In WW2, all soldiers were in a tight hierarchy and a clearly defined order existed even if only on paper. Everyone had their rank displayed on their shoulder, superiors and subordinate soldiers were unmistakeably set. And then they had a common, clearly defined enemy and the memory and hope of coming home. They were given (some) tools, (some) advice and (some) overall meaning.
In a society breakdown, you have NONE of that outside the governmental organizations and those are not everywhere.
Humans default mode is cooperation, of course - but then there's the anti-socials. And 10 anti-socials can pull a whole city into problems, even WITH a fully functional social environment.
Never underestimate how much destruction 10 crazies with guns, motorbikes and alcohol can bring to any society.
Well, it wasn't the tooth fairies that did not show up for evacuation duties and it wasn't the tooth fairies looting Walmart, either.
You may very well argue about the possible REASONS there were only black people looting the store, but not dispute the fact that they were.
You could've speculated on the whereabouts of poor white people during these times or dig up a news link where black people REALLY WERE intentionally or negligently left behind in a large scale evacuation.
But you didn't. You decided to attack me for reminding us of these unfortunate TV scenes, but that doesn't make them any less real. In fact, you could've said anything about me and you would still have said effectively nothing.
You could very well load up YouTube, watch the videos of the Katrina events and then decide again on what part of your opinion is and what may be wishful thinking.
It may be against the politically correct handbook of communication to discuss doubleplusungood arguments and instead attack the messenger. If you can win with arguments, you're defending a valid idea. If you need insults, cencorship or even force, chances are you're defending an ideology.
Seriously - what goals do airport security checkpoins have?
Screen passengers and their baggage for protection against any threats against the aircraft from the inside, that is passenger and cargo compartments - and be effective, efficient, speedy and cheap, in that order.
99 percent of any and all past and present attacks against airline travel perpetrated - through passengers or baggage! - were committed by people who a) claimed they were doing it for Islam and b) who have declared as being of Muslim faith.
All "airline terrorists" - against which airport security can provide any protection - are a proper subset of "People is Muslim faith".
Therefore, it is not only logical to exclude non-Muslims from security checks but beneficial, as it wastes less resources and security staff to search improbable suspects.
Because the result of this logical reasoning is entirely un-PC and doubleplusungood, I could've very well just said "show me one non-Muslim passenger with a bomb and then we'll talk". But that wouldn't have made so much fun doing it, I admit. But I'm preaching to the choir here, as all un-PC-thinking people already know this and all strictly PC people have stopped reading in the second sentence and will never take any logic into account anyway.
Now if you had argued that it's impossible to IDENTIFY passengers of Muslim faith, well that's the reason we're searching everyone equally right now. Oh, and we're not trying to hurt Muslims feelings, of course.
Of course, you're right. But in imminent and physical danger, that person better have some other skills to make up for eating all the rations. Cooking, repairing, medical or upper body strength, heck even comic relief would be sufficient. But light entertainment is only needed against low but constant danger OR in a truly un-survivable event.
I don't remember hearing anything about evacuation officers disallowing people to board because of their skin color. It would've been all over the news for weeks, even for a single isolated event.
I DO remember, however, that of most people who actively REFUSED to be evacuated were from predominantly black quarters. It was suggested they were trying to protect their property from burglars.
I also DO remember who was the predominant group among the school bus drivers who did NOT appear when they were all be called to evacuate people en masse. It has been suggested, that they were also at home protecting their property.
Now it's a questionable choice when people prefer to protect your TV set over being evacuated to safety - and an even more questionable decision to NOT show up on your duty as an evacuation bus driver and rather protect your TV set. In any case, the choice to rather die or let other people die than let someone break into your house is purely personal, and certainly independent of George W. Bush's skills or lack thereof - or anyone else's, for that matter.
But I'm sure there is a plausible explanation why some people who were supposedly "staying at home to protect their property" were later seen looting and ransacking property of those who evacuated.
