Yes, but it is NOT the job of the audio system to unilaterally decide to limit or prevent clipping, unless I fucking tell it to. My dumb ol' SET tube amp grasps that concept easily, playing at the volume I tell it to. Why can't my Linux sound system do the same.
Granted, if one has in production a data store of 1PB, and is relying on cloud storage as the backup medium, a restore of that 1PB of data will take a frightfully long time in a DR scenario. Not that there aren't many, many shops with that much data (and more) in use every day, but I'd suggest that they are the exception. I know we are. We deal with less than a TB in live production data, at most. Much of that we could live without while it is restored, because our architecture is designed with that filer-Internet-cloud network bottleneck in mind. The point is you don't have to (and shouldn't) treat cloud storage like a tape drive or a hard drive. It is something else, with certain advantages and disadvantages. To make a blanket "it sucks" statement is more than overly simplifying the issue.
So they had 88 pages on you for no reason? What the heck could warrant that?
Having a common name that just happens to also belong to at least one "person of interest" springs immediately to mind.
Or maybe being a Quaker - you know, those radical peace activists who are known to sympathize with terrorists.
I've been building this big ol' rocket in my barn, here in Texas. If I could just get the feds off my back long enough to fuel the thing, I'd be happy to help out.
You joke..., and it is, but at the same time it is genuinely unsettling in a rather Machiavellian sort of way.
Not that it isn't done in a hundred different ways every day, but this kind of manipulation of our culture by corporate advertising (however ham-handed this particular attempt may be), not to mention their meddling in the operation of our government, is something that I find more than a little troubling. And no, I don't blame a business for doing whatever it can to make money. That's what they're there for, but it's the increasingly dazed complicity of the consumers (present company excepted, mostly) that gives me chills.
Consider something like Starbucks. I was a customer when it was still a hippie coffee store in Pike Place that sold varietal coffee beans and hard-to-find paraphernalia for the java junkie. Now it is a marketing miracle that sells, primarily, over-priced beverages of depressingly inconsistent quality. And yet I know of at least two locations where there are three separate Starbucks operations within a hundred yards or so of each other. Surely there are others. While I mourn the loss of what was (cool people and great coffee), I stand in awe of what it has become. I despair at knowing that this is but one relatively trivial example of what we have allowed corporate business to do throughout our culture. Some of those dystopian films like "Rollerball", "Max Headroom", and "Demolition Man" are starting to look a little less silly and little more visionary.
Mod (the gray-bearded) parent up for knowing about the "World's Fastest Indian", and for having a true appreciation for the spirit that is found in all forms of motorcycle racing.
7510? Jeez, you are and old-timer. So just tell you me that you know who Dick Mann or Mert Lawill were and I'll get off your lawn.
I doubt that one tenth of one per cent of/. readers would recognize the name, but Chris Carr does indeed have the anatomical qualifications for this gig, having multiple dirt-track motorcycle championships on his resume. And that's "dirt track" as in oval speedway, not that sissy-boy stadium-racing-cum-bump-jumping that has captured the media's attention for the last 25 years. Motorcycle "flat track" racing is the province of what are arguably the bravest racers on two wheels. Pitching the bike sideways and using a combination of throttle and body-english to steer it through the corner of a slippery clay track, at well over 100 miles per hour is nothing if not ballsy. Doing it fast enough to win multiple AMA championships, including a staggering six consecutive titles, certainly indicates the presence of heavy metals in the guy's leathers.
Congrats, Chris, on bagging yet another major accomplishment in an already legendary career.
FTFA...
limiting the government's power to issue "national security letters,"...
Translation: The President of the United States does, in fact, NOT have the power to issue a royal decree which suspends the Constitution of the United States of American whenever he fucking feels like it. Nor do his minions have such authority. The laws regarding due process, privacy, unreasonable search and seizure, and so on, shall stand, and we are very, very sorry that we allowed the terrorists to win by scaring us into passing this absurdly named "Patriot Act".
