If anything, taking care of net neutrality should be something the SEC has domain over
No. If any federal government agency should be involved, something I disagree with, it should be either the Federal Trade Commission, FTC, or the Interstate Commerce Commission, ICC, that enforced net neutrality regulations. The SEC, U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission has nothing to do with net neutrality.
Every step they take into other domains is a step in the wrong direction.
And you don't think the SEC would be stepping in the wrong direction?
However, we should be wary of setting a precedent where the FCC gets more power over the Internet and how people do and don't use it in the United States.
I'd prefer to see the FCC abolished and disbanded. The airwaves should be freed.
Because customers expect broadband internet at dial-up price, and the pipes simply cost more than the average end user realizes.
BS! When I upgraded from dial-up to cable my normal costs went up 2.5X, ie from $20 to $50 a month . Of course the ISP had a special, $30 a month for 6 months, still that was a 50% increase in price.
Flat rate pricing is broken,
Agreed. But when you sell unlimited service, which is what I was sold, don't complain when people take you up on it.
"enforcing net neutrality" is not going to do anything to fix it. Bandwidth is like any other finite resource - it needs to be charged by consumption
There is a big difference between that, charging more for more bandwidth used, and slowing down a service a competitor provides when your own service is not slowed down. It is wrong when ComCast throttles VoIP services that compeats with it's own VoIP service but does not throttle it's service.
There's also a big difference between spending your own money to build-out infrastructure and being given $200 billion of taxpayer money to build out but not doing it. Either build-out broadband or get out of the way of those who would.
...but aren't we talking about private property owned by private private companies?
Okay then, ComCast's cable is buried in my yard so ComCast should pay me rent for traffic that goes across my yard. Or does ComCast get a free ride but I have to pay?
Sure, routers and equipment cost money. But they only cost money once, and then continue to transmit data at exponentially faster speeds compared to their predecessors. If we change the investment scheme so that a larger percent of the revenues are actually invested into equipment, (even though still a small fraction of the total revenue stream!) we'd find exponentially better service.
This is something that our "free market" telecommunications industry is anything but motivated to provide.
While the part about costs is good, it is wrong to say there's a free market. About the closest the US comes to a free market in telecommunications is with cellphone services, and while smaller towns and villages may not have much of a choice for service many places have a number of picks from which to get service from. The competition has driven costs for cellphone service down. My cellphone service is cheaper than my landline phone service was, so it's my only phone service now.
100 Mb to the house should be commonplace. There's absolutely no good reason why it isn't, other than the friction of the "free" marketplace.
The only reason there is NO 100Mbs connections to the curb is because there is no competition and therefore no free market!!!
No matter how many tymes a lie is repeated that will not make it true.
there will eventually have to be some use-based pricing because transfer does cost money.
ComCast along with other cable companies sold unlimited plans. Now that they oversold their capabilities they want to cap people or make them pay more. It was their own fault they oversold.
From what I've heard I am lucky, though I have cable access from a third party through ComCast I only have trouble with my speed occasionally. I am also lucky because if I ever have trouble with my connection I can switch from cable to DSL. Most people don't have that choice though.
Vonage lets me do what I wish, anywhere I like for less.
Does Vonage let me take phone service with me? Or am I tied to a landline? See the only phone service I have is cellphone service which costs less than my landline service did. It also includes long distance with no added costs, with my landline I had to pay extra.
In case you bring up VoIP, if I'm going to take that with me I also have to pay for mobile net access which isn't available everywhere, as well as bringing my laptop everywhere.
A few Democratic senators may have been bought by the health care industry and are holding things up, but you also have Republican ex-governors and senators making shit up about death panels.
Meanwhile Democrats are making shit up about free markets.
the far left and far right are correct when they blame big govt
So they need to blame themselves and each other. Both the left and right, far and near, want big government. The only difference is what part of government they want big.
Up to this point, remote surgery has been done over dedicated, fiber optic links with a backup surgeon physically present. Frankly, it shouldn't be done any other way.