When the televised results of absurdly wrong personal choices make some people speculate if "George W. Bush hates black people", one could reasonably well speculate if "black people hate Walmart", because that's what it looked like on TV.
One could still argue that many people would loot an unprotected Walmart Superstore given the chance, regardless of their skin color. But then again, where were the poor people who are not black? Did they somehow catch the Whites-only buses from 1962 or did they stay at home, protecting their TV, listening to country music with their rifles and bibles in hand?
It's all probably a giant conspiracy when they filmed the looted Walmart with all looters being black by pure chance. That black POLICE OFFICER who seemed busy looting the store with all the others probably was casted for this role, her threat to use her gun if the camera team wouldn't stop filming well rehearsed to sound surprised and convincing.
Katrina was not a localized calamity and the potential Yellowstone event would certainly not be, either.
Let's play Civ for a while: Imagine all members of society have just elected you as their Dear Leader and granted you with all available executive, legislative, judiciary powers and you can employ all resources of the state including insane bank loans and slave labor of Ancient Egyption proportions.
For the Yellowstone scenario, you have 10 days of advance warning and you need to move at least 50 million people at least 1000km or more. Your goal is to to have 40 million people survive reasonably healthy for 30 days. How do you do THAT?
If you expect civil society and all it's benefits to remain intact during a predicted doomsday scenario of this size, you're either being idealistic or truly naive.
Resources and staff for police and law enforcement will be diverted to even more important events and projects, and the remainder will not be sufficient everywhere.
It won't be total lawless anarchy, but way too few officers for a lot of people in a way too large county. Which is ironically resembling the "Wild West" society model of former times.
I don't want to dive too deep into the Nerds vs. Jocks contest you just entered. For any thinkable doomsday scenario, having a manageable-sized group of healthy adults with a very diverse skillset is probably the best preparation.
Nevertheless, people without real physical or directly applicable theoretical skills could be dead weight, though, when the current situation requires immediate self-defense against predators or nature and self-procurement of foodstuffs.
Society has to be pretty stable and evolved to make good use of people with majors in comparative literature or liberal arts and sciences.
Note that I'm not saying they are useless for wealth creation, but their primary fields of education are pretty limited when society is in a state that bears, hurricanes, thugs or hordes of refugees are literally knocking at the door.
Rest assured, we WILL have a world-changing event more sooner than later. Muslim population in Europe is increasing at a steady 7-10 percent per year, while the native population is DEcreasing at a slow 1 percent.
At present, there are 10 percent Muslim immigrants living in Europe.
To calculate the exact date of European cultural meltdown is left as an exercise to the reader.
Hint: before calculating what seems like a simple math question, remember a) that different age groups change in different speeds, b) that people over 65 have low upper body strength compared to people between 20 and 35 and c) that only criminals have guns in Europe.
If you still have problems making out THE definitively will-happen-for-sure world-changing event in the near future, feel free to wait for Aliens.
Oh and BTW, the above post of mine is totally racist and should not be read or understood by anyone. I was just joking, haha, really, I love democracy, don't send me to sensitivity re-education, please
I have numbers to back it up: D-LINK DNS-323, 2x 500gb 5400rpm Samsung drives in Raid-1 configuration. I don't know the exact model, but I certainly selected these for low noise, low energy consumption and low heat output. So they're absolutely no high performers, but in regular, day-to-day operations, the Gigabit adapter manages a throughput at a steady 15 percent of 1000mbit push and pull from/to medium performance Windows workstations.
This NAS unit is on the market for well over a year and it took several firmware revisions before other problems were worked out - but raw speed above 100mbit was never an issue. I don't have any real high performance client workstations, so I cannot say if these steady 150mbit throughput is limited by client or the NAS itself, but it certainly is enough to max out any and all WiFi links, which is enough for many applications except full disk backups, which take some hours in any case.
I researched for a while before buying and got pretty much what other users described. I suggest you do the same so you can avoid the bad apples in the crowd of NAS units.
