I've experienced almost the same thing, but with engineers instead of scientists. I attributed the engineer's disdain for software quality to a different motivation. Namely, the disparity in status and pay between engineers and programmers. I believe that they felt that spending extra time on making the software readable, maintainable and all those other ables was beneath them.
The proof of the pudding came when I happened to hire an inexperienced guy as a programmer. He was so smart that he soon learned not only to program but even to be a better engineer than the real engineers. The company culture turned against him viciously. They ran him out of town on a rail. Fortunately for him, he move to Santa Clara, got a job with a software company not involved with engineering, and soon earned 600% more than those engineers.
Is that little story off topic? I think not. I believe that engineers and probably scientists feel very threatened when they write software in the presence of lower paid programmers who might be able to do it better. Their defense is to downplay all aspects of the software other than it's ability to calculate the right answer in thier own hands.
The cure? In scientific or engineering cultures, give non-science non-engineer talented tech people as much pay and status. In hospitals some nurses should earn more than doctors. When will that happen? Not in my lifetime.
What security threat? You don't need a map. Just cruise the coast looking for signs that say DO NOT ANCHOR OR DREDGE. The US military figured that out decades ago.
And no you can not make them more secure by not putting up those warning signs because someone will anchor or dredge and cut the cable.
Everyone of your example's senior citizens is collecting Social Security, which has very strict requirements for identification.
What the hell are you talking about? I'm a senior collecting SS. I applied online and was then interviewed by phone. No scrap of ID was ever requested. I have a drop box snail mail address. I never needed to appear in person. All I needed was a SSN and an account for deposits.
I think the premise of the summary ignores trends. People love getting digital stuff wirelessly. They also love eliminating duplicate or overlapping monthly bills.
Just as wired telephones become fewer every year, I expect the demand for wired (or fibered) Internet to decrease each year wile demand for wireless services increase.
But high bandwidth wireless for everybody is very difficult and very expensive. We're already seeing the price increased and data caps that add negative feedback to wireless demand. Nevertheless, the public's enthusiasm for doing it wirelessly can't be extinguished.
The original article does a hack job on the basic premise. It says that expert after expert cited "sharpening the pencil" as the justification for relaxing standards. The AP author wields a very broad brush and characterizes all of that as "fudging the answers"
The implication is that the tens of thousands of people world wide employed in engineering analysis to sharpen the pencil of nuclear plant analysis are all liars and frauds. Then throw into the pot all the regulators from all the companies who conspire. Of course the AP author cites no sources nor gives any basis for his allegation of fudging. Nevertheless, many gullible readers will praise him as a fearless investigative journalist.
I'll confess. I was once one of the engineers employed to do the analysis to help sharpen the pencils. Believe me, if all they wanted was fudged answers, I could have sent them a fudged report then gone out sailing instead of sweating to get it right. Of course people strain extra hard to prove the desirable result if possible. But in 30 years with four companies in three countries, I never ever saw any instance of fudging.
Is there any other field in which one can get away with generally branding engineering analysis and scientific research as fudging? Oh wait, how about climate research? Are Slashdot readers ready to believe an unsubstantiated accusation that all that work is fudged?
I recall hearing about a fun concept. It would use a solar sail only 2 molecules in thickness and a single chip payload weighing only a gram or two. It would be accelerated by laser to 0.25 to reach Proxima Centauri in about 17 years and beam close-up pictures home. No need to decelerate.
I live on a boat and cruise the US East Coast and The Bahamas. We don't stop at marinas, we anchor out and try to snag a WIFI from somewhere within a mile or so. I have a omnidirectionalWIFI booster antenna.
People like me have no wired option.
We're often in out island areas where there is no cell phone signal.
There is no paid service I can buy that covers all or even half the places I go.
I sympathize with the librarian's plight, but they are out of step with today's reality.
The writer who claimed books were unobtainable may be wrong technically, but he is in the main stream and he represents what I expect of future generations. IMHO, the main stream is, by definition, correct.
Librarians need to digitize their catalogs and to make them discoverable by a general purpose Google (or otherwise) search. Clicking the search result link should take one to a page for ordering an interlibrary loan without regard to political borders and without clunky proprietary library software. Interlibrary loans over long distances may be too expensive, so digital delivery should be the solution.
