My biggest concern for the beta is it seems to destroy the tools needed for a robust commenting and conversation, including notification of new posts, easy ways to quote prior posts, easy way to link directly to comments, etc. If this is going to be reintegrated for sure (and maybe expanded?) then I'm probably cool with it.
I agree. There are a hundred little nuances to the old interface that are simply AWOL with the beta. In their place we get these freaking pop-over menus that are hard to close on tablets and screen density that leaves you scrolling forever. We get a share link that doesn't take you to the specific message, and no way to link to any specific reply. Friends and Foes markers are gone!? SlashIDs are gone. I have to hover the cursor to figure out who's lawn I have to get off of. (Have you tried hovering on a touch screen?)
Dice needs to save some money. Let those programmers go back to making minor improvements to Classic. (ever try to use the score slider on a touch screen?).
IINBDFI.
From Timothy:
but that is, at the same time, more accessible and shareable by a wider audience.
Precisely which audience is having problems reading slashdot, on precisely which platform? I read/. on desktops, laptops, phones android, IOS, 4 or 5 different browsers. Its not a problem.?
How is removing individual reply links making it more shareable?
Nope. As people are so fond of pointing out, we're the product. Since our displeasure with the new UX-infested abortion obviously, as you so correctly put it, "means squat to Dice," maybe having a bunch of "products" walking off the shelves and out of the store will get their attention.
With "ads off" button checked, (not to mention adblock and safescript running, I fail to see how I am a product.
It is hard to see what their game plan is here, at this stage, but judging by the layout you can expect an ever increasing amount of floating ads. They have hacked out huge percentages of real estate on each page, the entire right column is currently wasted. I predict this won't last as it will be full of ads (all designed to beat adblock) for the entire page height.
This is the camel's nose under the tent. If you swallow beta, you'll be swallowing forever.
I'm still on classic, but I'm not commenting on any articles (other than to speak out against beta) until this nonsense goes away or at least is entirely optional. (Its not like I haven't tried to use it.).
The fear hasn't existed for a long time. The drums of fear are still being pounded hard and loud. Just read a few of the administration's fear talk about why we have to have continued data gathering.
What about all the other Democrats that pushed through the last reauthorization?
The scale of the surveillance and lengths to which the NSA has pushed its limits was a "shock" according to Sensenbrenner, who also wrote the USA Freedom Act, a bill to restrict the scope of both Section 215 and the NSA programs, which has attracted 130 co-sponsors.
The author of the Patriot act has seen the light, and yet you do nothing but call him names?
A laughably empty threat. The Republican bloc is unlikely to do anything that would curb military or intelligence related activities.
The two prior extensions were pushed through by Democrats. After 8 years, its time to stop blaming Republicans.
On Saturday, February 27, 2010, President Barack Obama signed into law legislation that would temporarily extend for one year three controversial provisions of the Patriot Act that had been set to expire: Authorize court-approved roving wiretaps that permit surveillance on multiple phones. Allow court-approved seizure of records and property in anti-terrorism operations. Permit surveillance against a so-called lone wolf, a non-U.S. citizen engaged in terrorism who may not be part of a recognized terrorist group.
Its useful divisive idiots like you that keep trying to make this a partisan issue rather than getting you own party to actually READ the constitution.
And this is why it can be smart to put time limits on bills, even if you think they are a good idea at the time. In that sense, the original authors of the Patriot Act were smart.
This will be something like the third re-authorization. (It expired piecemeal, making it easier to re-authorize it piecemeal).
We not only need sunset into bills, we need to require an ever increasing majority to re-authorize these laws. (As well as (nearly) unanimous consent to lower those requirements.)
You can bet that at the time grows near, there will be an "incident" that just "happens" to come along which will have the usual useful idiots demanding more protection, and tighter scrutiny. The drumbeat of fear will be revved up again. Someone will put forth minor meaningless tweaks and tell us the problem is solved. Opponents will be vilified and demonized in the press, mistresses will surface. You name it. Its not like we haven't seen this before.