You're right, it was poorly worded. Actually, I meant "our children" as our descendants, as adults in the future.
I would not allow my children unfiltered access to the Internet as long as they are underage, but with a filter of my choice with machines I myself am able to control and that can be properly deactivated for whatever reasons I see fit.
But after my children turn 18, they are adults and should have all options available to adults, especially unfiltered access to the Internet, media and news. This will mean that they will at some point see their first Goatse and midget porn, but they will also be able to educate themselves about the government's actions, their rights and freedom in general.
I will not trade any of my rights for protection from Goatse and a lousy Scorpions album cover. Whoever thinks differently has been thoroughly cheated.
Well, my irony detector wasn't suggesting anything so I try to take you serious.
First serious question: do people (including children) die in greater numbers in totalitarian or in libertarian societies?
In my view, totalitarian societies tend to cause the death of hundreds of thousands of people including children while libertarian societies do not.
I prefer the society with the least risk of children dying. If this model has its drawbacks or is imperfect, well, that's the price. But risking torture, imprisonment, re-education camps for adults and kids to save kids from perverts is a laughable trade-off without taking pervert dictators themselves into account.
Puritans of the world can always disconnect from the Internet or build their own.
Mandating something drastic for $religious-group other than your own is what caused religious wars in the past or an exodus of said groups if free space was available.
I will certainly not be held to Puritan or Shiite or Sunnite or Hindu moral standards. I tolerate general Christianity, but only until they reinstate the Inquisition. Which always comes unexpected, I know.
And half the people in here are actually discussing if this lousy photo is in fact child pornography or not.
Freedom may have gotten bad press recently, but do we seriously need to filter the whole freakin' internet because of indecent pictures?
As both seem to be conflicting goals at the bottom of the problem, what do we do about it?
Is protection of children really, truly, positively more important than free dissemination of information?
Internet filtering is a digital issue and as such only works on an all-or-nothing basis - either we filter ALL of the internet or NOTHING. There is no middle ground, because the first established filter is capable of filtering any and all information AND immediately alarming law enforcement when someone hits the filter rules.
ONE (1) filter set up to protect the dearest, most innocent child can be subverted to a general tool of oppression - with just one additional line in the filtering rule.
So, ultimately, we have to ask ourselves:
Do we want our children - free access to all information, including anti-government activism AND perverted erotic material - or to never see any objectional material AND never see any blog or news site critic of the government?
Which choice is worse? Which type of state (or "regime" in some cases) has caused more suffering and death to children?
What, if we could only allow or disallow the government to imprison dissenters AND perverts? Will we sacrifice our childrens freedom for our childrens chastity?
If they say so clear in the contract, then so be it. I just have a huge problem with companies or people weaseling out of contracts they advertised and received good money for.
If they can quantify their "reasonable use" clause to something both parties can agree on beforehand AND objectively measure afterwards in case of a dispute, fine.
But spare us the ISPs that bet everything but the farm on their use patterns and then cry foul when they don't match the customer's.
Valve is a DRM scheme, but I never heard anyone complain about things other than pure connection speed for downloads or downtime of the authentication servers.
no bricked firmware no issues with virtual cd drives no crashes no minute-long authentication sequences that wear and tear on the drive's actuators no authentication that fails with the tiniest dustmarks on the cd surface no toolbars installed no browser helpers no additional marketing information about trusted partners no rootkits
but
automatic updates for all games within the platform downloads of patches and extra material in the background automatic distribution of in-game material (cs spraylogos, extra maps, extra sounds etc.) integrated, automatic anti-cheat measures easy transfer of all licenses to a new pc, with the option of taking over already downloaded material
Post whatever price you see fit - all are fine with me.
But if you can't keep your contract BUT keep my money, you're going to jail.
Note to self: never make any explicit measures except the asking price in a contract of mine and then only sell vague assumptions that I never have to fulfill while collecting serious hard cash from gullible consumers.