The point is that libraries, like countless other businesses, must review their business practices and adapt them to the demands of our spoiled and Internet-enabled consumer society. To do otherwise invites irrelevancy. Witness the fate of the music industry for example. Consumers are in control of how they want their goods and services delivered.
If the national library association were to approach Google for technical and financial help to do such a project, I would not be surprised if it succeeds.
The really tough reform issue will be to change library boards of trustees such that 18 is the median age of trustees.
IBM seems to be getting off easy. $10 million for hundreds of thousands of dollars in bribes covering multiple incidents over an extended period of time.
What a comfort. In case of an extinction level event, we can be assured that the final act of the last human survivor will be to check Slashdot for updates.
Fascinating. It appears that the Western Democracies are simultaneously the most vulnerable to cyber attack, and the most capable of launching cyber attacks.
That creates an unique and fantastic challenge and conundrum for our diplomats responsible for negotiating treaties regarding cyber warfare.
Perhaps my great grandchildren will get to read the actual story of how they navigated that narrow path. For now, we can only hope that Tom Clancy might be inspired to write one of his marvelous novels around this theme. I'm sure it would make fascinating reading.
Net neutrality advocates main claim is that regulation is needed to preserve a level playing field. They say that a poor startup site must be able to deliver its content to us as fast as giants like Google. That's preposterous.
Rich providers are able to buy many servers and faster servers. They lease multiple T3 lines instead of one T1. They also pay big bucks to third parties like Akamai to cache their content locally and deliver it faster. For example, only Hulu.com is able to deliver smooth video to me via my smartphone tethered to my laptop. Hulu has plenty of expensive adaptive software to do that and they also spend untold millions to Akamai to help speed it along. No proposed regulations will ever level the playing field to counter the advantage of deep pockets.
Another thing bugs me. The net neutrality debate focuses exlusively on ISP carriers. Suppose instead of Comcast conspiring to slow down Google content, it is my web browser that throttles Google content? Suppose Apple starts slowing down content from any source that competes with Itunes? Suppose, Google slows down content to anyone not using the Google Chrome browser? Suppose, Hulu blocks content to people not running politically correct software [they already block delivery to Google TV]. Suppose the news networks decide to deliver different content to red states and blue states? The point is that there are countless non-ISP parties who are able to screw up a freely flowing Internet. It makes no sense to reglate ISPs and not everyone else.
I'm deeply suspicious of present day net neutrality advocates. Their proposals will not create a level playing field, nor will they regulate anybody other than the ISP carriers. I smell a hidden political agenda here; just what I haven't figured out yet.
In order to make such an explicit prediction as a "two year delay", that German consultant must have had access to extraordinarily detailed information.
How many centrifuges are in operation. How many years scheduled to completion. How many centrifuge-years were lost to the Suxnet worm.
I believe it more likely that the aforementioned consultant was blowing smoke just to bask in the press attention.
If you want to send any enterprise down the tubes, start by giving one group the authority and another the responsibility. DHS wants to dictate standards but when the next big blackout occurs will DHS rush to accept the blame?
Have we considered the risk of self-inflicted damage caused by ill-conceived government-mandated software?
You don't need to be a libertarian to see that this is insanity.
I still think though that the definition of net neutrality leads to absurdities.
Say a constituent and Comcast customer wants to watch a movie on hulu using his google TV. At a minimum, it takes the cooperation of Hulu, Comcast, and Google for it to work. A closer look is likely to reveal a dozen or more vendors in the chain of delivery. As I understand it, only Comcast would be accused of violating net neutrality. All the other vendors are just exercising their rights. That's absurd. From the constituent's view, it is immaterial which vendor or vendors blocks his viewing; the result is the same.
I fail to see where the network ISPs should be singled out for treatment different than any other vendor in the chain. They are not public utilities, nor are they monopolies.
I also fail to see how a new law can create a level playing field. For example, Hulu uses the services of Akamai to speed delivery of their traffic. That's expensive. Of all the video sources, only Hulu delivers non-jerky video to my PC. The bar is not low for would-be competitors to Hulu, it's high. Akamai services are expensive.
