topic: FCC-10-201 Paragraph 13... (Under Section Heading:) The Internet’s Openness Promotes Innovation, Investment, Competition, Free Expression, and Other National Broadband Goals 13. Like electricity and the computer, the Internet is a "general purpose technology" that enables new methods of production that have a major impact on the entire economy.(12) The Internet’s founders intentionally built a network that is open, in the sense that it has no gatekeepers limiting innovation and communication through the network.(13) Accordingly, the Internet enables an end user to access the content and applications of her choice, without requiring permission from broadband providers. This architecture enables innovators to create and offer new applications and services without needing approval from any controlling entity, be it a network provider, equipment manufacturer, industry body, or government agency.(14) End users benefit because the Internet’s openness allows new technologies to be developed and distributed by a broad range of sources, not just by the companies that operate the network. For example, Sir Tim Berners-Lee was able to invent the World Wide Web nearly two decades after engineers developed the Internet’s original protocols, without needing changes to those protocols or any approval from network operators.(15) Startups and small businesses benefit because the Internet’s openness enables anyone connected to the network to reach and do business with anyone else,(16) allowing even the smallest and most remotely located businesses to access national and global markets, and contribute to the economy through e-commerce(17) and online advertising.(18) Because Internet openness enables widespread innovation and allows all end users and edge providers (rather than just the significantly smaller number of broadband providers) to create and determine the success or failure of content, applications, services, and devices, it maximizes commercial and non-commercial innovations that address key national challenges -- including improvements in health care, education, and energy efficiency that benefit our economy and civic life.(19)......63
Consumer grade prices are based on consumer grade usage. Consumers are people who sleep, have jobs, etc. Much of the time they are not using the net connection. There are basically physical limits on how much a person or small group of people can consume and that limit is far below the bandwidth limit.
The problem with this line of argument is the old "correlation does not imply causation". The whole in your theory is that it absolutely is possible for 'ordinary' 'consumer grade' uses to peg the bandwidth as much as any server. People can leave a Skype HD video chat on 24/7. People can use rsync to mirror mirrors.kernel.org.
The style of argument you made has some connection the T-Totalers of prohibition. After all, if you can anecdotally point to some people who drank too much alcohol, and went off and murdered people, then why not make drinking alcohol illegal? The thing is, you need to make the rules and laws fit the actual problem. Don't block me from running a server just because you _assume_ I'll use more bandwidth than my neighbors. If the *real problem* is excessive bandwidth use- *make the rules and laws target that*. Making the rules target "commercial servers" instead of "levels of bandwidth use that kills everyone elses performance" only leads to a throttling of innovative _low bandwidth_ use of the internet that involves commercial servers.
The real issue is marketing bullshit and lies. ISPs want to market "unlimited bandwidth, no datacaps" because that sounds super awesome. The problem is that it is FRAUD. The internet, as described by FCC-10-201/NetNeutraly is "general purpose technology". If the cable companies want to sell me a "gmail pipeline", then market it as a "gmail pipeline". Don't market as "internet service", because without the ability to run a _low bandwidth commercial server_, it IS NOT INTERNET SERVICE.
what will happen is the ISPs will prioritize traffic to the big players, and slow EVERYTHING else down.
Well that is exactly OPPOSITE of what this article is all about, where big traffic is getting throttled by big ISPs with competing service.
You do realize you are on a comment subthread right? While you are correct that this is not what the ARTICLE is about, it is as a point in fact what the parent thread (that I started, and got modded 5 insightful) is about. Context matters.
The content providers need to show how the ISPs affect the speed, and who the best option in your area is.
My GG..P point was that yes, Netflix and other established players are able to do this. The problem, that Net Neutrality was trying to fix, was that ISPs, perhaps ones that offer their own voice and video and other high bandwidth services that Netflix is competing against, can throttle *new entrants to the field before they become big enough to be any kind of a competitor to the ISPs own voice and video offerings*. In other words- I agree with your sentiment that Netflix can and should do this, and that can and will ensure Netflix doesn't get throttled into oblivion. *My problem* is that anyone who wants to be the next Netflix, can be throttled into oblivion before being influental enough to ensure ISPs don't get away with throttling them into oblivion.
mod parent up. I do agree with that completely. I was really trying to be a voice of temperment against the juvenility of the Fuck Beta crowd. I have a slight sympathy in dice/slashdot's possible wish to shake off some portion of audience responsible for some of the viler comments. But your comment and a couple of the others have made me rethink it, and I agree, it is worthy of rebuke that the claim is they just haven't gotten around to a 'little' feature like that, several months after calling it a beta. For your and VortexCortex's and other's reasons, I agree- It does seem just plain wrong to keep calling it even a Beta rather than Alpha, and beyond that, to be imposing the Beta on the users. I can't argue with that logic. Soulskill- I urge you in meetings with your managers to discuss this point. It's not like you don't already have all the infrastructure in place already for direct linking comments. It does seem really hard to believe it would take much time to add the feature to the beta.
I'm confused - why did you quit your VMware job because Obama wasn't really going to close Gitmo?
Psychologically the 8 years of the W administration, or rather the 6 that included GITMO, were devastating to me. It was all I could do to make it through each day. I had lived a life, pretty much believing in the propaganda that there was a fundamental difference that made my country better than the Russians and their "Gulag". The idea that we had our own "extralegal black hole", really, really, ate away at my psyche day after day, year after year. It wasn't just GITMO, but the clarity of the "extralegal black hole" issue of GITMO, was a focus. I've also watched HBO's documentary "Ghosts of Abu Ghraib" at least a dozen times. I've chosen to make it my lifes mission to never let my country forget about what it did. And to try my best to educate the younger generations about what a fundamental change those things were.
I always temper those things with reminders about slavery, and Rodney King, and millions of references to socially accepted rape in prisons, and prisons filled with non-violent 'criminals' only guilty of stupid things like growing a plant like cannabis.