And we need to enact penalties for judges that fail to uphold their oath of office.
Section 215 of the Patriot Act will expire during the summer of 2015 and will not be renewed
Its time to put this experiment to bed. Like prohibition, which lasted 13 years, the Patriot act (now 13 years old), and damage it has caused needs to be rolled back. Not just Section 215, but other major portions of the act as well.
We are not safer now. We are simply less free now. It has not prevented terrorist attacks, either here or abroad. Boarder security continues to be a utter joke, and secrecy provisions are the antithesis of our supposed freedoms.
Its probably time to start yanking your congressman's chain. Its time to point out that the simple fact we are not asleep any more is basically all that is needed, and all that was ever needed. Its time to point out that 13 years of lies and secrecy is enough. Its time for them to stop carrying the governments message to their constituents, and start carrying their constituents message to the government.
Do I expect this to be successful? No. Not as long as a single one of those congressmen were in office for the initial passing, or the prior re-authorizations. They are too heavily invested in the act, and the administration has too much control over them.
Time to clean house. Stop fearing your district's loss of seniority by electing new people. Vote them all out. If we do it piece meal, career bureaucrats and career politicians will just co-opt the new members. Remove the leverage.
At this point, yes you are wrong. The whole point of the Police for is not to protect and serve but to take in enough money to stay alive. If you look at a police department and look at the "crimes" people are arrested and fined for you will see that the vast majority are revenue collection under the guise of breaking a law and nothing more.
You sir, are an idiot.
Police do not get to keep the money they collect. None of that money is allowed to go back to the police department.
I bet some police officers are mighty pissed off about this ruling, but as someone who frequently drives with the lights on to warn fellow motorists of speed traps, I am pleased.
I don't know about that, its not like the cops get to keep the fines for the tickets they write. They also don't actually like the confrontation of every stop they make. There is a non-zero risk of getting attacked each time they pull someone over.
The idea is to slow traffic down for safety. Any method that works should be welcome.
This is why most states have given up worrying about radar detectors.
What other solution is there? Now that most Fortune 500 companies have outsourced their IT services, what the heck is the point of worrying about other entities having access to this information?
Well you could pick a cloud provider that does not know your encryption key at all. That way you get the the advantages of collaboration without the public exposure. Or you could set up OwnCloud.
Admittedly these to not offer all the advantages of Plus and Drive.
Does ANYBODY use that? No, seriously, when was the last time you actually heard the term used in relation to TV over IP?
Admittedly it would be best for scheduled TV shows, but when you start talking about TV over IP getting free of the schedule is sort of taken for granted. People want to watch what ever they want when ever they want without a single thought of the bandwidth that will take.
Individual TCP/IP streams is bad enough in you own house, its unsupportable for anything other than Google sized organizations with dozens of data-centers and massive pipes. Even Netflix and things like that have to replicate their entire server farms on ISP's cable plant head-ends to achieve level of business they currently provide. A truly on demand media world will dramatic infrastructure growth.
The cost and quality is far from convincing proof.
Have you used municipal broadband, such as WIFI for a tablet or something? Its not a bed of roses. You've got municipal employees trying to manage things they have no training for, on limited budgets, and no ability to control load.
Like roads, City Fiber provides pathways. But not vehicles. You still have to buy your own car, (or take what ever your city offers in the way of public transport).
You still have to pay for content, to TV, Movies, and your bandwidth for Computer usage. I don't see cities getting into licensing negotiations with Studios, Disney, CBS, NBC for fees. I don't see them providing Email accounts. You will still choose who you are going to pay those TV royalties to, whether you stream or watch cable (fiber) TV.
Municipalities don't want to buy your upstream content, or bandwidth for you. Its huge business, that only the largest cities with full coffers could afford to take on.
By opening the plant for all providers, cities can collect some fees from the providers, and some fees direct from each household. You are probably still going to have somebody's cable/fiber modem in your house.