Would a net neutrality law forbid services like Akamai? What about those who afford a T3 line rather than a T1? I think not. My point is that the playing field will never be flat, with or without a new law. Wealth gives big advantages to a startup company; we can't erase that.
If you think network providers should become regulated public utilities,like electricity providers, just say so.
It makes little sense to me to waste so much hot air and lobbying effort to regulate what ISPs can and cannot do if non-ISP parties can accomplish the same evil means.
Hulu, Apple, Google Android, TV networks, Microsoft. It's hard to think of a player in the net market who is not trying to restrict unfettered access to any and all apps and uses. I don't understand why people get so worked up if an ISP wants to throttle competitor's video, but they easily accept that Apple's Itunes store wants to refuse competing apps from getting to the Iphone. Aren't they nearly identical issues?
In many cases, the vendors are using fights against malware to get their toe in the door to regulate content. We must remember that neutrality is like free speech. Popular speech doesn't need protection, the most hated speech does.
Since language is all important in today's politics, I suggest that Network Neutrality is a misnomer. It suggests that it is an issue only for network providers. A more appropriate term would be Freedom of Internet and in the purest form it would forbid any party from inhibiting what anybody else does on the Internet, good or evil. I'm pretty sure that non of us want total Freedom of Internet any more than we want total Free Speech. But the debate would be best served by starting with total freedom as a starting point, then carefully carving out the exceptions we want to make.
I used to deliberately procrastinate on all coding jobs. That is because I found that I performed best under the stress of an approaching deadline. It forces you to totally focus on the job. In those circumstances, I was most creative, and productive, and made the fewest errors.
I believe that's why programmers have always loved all nighters. Programs conceived, designed, implemented, and tested in a single unbroken session are far more cohesive than any others.
I say all this in the past tense. Eventually I burned out when the stress overwhelmed me. Now I'm retired to a cruising sailboat and the closest thing to a deadline I see is the approaching change of season.
The ACLU report addresses the pro-net-neutrality arguments. The other side of the coin is the revenue requirements of the ISPs and their business models. Nobody can fairly judge this issue without consideration of both sides.
A few months ago, I got a Droid phone. I also downloaded a tether app (forbidden by Verizon's non-net-neutral terms) but I got it anyhow. I used them to catch up on a few TV programs I like (I don't have access to regular TV). I think I watched for 5 hours. It worked great and I really enjoyed it. The next day I checked my use and I was shocked to learn that I used 2GB in one night. If I continued to indulge this way, my use would be 60GB per month!! With tens of millions of people buying smart phones, and with HD video coming online via wireless, it is not hard to imagine that the aggregate use demand may climb by a factor of 50-100 in the next 5 years and 1,000 within 10 years.
I believe that wireless is the future of the Internet. I also acknowledge that wireless ISPs have special problems because of the needs for huge captial investments in infrastructure.
How many trillions will it take to expand the wireless capacity 50 fold in the next few years? I don't have any hard figures. Let's just say a cost of $500/month per user. The ISP would have to charge that, plus profit and overhead to survive. Would I pay that much? Hell no. Nor do I know anybody who would. So, what's the solution?
1) The ISPs can charge everyone more preserving net neutrality. As it gets more expensive, use will drop off. Eventually, it will meet a stable point where demand versus the pain of paying reach a balance. Personally, I believe that the balance will end up around $100/month for a 5GB quota. Many more people will have smart phones, but they will be frustrated in being only to stream a fraction of what they desire.
2) They can violate net-neutrality and charge more for premium services. They could even charge per-byte instead of a flat fee. People like Steve Jobs will no doubt be willing to pay $500 or even $5,000/month to indulge themselves. It's like progressive taxes. It would work only if the rich are willing to pay most of the costs.
3) They can not invest and fail to meet the increase in demand, in other words, just maintain the status quo. There would be no increase in monthly quotas, and only modest increases in the number of smartphone users.
Scenarios 1 and 3 cause the Internet's future to fail because of rationing of service one way or another. Scenario 2 causes it to fail, in the view of many, because of loss of net neutrality.