I know it's nice to blame Israel and the West for everything that goes wrong in the world militarily but pleace, if you're going to do so then actually provide some logic for you're reasoning rather than just blurt it out cluelessly like an idiot drone who falls for the first bit of anti-establishment propaganda that blows his way.
Now, now. Don't be mean. Creating an idiot drone takes time. He likely didn't fall for "..the first bit of anti-establishment propaganda...".
Fox News, Lush Rimjaughb, and others have been feeding them bits of "the truth" for years.
Uh, not really. The state's budget shortfall is what it is for a variety of reasons, a tanked economy being one of the largest. The fact that cutting off one of the corporate welfare tits that Microsoft enjoys would make up for revenues lost due to these other reasons is not "blaming Microsoft".
Perhaps there are deliberate omissions, but I don't think that matters much in the face of what will be a lobbying campaign of history-making proportions. The telecom lobby is arguably the most powerful in Washington. They do not want net neutrality. While it will almost certainly not receive the press attention that the health-care reform debate has had, this issue will open a fire-hose of influence buying. Mark my words. Couple that with the fact that few of the regulators, and virtually no one in congress, has an adequate understanding of the technological issues, and we'll be lucky if the end product isn't worse that the current mess.
"Such a device will work for cyclists as well as pedestrians...."
Yeah, but why would I want that? A few more traffic-jamming, "I'm entitled to a whole lane even if I am moving at 20 mph under the speed limit", asshole cyclists getting punted into the ditch would be a good thing.
Nice try.
Blame the FoxNews astroturf movement for misappropriating the term. Then take responsibility for not grasping even the most basic of civic principles. And then take your lumps for the irony of the story you link to in your sig. Yeah, that's right, consumeraffairs.com/news04/2009/09/asthma_hfa05.htmlis a gleaming example of why the insurance and health care industries are in desperate need of regulation. Setting aside, for the moment, the whole "astham inhalers are destroying the ozone layer" argument (because it's absurd, owing to the relatively infinitesimal contribution to total CFC release they represent), it should be noted that the "new and improved green inhalers" qualify under corporate welfare rules as a "new" forumlation. So instead of the commodity pricing on an older, and yet in this case more effective, generic formulation, the drug company sells it for 10 times as much.
Do we even need to go into the fact that the protagonist's has suddenly found herself without health insurance? Sounds like a death-panel to me.
This "insurance is supposed to cover medical devices" comes directly from government regulation. Even if an insurance company like Nationwide wanted to provide coverage to buy an Iphone for their hearing-disabled customer, they could not do it, else they'd be fined by the U.S. Congress.
Uh..., no. Go back to school and retake basic civics with your borderline illiterate tea-bagger buddies. Pay particular attention to the part where they describe the roles of the various branches of government. Note that neither the Senate nor the House of Representatives is charged with the actual enforcement of the laws they make. Until then, do us all a favor and stop adding incoherent noise to the healthcare debate.
Mod parent way up. Couldn't have said it better myself.
You know, it's tempting to dismiss the parent's argument as an oversimplification. After all, how many U.S. citizens truly buy, literally, the Biblical version of creation? Not many. A minority, by an measure, but the impact that this noisy minority has had is substantial. The Republican party has successfully exploited this previously ignored fringe group for quite some time now. The result? Educational policy that places creationism or "intelligent design" on par with accepted scientific theory (shameless baiting of the semantically challenged, I know) and a political machine that wastes time and money arguing about it. Meanwhile, with that as a convenient diversion, the real business of Republican politics, crony capitalism, gets done. Meanwhile, superstition has gained the status of "alternative" to accepted science.
I think we've missed one important point though, the loss of funding for "pure research". Ever since the Reagan years, there has been a fairly steady decline in funding for pure research. Without the promise of profitable applications, so many projects never get the resources needed to support the kind of inquiry that leads to the huge leaps in our knowledge that once made "science" cool. Now, research must not only promise at least potential profit, but it must also receive the blessing of the growing American theocracy. Can you say "stem cell research"?
