Caveat: I've never tried this, but it got me thinking...
Ethernet hardware doesn't have error correcting, except to retransmit if there are collisions. Error checking would work since CRCs would still be sent. The problem is there would be no mechanism for retransmission. But the serial solution has that same problem. You can send CRCs with your packets, but you can't request a retransmission. But for Ethernet, that is up to the higher layers like TCP. A bigger problem is that the Ethernet speed autonegotiation won't work. You might be able to disable that on the card.
The error handling problem arises with serial too. You would have to send a CRC on each packet, but you would have no way to retransmit if there was an error.
Here, the Chinese government is deciding which businesses will be featured more prominently on the internet, which makes a big impact on that companies business. I keep getting called a tinfoil hat when I propose that ISPs could do the same thing. But here is a real world example of it. If you can filter and prioritize web sites, you can control business.
Some Web content blocked from appearing on U.S.-based sites in China appears on Chinese sites, he said. In some cases, China has redirected searches through U.S. services to a Chinese service, and its censorship of foreign services drives consumers to Chinese alternatives, he added.
The latter example sounds much like Verizon (and others) who redirect DNS lookup failures to their own search engine.
Since you seem to know the source, can you list it? Does opensecrets know this? This is contrary to their mission and if they are ignoring it that paints them badly, and if they don't know it you should tell them!
Suppose I work for a company and the IT department installed a piece of software on that computer. Must I abide by the EULA?
Or the reverse: Suppose I install a piece of software, must the company abide by the EULA, or just the individual? What if the EULA states that the publisher can remotely access my workstation or use our company trademarks in their promotional materials? The individual installing and using the software probably doesn't even have the power to make those decisions. So do they apply?
Following the money doesn't seem to work here. The telecom industries are giving equally to both parties.
http://www.opensecrets.org/industries/indus.php?ind=B08 AT&T and Verizon are the biggest lobbyists in the telephone industry by 10:1 and 5:1 respectively. Most of the money went to Obama, naturally, but he supports Network Neutrality. The next 4 on the list are Republicans. Looking at the "Party Split" graph, 2010 the Democrats got 4.3 million and the Republicans got 4.2 million. The "Telephone Utilities to House" graph does show the Republicans receiving somewhat more money, but it is fairly even in the house.
I am glad that someone did some academic research to prove this, but it seems unnecessary. Isn't the entire point of eliminating network neutrality just so that carriers can charge more for their existing bandwidth? They slow down a site, then charge you to restore the speed back to what it originally was. Or they charge you a fee to make your packets a higher priority than your neighbor's. Either way, no infrastructure changes were required. The highway analogy the article uses is spot-on.
Can someone explain to me why Republicans keep spewing this illogic about Net Neutrality? Why all the hate and rhetoric? It's really a very simple, and should be a non-partisan issue.
So Carmack is doing something for the good of society, and a commercial company chooses to add a roadblock. But rather than give up, he spends his own time to rewrite the algorithm in a way that avoids the patent. That is a phenomenal level of dedication to the open-source community. He doesn't have to release the code. He doesn't have to rewrite that section.
If you can't think of a single good CEO in the real world, then I can see why a book where the entire world topples and burns and everyone in New York starves to death is too positive for you.
There needs to be a sane path to being able to prosecute the abuse of FB/Twitter/etc. in such a way it's leading to suicide, etc.
Okay, I see where you are going. You want to make sure that someone who is cyber bullying, like in the case of Megan Meier, they are held accountable. Or any other crime for that matter. But successful prosecution of a crime should have nothing to do with the TOS. The TOS does not need to say "You are forbidden to convince people on this site to commit suicide." The TOS is irrelevant. It doesn't need to list all the things that are crimes in order for them to be prosecuted.
I don't have a sign on my front door that says "By entering this house you agree not to commit the following crimes...." because it isn't needed. The law applies inside my house, and I don't have to spell it out. Same with a TOS. If someone enters my house and harms me, the DA doesn't bring charges for violating the TOS of my house. They bring charges for violating the law.