So not everybody should have access then? I had a serious accident, which left me with a disability, but because it happened in a medium sized city I was medivaced by helicopter to a hospital that was capable of dealing with my injury. You would have those who are more than 200 or 300 hundred miles from such a hospital out of lock though. And yes, serious accidents can even happen in small villages with only 100 people.
Anyone can take the FCC to court for anything they want; whether they can win or not is another matter.
After reading this I couldn't help but think people can take government to court over constitutional issues but whether they win or lose is another matter. Court judges, even Supreme Court Justices, are able to twists things around so that in their own non-logic something is constitutional. Such as the Gonzalez v. Raich medical marijuana case.
It gives me the choice to choice a competitor without having my connection artificially slowed down. If I as a ComCast customer can choice to use a video download service other than ComCast's own service, then I have more freedom. If instead of using ComCast's phone service I choice another, I have more freedom. Or if instead of viewing ComCast's preferred political messages I can view others I have more freedom.
You haven't gained any freedom, what's happened is a private corporation has lost freedom to more government regulation, and I don't see how anyone could think that this is a surprising thing.
BS!!! I have gained more choices than either putting up with ComCast or going without. If you want to live in a world where one entity controls what you can see then Cuba's 90 miles from Florida.
I would never get any kind of telesurgery where the success of the surgery depended on specific latency and reliability promises over the Internet.
How would you have surgery if there weren't local surgeons? Small villages in Africa and India don't have surgeons. Nor does it make sense to have a specialist every couple of hundred miles for an area that may only have 50,000 people in case of emergencies.
And no, a separate network doesn't cut it. All it does is add costs.
I see no reason at all to have policies based on protocol. That's a static decision, and static policy decisions can be inaccurate for any particular connection, out of date or simply ignorant of new protocols, and can/will be largely decided by politics not practicality
So, you wouldn't mind having telesurgery on a connection that wasn't protocol aware?
I think that we're agreed that arbitrarily throttling downloads to x Kb/s is wrong.
I don't have much of a problem with throttling upload and download speeds if it is protocol agnostic and there is not enough bandwidth available. What I do mind, hate actually, is when capacity is oversold. I also hate when cable companies and telecoms take $200 Billion of taxpayer subsidies but they do not do what they were given the money for. That was to build out broadband. If they don't want to build out then they can return the money and get out of the way of those who would build a broadband infrastructure.
Pretty soon, Apple is going to run out of cats to name their OS X versions after. How many are left? When are they going to stoop to calling a new version "Housecat"?
Actually Apple still has a few more felinae or felines left and if they name modifiers, like they did going from Leopard to Snow Leopard, more can be added. Apple can use Florida, or Black, Panther. It can use White Tiger or Chinese White Tiger.
There's no worry Apple will run out of cat names anytime soon.
The $29 price is for an upgrade from Leopard. It won't install unless you already have Leopard on the system. If you are still using Tiger then you need to buy the 'Mac Box Set' which bundles iWork and iLife in with a full version of Snow Leopard and costs $169.
Yea I saw that. You can buy just the Snow Leopard DVD if you have Tiger though, you don't have to buy the Mac Box Set. Personally because I use NeoOffice I don't see any reason to pay for iWork and I don't use iLife I see no reason to pay for the box set, however because Snow Leopard trims disk space from what Leopard needs and storage is valuable to me I may pay $29 to upgrade.
Since your entire post is in italics I'm not sure what is the part you are replying to and what part is your reply, therefore I'll do the best I can.
almost none of the software there was developed by Apple.
Apparently you did not read much and click on links. In the "All Downloads" catagory I clicked on 1 link, Apple, which lists Apple's own downloads including Safari and iTunes both of which are available for Windows as well as Macs, and updates to Apple software. It has 758 downloads You'll even find an update to an 8 year old OS, 10.0. Microsoft on the other hand stopped offering downloadable updates to Windows NT4 less than 5 years after it was released. I know because I have an NT4 PC I bought new I was unable to download an update for 3 years after I bought it. To get the latest update for it I had to order, and pay for, a CD with them.