...clinging to guns and religion is plainly unintelligent...
Huh? OK, I'm with you on the religion part. "Any thinking person must be an agnostic" and all that. Little good ever came from the zealous observance (clinging-to, as you say) of any religion. Ever. But I am just about as liberal as they come, and I have no use for the anti-gun nuts out there. Responsible gun ownership is not a crime. Period. If I want to own and shoot a.22 plinker or a.50 BMG bench-rest rifle, I should be able to. Depending on where you live, either or both of those types of weapons are off the table. That's bullshit. If you want me to demonstrate proficiency with what is, by it's very nature, a dangerous weapon, fine. In fact, I wish there were more requirements for gun ownership. Every gun show I've ever been to has had dozens of attendees who plainly appear to be someone who shouldn't be trusted with a pointy stick, much less a firearm. That's wrong.
I live in a city where violent crime is an every day occurrence. It seems that not a week goes by that some convenience store clerk or innocent kid is killed or injured by someone who probably should not have had a gun. Most of the guns involved in those incidents are, by far, not acquired legally. No amount of regulation aimed at law abiding citizens will change that. To suggest otherwise is absurd. On the other hand, every once in a while an armed shop keeper or home owner shoots back. That is how it should be. Armed and proficient is safer than unarmed or inept. No, please don't trot out the "...most gun deaths are caused by someone you know..." statistics, but do read as much as possible into the term "proficient". Proficiency means more than being a good shot. Get it?
Also, let's put things in perspective. While each is tragic, the number of gun-related deaths and injuries in this country pale in comparison to many other causes, especially those related to things with wheels on them. All the hand-wringing and fear-mongering from the anti-gun nuts starts to look a bit irrational when you actually put things in perspective. In my particular neighborhood, I'm not to worried about getting shot at, but my life is threatened every single time I venture out onto the freeways here. Racer-boy wannabe's and various other idiots routinely dodge through traffic at speeds 30 mph or more above the flow of traffic. They kill or maim every day here. Just last week, an SUV left the freeway and wrapped itself around a 6" diameter steel sign post in front of where I work. But still, I hear no emotional outrage calling for the banning of wheels.
Really? Handled correctly? Well, I guess, by comparison, with Chernobyl, it was handled a lot more correctly. It was still bungled in many important respects. More important than that, however, is the remaining fact that it broke in the first place. Complex systems have a way of doing that. When the consequences of failure are so dire, and very few human endeavors have consequences of failure anywhere near as dire as those involving nuclear energy, is it ever worth the risk? How many lives are an acceptable sacrifice for "cheap" and "clean" power? How many square miles of homes and businesses are we willing to abandon, virtually forever, when they become so badly contaminated that they can no longer b occupied? And don't even get me started on the waste issue. Okay, too late, so just tell me what mankind has ever built that has lasted as long as it takes for high-level nuclear waste to be rendered harmless? That's right. Not even close. Not by half. But if we can get some chump state with a population density low enough not to notice, we can dump it there with reasonable assurance that we'll be dead and gone before their children have to deal with it, so fuck 'em.
How about having the British apologize to everyone who was wronged by their hateful policies in the past?
Oh, sure. Start apologizing and pretty soon the pufters will be wanting their rights. Before you know it, bestiality will be legalized and the sacred institution of marriage will fall apart.
Friedman was on the right track, but he missed the obvious conclusion - that incentive is lower still, when you are compensated by the recipients of the spending of "someone else's money". Can you say crony capitalism? How about Enron? Haliburton? Blackwater? Corrupt politicians, those bought and paid for by special interests, have an incentive to spend as recklessly as they can get away with while doing business with the interests who own them.
