unions! They oppose laws that restrict their ability to use their members' money to influence elections even when the beliefs of the union are opposite the beliefs of the member. Unfortunately, for many people quitting the union is not a realistic option due to various laws (no right to work) and circumstances. Members of the NRA or Greenpeace can just opt to not renew. Shareholders in corporations can sell their shares. But union members are mostly screwed.
Organizations are not people, just as a pack of dogs is not a dog and a mob of people is not a person.
However, an organization is made of people, and do they lose all of their rights as part of the organization? You and a bunch of friends don't like people killing kittens, and you use your full constitutional ights to fight the killing of kittens. To be more efficient, you decide to form an official organization to promote your cause and fight under its mantle. Now, because you did that, you lose your rights, making your efforts less effective?
For machine generated content, I'll accept that when machines start having original ideas.
Slashdot Mirror
1. Unintended consequences on the market. Will this slow broadband rollout?
2. Going beyond basic, technical, historical neutrality as it existed before this issue even became popular. The initial pinciples as stated by the FCC were good. But we've seen that already grew quite a bit in their first proposed rules, and as you note had exceptions carved out. Keep it going, add lawmakers with their own agendas in it (MAFIAA ass-kissers, fairness doctrine promoters), and it has a good potential to get very scary for the open nature of the Internet. The last head of the FCC was worried about it, the current head of the Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs once proposed an Internet fairness doctrine, full government control of what you read (individual choice on whether to read something is "anti-democratic"). He's since backed off that as impractical -- but that means if it becomes practical he'd love to do it. He's not alone. Waxman's people even met with the FCC over "media diversity," a codeword for fairness doctrine.
My problem with any variant of a fairness doctrine is, of course, who decides what's fair.
That one's littered with disasters. Remember the breakup of the Ma Bell monopoly? Did you know the government created that monopoly in the first place?
Sure, you have a first-aid box, but that's tucked away somewhere. The toolbox is right there.
Wind, waves, currents (differing surface and at depths), it spready pretty far. That teaspon won't distribute throughout the pool either, but in the larger picture it's still not much.
The most damage was done to our economy. The ocean will recover naturally better than we could ever hope to try ourselves. Nature is good at cleaning up natural substances.
Christian Scientists are actually some of the least extremist Christians I know. They have beliefs I consider rather odd, but then so do all other religions.
I calculated the amount of oil once. Based on the size of the Gulf of Mexico, and the high estimate for how much oil was pumped in, IIRC it came out to the equivalent of about a teaspoon or so in an Olympic-sized swimming pool. Not exactly devastating.
Except he's not really in the pocket of the telcos. He takes far more money from Google and others who have an interest in an open Internet.
I think he's doing this on principle. I am for net neutrality, but I am afraid of what our government might do when making laws to supposedly enforce net neutrality -- but will likely be loaded with various partisan interests where only we lose.
It would be good to have a skeptic, someone who won't just dive in with spending trillions and curtailing rights every time someone brings up the climate change bogeyman.
What I am worried about is this guy is in the pocket of the entertainment industry. He wanted to strengthen the DMCA's provision on anti-circumvention software, and this is THE guy who introduced SOPA.
The meat of the bill is the part where it forbids any regulatory agency from creating new rules. Remember, regulatory agencies operate under the authority of Congress, certain functions reserved to Congress under the Constitution being delegated by Congress to that agency under that laws that created it.
But in general, each Congress can make its own rules, and is not restrained by previous Congresses. Usually, they just adopt the previous Congress' rules. But they can make a rule that binds them for the rest of the Congress. Technically the rule can be rescinded, but that can be made much harder to do than simply passing legislation that the rule prohibits. In addition, if the rule has popular support, then those pushing to rescind the rule will be at a political disadvantage.
Gerrymandering goes on across the board. Both parties do it as much as they can. Have you seen Jackson Lee's district? Or the Illinois 4th? Those Democrats would not be in office if not for racist carve-outs. Of course some gerrymanders aren't for partisan political reasons. Arizona's famed 2nd looks funny because the Hopis and Navajos didn't want to be represented by the same congresscritter.
The donations to him from tech companies such as Google, who have an interest in an open Internet, are far more than donations from the telcos.
All but the The Daily Show claim to be news. They all have a mix of news and editorial, and the news itself can be heavily biased. For example, near the end of the last election, MSNBC ran no positive news stories about Romney, and no negative news stories about Obama.
But then the owner tells you that up front, unlike mainstream news sources like MSNBC, CBS and Fox.