Are there any win-win scenarios that maintain net-neutrality and also provide the vast amount of capital needed for wireless infrastructure? I don't see them.
My dad worked for Chrysler back then. He got to participate in a publicity stunt with the turbine car.
After alerting the TV network, he drove up to Rockefeller Center in the turbine car. In front of the cameras he poured a quart of Chanel No. 5 in the tank. Then he drove it all over Manhattan the rest of the day.
As an added twist, he did the whole thing on three wheels. He had removed one of the front wheels to demonstrate the superiority of Chrysler's torsion bar suspension.
It started with a half-hearted campaign against Fox News. They couldn't censor them so they tried to discredit them. Next the White House called liberal commentary on MSNBC and invaluable public service.
Then comes the Citizens United case. They hate the idea of first amendment rights being given to corporations, but they love it for non-profits and labor unions.
Next, Obama couldn't bring himself to criticize the backers of the ground zero mosque but he couldn't resist trying to prevent a preacher in Florida from exercising his first amendment rights.
Now we come to web sites. Time to try to eliminate the ones we don't like.
Never before have we had such a thin-skinned president, nor an administration so openly contemptuous of rights for those who disagree with them. I suppose tha't not really true, America once passed the Alien and Sedition Act.
This hostility to free speech is a far greater threat to your and my civil rights than the Patriot Act ever was. The current White House threatens freedom more than Dick Cheney and Karl Rove ever imagined. Where is the outcry? Where are the demonstrators? Where are the media campaigns? WTF?
Sure I'll blow all my mod points for daring to post anti-Obama stuff. So be it.
The last time this issue came up, I started sending emails to the developers of my apps challenging their need for permissions that don't seem to make sense. I got several replies that stated that the legitimate permission the developer needs is buried under overly broad packages.
For example, a battery monitor app needs to request access to "Phone Calls" to read the battery state.
With such granularity developers can't be responsibly specific and end users have no rational way to accept/reject apps based on the permission requested. Whatever else, the granularity of permissions packages must be changed first.
Western countries want a treaty banning cyber warfare. By that we mean hacking but eastern countries mean things like Twitter. It's a formula for perpetual stalemate.
It really upsets me to see how popular it is for Attorney Generals to abuse their powers to feather their political beds. I suppose it was started by Elliot Spitzer's great success at the tactic. We need a way to check their powers.
Might the Citizens United decision point the way? In that decision, the justices said that corporations are people with respect to first amendment rights. What about fourth amendment rights about unreasonable search and seizure? It seems that one of the primary forms of government abuse these days is to demand that corporations cough up all sorts of information at the drop of a hat in support of a so-called "investigation."
Without fourth amendment rights, government orders, subpoenas, regulations, and statue laws are not required to be "reasonable."
Clearly, the USPTO will never get rid of that 700000 backlog satisfactorily. Their archaic approach can never succeed. Software types just don't have the same tradition of publishing their ideas the way that other fields do. Therefore, they don't create the paper trail that patent examiners rely on to make their decisions.
The most promising solution to this problem I've heard is to make it a kind of wiki. Online users could contribute to the wiki evidence of prior art. In this case, crowd sourcing seems like the right thing to do.
On the other hand a patent wiki might just bring out the worst from many people. Snark, misinformation, and partisan sniping might dominate. Even without that, the volume of work needed to properly research 700000+ applications is huge, maybe much more than the total effort spent to create Wikipedia. Appreciation and rewards for that hard work would be even less than Wikipedia because the contributors don't see their work posted prominently.
Other than a wiki, the only other systemic solution I can imagine would be legislation to sharply curtail the kinds of things that are patentable; thus invalidating 90% or more of the backlog with a wave of the pen.
Slashdot Mirror
I've experienced almost the same thing, but with engineers instead of scientists. I attributed the engineer's disdain for software quality to a different motivation. Namely, the disparity in status and pay between engineers and programmers. I believe that they felt that spending extra time on making the software readable, maintainable and all those other ables was beneath them.