Note to the general public: I have a reasonably new car that can drive reasonably fast, looks reasonably shiny and has a reasonable fuel consumption assuming you drive responsibly. It also has a low probability of failure*1, is not too loud on idle and will start without serious problems in a reasonably warm winter*2. The price is 10000 dollars and is not negotiable*3.
*1 this term does not apply for sales in Mexico *2 this term does not apply for sales in Canada, Montana and Wisconsin. *3 if you make any real offers, I will apply a 3000 dollar surcharge for a reason I will only tell you after the sale
And if you apply NOW within three minutes, I will NOT charge you a broker's fee.
Sounds to good to be true, eh?
Just look through your ISP contract and come back whining.
The real world of us grown-ups outside the Soviet Union is not about real actual costs and real actual usage, it is about contracts and contractual compensation.
Which is the reason why a bottle of Coke costs 1 dollar at the store and 20 dollar at a fancy restaurant.
Which is the reason that all the people flying with you in an airplane all paid a different price for their seat.
If you abolish that, you help people in the short run, but instantly abolish freedom of contract as the basis of any and all successful economies.
But that's too far out to mention here, because in this country, we have laws of commerce which basically just say "a contract is a contract is a contract" albeit in a hundred different clauses.
Which brings us back to your post: company A offers a contract to the general public explictly stating "x mbit/sec and no other limits for the low low price of 10 dollars per month". When General Joe Public accepts this contract, Company A and Joe are in a binding contractual obligation with each other, out of which neither can escape for non-serious reasons without serious lawful consequences.
Company A didn't sell "a reasonable and sane share of x mbit/sec, while we define what 'sane' actually means" just as Joe Public didn't pay with only a part of his 10 dollars.
If that wouldn't be the case, we would have an economy where every partner in a contract could give as much or as little as he wanted. This may work for money donations on Christmas and candy on Halloween, but is no basis for an economy. That's why we write down contracts since the Middle Ages and have contract lawyers a dime a dozen.
If you object to that, I will gladly sell you my new car for which YOU pay full retail while I deliver only a glossy brochure, three wheels, a tiny spare wheel and a bag of seat stuffing. And then terminate my contract with you telling all the world how greedy YOU are.
Which would call for a paradigm shift in billing Internet access.
What about the same paradigm every other household commodity is billed?
Volume AND max peak?
How about it?
"20 Dollar for 5 MB/fortnight peak and three microdollar per Mebibyte volume"
Natural gas, electricity and telephony are billed like this, if not on a household level then at least on an industrial scale.
Which is a pretty much accurate model on how the real costs are generated: the pipe in itself costs something and whatever is transferred through costs another part.
Capacity and volume - the basis of all pipeline-based trading.
And the damn ISPs just won't get it, crying wolf all the time.
Selling a clearly marked service " - "5mb/sec, 50gb/month" - "1 air transfer to new york, you and 20kg of stuff, this friday at 0800"
then they oversell their capacity based on statistical analysis and when their statistical model fails, which it will always do, statistically speaking, they tell you
- "you bandwidth hog, we bill you on a backdated, horribly expensive business plan AND cut you off from now on AND never deal with you again. And if you sue, we tell everyone about your midget porn"
respective
- "We are totally sorry you cannot take this plane, take a later plane with an upgrade to business class OR take a hotel on us OR take some hundred dollar compensation"
And I was always furious about airlines doing this. Now it turns out they're actually pretty sensible about this matter and pure angels when compared to other businesses.
Slashdot Mirror
Interesting link, thank you. Although the incident is 30 years past, it's nevertheless good to know that there really were non-Muslim airline bombers.
With a ratio of 1:400 including incidents from 30 years ago were looking at a pretty distinct group where airline terrorists come from, but still.
Godwin's Law calls for mentioning HITLER, not Castro or Cuba.
Didn't you get the memo?