I know many of the juvenile 'Fuck Beta' crowd around here will assume I'm a troll, or crazy. But I've just told you the truth. Nothing more. Nothing less.
And when I "read WAY too much" into Obama's choice of giving himself a 1 year deadline instead of closing GITMO within a week of coming into office, I decided I wanted nothing more of being a well-paid part of that system. I'd rather starve. I'd rather die. I'd rather kill. Somehow I've found information warfare as my solace.
None of those examples requires a server at the customer's house and therefore are not relevant. The restriction is about servers not browsing.
Actually, after a couple 5 year old kids started holding up protest placards in Utah, GoogleFiber backed off the 'servers' and made it just about 'commercial servers'.
If you want an example including a server- Quake3 server, making money for Id Software.
The point is that there is nothing about a server as opposed to a client, that makes it 'dangerous to the network' in a way that (back when we thought the FCC's Net Neutrality rule was enforceable, pre-verizon-ruling) can reasonably fall under the 'reasonable network management' NetNeutrality clause.
There is *no* technical reason why writing my own closed source competitor to a Quake3 server and running it from my residence should be blocked from the network. It is just normal internet udp/tcp over ip traffic. Doesn't hurt anyone. Doesn't cost the ISP more to pass the traffic than it does to pass Skype client traffic.
The whole point of NetNeutrality was to keep the ISP from being in the position to determine and shape the winning and losing applications, services, and devices that use the internet. The Network was supposed to treat them all Neutrally. packets are packets. Just like it's not the ISPs position to discriminate against packets going to a PlannedParenthood server, it should be their position to discriminate against packets going between my game or web server and clients around the globe. Sure, go ahead and balance my traffic equally with my neighbors. But if I'm using less traffic, upstream and down, than my neighbor Skype chatting with their grandparents and Netflixing in the evening, *then I should not have to pay more for the same amount of service, just because I use the service for different things*. The internet was supposed to be "general purpose technology" (that phrase was bandied about a lot in the FCC's Network Neutrality document).
Sorry ColdWetDog, you took your half court 3 pointer and air-balled. deconfliction is not my first account. In fact, if you imagined that anyone else _could have had_ that username with a lower UID, you would then have to presume that I was actually working for the NSA (which I'm not). My original account- jdogalt, has a UID about the same as yours. And if I'd gotten an account when I first read slashdot 5 days out of a week, I'd probably have a 4 digit UID or lower. In fact, I was posting to usenet (check alt.drugs, alt.philosophy.objectivism (i was young once)) since before the eternal september. (I think I first got a college account on KU's VAX when I was in high school at the age of 16 in 1991. I probably knew about usenet from my older brother who worked at SGI's ASD quite awhile before that. Now he is a VP at google)
Nice that you can afford a lawn. I quit my 6 figure salary job at VMWare in 2009 when I had a personal hardwall office in the Xerox-Parc campus (VMWare had just aquired a large chunk of the campus). I quit because when I saw Obama give himself a 1 year deadline to close GITMO, it was obvious to me he had no intention of really doing it. I also didn't like the laughable idea that I was one of four people whose fingerprint was authed for the non-smart-card usbkey containing the private key for the vmware linux guest packages.
Please name and describe as many of those levels as you can so that I can refute them.
However, I will admit that Soulskill just gave this response- which definitately settles some of my personal main issues with beta (and I don't have any reason to disbelieve Soulskill at this point in time)-
We have plans to implement direct linking to comments. It's been on our to-do list since before the recent expansion of the beta test. It's one of several features we simply haven't had time to implement yet.
Also, the way in which comments are displayed is still a work-in-progress as well. There will be improvements. "
Lastly, bonus advise to Soulskill/Slashdot about the FirstPost issue- how about randomizing the time of article release to various IP. I.e. within a 30 minute block perhaps? Just a thought.... (but really, the classic moderation/comment system seems to be the well evolved solution to that already)
Please be nice VortexCortex. I for one thank Soulskill for that response. And I thank you VortexCortex for a comment you made long ago about how we may possibly once again in the future be able to trust our computers (open source hardware designs shipped with the hardware, allowing users to do things such as compare power draw under simulation and reality to ensure extra hardware/software isn't running alongside the published design). And Soulskill, I'll take your word and start playing a little nicer. And Dave Schroeder- it would be kind of cool if you would weigh in with some respectful commentary as well. That previous slashdot article about a scientist being systematically harassed by a corporation rings entirely too true with my own experiences. If you have some friends in government, I would deeply appreciate your looking into my case.
1) the fresh user experience involves by default full expansion of 0 and -1 comments. This is pure poison. Much as I laud the side of the debate that paints us commenters as *contributors* rather than just 'audience', the fact is that there are as many poisonous comments as golden ones. Exposing new users to the site to all of those instead of hiding score:0/-1 by default and 1-lining score:1/2 will simply leave new visitors with the wrong impression of the site (IMHO)
2) for me, the ability to direct link to comments is critical. This seems missing, and as yet I've seen no promise to implement it in beta or keep its aspect of classic around permanently. For instance, I like to share specific comment subthreads, like this one, between myself and active duty US Navy Information Warfare Officer Dave Schroeder from 8 months prior to the Snowden revelations-
" That's one problem with cyber (Score:5, Insightful) Attribution.
Disclaimer: I am a Navy Information Warfare Officer. First, it's important to note that the White House didn't confirm the suspected source. It was anonymous officials who said this appeared to originate "from China" -- take that as you will. "...
" A couple of things:
1. I thought your Google manifesto was very good (I know it's a work in progress). 2. I think you're reading WAY too much into certain things..........
Back to the other issues. I'm a little disappointed you called so many of my responses straw men; they're not in any respect.
I have not seen any serious calls for "backdoors" in secure protocols. You're completely misunderstanding what even the FBI wants: you're imagining a scenario where "the Man" has a secret backdoor to any running system, encryption, or secure protocol, anywhere. That is not only false, it actually would be gravely detrimental to our own security: we -- individuals, the civilian sector, the government, the military -- rely on the security of these protocols. It's similar to the belief among some that NSA has a "secret backdoor"... "
They are only prohibiting commercial use of consumer grade contracts. There is no prohibition for the innovator getting a business line contract and making money at home.