Why is it that Sarah Palin, Carrie Prejean, and other tea-baggers and ditto-heads, and now (somewhat surprisingly) the EFF, have such a hard time grasping the principles embodied in the U.S. Constitution? I mean, come on. Cutting of your Internet access does nothing to violate one's Constitutional guarantee to privacy. Never mind the fact that if you put it on the Internet, it is now de facto not private, pulling the plug on your connection, or on entire segments of the network, does nothing if not enhance your privacy by making your stuff harder to get to. And no, your First Amendment rights do not extend to the Internet. The First Amendment protects your right to say what you want. It is not, nor has it ever been, a guarantee of access to a specific platform to express one's views. For that you are on your own.
Yes, yes, it can be argued that the Internet has become an extension of "the commons"; a virtual town square, if you will, where one is indeed free to speak one's mind without fear of the government locking you up for it. For better or worse, however, it is also a medium for many other things, and many of those things are of critical importance for reasons of public safety, commerce, etc. Public safety trumps free speech most of the time (yelling "fire!" in a crowded theatre, etc), but in the case of the net, I'm going to want some very good reasons for clamping down on the public's right to share information. That means a lot more transparency when it comes to the government's reasons for taking such an action than we have seen for the last 8 years; a hell of a lot more. Just saying "national security" is not good enough, not by half. If you give me a good reason that you need to pull most of patch cables out of the switches at MAE-East, for example, fine, but don't expect me to sit still for it if you don't. At the risk of sounding like a run-of-the-mill right wing tool, this is not Iran. Shutting off simple dissent is not OK. If (and only if) there exist protections for abuses of that power, and I mean protection with big teeth that won't let a power-mad Administration piss on The Constitution, then fine. Protect my electrical service, emergency communications, whatever, from hackers..., I mean, "terrorists". Just do a better job of it than you have to date.
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Yes, but it is NOT the job of the audio system to unilaterally decide to limit or prevent clipping, unless I fucking tell it to. My dumb ol' SET tube amp grasps that concept easily, playing at the volume I tell it to. Why can't my Linux sound system do the same.
"Lighten up, Francis".
Granted, if one has in production a data store of 1PB, and is relying on cloud storage as the backup medium, a restore of that 1PB of data will take a frightfully long time in a DR scenario. Not that there aren't many, many shops with that much data (and more) in use every day, but I'd suggest that they are the exception. I know we are. We deal with less than a TB in live production data, at most. Much of that we could live without while it is restored, because our architecture is designed with that filer-Internet-cloud network bottleneck in mind. The point is you don't have to (and shouldn't) treat cloud storage like a tape drive or a hard drive. It is something else, with certain advantages and disadvantages. To make a blanket "it sucks" statement is more than overly simplifying the issue.
You're not. :)
Now get off my lawn.
So they had 88 pages on you for no reason? What the heck could warrant that?
Having a common name that just happens to also belong to at least one "person of interest" springs immediately to mind.
Or maybe being a Quaker - you know, those radical peace activists who are known to sympathize with terrorists.
I've been building this big ol' rocket in my barn, here in Texas. If I could just get the feds off my back long enough to fuel the thing, I'd be happy to help out.
You joke..., and it is, but at the same time it is genuinely unsettling in a rather Machiavellian sort of way.
Not that it isn't done in a hundred different ways every day, but this kind of manipulation of our culture by corporate advertising (however ham-handed this particular attempt may be), not to mention their meddling in the operation of our government, is something that I find more than a little troubling. And no, I don't blame a business for doing whatever it can to make money. That's what they're there for, but it's the increasingly dazed complicity of the consumers (present company excepted, mostly) that gives me chills.
Consider something like Starbucks. I was a customer when it was still a hippie coffee store in Pike Place that sold varietal coffee beans and hard-to-find paraphernalia for the java junkie. Now it is a marketing miracle that sells, primarily, over-priced beverages of depressingly inconsistent quality. And yet I know of at least two locations where there are three separate Starbucks operations within a hundred yards or so of each other. Surely there are others. While I mourn the loss of what was (cool people and great coffee), I stand in awe of what it has become. I despair at knowing that this is but one relatively trivial example of what we have allowed corporate business to do throughout our culture. Some of those dystopian films like "Rollerball", "Max Headroom", and "Demolition Man" are starting to look a little less silly and little more visionary.