In WW2, all soldiers were in a tight hierarchy and a clearly defined order existed even if only on paper. Everyone had their rank displayed on their shoulder, superiors and subordinate soldiers were unmistakeably set. And then they had a common, clearly defined enemy and the memory and hope of coming home. They were given (some) tools, (some) advice and (some) overall meaning.
In a society breakdown, you have NONE of that outside the governmental organizations and those are not everywhere.
Humans default mode is cooperation, of course - but then there's the anti-socials. And 10 anti-socials can pull a whole city into problems, even WITH a fully functional social environment.
Never underestimate how much destruction 10 crazies with guns, motorbikes and alcohol can bring to any society.
Well, it wasn't the tooth fairies that did not show up for evacuation duties and it wasn't the tooth fairies looting Walmart, either.
You may very well argue about the possible REASONS there were only black people looting the store, but not dispute the fact that they were.
You could've speculated on the whereabouts of poor white people during these times or dig up a news link where black people REALLY WERE intentionally or negligently left behind in a large scale evacuation.
But you didn't. You decided to attack me for reminding us of these unfortunate TV scenes, but that doesn't make them any less real. In fact, you could've said anything about me and you would still have said effectively nothing.
You could very well load up YouTube, watch the videos of the Katrina events and then decide again on what part of your opinion is and what may be wishful thinking.
It may be against the politically correct handbook of communication to discuss doubleplusungood arguments and instead attack the messenger. If you can win with arguments, you're defending a valid idea. If you need insults, cencorship or even force, chances are you're defending an ideology.
Seriously - what goals do airport security checkpoins have?
Screen passengers and their baggage for protection against any threats against the aircraft from the inside, that is passenger and cargo compartments - and be effective, efficient, speedy and cheap, in that order.
99 percent of any and all past and present attacks against airline travel perpetrated - through passengers or baggage! - were committed by people who a) claimed they were doing it for Islam and b) who have declared as being of Muslim faith.
All "airline terrorists" - against which airport security can provide any protection - are a proper subset of "People is Muslim faith".
Therefore, it is not only logical to exclude non-Muslims from security checks but beneficial, as it wastes less resources and security staff to search improbable suspects.
Because the result of this logical reasoning is entirely un-PC and doubleplusungood, I could've very well just said "show me one non-Muslim passenger with a bomb and then we'll talk". But that wouldn't have made so much fun doing it, I admit. But I'm preaching to the choir here, as all un-PC-thinking people already know this and all strictly PC people have stopped reading in the second sentence and will never take any logic into account anyway.
Now if you had argued that it's impossible to IDENTIFY passengers of Muslim faith, well that's the reason we're searching everyone equally right now. Oh, and we're not trying to hurt Muslims feelings, of course.
Of course, you're right. But in imminent and physical danger, that person better have some other skills to make up for eating all the rations. Cooking, repairing, medical or upper body strength, heck even comic relief would be sufficient. But light entertainment is only needed against low but constant danger OR in a truly un-survivable event.
It's the other way around: we don't NEED all be tax-havens.
Some countries have enough advantages to be attractive for corporate centers without tax breaks.
On the other hand, some countries don't spend billions on crap and therefore can simply afford lower taxes.
I don't remember hearing anything about evacuation officers disallowing people to board because of their skin color. It would've been all over the news for weeks, even for a single isolated event.
I DO remember, however, that of most people who actively REFUSED to be evacuated were from predominantly black quarters. It was suggested they were trying to protect their property from burglars.
I also DO remember who was the predominant group among the school bus drivers who did NOT appear when they were all be called to evacuate people en masse. It has been suggested, that they were also at home protecting their property.
Now it's a questionable choice when people prefer to protect your TV set over being evacuated to safety - and an even more questionable decision to NOT show up on your duty as an evacuation bus driver and rather protect your TV set. In any case, the choice to rather die or let other people die than let someone break into your house is purely personal, and certainly independent of George W. Bush's skills or lack thereof - or anyone else's, for that matter.
But I'm sure there is a plausible explanation why some people who were supposedly "staying at home to protect their property" were later seen looting and ransacking property of those who evacuated.