And unlike them, if want to make up your own mind, Groklaw always has the original documents for you to read for yourself. You don't even have to read the commentary.
It is perfectly legal to shoot someone who threatens you with a knife.
I'm a big fan of disproportionate response. If you slap me, I'll fuck you up so bad you'll apologize if you slap me again in your dreams.
That way, I never get slapped again. And that's kind of the point of a response. Right now Israel roughs up Hamas a bit, they spend a couple years rearming, then and it starts all over again.
If they weren't in between several foreign powers hell-bent on their destruction, suffering constant attacks against their country, usually deliberately aimed at their civilian populations. That kind of thing engenders some sympathy. Israel has survived, what, three attempts to wipe it off the map? The first one was against the combined might of all the surrounding Arab countries.
It's the Democrat politicians who are waging it. And it's not to the benefit of the poor or detriment of the rich, it's just so they can get the votes of the ignorant masses to stay in office. The rich still fund their campaigns, the politicians still loyal to them, not the people.
From the first article:
Private equity firms like this are not the hostile company busters of the 80s. They buy into failing companies (and Hostess was failing before they came along), and try to return them to profitability. They make the most money when the company turns around and becomes long-term profitable, because then they pull in the return on the investment for years. If they can't turn it around, then they let the company go bankrupt (as it would have anyway) and logically try to cut their losses as much as possible.
Unfortunately, a major obstacle to profitability is often unrealistic deals with unions made by previous management decades ago, deals that in the current environment are bleeding the company dry, leading to inevitable banktupcy. So you have a choice, just let the company die, or everybody work together to salvage something from it.
The only thing typical about "vulture capitalism" is how the term is grossly misued by those promoting class warfare.
Lofgren represents Northern California with the tech and Internet companies. They have a monied interest in an open Internet, naturally you'd think that their paid congresscritter fights for that. This bill falls right into that. However, back in 2002 she introduced a bill that would invalidate EULAs. That would seriously anger this core constituency. It really seems that she's looking out for us.
Well, at least in this one respect (she still promotes institutional racism, unequal protection under the law, and flat-out doesn't believe in three of the ten amendments in the Bill of Rights).
And if I understand bankruptcy right, the purchaser could buy the assets, and then hire on who he wants to run them without any union at all. This is the classic instance of the union being so stubborn it's willing to kill the company, lose people their jobs, and lose even its own union dues.
In your opinion. You may be right, may be not. That's why we have this process. Gevo is backed by the megacorporation Virgin Group, so this isn't the poor little guy getting squashed.
Gevo's business plan is to buy plants and convert them. A few years ago, both only had their pilot projects. Gevo just barely went beyond that recently with their first commercial scale plant (easier to do using stolen technology and converting your own plants). Butamax has a different business model, getting ethanol producers to switch to butanol using their technology. Having the weight of BP and DuPont behind it, they have the potential to get far more butanol flowing than the single company Gevo could hope to produce itself.
I was opposing the concept of absolutely no person-equivalent rights for organizations. It would be untenable otherwise. Imagine, prosecution for upsetting the politicians, searches without warrants, shut down and seizure with no due process.
Source code communicates to a compiler how the compiler is supposed to function. But a binary communicates to the operating system and hardware how they are supposed to function. The binary is effectively your original communication interpreted into a different language, which, if it were a book, would be covered. Also, it is possible to write the machine language binary data from scratch, just as values inserted into memory locations, which would make the binary itself your source code. I've written that way.
Under the "organizaitons have no rights" idea, I and my friends can individually spend our money to buy ad time to promote the cause, and we would have the right to do it as individuals. But if we pool our money to buy an ad, we would lose all rights to air it.
I'm thinking genuine original creative ideas vs. an algorithm that just combines words according to preset rules. I don't think we're quite there yet.
Like unions! They oppose laws that restrict their ability to use their members' money to influence elections even when the beliefs of the union are opposite the beliefs of the member. Unfortunately, for many people quitting the union is not a realistic option due to various laws (no right to work) and circumstances. Members of the NRA or Greenpeace can just opt to not renew. Shareholders in corporations can sell their shares. But union members are mostly screwed.
However, an organization is made of people, and do they lose all of their rights as part of the organization? You and a bunch of friends don't like people killing kittens, and you use your full constitutional ights to fight the killing of kittens. To be more efficient, you decide to form an official organization to promote your cause and fight under its mantle. Now, because you did that, you lose your rights, making your efforts less effective?
For machine generated content, I'll accept that when machines start having original ideas.