Mod (the gray-bearded) parent up for knowing about the "World's Fastest Indian", and for having a true appreciation for the spirit that is found in all forms of motorcycle racing.
7510? Jeez, you are and old-timer. So just tell you me that you know who Dick Mann or Mert Lawill were and I'll get off your lawn.
I doubt that one tenth of one per cent of /. readers would recognize the name, but Chris Carr does indeed have the anatomical qualifications for this gig, having multiple dirt-track motorcycle championships on his resume. And that's "dirt track" as in oval speedway, not that sissy-boy stadium-racing-cum-bump-jumping that has captured the media's attention for the last 25 years. Motorcycle "flat track" racing is the province of what are arguably the bravest racers on two wheels. Pitching the bike sideways and using a combination of throttle and body-english to steer it through the corner of a slippery clay track, at well over 100 miles per hour is nothing if not ballsy. Doing it fast enough to win multiple AMA championships, including a staggering six consecutive titles, certainly indicates the presence of heavy metals in the guy's leathers.
Congrats, Chris, on bagging yet another major accomplishment in an already legendary career.
FTFA... limiting the government's power to issue "national security letters,"...
Translation: The President of the United States does, in fact, NOT have the power to issue a royal decree which suspends the Constitution of the United States of American whenever he fucking feels like it. Nor do his minions have such authority. The laws regarding due process, privacy, unreasonable search and seizure, and so on, shall stand, and we are very, very sorry that we allowed the terrorists to win by scaring us into passing this absurdly named "Patriot Act".
I know it's nice to blame Israel and the West for everything that goes wrong in the world militarily but pleace, if you're going to do so then actually provide some logic for you're reasoning rather than just blurt it out cluelessly like an idiot drone who falls for the first bit of anti-establishment propaganda that blows his way.
Now, now. Don't be mean. Creating an idiot drone takes time. He likely didn't fall for "..the first bit of anti-establishment propaganda...".
Fox News, Lush Rimjaughb, and others have been feeding them bits of "the truth" for years.
Way to blame microsoft for the state deficit.
Uh, not really. The state's budget shortfall is what it is for a variety of reasons, a tanked economy being one of the largest. The fact that cutting off one of the corporate welfare tits that Microsoft enjoys would make up for revenues lost due to these other reasons is not "blaming Microsoft".
Perhaps there are deliberate omissions, but I don't think that matters much in the face of what will be a lobbying campaign of history-making proportions. The telecom lobby is arguably the most powerful in Washington. They do not want net neutrality. While it will almost certainly not receive the press attention that the health-care reform debate has had, this issue will open a fire-hose of influence buying. Mark my words. Couple that with the fact that few of the regulators, and virtually no one in congress, has an adequate understanding of the technological issues, and we'll be lucky if the end product isn't worse that the current mess.
"Such a device will work for cyclists as well as pedestrians...." Yeah, but why would I want that? A few more traffic-jamming, "I'm entitled to a whole lane even if I am moving at 20 mph under the speed limit", asshole cyclists getting punted into the ditch would be a good thing.
Nice try. Blame the FoxNews astroturf movement for misappropriating the term. Then take responsibility for not grasping even the most basic of civic principles. And then take your lumps for the irony of the story you link to in your sig. Yeah, that's right, consumeraffairs.com/news04/2009/09/asthma_hfa05.htmlis a gleaming example of why the insurance and health care industries are in desperate need of regulation. Setting aside, for the moment, the whole "astham inhalers are destroying the ozone layer" argument (because it's absurd, owing to the relatively infinitesimal contribution to total CFC release they represent), it should be noted that the "new and improved green inhalers" qualify under corporate welfare rules as a "new" forumlation. So instead of the commodity pricing on an older, and yet in this case more effective, generic formulation, the drug company sells it for 10 times as much.