The proof of the pudding came when I happened to hire an inexperienced guy as a programmer. He was so smart that he soon learned not only to program but even to be a better engineer than the real engineers. The company culture turned against him viciously. They ran him out of town on a rail. Fortunately for him, he move to Santa Clara, got a job with a software company not involved with engineering, and soon earned 600% more than those engineers.
Is that little story off topic? I think not. I believe that engineers and probably scientists feel very threatened when they write software in the presence of lower paid programmers who might be able to do it better. Their defense is to downplay all aspects of the software other than it's ability to calculate the right answer in thier own hands.
The cure? In scientific or engineering cultures, give non-science non-engineer talented tech people as much pay and status. In hospitals some nurses should earn more than doctors. When will that happen? Not in my lifetime.
What security threat? You don't need a map. Just cruise the coast looking for signs that say DO NOT ANCHOR OR DREDGE. The US military figured that out decades ago.
And no you can not make them more secure by not putting up those warning signs because someone will anchor or dredge and cut the cable.
Everyone of your example's senior citizens is collecting Social Security, which has very strict requirements for identification.
What the hell are you talking about? I'm a senior collecting SS. I applied online and was then interviewed by phone. No scrap of ID was ever requested. I have a drop box snail mail address. I never needed to appear in person. All I needed was a SSN and an account for deposits.
I think the premise of the summary ignores trends. People love getting digital stuff wirelessly. They also love eliminating duplicate or overlapping monthly bills.
Just as wired telephones become fewer every year, I expect the demand for wired (or fibered) Internet to decrease each year wile demand for wireless services increase.
But high bandwidth wireless for everybody is very difficult and very expensive. We're already seeing the price increased and data caps that add negative feedback to wireless demand. Nevertheless, the public's enthusiasm for doing it wirelessly can't be extinguished.
The original article does a hack job on the basic premise. It says that expert after expert cited "sharpening the pencil" as the justification for relaxing standards. The AP author wields a very broad brush and characterizes all of that as "fudging the answers"
The implication is that the tens of thousands of people world wide employed in engineering analysis to sharpen the pencil of nuclear plant analysis are all liars and frauds. Then throw into the pot all the regulators from all the companies who conspire. Of course the AP author cites no sources nor gives any basis for his allegation of fudging. Nevertheless, many gullible readers will praise him as a fearless investigative journalist.
I'll confess. I was once one of the engineers employed to do the analysis to help sharpen the pencils. Believe me, if all they wanted was fudged answers, I could have sent them a fudged report then gone out sailing instead of sweating to get it right. Of course people strain extra hard to prove the desirable result if possible. But in 30 years with four companies in three countries, I never ever saw any instance of fudging.
Is there any other field in which one can get away with generally branding engineering analysis and scientific research as fudging? Oh wait, how about climate research? Are Slashdot readers ready to believe an unsubstantiated accusation that all that work is fudged?
I recall hearing about a fun concept. It would use a solar sail only 2 molecules in thickness and a single chip payload weighing only a gram or two. It would be accelerated by laser to 0.25 to reach Proxima Centauri in about 17 years and beam close-up pictures home. No need to decelerate.
Does that qualify as an interstellar mission?
I live on a boat and cruise the US East Coast and The Bahamas. We don't stop at marinas, we anchor out and try to snag a WIFI from somewhere within a mile or so. I have a omnidirectionalWIFI booster antenna.
People like me have no wired option.
We're often in out island areas where there is no cell phone signal.
There is no paid service I can buy that covers all or even half the places I go.
I know I'm freeloading but I have no alternative.
I sympathize with the librarian's plight, but they are out of step with today's reality.
The writer who claimed books were unobtainable may be wrong technically, but he is in the main stream and he represents what I expect of future generations. IMHO, the main stream is, by definition, correct.
Librarians need to digitize their catalogs and to make them discoverable by a general purpose Google (or otherwise) search. Clicking the search result link should take one to a page for ordering an interlibrary loan without regard to political borders and without clunky proprietary library software. Interlibrary loans over long distances may be too expensive, so digital delivery should be the solution.