"commercial use of..." huh?? Are people who sell knick knacks on Ebay engaging in "commercial use of consumer grade contracts"? (yes, they are). Are people who agree to view advertisements on gmail in exchange for 'free' use of a service that costs money to run engaging in "commercial use of consumer grade contracts" (yes, they are). Network Neutrality was intented to prevent giving ISPs arbitrary power over such things. Without it, ISPs can charge consumers extra to visit, e.g. Netflix, or FoxNews, or PlannedParenthood. ISPs *should not have* that arbitrary ability to discriminate amongst traffic. It should be none of their business whether or not the primary profiteer of my used bandwidth is Microsoft via Skype, or myself personally.
In all fairness, there are some things I like about beta, and some things I don't. I think the animosity is stemming from the apparent inflexibility on the idea of maintaining classic as an alternative indefinitely for those who prefer it. And perhaps for not fixing some things (aforementioned via direct linked historical comment) that could use fixing before deploying it on all (or even 25% of) users.
Two judges, with partial support from a third, said the commission has the authority to regulate broadband access but had failed to show that it has a mandate to impose the anti-discrimination rules on broadband providers.
You forgot to mention (if I'm not mistaken) how the court practically invited the FCC simply to invoke common carrier regulation as the legally proper way to achieve it's Net Neutrality anti-discrimination rules. While the "FCC tried", the FCC also _has not tried_ to reinstate Net Neutrality via its legal authority to regulate common carriers that way (vs 'information services'). The FCC, also, after a year and a lot of press, has never given me a single sentence of analysis of my 53 page Net Neutrality complaint I filed with them, via the Kansas Attorney General's Office, over GoogleFiber's (terms of service) blocking of residential servers. (after my cause inspired some protesters in Utah, Google backed down and narrowed the blockage to 'commercial servers', whatever that means. I.e. a Quake3 server is a commercial server making money for Id Software. Somehow that is OK, but god forbid any innovator in their own home makes a profit)
And if they grow big enough to appear on the provider's radar, they are so wellknown, it will be noticed if they get throttled.
I'm not sure you understood my point. My point was that without Network Neutrality, and with throttling, the Establishment can keep them from growing in the first place. Or did you understand that? If so, please clarify your point.
Sure, one extremely popular destination on the internet is safe, because throngs of angry users will raise a stink. But what about all the small players who get throttled into oblivion before their innovations get a chance to have the kind of army of defensive consumers that Netflix has?
This is an information warfare[1] campaign where the Establishment is trying to make sure they stay there indefinitely, safe from all new comers.
I agree that the F.B. information warfare[1] campaign here has been juvenile. But an on topic instance of the decreased beta features is this- I recently made this comment, which the pre-beta interface allows me to direct link[2] to for convenience-
" > Overloading a system by running it as hard as...
Not that I'm accusing Lennart Poettering of cyberwarfare, but a highly relevant anecdote is that when pulseaudio was first thrust upon me in fedora, I and many(?) others discovered that it was only software that was preventing our PC's audio out from being overdriven to the point of health and property risk. I discovered this as my volume, due to bug, instantaneously jumped to 400% as I had my sony earbuds in listening to music. The result was excruciating ear pain for the duration of time (about half a second) it took my body to react and rip the earbuds out of my ears. I wonder (not enough to experiment) what would have happened if my speakers had been connected. It would have certainly taken me more than half a second to cause things to stop, and I'm guessing permanent damange to my speakers may have occurred.
Of course, I'm not sure how expensive it would have been for sony to have put a safety in the earbuds. Still, quite the educational experience that was precisely illustrative of what you described, but in a more personal non-industrial sort of way. "
What has been fundamentally broken in the comment system? Nobody seems to say, they just say it sucks, or is fundamentally broken, or as you say is an add-on, etc.
I'm not the GP, but I'll answer with the 2 most critical points for me personally.
1) the fresh user experience involves by default full expansion of 0 and -1 comments. This is pure poison. Much as I laud the side of the debate that paints us commenters as *contributors* rather than just 'audience', the fact is that there are as many poisonous comments as golden ones. Exposing new users to the site to all of those instead of hiding score:0/-1 by default and 1-lining score:1/2 will simply leave new visitors with the wrong impression of the site (IMHO)
2) for me, the ability to direct link to comments is critical. This seems missing, and as yet I've seen no promise to implement it in beta or keep its aspect of classic around permanently. For instance, I like to share specific comment subthreads, like this one, between myself and active duty US Navy Information Warfare Officer Dave Schroeder from 8 months prior to the Snowden revelations-
" That's one problem with cyber (Score:5, Insightful) Attribution.
Disclaimer: I am a Navy Information Warfare Officer.
First, it's important to note that the White House didn't confirm the suspected source. It was anonymous officials who said this appeared to originate "from China" -- take that as you will. "...
" A couple of things:
1. I thought your Google manifesto was very good (I know it's a work in progress). 2. I think you're reading WAY too much into certain things..........
Back to the other issues. I'm a little disappointed you called so many of my responses straw men; they're not in any respect.
I have not seen any serious calls for "backdoors" in secure protocols. You're completely misunderstanding what even the FBI wants: you're imagining a scenario where "the Man" has a secret backdoor to any running system, encryption, or secure protocol, anywhere. That is not only false, it actually would be gravely detrimental to our own security: we -- individuals, the civilian sector, the government, the military -- rely on the security of these protocols. It's similar to the belief among some that NSA has a "secret backdoor"... "
I'm tempted. At this point, though, it's been so long that I can't even remember the name of any of the old NNTP clients!