Believe me, you do not want your municipality regulating content, or limiting bandwidth due to tax constraints, or having every religious group lobbying to shut down huge sections of the internet.
Satellite is really only good for Television, and it makes a terrible internet access route.
But big cable companies like Comcast make their bread and butter selling TV access, its more lucrative than internet access. Some think this is likely to be replaced by intenet tv. Others dispute this.
But the prospect for internet TV, where every single viewing results in a separate TCP/IP feed, scares the hell out of cable companies because even if they manage to get some revenue out of it by hosting things like Netflix on their own plant, they simply do not have enough bandwidth in the ground using old school (coax) cable plants to accommodate the demand. Every TV in the house, and every computer streaming separate programs at different times. GAH!!! The load will kill your typical coax plant.
They are staring an entire infrastructure replacement in the face. Uprooting every front lawn in the country stringing new fiber.
This is another reason I don't believe big cable fights municipal fiber too strenuously.
Go read it yourself. https://www.federalregister.go... Read very carefully. What sounds reasonable is not always reasonable. The regulations authorize deep packet inspection, federal snooping, and none of it applied to mobile broadband.
The thing is, the ISPs SHOULD be treated like phone companies Including common carrier status, with the restrictions that that imposes. When you let them act as if they were common carriers, but don't impose the restrictions of such, you are asking for malicious behavior.
If that is the argument, then let Congress write that legislation.
But be careful what you wish for, because government regulation seldom works in your favor.
Paraphrasing Obama: If you LIKE your current ISP, you can KEEP your current ISP.
Except, by delaying, any planned projects will be rushed through to completion, and once cities and counties start putting in fiber and public wifi that cat's out of the bag.
The summary is a bit misleading, because this would not have blocked Google Fiber. It might have blocked Google supplying an upstream to municipal fiber at a very cheap rate, but even that isn't clear. Once the infrastructure is in place at public expense, its pretty hard mandate its sale or destruction or abandonment. Every city would have grounds to sue.
Cities provide water, sewer, roads, fire protection, and police. In some places, you will find examples of each such service being provided by private industry. Sometimes under contract, rarely in competition. There is scarcely room for competing roads, sewer, or water. Those are things that are natural monopolies.
I've got no problem if a city wants to provide municipal fiber, but I do have a problem when doing so blocks competition or decides what content may be carried.
Municipal fiber, like municipal roads and water, must serve all comers, and must collect revenue from all users via one means or another. (Most people realize that municipal fiber will either become the tragedy of the commons OR it will have to charge competitive rates just to maintain the plant.) Content provision should never be regulated by municipalities. (Too much risk of "won't somebody think of the children" demanding censorship).
Municipal fiber, done right, means more competition, not less. It opens the door for Road Runner, and Century Link, and Google to service what use to be an exclusive Comcast territory, because they can all use the same plant, just like their trucks all use the same street. Access fees, sure. Total throughput fees, sure.
However, I don't think the big broadband companies want to fight this too hard. After all, if the municipality does not provide the physical plant, those companies have to make a HUGE investment in neighborhood plant before they can collect a cent of revenue. Its only where they are already entrenched (see what I did there?) that these companies are looking to prevent municipal broadband.Trying to preserve their existing monopoly.
But I bet they are also doing the math, and realizing they can access more customers than they would lose, especially for TV, when sat dishes are dirt cheap.
There was no "bill", those were regulations that the FCC made in 2011, when they simply asserted an authority to regulate the internet. A pure power grab at the Federal level, not supported by any enabling legislation.
In 2011, the republicans voted to block this power grab, (and lost), but those regulations were subsequently struck down by the Judicial branch, (DC Circuit) because they exceeded the authority of the FCC. (So, if you are keeping score, the Republicans were proven correct).
The present bill, simply attempts to over-ride the court, by stating that the FCC rules go back into effect. (Go read it, its very short).