The point is that libraries, like countless other businesses, must review their business practices and adapt them to the demands of our spoiled and Internet-enabled consumer society. To do otherwise invites irrelevancy. Witness the fate of the music industry for example. Consumers are in control of how they want their goods and services delivered.
If the national library association were to approach Google for technical and financial help to do such a project, I would not be surprised if it succeeds.
The really tough reform issue will be to change library boards of trustees such that 18 is the median age of trustees.
IBM seems to be getting off easy. $10 million for hundreds of thousands of dollars in bribes covering multiple incidents over an extended period of time.
ABB, with headquarters in Zurich was recently fined $58 million for only two, relatively small, bribe incidents.
http://www.abb.com/cawp/seitp202/b7aa479846d0fe19c12577ae0017bfa0.aspx
The circumstances suggest favoritism for home team players.
.
What a comfort. In case of an extinction level event, we can be assured that the final act of the last human survivor will be to check Slashdot for updates.
Fascinating. It appears that the Western Democracies are simultaneously the most vulnerable to cyber attack, and the most capable of launching cyber attacks.
That creates an unique and fantastic challenge and conundrum for our diplomats responsible for negotiating treaties regarding cyber warfare.
Perhaps my great grandchildren will get to read the actual story of how they navigated that narrow path. For now, we can only hope that Tom Clancy might be inspired to write one of his marvelous novels around this theme. I'm sure it would make fascinating reading.
Net neutrality advocates main claim is that regulation is needed to preserve a level playing field. They say that a poor startup site must be able to deliver its content to us as fast as giants like Google. That's preposterous.
Rich providers are able to buy many servers and faster servers. They lease multiple T3 lines instead of one T1. They also pay big bucks to third parties like Akamai to cache their content locally and deliver it faster. For example, only Hulu.com is able to deliver smooth video to me via my smartphone tethered to my laptop. Hulu has plenty of expensive adaptive software to do that and they also spend untold millions to Akamai to help speed it along. No proposed regulations will ever level the playing field to counter the advantage of deep pockets.
Another thing bugs me. The net neutrality debate focuses exlusively on ISP carriers. Suppose instead of Comcast conspiring to slow down Google content, it is my web browser that throttles Google content? Suppose Apple starts slowing down content from any source that competes with Itunes? Suppose, Google slows down content to anyone not using the Google Chrome browser? Suppose, Hulu blocks content to people not running politically correct software [they already block delivery to Google TV]. Suppose the news networks decide to deliver different content to red states and blue states? The point is that there are countless non-ISP parties who are able to screw up a freely flowing Internet. It makes no sense to reglate ISPs and not everyone else.
I'm deeply suspicious of present day net neutrality advocates. Their proposals will not create a level playing field, nor will they regulate anybody other than the ISP carriers. I smell a hidden political agenda here; just what I haven't figured out yet.
In order to make such an explicit prediction as a "two year delay", that German consultant must have had access to extraordinarily detailed information.
How many centrifuges are in operation.
How many years scheduled to completion.
How many centrifuge-years were lost to the Suxnet worm.
I believe it more likely that the aforementioned consultant was blowing smoke just to bask in the press attention.
If you want to send any enterprise down the tubes, start by giving one group the authority and another the responsibility. DHS wants to dictate standards but when the next big blackout occurs will DHS rush to accept the blame?
Have we considered the risk of self-inflicted damage caused by ill-conceived government-mandated software?
You don't need to be a libertarian to see that this is insanity.
Thanks for a very thoughtful reply.
I still think though that the definition of net neutrality leads to absurdities.
Say a constituent and Comcast customer wants to watch a movie on hulu using his google TV. At a minimum, it takes the cooperation of Hulu, Comcast, and Google for it to work. A closer look is likely to reveal a dozen or more vendors in the chain of delivery. As I understand it, only Comcast would be accused of violating net neutrality. All the other vendors are just exercising their rights. That's absurd. From the constituent's view, it is immaterial which vendor or vendors blocks his viewing; the result is the same.
I fail to see where the network ISPs should be singled out for treatment different than any other vendor in the chain. They are not public utilities, nor are they monopolies.