OMG Poniez!!! I succumbed to temptation. After an hour or so, I've got some answers you may be interested in. Short story- slrn. Next, I find it somewhat hilarious that it was RocketRabbit's post that got me to post to usenet for the first time in probably over a decade. It was only about a week ago I discovered RR on/. and had to call him out for (mild as far as I bothered to research) anti-semitism (see my comment history). That said, posting to usenet for the first time in many years is the most fun I've had in a long time. I can help you with the rusty memory if you happen to be similar. I'm on CentOS 6. I got slrn 1.0.1 from sourceforge. Had to yum install slang-devel, then configure --with-slanglib=/usr/lib64 (and maybe --with-slanginc=/usr/include/slang --prefix=/opt/slrn).
also did
cp/opt/slrn/share/doc/slrn/slrn.rc ~/.slrnrc (then edit it, after going to eternal-september.org and registering to get user/pass then changing password) then something like NNTPSERVER='news.eternal-september.org'/opt/slrn/bin/slrn -f ~/.jnewsrc --create
then I posted to eternal-september.test , got a nice bounce even
had to remember/use-help for things like 'a' (author search) 'h' hide message 't' toggle headers (to see timestamps)
i feel young again
(no I have no illusions that it will actually be useful in the short term, but I've had a quixotic desire to see usenet ressurrected as a viable alternative to things like facebook/twitter/slashdot for a long time now, and... it's still there. I think there are even moderation/score features these days that I've never used)
Probably becasue it costs a lot of moeny to maintain the old crappy site and the new modern awesome site.
Work isn't free, the site isn't free, servers aren't free. Got it?
I get it. But I don't think you've seriously considered it. You have to weigh the benefits of the work vs the cost. The comments all day today, should illustrate an estimate of the value gained by that maintenance cost. Likewise, you aren't honestly suggesting that server cost is a real issue are you? One server can serve multiple code paths. And the bandwidth and server resources are proportional to the number of visitors accessing that service. And by the time you imagine that many people would choose the classic over the new, to the point that there is real server and bandwidth cost, you pretty much have to admit that the value is justified by that many people who clearly prefer the classic over the new.
I'm guessing, and it is just a guess and no offence intended, that you were not alive for the 'new coke' fiasco. Businesswise, it became very clear, very soon (smells analagous to today on slashdot), that it was a wise business decision for coca cola to maintain the production facilities and infrastructure for the "classic coke" product. In fact, some months, maybe a couple years after coca cola realized it was a wise business practice to maintain that infrastructure, their consumers voted so consistently, that now 'classic coke' is just plain 'coke'. And the 'new coke' that was marketed as 'coke' is now a distant memory. It tasted bad. It was not as good. That seems to be the message of the majority of slashdot contributors/consumers today about the new 'beta'.
2. Everything is expanded by default, which, again makes it tiresome to skip through pages of low-rated comments.
THIS. I don't know why I haven't seen more complaints about this, perhaps another issue only for people that don't log in or set cookies or something. But this is the most horrible thing. Much as I like the side of this debate that paints us CONTRIBUTORS as valuable, we must also admit that at least half of the comments are beyond crap. Setting asside the occasional max-modded (5 funny) comment about someone's mother being raped by a splintered stick (happened to be on the slashdot article about one of my cause-de-jur of the last few years), there are often such comments that get appropriately modded to 0 and -1. I consider those sorts of things an assault on my eyes. The value of slashdot is in it's self-policing nature. Expanding by default every 0 or -1 flamebait or troll and subjecting every new user to the site to those comments is practically suicidal from a business standpoint. Having sane defaults for viewing the conversation, i.e. 0/-1 not displayed, 1/2 abbreviated, and 3/4/5 expanded, is what makes slashdot discussions so impressive.
If you make new users visually scan over all 0 and -1 comments, they are going to think this site's "audience" are psychotic idiots, and never come back. This seems like a formulaic way of literally sabotaging and destroying the community discussion nature of this site, which as mentioned about a thousand times today, is the *core value of slashdot*. What were you thinking? Were you thinking that the 'flag as innapropriate' facility would replace that? No, because almost as often, intelligent, witty, insightful and funny people respond to those crap comments in very entertaining and enlightening, and heartening ways. That sort of interplay, built on the beautful AND UGLY foundation of freedom of expression, is what makes slashdot discussions often valuable. It seems like today we are witnessing a 'cyberwar' between the people who have enjoyed that sort of interplay for years, and a standard large business that wants to do away with it, and replace it with something much more sanitized and productized. I still wouldn't dare to bet which side wins. But face up to the facts- default expanding 0 and -1 comments for new visitors to the site IS NOT A GOOD IDEA.
Most importantly, we want you to know that Classic Slashdot isn't going away until we're confident that the new site is ready. And — okay, we've got it — it's not ready.
Why are you so inflexible on the idea of keeping classic slashdot *forever*. Think of it as a protected historical landmark in the internet space. To help future generations understand where this 'blogging' thing really came from? Computers are good like that, keep classic.slashdot.org FOREVER and your audience^H^H^H CONTRIBUTORS might stop rallying against you.
Although Slashdot always has news 3 days after every other blog,
Seriously, wasn't slashdot the website that _defined_ the term 'blog'. Why is it I feel that we need some sort of historical landmark style legal protection for slashdot in this regard?
If you completely redesign slashdot, make it look completely different from what it originally was, how will the future generations get the right idea about where the global information superhighway that is a fundamental part of their existence came from? Yes, I'm being a bit overzealous, but if I were holding onto the reigns of something so profoundly historical (in internet history terms), I would feel an obligation to maintain the old interfaces. Surely there are no *technical* or *financial* reasons why the old interfaces cannot be kept around? Computers are good like that.
Slashdot Mirror
You can run your commercial server on a commercial connection problem solved.
Certainly money solves many of lifes problems rather neatly.
My problem I suppose was that I bought into this-
http://hraunfoss.fcc.gov/edocs_public/attachmatch/FCC-10-201A1_Rcd.pdf
topic: FCC-10-201 Paragraph 13 ... ......63
(Under Section Heading:)
The Internet’s Openness Promotes Innovation, Investment, Competition, Free Expression, and Other National Broadband Goals
13.