Ayn Rand makes heroes of CEOs of giant corporations -- the same people who, in real life, buy these laws and regulations
Actually, the book makes both heroes and villains out of those CEOs. In her world, there are 2 types of CEOs. Some are the ones that build the company up from nothing, who value the product and the quality of the creation. The others are the financial analyst/legal types who do it for the power. While Ayn Rand oversimplified everyone to being either black or white, don't accuse the her of glorifying corporations - for every "good" CEO in the Atlas Shrugged there are 100 "bad" CEOs.
It sounds to me like you just read the summary and stopped there. Or maybe I am just pretty dense. Why do you accept think this study disagrees with the other one? And if it did, why would you favor this study over the other one? If you read the articles, they are actually talking about two different things.
The original study is you scoff at is based on nearby measurements, while this new one is based on mathematical modeling. The original study measured plants at "around 9 becquerels per kilogram, much lower than the 500 Bq kg–1 safety limit for human consumption." Whereas the new study "provide[s] the first comprehensive estimates of contamination across Japan following the nuclear accident in 2011."
If you read the articles, they don't actually disagree. They have different purposes. One measures specific plants, and the other tries to guess overall radiation for the entire country. This new study merely recommends that "the Japanese government to carry out a more thorough assessment..." The article goes on to explain the discrepancy between the mathematical models and the actual soil samples. It says "once in soil, caesium will become bound to mineral components, which limits its uptake into plants." Aha!
...the chip's die actually has eight cores on board (two inactive), due to power and yield constraints...
So that means that some of these chips might have 7 or 8 cores functioning, but they still won't enable them because it would probably exceed their TDP. I wonder if it is possible to find out which cores are working and enable them? This might mean that once the yields go up they could start binning them and sell 7 and 8 core versions. The other interesting thing is that this chip won't perform as well as a 6-core chip with only 6 physical cores, because it will be harder to dissipate the heat when there are 2 cores just sitting there acting as an insulator.
This is breaking news so the details are not all there. What if they also got to the databases that push updates? I would like to know the definitive answer to that because Steam is one of the few things that I allow to send me automatic updates. I sure would hate to get a virus via steam. Fortunately, Steam runs as a non-administrative user but it still has write access to all the binaries in my steam folder, so that is still a lot of potential damage.
First, assume for a moment that I agree with you on the quality of the regulations as written - who do you think should enforce Network Neutrality then? Is this regulation bad enough to throw-out the entire thing and let a few monopolies control everyone's access to information?
Second, you say:
It's not an oversimplification, because the regulations are far-reaching and quite specific.
But the regulations you linked to har hardly far reaching or overly specific. I'm looking through them now, since the last time I looked into this it was still the "FCC's four principles."
If your goal is to convince people that allowing ISPs unchecked control over the internet is better than allowing the government to limit their power, this document sure isn't helping that point. It even cites network neutrality violations in there.
At the top-level, it has a summary of what they want:
i. Transparency. Fixed and mobile broadband providers must disclose the network management practices, performance characteristics, and terms and conditions of their broadband services; ii. No blocking. Fixed broadband providers may not block lawful content, applications, services, or non-harmful devices; mobile broadband providers may not block lawful websites, or block applications that compete with their voice or video telephony services; and iii. No unreasonable discrimination. Fixed broadband providers may not unreasonably discriminate in transmitting lawful network traffic.
That looks simple, clear, and reasonable. Then follows explanation, history, and justifications. The include examples of network neutrality violations, and the harm that they cause. Then on page 30 they go into more detail about the scope of the rules and definitions of broadband, internet access, etc. I'm impressed considering a government body made this. It reads like a judge's opinion in a lot of ways, tying together logic and law. It gets more specific as you go along, but I don't see it being too specific. Compare this to the thousands of pages that legislation usually is, and this looks very pleasing by comparison!
But I think you have drifed from your original point in the process of trying to shoot down this legislation. You said it contains:
...several [regulations] that fail to protect consumers as content creators, and actually make it more difficult and likely more expensive for them
Okay, so here you are complaining that the FCC regulations don't offer enough protection. Yet you advocated getting the government out of the way. So do you want to be protected from an ISP modifying your content, or do you not care? Personally, I'll take limited protections over none at all. If thatis the compromise we must make, then so bet it.
Let us get back to the original point Olorion brought-up. ISPs are seeking power that would allow them to silence people on the internet. You think that the FCC regulations are more heavy handed than the problem we are trying to fix, and I propose that we agree to disagree there. Yet from your criticism of the FCC, you seem to still want protections. So who should write them and how should they be enforced?