When the televised results of absurdly wrong personal choices make some people speculate if "George W. Bush hates black people", one could reasonably well speculate if "black people hate Walmart", because that's what it looked like on TV.
One could still argue that many people would loot an unprotected Walmart Superstore given the chance, regardless of their skin color. But then again, where were the poor people who are not black? Did they somehow catch the Whites-only buses from 1962 or did they stay at home, protecting their TV, listening to country music with their rifles and bibles in hand?
It's all probably a giant conspiracy when they filmed the looted Walmart with all looters being black by pure chance. That black POLICE OFFICER who seemed busy looting the store with all the others probably was casted for this role, her threat to use her gun if the camera team wouldn't stop filming well rehearsed to sound surprised and convincing.
Katrina was not a localized calamity and the potential Yellowstone event would certainly not be, either.
Let's play Civ for a while: Imagine all members of society have just elected you as their Dear Leader and granted you with all available executive, legislative, judiciary powers and you can employ all resources of the state including insane bank loans and slave labor of Ancient Egyption proportions.
For the Yellowstone scenario, you have 10 days of advance warning and you need to move at least 50 million people at least 1000km or more. Your goal is to to have 40 million people survive reasonably healthy for 30 days. How do you do THAT?
If you expect civil society and all it's benefits to remain intact during a predicted doomsday scenario of this size, you're either being idealistic or truly naive.
Resources and staff for police and law enforcement will be diverted to even more important events and projects, and the remainder will not be sufficient everywhere.
It won't be total lawless anarchy, but way too few officers for a lot of people in a way too large county. Which is ironically resembling the "Wild West" society model of former times.
I don't want to dive too deep into the Nerds vs. Jocks contest you just entered. For any thinkable doomsday scenario, having a manageable-sized group of healthy adults with a very diverse skillset is probably the best preparation.
Nevertheless, people without real physical or directly applicable theoretical skills could be dead weight, though, when the current situation requires immediate self-defense against predators or nature and self-procurement of foodstuffs.
Society has to be pretty stable and evolved to make good use of people with majors in comparative literature or liberal arts and sciences.
Note that I'm not saying they are useless for wealth creation, but their primary fields of education are pretty limited when society is in a state that bears, hurricanes, thugs or hordes of refugees are literally knocking at the door.
Rest assured, we WILL have a world-changing event more sooner than later. Muslim population in Europe is increasing at a steady 7-10 percent per year, while the native population is DEcreasing at a slow 1 percent.
At present, there are 10 percent Muslim immigrants living in Europe.
To calculate the exact date of European cultural meltdown is left as an exercise to the reader.
Hint: before calculating what seems like a simple math question, remember a) that different age groups change in different speeds, b) that people over 65 have low upper body strength compared to people between 20 and 35 and c) that only criminals have guns in Europe.
If you still have problems making out THE definitively will-happen-for-sure world-changing event in the near future, feel free to wait for Aliens.
Oh and BTW, the above post of mine is totally racist and should not be read or understood by anyone. I was just joking, haha, really, I love democracy, don't send me to sensitivity re-education, please
I have numbers to back it up: D-LINK DNS-323, 2x 500gb 5400rpm Samsung drives in Raid-1 configuration. I don't know the exact model, but I certainly selected these for low noise, low energy consumption and low heat output. So they're absolutely no high performers, but in regular, day-to-day operations, the Gigabit adapter manages a throughput at a steady 15 percent of 1000mbit push and pull from/to medium performance Windows workstations.
This NAS unit is on the market for well over a year and it took several firmware revisions before other problems were worked out - but raw speed above 100mbit was never an issue. I don't have any real high performance client workstations, so I cannot say if these steady 150mbit throughput is limited by client or the NAS itself, but it certainly is enough to max out any and all WiFi links, which is enough for many applications except full disk backups, which take some hours in any case.