Like electricity and the computer, the Internet is a "general purpose technology" that enables new methods of production that have a major impact on the entire economy.(12) The Internet’s founders intentionally built a network that is open, in the sense that it has no gatekeepers limiting innovation and communication through the network.(13) Accordingly, the Internet enables an end user to access the content and applications of her choice, without requiring permission from broadband providers. This architecture enables innovators to create and offer new applications and services without needing approval from any controlling entity, be it a network provider, equipment manufacturer, industry body, or government agency.(14) End users benefit because the Internet’s openness allows new technologies to be developed and distributed by a broad range of sources, not just by the companies that operate the network. For example, Sir Tim Berners-Lee was able to invent the World Wide Web nearly two decades after engineers developed the Internet’s original protocols, without needing changes to those protocols or any approval from network operators.(15) Startups and small businesses benefit because the Internet’s openness enables anyone connected to the network to reach and do business with anyone else,(16) allowing even the smallest and most remotely located businesses to access national and global markets, and contribute to the economy through e-commerce(17) and online advertising.(18) Because Internet openness enables widespread innovation and allows all end users and edge providers (rather than just the significantly smaller number of broadband providers) to create and determine the success or failure of content, applications, services, and devices, it maximizes commercial and non-commercial innovations that address key national challenges -- including improvements in health care, education, and energy efficiency that benefit our economy and civic life.(19)
Consumer grade prices are based on consumer grade usage. Consumers are people who sleep, have jobs, etc. Much of the time they are not using the net connection. There are basically physical limits on how much a person or small group of people can consume and that limit is far below the bandwidth limit.
The problem with this line of argument is the old "correlation does not imply causation". The whole in your theory is that it absolutely is possible for 'ordinary' 'consumer grade' uses to peg the bandwidth as much as any server. People can leave a Skype HD video chat on 24/7. People can use rsync to mirror mirrors.kernel.org.
The style of argument you made has some connection the T-Totalers of prohibition. After all, if you can anecdotally point to some people who drank too much alcohol, and went off and murdered people, then why not make drinking alcohol illegal? The thing is, you need to make the rules and laws fit the actual problem. Don't block me from running a server just because you _assume_ I'll use more bandwidth than my neighbors. If the *real problem* is excessive bandwidth use- *make the rules and laws target that*. Making the rules target "commercial servers" instead of "levels of bandwidth use that kills everyone elses performance" only leads to a throttling of innovative _low bandwidth_ use of the internet that involves commercial servers.
The real issue is marketing bullshit and lies. ISPs want to market "unlimited bandwidth, no datacaps" because that sounds super awesome. The problem is that it is FRAUD. The internet, as described by FCC-10-201/NetNeutraly is "general purpose technology". If the cable companies want to sell me a "gmail pipeline", then market it as a "gmail pipeline". Don't market as "internet service", because without the ability to run a _low bandwidth commercial server_, it IS NOT INTERNET SERVICE.
what will happen is the ISPs will prioritize traffic to the big players, and slow EVERYTHING else down.
Well that is exactly OPPOSITE of what this article is all about, where big traffic is getting throttled by big ISPs with competing service.
You do realize you are on a comment subthread right? While you are correct that this is not what the ARTICLE is about, it is as a point in fact what the parent thread (that I started, and got modded 5 insightful) is about. Context matters.
The content providers need to show how the ISPs affect the speed, and who the best option in your area is.
My GG..P point was that yes, Netflix and other established players are able to do this. The problem, that Net Neutrality was trying to fix, was that ISPs, perhaps ones that offer their own voice and video and other high bandwidth services that Netflix is competing against, can throttle *new entrants to the field before they become big enough to be any kind of a competitor to the ISPs own voice and video offerings*. In other words- I agree with your sentiment that Netflix can and should do this, and that can and will ensure Netflix doesn't get throttled into oblivion. *My problem* is that anyone who wants to be the next Netflix, can be throttled into oblivion before being influental enough to ensure ISPs don't get away with throttling them into oblivion.
mod parent up. I do agree with that completely. I was really trying to be a voice of temperment against the juvenility of the Fuck Beta crowd. I have a slight sympathy in dice/slashdot's possible wish to shake off some portion of audience responsible for some of the viler comments. But your comment and a couple of the others have made me rethink it, and I agree, it is worthy of rebuke that the claim is they just haven't gotten around to a 'little' feature like that, several months after calling it a beta. For your and VortexCortex's and other's reasons, I agree- It does seem just plain wrong to keep calling it even a Beta rather than Alpha, and beyond that, to be imposing the Beta on the users. I can't argue with that logic. Soulskill- I urge you in meetings with your managers to discuss this point. It's not like you don't already have all the infrastructure in place already for direct linking comments. It does seem really hard to believe it would take much time to add the feature to the beta.
I'm confused - why did you quit your VMware job because Obama wasn't really going to close Gitmo?
Psychologically the 8 years of the W administration, or rather the 6 that included GITMO, were devastating to me. It was all I could do to make it through each day. I had lived a life, pretty much believing in the propaganda that there was a fundamental difference that made my country better than the Russians and their "Gulag". The idea that we had our own "extralegal black hole", really, really, ate away at my psyche day after day, year after year. It wasn't just GITMO, but the clarity of the "extralegal black hole" issue of GITMO, was a focus. I've also watched HBO's documentary "Ghosts of Abu Ghraib" at least a dozen times. I've chosen to make it my lifes mission to never let my country forget about what it did. And to try my best to educate the younger generations about what a fundamental change those things were.
I always temper those things with reminders about slavery, and Rodney King, and millions of references to socially accepted rape in prisons, and prisons filled with non-violent 'criminals' only guilty of stupid things like growing a plant like cannabis.
I know many of the juvenile 'Fuck Beta' crowd around here will assume I'm a troll, or crazy. But I've just told you the truth. Nothing more. Nothing less.