So by this means, the Democrats hope to restore government by fiat! What a surrender! What wrong headedness! It turns government on its head. Go ahead Executive branch, make any regulations you want, and we will rubber stamp them. Never mind those pesky courts, we will retroactively bitch slap them into submission.
Before you get too comfortable with that assertion, recall that Linux Torvalds wasn't being paid to develop Linux in the beginning nor for long after. Nor were his earliest assistants.
It's certainly easier to develop good-quality software if you aren't distracted by the need to earn a living doing something else, but it's not essential.
Linux moved very slowly (Glacially) while Linus was working for a living and building linux evenings and weekends. He was still in the University at the time if the initial release in 1991. He graduated in 1996 and took work with Transmeta, (Crusoe) which lasted till 2003. Transmeta gave him wide scope to spend significant time on Linux on the company clock.
From 2003 on, he has been essentially paid, allowed, and encouraged to work on Linux with a free hand.
So he spent 8 years at University (interrupted by a year of military service). How those years were financed is not public knowledge, but I suspect his Parents and the Finnish government played a part.
From graduation in 1997 on, he was on the payroll of companies that had the good sense to let him do pretty much as he wanted.
And that's not unusual. A lot of these early contributors were in the employment of companies that allowed and encouraged them to work on linux. You need only dig through early archives to see the email addresses used.
...to see just how in the pocket of huge corporations the GOP is, and yet people continue to vote for them, against their own interests.
What will it take to wake people up? I fear it may not happen until it's too late, if not already.
Its even more infuriating when people don't understand that there is a huge difference between this bill and the one the Republicans voted for in 2011. And its yet more infuriating when some biased blog doesn't even mention the regulations the FCC was trying to impose in 2011 were things that a lot of people here on Slashdot were complaining about vociferously back in 2011. Those regulations went way past what the common man understands as "net neutrality". Those regulations essentially made the internet like a telephone carriers or tv station, which would need FCC licenses just to operate. It was a back-door regulation grab. No rules are better than total government control.
Its depressing to see how many people automatically think that if a Democrat authors a bill its automatically good for the people. Have you learned nothing in the last 8 years?
You're being ridiculous. There will be ample evidence at your trial that you are free to challenge.
The current discussion is about HOW they got the INITIAL IDEA that you were running drugs. Its not about what additional evidence they turn up in their subsequent investigation.
Its impossible to write a law listing all the legal means by which police can initially acquire the vague idea that you might be involved in running drugs, if for no other reason than you can never know the content of their brain.
Because that is what you are trying to control, not where the investigation take you after the police get a lead to the effect that you were running drugs. You are trying to control what they happened to come across in their daily lives.
The problem isn't that police follow up on leads. We pay them to do that. The problem is that the Government has information that they have no business collecting, and your congressmen decided that was a good idea, and you re-elected them.
Purely coincidentally, law enforcement agencies have a penchant for using confidential informants.
Exactly. Simply having an anonymous tip can serve to get some fact or allegation into the record to serve as a basis for investigation.
Cops have been using those tactics for decades to protect undercover officers or snitches embedded in criminal organizations. Parallel Construction simply applies this technique of protecting sources from retribution, and redirects it to protecting government illegal activity.
The solution isn't to expect cops not to use information that comes into their hand via less than perfectly legal means. That goes against human nature.
The solution is to make sure goverment isn't in possession of this information in the first place.
WHY was the dog sniffing around that street need not be justified by anything more than Routine Patrol and training. (regardless of that phone call from the DEA that suggested 2nd Ave would be a good place to train).
Slashdot Mirror
My biggest concern for the beta is it seems to destroy the tools needed for a robust commenting and conversation, including notification of new posts, easy ways to quote prior posts, easy way to link directly to comments, etc. If this is going to be reintegrated for sure (and maybe expanded?) then I'm probably cool with it.
I agree.
There are a hundred little nuances to the old interface that are simply AWOL with the beta. In their place we
get these freaking pop-over menus that are hard to close on tablets and screen density that leaves you scrolling forever.