I researched for a while before buying and got pretty much what other users described. I suggest you do the same so you can avoid the bad apples in the crowd of NAS units.
The cost of a handheld GPS added to a car is next to nothing compared to the actual car - even a cheap 10 year old beater.
Yep, they're re-inventing the wheel, how cool is that?
You're right, it was poorly worded. Actually, I meant "our children" as our descendants, as adults in the future.
I would not allow my children unfiltered access to the Internet as long as they are underage, but with a filter of my choice with machines I myself am able to control and that can be properly deactivated for whatever reasons I see fit.
But after my children turn 18, they are adults and should have all options available to adults, especially unfiltered access to the Internet, media and news. This will mean that they will at some point see their first Goatse and midget porn, but they will also be able to educate themselves about the government's actions, their rights and freedom in general.
I will not trade any of my rights for protection from Goatse and a lousy Scorpions album cover. Whoever thinks differently has been thoroughly cheated.
Well, my irony detector wasn't suggesting anything so I try to take you serious.
First serious question: do people (including children) die in greater numbers in totalitarian or in libertarian societies?
In my view, totalitarian societies tend to cause the death of hundreds of thousands of people including children while libertarian societies do not.
I prefer the society with the least risk of children dying. If this model has its drawbacks or is imperfect, well, that's the price. But risking torture, imprisonment, re-education camps for adults and kids to save kids from perverts is a laughable trade-off without taking pervert dictators themselves into account.
Puritans of the world can always disconnect from the Internet or build their own.
Mandating something drastic for $religious-group other than your own is what caused religious wars in the past or an exodus of said groups if free space was available.
I will certainly not be held to Puritan or Shiite or Sunnite or Hindu moral standards. I tolerate general Christianity, but only until they reinstate the Inquisition. Which always comes unexpected, I know.
And half the people in here are actually discussing if this lousy photo is in fact child pornography or not.
Freedom may have gotten bad press recently, but do we seriously need to filter the whole freakin' internet because of indecent pictures?
As both seem to be conflicting goals at the bottom of the problem, what do we do about it?
Is protection of children really, truly, positively more important than free dissemination of information?
Internet filtering is a digital issue and as such only works on an all-or-nothing basis - either we filter ALL of the internet or NOTHING. There is no middle ground, because the first established filter is capable of filtering any and all information AND immediately alarming law enforcement when someone hits the filter rules.
ONE (1) filter set up to protect the dearest, most innocent child can be subverted to a general tool of oppression - with just one additional line in the filtering rule.
So, ultimately, we have to ask ourselves:
Do we want our children
- free access to all information, including anti-government activism AND perverted erotic material
- or to never see any objectional material AND never see any blog or news site critic of the government?
Which choice is worse? Which type of state (or "regime" in some cases) has caused more suffering and death to children?
What, if we could only allow or disallow the government to imprison dissenters AND perverts? Will we sacrifice our childrens freedom for our childrens chastity?
This is not censorship but a free choice of Wikimedia to either allow or disallow people to access Wikimedia's servers.
This may not be nice, but someone excluding people from using YOUR property if YOU don't like them or their behaviour, well, that's life.
If they say so clear in the contract, then so be it. I just have a huge problem with companies or people weaseling out of contracts they advertised and received good money for.
If they can quantify their "reasonable use" clause to something both parties can agree on beforehand AND objectively measure afterwards in case of a dispute, fine.
But spare us the ISPs that bet everything but the farm on their use patterns and then cry foul when they don't match the customer's.
Valve is a DRM scheme, but I never heard anyone complain about things other than pure connection speed for downloads or downtime of the authentication servers.
no bricked firmware
no issues with virtual cd drives
no crashes
no minute-long authentication sequences that wear and tear on the drive's actuators
no authentication that fails with the tiniest dustmarks on the cd surface
no toolbars installed
no browser helpers
no additional marketing information about trusted partners
no rootkits
but
automatic updates for all games within the platform
downloads of patches and extra material in the background
automatic distribution of in-game material (cs spraylogos, extra maps, extra sounds etc.)
integrated, automatic anti-cheat measures
easy transfer of all licenses to a new pc, with the option of taking over already downloaded material
Post whatever price you see fit - all are fine with me.