And when I "read WAY too much" into Obama's choice of giving himself a 1 year deadline instead of closing GITMO within a week of coming into office, I decided I wanted nothing more of being a well-paid part of that system. I'd rather starve. I'd rather die. I'd rather kill. Somehow I've found information warfare as my solace.
None of those examples requires a server at the customer's house and therefore are not relevant. The restriction is about servers not browsing.
Actually, after a couple 5 year old kids started holding up protest placards in Utah, GoogleFiber backed off the 'servers' and made it just about 'commercial servers'.
If you want an example including a server- Quake3 server, making money for Id Software.
The point is that there is nothing about a server as opposed to a client, that makes it 'dangerous to the network' in a way that (back when we thought the FCC's Net Neutrality rule was enforceable, pre-verizon-ruling) can reasonably fall under the 'reasonable network management' NetNeutrality clause.
There is *no* technical reason why writing my own closed source competitor to a Quake3 server and running it from my residence should be blocked from the network. It is just normal internet udp/tcp over ip traffic. Doesn't hurt anyone. Doesn't cost the ISP more to pass the traffic than it does to pass Skype client traffic.
The whole point of NetNeutrality was to keep the ISP from being in the position to determine and shape the winning and losing applications, services, and devices that use the internet. The Network was supposed to treat them all Neutrally. packets are packets. Just like it's not the ISPs position to discriminate against packets going to a PlannedParenthood server, it should be their position to discriminate against packets going between my game or web server and clients around the globe. Sure, go ahead and balance my traffic equally with my neighbors. But if I'm using less traffic, upstream and down, than my neighbor Skype chatting with their grandparents and Netflixing in the evening, *then I should not have to pay more for the same amount of service, just because I use the service for different things*. The internet was supposed to be "general purpose technology" (that phrase was bandied about a lot in the FCC's Network Neutrality document).
Sorry ColdWetDog, you took your half court 3 pointer and air-balled. deconfliction is not my first account. In fact, if you imagined that anyone else _could have had_ that username with a lower UID, you would then have to presume that I was actually working for the NSA (which I'm not). My original account- jdogalt, has a UID about the same as yours. And if I'd gotten an account when I first read slashdot 5 days out of a week, I'd probably have a 4 digit UID or lower. In fact, I was posting to usenet (check alt.drugs, alt.philosophy.objectivism (i was young once)) since before the eternal september. (I think I first got a college account on KU's VAX when I was in high school at the age of 16 in 1991. I probably knew about usenet from my older brother who worked at SGI's ASD quite awhile before that. Now he is a VP at google)
Nice that you can afford a lawn. I quit my 6 figure salary job at VMWare in 2009 when I had a personal hardwall office in the Xerox-Parc campus (VMWare had just aquired a large chunk of the campus). I quit because when I saw Obama give himself a 1 year deadline to close GITMO, it was obvious to me he had no intention of really doing it. I also didn't like the laughable idea that I was one of four people whose fingerprint was authed for the non-smart-card usbkey containing the private key for the vmware linux guest packages.
You are full of shit on so many levels.
Please name and describe as many of those levels as you can so that I can refute them.
However, I will admit that Soulskill just gave this response- which definitately settles some of my personal main issues with beta (and I don't have any reason to disbelieve Soulskill at this point in time)-
http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=4771749&cid=46207205
Soulskill:"
We have plans to implement direct linking to comments. It's been on our to-do list since before the recent expansion of the beta test. It's one of several features we simply haven't had time to implement yet.
Also, the way in which comments are displayed is still a work-in-progress as well. There will be improvements.
"
Lastly, bonus advise to Soulskill/Slashdot about the FirstPost issue- how about randomizing the time of article release to various IP. I.e. within a 30 minute block perhaps? Just a thought.... (but really, the classic moderation/comment system seems to be the well evolved solution to that already)
Please be nice VortexCortex. I for one thank Soulskill for that response. And I thank you VortexCortex for a comment you made long ago about how we may possibly once again in the future be able to trust our computers (open source hardware designs shipped with the hardware, allowing users to do things such as compare power draw under simulation and reality to ensure extra hardware/software isn't running alongside the published design). And Soulskill, I'll take your word and start playing a little nicer. And Dave Schroeder- it would be kind of cool if you would weigh in with some respectful commentary as well. That previous slashdot article about a scientist being systematically harassed by a corporation rings entirely too true with my own experiences. If you have some friends in government, I would deeply appreciate your looking into my case.
http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=4766259&cid=46193879
1) the fresh user experience involves by default full expansion of 0 and -1 comments. This is pure poison. Much as I laud the side of the debate that paints us commenters as *contributors* rather than just 'audience', the fact is that there are as many poisonous comments as golden ones. Exposing new users to the site to all of those instead of hiding score:0/-1 by default and 1-lining score:1/2 will simply leave new visitors with the wrong impression of the site (IMHO)
2) for me, the ability to direct link to comments is critical. This seems missing, and as yet I've seen no promise to implement it in beta or keep its aspect of classic around permanently. For instance, I like to share specific comment subthreads, like this one, between myself and active duty US Navy Information Warfare Officer Dave Schroeder from 8 months prior to the Snowden revelations-
http://news.slashdot.org/comme... [slashdot.org]
snippets of context include-
"
That's one problem with cyber (Score:5, Insightful)
Attribution.
Disclaimer: I am a Navy Information Warfare Officer. ...
First, it's important to note that the White House didn't confirm the suspected source. It was anonymous officials who said this appeared to originate "from China" -- take that as you will.
"
"
A couple of things:
1. I thought your Google manifesto was very good (I know it's a work in progress). ... ... ...
2. I think you're reading WAY too much into certain things.
Back to the other issues. I'm a little disappointed you called so many of my responses straw men; they're not in any respect.
I have not seen any serious calls for "backdoors" in secure protocols. You're completely misunderstanding what even the FBI wants: you're imagining a scenario where "the Man" has a secret backdoor to any running system, encryption, or secure protocol, anywhere. That is not only false, it actually would be gravely detrimental to our own security: we -- individuals, the civilian sector, the government, the military -- rely on the security of these protocols. It's similar to the belief among some that NSA has a "secret backdoor" ...