We get a share link that doesn't take you to the specific message, and no way to link to any specific reply.
Friends and Foes markers are gone!?
SlashIDs are gone. I have to hover the cursor to figure out who's lawn I have to get off of. (Have you tried hovering on a touch screen?)
Dice needs to save some money. Let those programmers go back to making minor improvements to Classic. (ever try to use the score slider on a touch screen?).
IINBDFI.
From Timothy:
but that is, at the same time, more accessible and shareable by a wider audience.
Precisely which audience is having problems reading slashdot, on precisely which platform? I read /. on
desktops, laptops, phones android, IOS, 4 or 5 different browsers. Its not a problem.?
How is removing individual reply links making it more shareable?
Nope. As people are so fond of pointing out, we're the product. Since our displeasure with the new UX-infested abortion obviously, as you so correctly put it, "means squat to Dice," maybe having a bunch of "products" walking off the shelves and out of the store will get their attention.
With "ads off" button checked, (not to mention adblock and safescript running, I fail to see how I am a product.
It is hard to see what their game plan is here, at this stage, but judging by the layout you can expect an ever increasing amount of floating ads. They have hacked out huge percentages of real estate on each page, the entire right column is currently wasted. I predict this won't last as it will be full of ads (all designed to beat adblock) for the entire page height.
This is the camel's nose under the tent. If you swallow beta, you'll be swallowing forever.
I'm still on classic, but I'm not commenting on any articles (other than to speak out against beta) until this nonsense goes away or at least is entirely optional. (Its not like I haven't tried to use it.).
The fear hasn't existed for a long time.
The drums of fear are still being pounded hard and loud. Just read a few of the administration's fear talk about why we have to have continued data gathering.
What about all the other Democrats that pushed through the last reauthorization?
The scale of the surveillance and lengths to which the NSA has pushed its limits was a "shock" according to Sensenbrenner, who also wrote the USA Freedom Act, a bill to restrict the scope of both Section 215 and the NSA programs, which has attracted 130 co-sponsors.
The author of the Patriot act has seen the light, and yet you do nothing but call him names?
What has YOUR guy been doing all this time? Oh yeah, reauthorizing it year after year.
How can you be so ignorant of the truth, yet so quick to post insults?
>James Sensenbrenner Jr. (R-Wis.)
A laughably empty threat. The Republican bloc is unlikely to do anything that would curb military or intelligence related activities.
The two prior extensions were pushed through by Democrats. After 8 years, its time to stop blaming Republicans.
On Saturday, February 27, 2010, President Barack Obama signed into law legislation that would temporarily extend for one year three controversial provisions of the Patriot Act that had been set to expire:
Authorize court-approved roving wiretaps that permit surveillance on multiple phones.
Allow court-approved seizure of records and property in anti-terrorism operations.
Permit surveillance against a so-called lone wolf, a non-U.S. citizen engaged in terrorism who may not be part of a recognized terrorist group.
Its useful divisive idiots like you that keep trying to make this a partisan issue rather than getting you own party to actually READ the constitution.
And this is why it can be smart to put time limits on bills, even if you think they are a good idea at the time. In that sense, the original authors of the Patriot Act were smart.
This will be something like the third re-authorization. (It expired piecemeal, making it easier to re-authorize it piecemeal).
We not only need sunset into bills, we need to require an ever increasing majority to re-authorize these laws.
(As well as (nearly) unanimous consent to lower those requirements.)
You can bet that at the time grows near, there will be an "incident" that just "happens" to come along which will have the usual useful idiots demanding more protection, and tighter scrutiny. The drumbeat of fear will be revved up again. Someone will put forth minor meaningless tweaks and tell us the problem is solved. Opponents will be vilified and demonized in the press, mistresses will surface. You name it. Its not like we haven't seen this before.
And we need to enact penalties for judges that fail to uphold their oath of office.