I also fail to see how a new law can create a level playing field. For example, Hulu uses the services of Akamai to speed delivery of their traffic. That's expensive. Of all the video sources, only Hulu delivers non-jerky video to my PC. The bar is not low for would-be competitors to Hulu, it's high. Akamai services are expensive.
Would a net neutrality law forbid services like Akamai? What about those who afford a T3 line rather than a T1? I think not. My point is that the playing field will never be flat, with or without a new law. Wealth gives big advantages to a startup company; we can't erase that.
If you think network providers should become regulated public utilities,like electricity providers, just say so.
It makes little sense to me to waste so much hot air and lobbying effort to regulate what ISPs can and cannot do if non-ISP parties can accomplish the same evil means.
Hulu, Apple, Google Android, TV networks, Microsoft. It's hard to think of a player in the net market who is not trying to restrict unfettered access to any and all apps and uses. I don't understand why people get so worked up if an ISP wants to throttle competitor's video, but they easily accept that Apple's Itunes store wants to refuse competing apps from getting to the Iphone. Aren't they nearly identical issues?
In many cases, the vendors are using fights against malware to get their toe in the door to regulate content. We must remember that neutrality is like free speech. Popular speech doesn't need protection, the most hated speech does.
Since language is all important in today's politics, I suggest that Network Neutrality is a misnomer. It suggests that it is an issue only for network providers. A more appropriate term would be Freedom of Internet and in the purest form it would forbid any party from inhibiting what anybody else does on the Internet, good or evil. I'm pretty sure that non of us want total Freedom of Internet any more than we want total Free Speech. But the debate would be best served by starting with total freedom as a starting point, then carefully carving out the exceptions we want to make.
I used to deliberately procrastinate on all coding jobs. That is because I found that I performed best under the stress of an approaching deadline. It forces you to totally focus on the job. In those circumstances, I was most creative, and productive, and made the fewest errors.
I believe that's why programmers have always loved all nighters. Programs conceived, designed, implemented, and tested in a single unbroken session are far more cohesive than any others.
I say all this in the past tense. Eventually I burned out when the stress overwhelmed me. Now I'm retired to a cruising sailboat and the closest thing to a deadline I see is the approaching change of season.
The ACLU report addresses the pro-net-neutrality arguments. The other side of the coin is the revenue requirements of the ISPs and their business models. Nobody can fairly judge this issue without consideration of both sides.
A few months ago, I got a Droid phone. I also downloaded a tether app (forbidden by Verizon's non-net-neutral terms) but I got it anyhow. I used them to catch up on a few TV programs I like (I don't have access to regular TV). I think I watched for 5 hours. It worked great and I really enjoyed it. The next day I checked my use and I was shocked to learn that I used 2GB in one night. If I continued to indulge this way, my use would be 60GB per month!! With tens of millions of people buying smart phones, and with HD video coming online via wireless, it is not hard to imagine that the aggregate use demand may climb by a factor of 50-100 in the next 5 years and 1,000 within 10 years.
I believe that wireless is the future of the Internet. I also acknowledge that wireless ISPs have special problems because of the needs for huge captial investments in infrastructure.
How many trillions will it take to expand the wireless capacity 50 fold in the next few years? I don't have any hard figures. Let's just say a cost of $500/month per user. The ISP would have to charge that, plus profit and overhead to survive. Would I pay that much? Hell no. Nor do I know anybody who would. So, what's the solution?
1) The ISPs can charge everyone more preserving net neutrality. As it gets more expensive, use will drop off. Eventually, it will meet a stable point where demand versus the pain of paying reach a balance. Personally, I believe that the balance will end up around $100/month for a 5GB quota. Many more people will have smart phones, but they will be frustrated in being only to stream a fraction of what they desire.
2) They can violate net-neutrality and charge more for premium services. They could even charge per-byte instead of a flat fee. People like Steve Jobs will no doubt be willing to pay $500 or even $5,000/month to indulge themselves. It's like progressive taxes. It would work only if the rich are willing to pay most of the costs.
3) They can not invest and fail to meet the increase in demand, in other words, just maintain the status quo. There would be no increase in monthly quotas, and only modest increases in the number of smartphone users.