But if you can't keep your contract BUT keep my money, you're going to jail.
Note to self: never make any explicit measures except the asking price in a contract of mine and then only sell vague assumptions that I never have to fulfill while collecting serious hard cash from gullible consumers.
Note to the general public: I have a reasonably new car that can drive reasonably fast, looks reasonably shiny and has a reasonable fuel consumption assuming you drive responsibly. It also has a low probability of failure*1, is not too loud on idle and will start without serious problems in a reasonably warm winter*2. The price is 10000 dollars and is not negotiable*3.
*1 this term does not apply for sales in Mexico
*2 this term does not apply for sales in Canada, Montana and Wisconsin.
*3 if you make any real offers, I will apply a 3000 dollar surcharge for a reason I will only tell you after the sale
And if you apply NOW within three minutes, I will NOT charge you a broker's fee.
Sounds to good to be true, eh?
Just look through your ISP contract and come back whining.
The real world of us grown-ups outside the Soviet Union is not about real actual costs and real actual usage, it is about contracts and contractual compensation.
Which is the reason why a bottle of Coke costs 1 dollar at the store and 20 dollar at a fancy restaurant.
Which is the reason that all the people flying with you in an airplane all paid a different price for their seat.
If you abolish that, you help people in the short run, but instantly abolish freedom of contract as the basis of any and all successful economies.
But that's too far out to mention here, because in this country, we have laws of commerce which basically just say "a contract is a contract is a contract" albeit in a hundred different clauses.
Which brings us back to your post: company A offers a contract to the general public explictly stating "x mbit/sec and no other limits for the low low price of 10 dollars per month". When General Joe Public accepts this contract, Company A and Joe are in a binding contractual obligation with each other, out of which neither can escape for non-serious reasons without serious lawful consequences.
Company A didn't sell "a reasonable and sane share of x mbit/sec, while we define what 'sane' actually means" just as Joe Public didn't pay with only a part of his 10 dollars.
If that wouldn't be the case, we would have an economy where every partner in a contract could give as much or as little as he wanted. This may work for money donations on Christmas and candy on Halloween, but is no basis for an economy. That's why we write down contracts since the Middle Ages and have contract lawyers a dime a dozen.
If you object to that, I will gladly sell you my new car for which YOU pay full retail while I deliver only a glossy brochure, three wheels, a tiny spare wheel and a bag of seat stuffing. And then terminate my contract with you telling all the world how greedy YOU are.
Which would call for a paradigm shift in billing Internet access.
What about the same paradigm every other household commodity is billed?
Volume AND max peak?
How about it?
"20 Dollar for 5 MB/fortnight peak and three microdollar per Mebibyte volume"
Natural gas, electricity and telephony are billed like this, if not on a household level then at least on an industrial scale.
Which is a pretty much accurate model on how the real costs are generated: the pipe in itself costs something and whatever is transferred through costs another part.
Capacity and volume - the basis of all pipeline-based trading.
And the damn ISPs just won't get it, crying wolf all the time.
Excellent analogy.
Selling a clearly marked service "
- "5mb/sec, 50gb/month"
- "1 air transfer to new york, you and 20kg of stuff, this friday at 0800"
then they oversell their capacity based on statistical analysis and when their statistical model fails, which it will always do, statistically speaking, they tell you
- "you bandwidth hog, we bill you on a backdated, horribly expensive business plan AND cut you off from now on AND never deal with you again. And if you sue, we tell everyone about your midget porn"
respective
- "We are totally sorry you cannot take this plane, take a later plane with an upgrade to business class OR take a hotel on us OR take some hundred dollar compensation"
And I was always furious about airlines doing this. Now it turns out they're actually pretty sensible about this matter and pure angels when compared to other businesses.