"
They are only prohibiting commercial use of consumer grade contracts. There is no prohibition for the innovator getting a business line contract and making money at home.
"commercial use of..." huh?? Are people who sell knick knacks on Ebay engaging in "commercial use of consumer grade contracts"? (yes, they are). Are people who agree to view advertisements on gmail in exchange for 'free' use of a service that costs money to run engaging in "commercial use of consumer grade contracts" (yes, they are). Network Neutrality was intented to prevent giving ISPs arbitrary power over such things. Without it, ISPs can charge consumers extra to visit, e.g. Netflix, or FoxNews, or PlannedParenthood. ISPs *should not have* that arbitrary ability to discriminate amongst traffic. It should be none of their business whether or not the primary profiteer of my used bandwidth is Microsoft via Skype, or myself personally.
Actually, I like Beta.
In all fairness, there are some things I like about beta, and some things I don't. I think the animosity is stemming from the apparent inflexibility on the idea of maintaining classic as an alternative indefinitely for those who prefer it. And perhaps for not fixing some things (aforementioned via direct linked historical comment) that could use fixing before deploying it on all (or even 25% of) users.
http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=4766259&cid=46193879
http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=4766259&cid=46193879
The FCC tried.
Two judges, with partial support from a third, said the commission has the authority to regulate broadband access but had failed to show that it has a mandate to impose the anti-discrimination rules on broadband providers.
You forgot to mention (if I'm not mistaken) how the court practically invited the FCC simply to invoke common carrier regulation as the legally proper way to achieve it's Net Neutrality anti-discrimination rules. While the "FCC tried", the FCC also _has not tried_ to reinstate Net Neutrality via its legal authority to regulate common carriers that way (vs 'information services'). The FCC, also, after a year and a lot of press, has never given me a single sentence of analysis of my 53 page Net Neutrality complaint I filed with them, via the Kansas Attorney General's Office, over GoogleFiber's (terms of service) blocking of residential servers. (after my cause inspired some protesters in Utah, Google backed down and narrowed the blockage to 'commercial servers', whatever that means. I.e. a Quake3 server is a commercial server making money for Id Software. Somehow that is OK, but god forbid any innovator in their own home makes a profit)
And if they grow big enough to appear on the provider's radar, they are so wellknown, it will be noticed if they get throttled.
I'm not sure you understood my point. My point was that without Network Neutrality, and with throttling, the Establishment can keep them from growing in the first place. Or did you understand that? If so, please clarify your point.
Sure, one extremely popular destination on the internet is safe, because throngs of angry users will raise a stink. But what about all the small players who get throttled into oblivion before their innovations get a chance to have the kind of army of defensive consumers that Netflix has?
This is an information warfare[1] campaign where the Establishment is trying to make sure they stay there indefinitely, safe from all new comers.
[1] http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=4766259&cid=46193879
I agree that the F.B. information warfare[1] campaign here has been juvenile. But an on topic instance of the decreased beta features is this- I recently made this comment, which the pre-beta interface allows me to direct link[2] to for convenience-
" ...
> Overloading a system by running it as hard as
Not that I'm accusing Lennart Poettering of cyberwarfare, but a highly relevant anecdote is that when pulseaudio was first thrust upon me in fedora, I and many(?) others discovered that it was only software that was preventing our PC's audio out from being overdriven to the point of health and property risk. I discovered this as my volume, due to bug, instantaneously jumped to 400% as I had my sony earbuds in listening to music. The result was excruciating ear pain for the duration of time (about half a second) it took my body to react and rip the earbuds out of my ears. I wonder (not enough to experiment) what would have happened if my speakers had been connected. It would have certainly taken me more than half a second to cause things to stop, and I'm guessing permanent damange to my speakers may have occurred.
Of course, I'm not sure how expensive it would have been for sony to have put a safety in the earbuds. Still, quite the educational experience that was precisely illustrative of what you described, but in a more personal non-industrial sort of way.
"
[1] http://news.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=3156485&cid=41530745
[2] http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=4741383&cid=46132559
[3] http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=4766259&cid=46193879
What has been fundamentally broken in the comment system? Nobody seems to say, they just say it sucks, or is fundamentally broken, or as you say is an add-on, etc.
I'm not the GP, but I'll answer with the 2 most critical points for me personally.
1) the fresh user experience involves by default full expansion of 0 and -1 comments. This is pure poison. Much as I laud the side of the debate that paints us commenters as *contributors* rather than just 'audience', the fact is that there are as many poisonous comments as golden ones. Exposing new users to the site to all of those instead of hiding score:0/-1 by default and 1-lining score:1/2 will simply leave new visitors with the wrong impression of the site (IMHO)
2) for me, the ability to direct link to comments is critical. This seems missing, and as yet I've seen no promise to implement it in beta or keep its aspect of classic around permanently. For instance, I like to share specific comment subthreads, like this one, between myself and active duty US Navy Information Warfare Officer Dave Schroeder from 8 months prior to the Snowden revelations-
http://news.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=3156485&cid=41530745
snippets of context include-
"
That's one problem with cyber (Score:5, Insightful)
Attribution.
Disclaimer: I am a Navy Information Warfare Officer.
First, it's important to note that the White House didn't confirm the suspected source. It was anonymous officials who said this appeared to originate "from China" -- take that as you will. ...
"
"
A couple of things:
1. I thought your Google manifesto was very good (I know it's a work in progress). ... ... ...
2. I think you're reading WAY too much into certain things.
Back to the other issues. I'm a little disappointed you called so many of my responses straw men; they're not in any respect.
I have not seen any serious calls for "backdoors" in secure protocols. You're completely misunderstanding what even the FBI wants: you're imagining a scenario where "the Man" has a secret backdoor to any running system, encryption, or secure protocol, anywhere. That is not only false, it actually would be gravely detrimental to our own security: we -- individuals, the civilian sector, the government, the military -- rely on the security of these protocols. It's similar to the belief among some that NSA has a "secret backdoor" ...