Do we even need to go into the fact that the protagonist's has suddenly found herself without health insurance? Sounds like a death-panel to me.
This "insurance is supposed to cover medical devices" comes directly from government regulation. Even if an insurance company like Nationwide wanted to provide coverage to buy an Iphone for their hearing-disabled customer, they could not do it, else they'd be fined by the U.S. Congress.
Uh..., no. Go back to school and retake basic civics with your borderline illiterate tea-bagger buddies. Pay particular attention to the part where they describe the roles of the various branches of government. Note that neither the Senate nor the House of Representatives is charged with the actual enforcement of the laws they make. Until then, do us all a favor and stop adding incoherent noise to the healthcare debate.
Mod parent way up. Couldn't have said it better myself.
You know, it's tempting to dismiss the parent's argument as an oversimplification. After all, how many U.S. citizens truly buy, literally, the Biblical version of creation? Not many. A minority, by an measure, but the impact that this noisy minority has had is substantial. The Republican party has successfully exploited this previously ignored fringe group for quite some time now. The result? Educational policy that places creationism or "intelligent design" on par with accepted scientific theory (shameless baiting of the semantically challenged, I know) and a political machine that wastes time and money arguing about it. Meanwhile, with that as a convenient diversion, the real business of Republican politics, crony capitalism, gets done. Meanwhile, superstition has gained the status of "alternative" to accepted science.
I think we've missed one important point though, the loss of funding for "pure research". Ever since the Reagan years, there has been a fairly steady decline in funding for pure research. Without the promise of profitable applications, so many projects never get the resources needed to support the kind of inquiry that leads to the huge leaps in our knowledge that once made "science" cool. Now, research must not only promise at least potential profit, but it must also receive the blessing of the growing American theocracy. Can you say "stem cell research"?
...clinging to guns and religion is plainly unintelligent...
Huh? OK, I'm with you on the religion part. "Any thinking person must be an agnostic" and all that. Little good ever came from the zealous observance (clinging-to, as you say) of any religion. Ever. But I am just about as liberal as they come, and I have no use for the anti-gun nuts out there. Responsible gun ownership is not a crime. Period. If I want to own and shoot a .22 plinker or a .50 BMG bench-rest rifle, I should be able to. Depending on where you live, either or both of those types of weapons are off the table. That's bullshit. If you want me to demonstrate proficiency with what is, by it's very nature, a dangerous weapon, fine. In fact, I wish there were more requirements for gun ownership. Every gun show I've ever been to has had dozens of attendees who plainly appear to be someone who shouldn't be trusted with a pointy stick, much less a firearm. That's wrong.
I live in a city where violent crime is an every day occurrence. It seems that not a week goes by that some convenience store clerk or innocent kid is killed or injured by someone who probably should not have had a gun. Most of the guns involved in those incidents are, by far, not acquired legally. No amount of regulation aimed at law abiding citizens will change that. To suggest otherwise is absurd. On the other hand, every once in a while an armed shop keeper or home owner shoots back. That is how it should be. Armed and proficient is safer than unarmed or inept. No, please don't trot out the "...most gun deaths are caused by someone you know..." statistics, but do read as much as possible into the term "proficient". Proficiency means more than being a good shot. Get it?
Also, let's put things in perspective. While each is tragic, the number of gun-related deaths and injuries in this country pale in comparison to many other causes, especially those related to things with wheels on them. All the hand-wringing and fear-mongering from the anti-gun nuts starts to look a bit irrational when you actually put things in perspective. In my particular neighborhood, I'm not to worried about getting shot at, but my life is threatened every single time I venture out onto the freeways here. Racer-boy wannabe's and various other idiots routinely dodge through traffic at speeds 30 mph or more above the flow of traffic. They kill or maim every day here. Just last week, an SUV left the freeway and wrapped itself around a 6" diameter steel sign post in front of where I work. But still, I hear no emotional outrage calling for the banning of wheels.