Section 215 of the Patriot Act will expire during the summer of 2015 and will not be renewed
Its time to put this experiment to bed. Like prohibition, which lasted 13 years, the Patriot act (now 13 years old), and damage it has caused needs to be rolled back. Not just Section 215, but other major portions of the act as well.
We are not safer now. We are simply less free now. It has not prevented terrorist attacks, either here or abroad. Boarder security continues to be a utter joke, and secrecy provisions are the antithesis of our supposed freedoms.
Its probably time to start yanking your congressman's chain. Its time to point out that the simple fact we are not asleep any more is basically all that is needed, and all that was ever needed. Its time to point out that 13 years of lies and secrecy is enough. Its time for them to stop carrying the governments message to their constituents, and start carrying their constituents message to the government.
Do I expect this to be successful? No. Not as long as a single one of those congressmen were in office for the initial passing, or the prior re-authorizations. They are too heavily invested in the act, and the administration has too much control over them.
Time to clean house. Stop fearing your district's loss of seniority by electing new people. Vote them all out. If we do it piece meal, career bureaucrats and career politicians will just co-opt the new members. Remove the leverage.
Seriously considering it, yes.
Me too. I've tried the new look, and its more of a mess than the current version.
At this point, yes you are wrong. The whole point of the Police for is not to protect and serve but to take in enough money to stay alive. If you look at a police department and look at the "crimes" people are arrested and fined for you will see that the vast majority are revenue collection under the guise of breaking a law and nothing more.
You sir, are an idiot.
Police do not get to keep the money they collect. None of that money is allowed to go back to the police department.
It's still basically conspiracy (in this case, conspiracy to break the speed limit), and it carries jailtime if they want to pursue it.
Wait, how can warning someone about going to fast be a conspiracy to break the speed limit? That's just insane.
I bet some police officers are mighty pissed off about this ruling, but as someone who frequently drives with the lights on to warn fellow motorists of speed traps, I am pleased.
I don't know about that, its not like the cops get to keep the fines for the tickets they write.
They also don't actually like the confrontation of every stop they make. There is a non-zero
risk of getting attacked each time they pull someone over.
The idea is to slow traffic down for safety. Any method that works should be welcome.
This is why most states have given up worrying about radar detectors.
What other solution is there? Now that most Fortune 500 companies have outsourced their IT services, what the heck is the point of worrying about other entities having access to this information?
Well you could pick a cloud provider that does not know your encryption key at all. That way you get the the advantages of collaboration without the public exposure.
Or you could set up OwnCloud.
Admittedly these to not offer all the advantages of Plus and Drive.
Multicast?
Does ANYBODY use that? No, seriously, when was the last time you actually heard the term used in relation to TV over IP?
Admittedly it would be best for scheduled TV shows, but when you start talking about TV over IP getting free of the schedule
is sort of taken for granted. People want to watch what ever they want when ever they want without a single thought of the bandwidth that will take.
Individual TCP/IP streams is bad enough in you own house, its unsupportable for anything other than Google sized organizations with dozens of data-centers and massive pipes. Even Netflix and things like that have to replicate their entire server farms on ISP's cable plant head-ends to achieve level of business they currently provide. A truly on demand media world will dramatic infrastructure growth.
The cost and quality is far from convincing proof.
Have you used municipal broadband, such as WIFI for a tablet or something? Its not a bed of roses. You've got municipal employees trying to manage things they have no training for, on limited budgets, and no ability to control load.
Like roads, City Fiber provides pathways. But not vehicles. You still have to buy your own car, (or take what ever your city offers in the way of public transport).
You still have to pay for content, to TV, Movies, and your bandwidth for Computer usage. I don't see cities getting into licensing negotiations with Studios, Disney, CBS, NBC for fees. I don't see them providing Email accounts. You will still choose who you are going to pay those TV royalties to, whether you stream or watch cable (fiber) TV.