Scenarios 1 and 3 cause the Internet's future to fail because of rationing of service one way or another. Scenario 2 causes it to fail, in the view of many, because of loss of net neutrality.
Are there any win-win scenarios that maintain net-neutrality and also provide the vast amount of capital needed for wireless infrastructure? I don't see them.
Slashdotters, tell my why I'm wrong.
My dad worked for Chrysler back then. He got to participate in a publicity stunt with the turbine car.
After alerting the TV network, he drove up to Rockefeller Center in the turbine car. In front of the cameras he poured a quart of Chanel No. 5 in the tank. Then he drove it all over Manhattan the rest of the day.
As an added twist, he did the whole thing on three wheels. He had removed one of the front wheels to demonstrate the superiority of Chrysler's torsion bar suspension.
I think the whole thing was very cool.
Does the Obama Administration Hate Free Speech?
It started with a half-hearted campaign against Fox News. They couldn't censor them so they tried to discredit them. Next the White House called liberal commentary on MSNBC and invaluable public service.
Then comes the Citizens United case. They hate the idea of first amendment rights being given to corporations, but they love it for non-profits and labor unions.
Next, Obama couldn't bring himself to criticize the backers of the ground zero mosque but he couldn't resist trying to prevent a preacher in Florida from exercising his first amendment rights.
Now we come to web sites. Time to try to eliminate the ones we don't like.
Never before have we had such a thin-skinned president, nor an administration so openly contemptuous of rights for those who disagree with them. I suppose tha't not really true, America once passed the Alien and Sedition Act.
This hostility to free speech is a far greater threat to your and my civil rights than the Patriot Act ever was. The current White House threatens freedom more than Dick Cheney and Karl Rove ever imagined. Where is the outcry? Where are the demonstrators? Where are the media campaigns? WTF?
Sure I'll blow all my mod points for daring to post anti-Obama stuff. So be it.
The last time this issue came up, I started sending emails to the developers of my apps challenging their need for permissions that don't seem to make sense. I got several replies that stated that the legitimate permission the developer needs is buried under overly broad packages.
For example, a battery monitor app needs to request access to "Phone Calls" to read the battery state.
With such granularity developers can't be responsibly specific and end users have no rational way to accept/reject apps based on the permission requested. Whatever else, the granularity of permissions packages must be changed first.
You missed the point of the NPR story.
Western countries want a treaty banning cyber warfare. By that we mean hacking but eastern countries mean things like Twitter. It's a formula for perpetual stalemate.
It really upsets me to see how popular it is for Attorney Generals to abuse their powers to feather their political beds. I suppose it was started by Elliot Spitzer's great success at the tactic. We need a way to check their powers.
Might the Citizens United decision point the way? In that decision, the justices said that corporations are people with respect to first amendment rights. What about fourth amendment rights about unreasonable search and seizure? It seems that one of the primary forms of government abuse these days is to demand that corporations cough up all sorts of information at the drop of a hat in support of a so-called "investigation."
Without fourth amendment rights, government orders, subpoenas, regulations, and statue laws are not required to be "reasonable."
Uh thank you very much.
Practical and immediately useful advice from a Slashdot comment. What will they think of next?
Clearly, the USPTO will never get rid of that 700000 backlog satisfactorily. Their archaic approach can never succeed. Software types just don't have the same tradition of publishing their ideas the way that other fields do. Therefore, they don't create the paper trail that patent examiners rely on to make their decisions.
The most promising solution to this problem I've heard is to make it a kind of wiki. Online users could contribute to the wiki evidence of prior art. In this case, crowd sourcing seems like the right thing to do.
On the other hand a patent wiki might just bring out the worst from many people. Snark, misinformation, and partisan sniping might dominate. Even without that, the volume of work needed to properly research 700000+ applications is huge, maybe much more than the total effort spent to create Wikipedia. Appreciation and rewards for that hard work would be even less than Wikipedia because the contributors don't see their work posted prominently.
Other than a wiki, the only other systemic solution I can imagine would be legislation to sharply curtail the kinds of things that are patentable; thus invalidating 90% or more of the backlog with a wave of the pen.
What do slashdotters think?