It was kinda fun to live in that age when people were gullible enough to accept ANYTHING that popped up on screen.
They had Fox News back in those days?
Really? Handled correctly? Well, I guess, by comparison, with Chernobyl, it was handled a lot more correctly. It was still bungled in many important respects. More important than that, however, is the remaining fact that it broke in the first place. Complex systems have a way of doing that. When the consequences of failure are so dire, and very few human endeavors have consequences of failure anywhere near as dire as those involving nuclear energy, is it ever worth the risk? How many lives are an acceptable sacrifice for "cheap" and "clean" power? How many square miles of homes and businesses are we willing to abandon, virtually forever, when they become so badly contaminated that they can no longer b occupied? And don't even get me started on the waste issue. Okay, too late, so just tell me what mankind has ever built that has lasted as long as it takes for high-level nuclear waste to be rendered harmless? That's right. Not even close. Not by half. But if we can get some chump state with a population density low enough not to notice, we can dump it there with reasonable assurance that we'll be dead and gone before their children have to deal with it, so fuck 'em.
So, is IBM still a "friend of Open Source" today - a sentiment that was very much popular on /. in the wake of SCO lawsuit? Or not anymore?
Depends. How is IBM's relationship with Microsoft this week? Enemy of my enemy, and all that.
How about having the British apologize to everyone who was wronged by their hateful policies in the past?
Oh, sure. Start apologizing and pretty soon the pufters will be wanting their rights. Before you know it, bestiality will be legalized and the sacred institution of marriage will fall apart.
Friedman was on the right track, but he missed the obvious conclusion - that incentive is lower still, when you are compensated by the recipients of the spending of "someone else's money". Can you say crony capitalism? How about Enron? Haliburton? Blackwater? Corrupt politicians, those bought and paid for by special interests, have an incentive to spend as recklessly as they can get away with while doing business with the interests who own them.
Quite so. I can add only "...and it's about time."
Why is it that Sarah Palin, Carrie Prejean, and other tea-baggers and ditto-heads, and now (somewhat surprisingly) the EFF, have such a hard time grasping the principles embodied in the U.S. Constitution? I mean, come on. Cutting of your Internet access does nothing to violate one's Constitutional guarantee to privacy. Never mind the fact that if you put it on the Internet, it is now de facto not private, pulling the plug on your connection, or on entire segments of the network, does nothing if not enhance your privacy by making your stuff harder to get to. And no, your First Amendment rights do not extend to the Internet. The First Amendment protects your right to say what you want. It is not, nor has it ever been, a guarantee of access to a specific platform to express one's views. For that you are on your own.
Yes, yes, it can be argued that the Internet has become an extension of "the commons"; a virtual town square, if you will, where one is indeed free to speak one's mind without fear of the government locking you up for it. For better or worse, however, it is also a medium for many other things, and many of those things are of critical importance for reasons of public safety, commerce, etc. Public safety trumps free speech most of the time (yelling "fire!" in a crowded theatre, etc), but in the case of the net, I'm going to want some very good reasons for clamping down on the public's right to share information. That means a lot more transparency when it comes to the government's reasons for taking such an action than we have seen for the last 8 years; a hell of a lot more. Just saying "national security" is not good enough, not by half. If you give me a good reason that you need to pull most of patch cables out of the switches at MAE-East, for example, fine, but don't expect me to sit still for it if you don't. At the risk of sounding like a run-of-the-mill right wing tool, this is not Iran. Shutting off simple dissent is not OK. If (and only if) there exist protections for abuses of that power, and I mean protection with big teeth that won't let a power-mad Administration piss on The Constitution, then fine. Protect my electrical service, emergency communications, whatever, from hackers..., I mean, "terrorists". Just do a better job of it than you have to date.