Municipalities don't want to buy your upstream content, or bandwidth for you. Its huge business, that only the largest cities with full coffers could afford to take on.
By opening the plant for all providers, cities can collect some fees from the providers, and some fees direct from each household. You are probably still going to have somebody's cable/fiber modem in your house.
Believe me, you do not want your municipality regulating content, or limiting bandwidth due to tax constraints, or having every religious group lobbying to shut down huge sections of the internet.
Well you bring up another good point.
Satellite is really only good for Television, and it makes a terrible internet access route.
But big cable companies like Comcast make their bread and butter selling TV access, its more lucrative than internet access.
Some think this is likely to be replaced by intenet tv. Others dispute this.
But the prospect for internet TV, where every single viewing results in a separate TCP/IP feed, scares the hell out of cable companies because even if they manage to get some revenue out of it by hosting things like Netflix on their own plant, they simply do not have enough bandwidth in the ground using old school (coax) cable plants to accommodate the demand. Every TV in the house, and every computer streaming separate programs at different times. GAH!!! The load will kill your typical coax plant.
They are staring an entire infrastructure replacement in the face. Uprooting every front lawn in the country stringing new fiber.
This is another reason I don't believe big cable fights municipal fiber too strenuously.
Go read it yourself. https://www.federalregister.go...
Read very carefully. What sounds reasonable is not always reasonable.
The regulations authorize deep packet inspection, federal snooping, and none of it applied to mobile broadband.
The thing is, the ISPs SHOULD be treated like phone companies Including common carrier status, with the restrictions that that imposes. When you let them act as if they were common carriers, but don't impose the restrictions of such, you are asking for malicious behavior.
If that is the argument, then let Congress write that legislation.
But be careful what you wish for, because government regulation seldom works in your favor.
Paraphrasing Obama: If you LIKE your current ISP, you can KEEP your current ISP.
Except, by delaying, any planned projects will be rushed through to completion, and once cities and counties start putting in fiber and public wifi that cat's out of the bag.
The summary is a bit misleading, because this would not have blocked Google Fiber. It might have blocked Google supplying an upstream to municipal fiber at a very cheap rate, but even that isn't clear. Once the infrastructure is in place at public expense, its pretty hard mandate its sale or destruction or abandonment. Every city would have grounds to sue.
Cities provide water, sewer, roads, fire protection, and police. In some places, you will find examples of each such service being provided by private industry. Sometimes under contract, rarely in competition. There is scarcely room for competing roads, sewer, or water. Those are things that are natural monopolies.
I've got no problem if a city wants to provide municipal fiber, but I do have a problem when doing so blocks competition or decides what content may be carried.
Municipal fiber, like municipal roads and water, must serve all comers, and must collect revenue from all users via one means or another. (Most people realize that municipal fiber will either become the tragedy of the commons OR it will have to charge competitive rates just to maintain the plant.) Content provision should never be regulated by municipalities. (Too much risk of "won't somebody think of the children" demanding censorship).
Municipal fiber, done right, means more competition, not less. It opens the door for Road Runner, and Century Link, and Google to service what use to be an exclusive Comcast territory, because they can all use the same plant, just like their trucks all use the same street. Access fees, sure. Total throughput fees, sure.
However, I don't think the big broadband companies want to fight this too hard. After all, if the municipality does not provide the physical plant, those companies have to make a HUGE investment in neighborhood plant before they can collect a cent of revenue. Its only where they are already entrenched (see what I did there?) that these companies are looking to prevent municipal broadband.Trying to preserve their existing monopoly.
But I bet they are also doing the math, and realizing they can access more customers than they would lose, especially for TV, when sat dishes are dirt cheap.
There was no "bill", those were regulations that the FCC made in 2011, when they simply asserted an authority to regulate the internet. A pure power grab at the Federal level, not supported by any enabling legislation.
In 2011, the republicans voted to block this power grab, (and lost), but those regulations were subsequently struck down by the Judicial branch, (DC Circuit) because they exceeded the authority of the FCC. (So, if you are keeping score, the Republicans were proven correct).