I think the point was that once 10.6 is out, 10.5 will stop receiving updates, even vital bugfixes.
This concern is BS too. I kept on using and getting updates for Tiger a year and a half after I got Leopard on DVD. The link for OS X updates still lists updates for Tiger; Panther or 10.3, which was released in 2003; PPC updates, Jaguar or 10.2, released in 2002; and Puma or 10.1, released in 2001. Apple still releases updates for an 8 year old OS. On the other hand I bought a brand new PC with Microsoft Windows NT4 in December 1997, less than 2 years after MS released it. In January 2000, less than 3 year and 2 months afterwards I was not able to download updates for NT4. I had to order, and pay for, a CD of the latest NT4 updates.
If anything MS is more likely to stop offering downloadable updates to older versions of the OS earlier than Apple is.
I have, twice. I had to reinstall Tiger and Leopard once each. However I've had my Mac 2 year so that's not too bad. I had to reinstall Windows on my PCs at least twice a year.
"Archive and Install"
A Genus at the bar told me to nuke, erase and reformat, the disk and not just Archive and Install when I had to reinstall. However when I upgraded from Tiger to Leopard I was told to do an upgrade. I think that's why I had to reinstall Leopard, a Genus I saw said he thought when I upgraded Leopard picked up an error or something.
Slashdot Mirror
don't the ISPs risk their common carrier status?
Cable companies are not Common Carriers.
Falcon
If anything, taking care of net neutrality should be something the SEC has domain over
No. If any federal government agency should be involved, something I disagree with, it should be either the Federal Trade Commission, FTC, or the Interstate Commerce Commission, ICC, that enforced net neutrality regulations. The SEC, U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission has nothing to do with net neutrality.
Every step they take into other domains is a step in the wrong direction.
And you don't think the SEC would be stepping in the wrong direction?
However, we should be wary of setting a precedent where the FCC gets more power over the Internet and how people do and don't use it in the United States.
I'd prefer to see the FCC abolished and disbanded. The airwaves should be freed.
Falcon
Because customers expect broadband internet at dial-up price, and the pipes simply cost more than the average end user realizes.
BS! When I upgraded from dial-up to cable my normal costs went up 2.5X, ie from $20 to $50 a month . Of course the ISP had a special, $30 a month for 6 months, still that was a 50% increase in price.
Flat rate pricing is broken,
Agreed. But when you sell unlimited service, which is what I was sold, don't complain when people take you up on it.
"enforcing net neutrality" is not going to do anything to fix it. Bandwidth is like any other finite resource - it needs to be charged by consumption
There is a big difference between that, charging more for more bandwidth used, and slowing down a service a competitor provides when your own service is not slowed down. It is wrong when ComCast throttles VoIP services that compeats with it's own VoIP service but does not throttle it's service.
There's also a big difference between spending your own money to build-out infrastructure and being given $200 billion of taxpayer money to build out but not doing it. Either build-out broadband or get out of the way of those who would.
Falcon
...but aren't we talking about private property owned by private private companies?
Okay then, ComCast's cable is buried in my yard so ComCast should pay me rent for traffic that goes across my yard. Or does ComCast get a free ride but I have to pay?
Falcon
It's rare and awesome thing thing when that happens.
My ISP did the same though there wasn't a tyme length in the contract. Not only did my ISP cut my bill they also increased my max speed.
Falcon
My ISP, a national provider, provides me with a static IP address.
Falcon
A hippie and a conservative living happily together in one brain.
It's nice to meet a fellow traveler.
That is if "conservative" is applied to fiscal policy and means small government.
Falcon
Sure, routers and equipment cost money. But they only cost money once, and then continue to transmit data at exponentially faster speeds compared to their predecessors. If we change the investment scheme so that a larger percent of the revenues are actually invested into equipment, (even though still a small fraction of the total revenue stream!) we'd find exponentially better service.