"
I'm tempted. At this point, though, it's been so long that I can't even remember the name of any of the old NNTP clients!
OMG Poniez!!! I succumbed to temptation. After an hour or so, I've got some answers you may be interested in. Short story- slrn. Next, I find it somewhat hilarious that it was RocketRabbit's post that got me to post to usenet for the first time in probably over a decade. It was only about a week ago I discovered RR on /. and had to call him out for (mild as far as I bothered to research) anti-semitism (see my comment history). That said, posting to usenet for the first time in many years is the most fun I've had in a long time. I can help you with the rusty memory if you happen to be similar. I'm on CentOS 6. I got slrn 1.0.1 from sourceforge. Had to yum install slang-devel, then configure --with-slanglib=/usr/lib64 (and maybe --with-slanginc=/usr/include/slang --prefix=/opt/slrn).
also did
cp /opt/slrn/share/doc/slrn/slrn.rc ~/.slrnrc /opt/slrn/bin/slrn -f ~/.jnewsrc --create
(then edit it, after going to eternal-september.org and registering to get user/pass then changing password)
then something like
NNTPSERVER='news.eternal-september.org'
then I posted to eternal-september.test , got a nice bounce even
had to remember/use-help for things like 'a' (author search) 'h' hide message 't' toggle headers (to see timestamps)
i feel young again
(no I have no illusions that it will actually be useful in the short term, but I've had a quixotic desire to see usenet ressurrected as a viable alternative to things like facebook/twitter/slashdot for a long time now, and ... it's still there. I think there are even moderation/score features these days that I've never used)
Probably becasue it costs a lot of moeny to maintain the old crappy site and the new modern awesome site.
Work isn't free, the site isn't free, servers aren't free.
Got it?
I get it. But I don't think you've seriously considered it. You have to weigh the benefits of the work vs the cost. The comments all day today, should illustrate an estimate of the value gained by that maintenance cost. Likewise, you aren't honestly suggesting that server cost is a real issue are you? One server can serve multiple code paths. And the bandwidth and server resources are proportional to the number of visitors accessing that service. And by the time you imagine that many people would choose the classic over the new, to the point that there is real server and bandwidth cost, you pretty much have to admit that the value is justified by that many people who clearly prefer the classic over the new.
I'm guessing, and it is just a guess and no offence intended, that you were not alive for the 'new coke' fiasco. Businesswise, it became very clear, very soon (smells analagous to today on slashdot), that it was a wise business decision for coca cola to maintain the production facilities and infrastructure for the "classic coke" product. In fact, some months, maybe a couple years after coca cola realized it was a wise business practice to maintain that infrastructure, their consumers voted so consistently, that now 'classic coke' is just plain 'coke'. And the 'new coke' that was marketed as 'coke' is now a distant memory. It tasted bad. It was not as good. That seems to be the message of the majority of slashdot contributors/consumers today about the new 'beta'.
2. Everything is expanded by default, which, again makes it tiresome to skip through pages of low-rated comments.
THIS. I don't know why I haven't seen more complaints about this, perhaps another issue only for people that don't log in or set cookies or something. But this is the most horrible thing. Much as I like the side of this debate that paints us CONTRIBUTORS as valuable, we must also admit that at least half of the comments are beyond crap. Setting asside the occasional max-modded (5 funny) comment about someone's mother being raped by a splintered stick (happened to be on the slashdot article about one of my cause-de-jur of the last few years), there are often such comments that get appropriately modded to 0 and -1. I consider those sorts of things an assault on my eyes. The value of slashdot is in it's self-policing nature. Expanding by default every 0 or -1 flamebait or troll and subjecting every new user to the site to those comments is practically suicidal from a business standpoint. Having sane defaults for viewing the conversation, i.e. 0/-1 not displayed, 1/2 abbreviated, and 3/4/5 expanded, is what makes slashdot discussions so impressive.
If you make new users visually scan over all 0 and -1 comments, they are going to think this site's "audience" are psychotic idiots, and never come back. This seems like a formulaic way of literally sabotaging and destroying the community discussion nature of this site, which as mentioned about a thousand times today, is the *core value of slashdot*. What were you thinking? Were you thinking that the 'flag as innapropriate' facility would replace that? No, because almost as often, intelligent, witty, insightful and funny people respond to those crap comments in very entertaining and enlightening, and heartening ways. That sort of interplay, built on the beautful AND UGLY foundation of freedom of expression, is what makes slashdot discussions often valuable. It seems like today we are witnessing a 'cyberwar' between the people who have enjoyed that sort of interplay for years, and a standard large business that wants to do away with it, and replace it with something much more sanitized and productized. I still wouldn't dare to bet which side wins. But face up to the facts- default expanding 0 and -1 comments for new visitors to the site IS NOT A GOOD IDEA.
Most importantly, we want you to know that Classic Slashdot isn't going away until we're confident that the new site is ready. And — okay, we've got it — it's not ready.
Why are you so inflexible on the idea of keeping classic slashdot *forever*. Think of it as a protected historical landmark in the internet space. To help future generations understand where this 'blogging' thing really came from? Computers are good like that, keep classic.slashdot.org FOREVER and your audience^H^H^H CONTRIBUTORS might stop rallying against you.
Although Slashdot always has news 3 days after every other blog,
Seriously, wasn't slashdot the website that _defined_ the term 'blog'. Why is it I feel that we need some sort of historical landmark style legal protection for slashdot in this regard?
If you completely redesign slashdot, make it look completely different from what it originally was, how will the future generations get the right idea about where the global information superhighway that is a fundamental part of their existence came from? Yes, I'm being a bit overzealous, but if I were holding onto the reigns of something so profoundly historical (in internet history terms), I would feel an obligation to maintain the old interfaces. Surely there are no *technical* or *financial* reasons why the old interfaces cannot be kept around? Computers are good like that.