The present bill, simply attempts to over-ride the court, by stating that the FCC rules go back into effect. (Go read it, its very short).
So by this means, the Democrats hope to restore government by fiat! What a surrender! What wrong headedness! It turns government on its head. Go ahead Executive branch, make any regulations you want, and we will rubber stamp them. Never mind those pesky courts, we will retroactively bitch slap them into submission.
Before you get too comfortable with that assertion, recall that Linux Torvalds wasn't being paid to develop Linux in the beginning nor for long after. Nor were his earliest assistants.
It's certainly easier to develop good-quality software if you aren't distracted by the need to earn a living doing something else, but it's not essential.
Linux moved very slowly (Glacially) while Linus was working for a living and building linux evenings and weekends. He was still in the University at the time if the initial release in 1991. He graduated in 1996 and took work with Transmeta, (Crusoe) which lasted till 2003. Transmeta gave him wide scope to spend significant time on Linux on the company clock.
From 2003 on, he has been essentially paid, allowed, and encouraged to work on Linux with a free hand.
So he spent 8 years at University (interrupted by a year of military service). How those years were financed is not public knowledge, but I suspect his Parents and the Finnish government played a part.
From graduation in 1997 on, he was on the payroll of companies that had the good sense to let him do pretty much as he wanted.
And that's not unusual. A lot of these early contributors were in the employment of companies that allowed and encouraged them to work on linux. You need only dig through early archives to see the email addresses used.
...to see just how in the pocket of huge corporations the GOP is, and yet people continue to vote for them, against their own interests.
What will it take to wake people up? I fear it may not happen until it's too late, if not already.
Its even more infuriating when people don't understand that there is a huge difference between this bill and the one the Republicans voted for in 2011. And its yet more infuriating when some biased blog doesn't even mention the regulations the FCC was trying to impose in 2011 were things that a lot of people here on Slashdot were complaining about vociferously back in 2011. Those regulations went way past what the common man understands as "net neutrality". Those regulations essentially made the internet like a telephone carriers or tv station, which would need FCC licenses just to operate. It was a back-door regulation grab. No rules are better than total government control.
Its depressing to see how many people automatically think that if a Democrat authors a bill its automatically good for the people. Have you learned nothing in the last 8 years?
You're being ridiculous.
There will be ample evidence at your trial that you are free to challenge.
The current discussion is about HOW they got the INITIAL IDEA that you were running drugs.
Its not about what additional evidence they turn up in their subsequent investigation.
Its impossible to write a law listing all the legal means by which police can initially acquire the vague idea that you might be involved in running drugs, if for no other reason than you can never know the content of their brain.
Because that is what you are trying to control, not where the investigation take you after the police get a lead to the effect that you were running drugs. You are trying to control what they happened to come across in their daily lives.
The problem isn't that police follow up on leads. We pay them to do that.
The problem is that the Government has information that they have no business collecting, and your congressmen decided that was a good idea, and you re-elected them.
Purely coincidentally, law enforcement agencies have a penchant for using confidential informants.
Exactly.
Simply having an anonymous tip can serve to get some fact or allegation into the record to serve as a basis for investigation.
Cops have been using those tactics for decades to protect undercover officers or snitches embedded in criminal organizations. Parallel Construction simply applies this technique of protecting sources from retribution, and redirects it to protecting government illegal activity.
The solution isn't to expect cops not to use information that comes into their hand via less than perfectly legal means. That goes against human nature.
The solution is to make sure goverment isn't in possession of this information in the first place.
You are over thinking this. (I suspect you watch too much TV).
The dog will sniff out your car as you park it on the street.
Or maybe your shoes as you walk down the street.
Dog hits in public places are legal probable cause.
WHY was the dog sniffing around that street need not be justified by anything more than Routine Patrol and training.
(regardless of that phone call from the DEA that suggested 2nd Ave would be a good place to train).