This is something that our "free market" telecommunications industry is anything but motivated to provide.
While the part about costs is good, it is wrong to say there's a free market. About the closest the US comes to a free market in telecommunications is with cellphone services, and while smaller towns and villages may not have much of a choice for service many places have a number of picks from which to get service from. The competition has driven costs for cellphone service down. My cellphone service is cheaper than my landline phone service was, so it's my only phone service now.
100 Mb to the house should be commonplace. There's absolutely no good reason why it isn't, other than the friction of the "free" marketplace.
The only reason there is NO 100Mbs connections to the curb is because there is no competition and therefore no free market!!!
No matter how many tymes a lie is repeated that will not make it true.
Falcon
there will eventually have to be some use-based pricing because transfer does cost money.
ComCast along with other cable companies sold unlimited plans. Now that they oversold their capabilities they want to cap people or make them pay more. It was their own fault they oversold.
From what I've heard I am lucky, though I have cable access from a third party through ComCast I only have trouble with my speed occasionally. I am also lucky because if I ever have trouble with my connection I can switch from cable to DSL. Most people don't have that choice though.
Falcon
Vonage lets me do what I wish, anywhere I like for less.
Does Vonage let me take phone service with me? Or am I tied to a landline? See the only phone service I have is cellphone service which costs less than my landline service did. It also includes long distance with no added costs, with my landline I had to pay extra.
In case you bring up VoIP, if I'm going to take that with me I also have to pay for mobile net access which isn't available everywhere, as well as bringing my laptop everywhere.
Falcon
A few Democratic senators may have been bought by the health care industry and are holding things up, but you also have Republican ex-governors and senators making shit up about death panels.
Meanwhile Democrats are making shit up about free markets.
Falcon
the far left and far right are correct when they blame big govt
So they need to blame themselves and each other. Both the left and right, far and near, want big government. The only difference is what part of government they want big.
Falcon
Up to this point, remote surgery has been done over dedicated, fiber optic links with a backup surgeon physically present. Frankly, it shouldn't be done any other way.
So not everybody should have access then? I had a serious accident, which left me with a disability, but because it happened in a medium sized city I was medivaced by helicopter to a hospital that was capable of dealing with my injury. You would have those who are more than 200 or 300 hundred miles from such a hospital out of lock though. And yes, serious accidents can even happen in small villages with only 100 people.
Falcon
Anyone can take the FCC to court for anything they want; whether they can win or not is another matter.
After reading this I couldn't help but think people can take government to court over constitutional issues but whether they win or lose is another matter. Court judges, even Supreme Court Justices, are able to twists things around so that in their own non-logic something is constitutional. Such as the Gonzalez v. Raich medical marijuana case.
Falcon
It gives me the choice to choice a competitor without having my connection artificially slowed down. If I as a ComCast customer can choice to use a video download service other than ComCast's own service, then I have more freedom. If instead of using ComCast's phone service I choice another, I have more freedom. Or if instead of viewing ComCast's preferred political messages I can view others I have more freedom.
You haven't gained any freedom, what's happened is a private corporation has lost freedom to more government regulation, and I don't see how anyone could think that this is a surprising thing.
BS!!! I have gained more choices than either putting up with ComCast or going without. If you want to live in a world where one entity controls what you can see then Cuba's 90 miles from Florida.
Falcon
I would never get any kind of telesurgery where the success of the surgery depended on specific latency and reliability promises over the Internet.
How would you have surgery if there weren't local surgeons? Small villages in Africa and India don't have surgeons. Nor does it make sense to have a specialist every couple of hundred miles for an area that may only have 50,000 people in case of emergencies.
And no, a separate network doesn't cut it. All it does is add costs.
Falcon
I see no reason at all to have policies based on protocol. That's a static decision, and static policy decisions can be inaccurate for any particular connection, out of date or simply ignorant of new protocols, and can/will be largely decided by politics not practicality
So, you wouldn't mind having telesurgery on a connection that wasn't protocol aware?
Falcon
I think that we're agreed that arbitrarily throttling downloads to x Kb/s is wrong.
I don't have much of a problem with throttling upload and download speeds if it is protocol agnostic and there is not enough bandwidth available. What I do mind, hate actually, is when capacity is oversold. I also hate when cable companies and telecoms take $200 Billion of taxpayer subsidies but they do not do what they were given the money for. That was to build out broadband. If they don't want to build out then they can return the money and get out of the way of those who would build a broadband infrastructure.
Falcon
If "Net Neutrality"= "treat traffic the same regardless of source and destination", then GOOD.
If "Net Neutrality"= "treat traffic the same regardless of protocol", then BAD.
Agree, with some caveats such as with vocal and emergency communications.
Falcon
Pretty soon, Apple is going to run out of cats to name their OS X versions after. How many are left? When are they going to stoop to calling a new version "Housecat"?
Actually Apple still has a few more felinae or felines left and if they name modifiers, like they did going from Leopard to Snow Leopard, more can be added. Apple can use Florida, or Black, Panther. It can use White Tiger or Chinese White Tiger.
There's no worry Apple will run out of cat names anytime soon.
Falcon
The $29 price is for an upgrade from Leopard. It won't install unless you already have Leopard on the system. If you are still using Tiger then you need to buy the 'Mac Box Set' which bundles iWork and iLife in with a full version of Snow Leopard and costs $169.
Yea I saw that. You can buy just the Snow Leopard DVD if you have Tiger though, you don't have to buy the Mac Box Set. Personally because I use NeoOffice I don't see any reason to pay for iWork and I don't use iLife I see no reason to pay for the box set, however because Snow Leopard trims disk space from what Leopard needs and storage is valuable to me I may pay $29 to upgrade.
Falcon
Since your entire post is in italics I'm not sure what is the part you are replying to and what part is your reply, therefore I'll do the best I can.
almost none of the software there was developed by Apple.
Apparently you did not read much and click on links. In the "All Downloads" catagory I clicked on 1 link, Apple, which lists Apple's own downloads including Safari and iTunes both of which are available for Windows as well as Macs, and updates to Apple software. It has 758 downloads You'll even find an update to an 8 year old OS, 10.0. Microsoft on the other hand stopped offering downloadable updates to Windows NT4 less than 5 years after it was released. I know because I have an NT4 PC I bought new I was unable to download an update for 3 years after I bought it. To get the latest update for it I had to order, and pay for, a CD with them.
Falcon
I think the point was that once 10.6 is out, 10.5 will stop receiving updates, even vital bugfixes.
This concern is BS too. I kept on using and getting updates for Tiger a year and a half after I got Leopard on DVD. The link for OS X updates still lists updates for Tiger; Panther or 10.3, which was released in 2003; PPC updates, Jaguar or 10.2, released in 2002; and Puma or 10.1, released in 2001. Apple still releases updates for an 8 year old OS. On the other hand I bought a brand new PC with Microsoft Windows NT4 in December 1997, less than 2 years after MS released it. In January 2000, less than 3 year and 2 months afterwards I was not able to download updates for NT4. I had to order, and pay for, a CD of the latest NT4 updates.
If anything MS is more likely to stop offering downloadable updates to older versions of the OS earlier than Apple is.
Falcon
and reinstall
I have, twice. I had to reinstall Tiger and Leopard once each. However I've had my Mac 2 year so that's not too bad. I had to reinstall Windows on my PCs at least twice a year.
"Archive and Install"
A Genus at the bar told me to nuke, erase and reformat, the disk and not just Archive and Install when I had to reinstall. However when I upgraded from Tiger to Leopard I was told to do an upgrade. I think that's why I had to reinstall Leopard, a Genus I saw said he thought when I upgraded Leopard picked up an error or something.
Falcon
Thing is Microsoft released a ton of new stuff outside of service packs, that was just a free download from its website.
Apple also as a lot of free downloads.
Falcon