I get your point but your example could be improved. How about:
How would you like it if the post office told you that from now on unless you put two extra stamps on letters that go to certain recipients of their choosing, that each of your letters they would add a week to the delivery time of your first class mail?
The issue is largely about *unequal* treatment. And the issue is also on the receiver's end:
How would you like it if the post office told you that from now on, unless you paid them a fee, letters that came from certain recipients of their choosing, would add a week to the receipt time of your first class mail?
And it still isn't as gripping as network neutrality, because I can send letters through other means. There are other mail and freight carriers.
That's not true. Common carrier laws have been in place for *hundreds of years*. The US actually inherited them from British commonlaw, back when they were concerned that freight carriers could mess with cargo. This only became a problem when the courts ruled that voice calls sent over the internet is not a voice call.
It would seem far fetched if it hadn't happened already, and if they weren't asking for this ability. When someone asks for a law granting them some power, it is reasonable to assume they will use it. I have been meaning to compile a list of network neutrality violations for a while now, but we have had cases where ISPs have blocked or modified content. They come-up on Slashdot on occasion. We had common carrier laws long before the internet because historically freight carriers and phone companies did stuff like this. So this is not far fetched, it is history, it has happened.
Allowing government to regulate the Internet will do exactly the same thing
This extreme oversimplification has to stop. We aren't "giving the government the ability to regulate the internet" we are "restricting the ability for corporations to interfere with the internet." You are oversimplifying things so far that they actually mean the opposite. If we oversimplified every law to "giving the government the ability to regulate X" then we could argue against every single law. We shouldn't have laws telling companies that it is illegal to sell poisonous foods because that would be giving the government the ability to regulate food, and I don't want the government to tell me what food I can eat! We shouldn't have laws that make trespassing illegal because that would be giving the government the ability to regulate where I can go!
Also note, that we are talking about monopolies here. So the argument against government interference doesn't apply. The government has created this mess by screwing up telecommunications law to the point where no one could switch to a neutral ISP even if they wanted to.
The reality is that ISPs are trying to control the flow of content over the internet for their own profit. We have had network neutrality protections in place since before the internet existed (they were called "Common carrier" laws) because of historical violations of the same type, and they have served us well. We should not allow the protections to be removed under the guise that no one would bother to violate them.
I'm sure that your arguments make perfect sense within some definition of network neutrality. If you could, please reply to this stating what you think network neutrality means because I would like to know how you came to your conclusions. Unfortunately, the term keeps getting hijacked by companies with a political agenda. Network neutrality is supposed to mean that ISPs cannot modify or shape internet traffic. And based on that simple rule, your conclusions are not correct. Let me explain:
Pro NN: Netflix and Google Win. Anti NN: AT&T and Comcast Win.
No one "wins" if NN is repealed. Currently, we have NN and everyone is doing just fine. If we lose NN, AT&T and Comcast can cheat by blocking a site then charging an extra fees to get it back. This is how they plan to make money off of it, without having to upgrade their infrastructure. I think calling that "winning" is a bad idea, since nothing good comes out of it.
Pro NN: The End User will end up paying more for service. Anti NN: The End User will not have fair access to other services
This is really the same issue as the first point. If we retain NN, the end user pays exactly what they are paying now. If NN is repealed, it means that ISPs can provide unfair access, then charge a special fee to get fair access back. It means the end user pays more to get the same thing. Or they just get unfair access.
Pro NN: You cannot offer a service with a connection that included internet as a secondary option... I am breaking NN laws because I am offering my service faster to customers and internet access as a secondary service is slower.
Network Neutrality does not state that you cannot offer a service faster to customers and internet access as a slower service. *All* networks are this way. The internet network is always faster than the external network.
Anti NN: ISP can decide who they want to slow down or block just because they are in competition with them. So lets block Vonage or Skype because it Interfears with their Telephone business. Or netflix or hulu.
This a the big ticket, but you only hit the smallest piece of it. Some other examples: ISPs could change advertisements on pages. Imagine a mom and pop advertises their local toy shop, but WalMart pays an ISP to remove those ads and replace them with ads for WalMart. Or an ISP alters pages that are critical critical about the ISP. Or perhaps they redirect websites that are critical of their political agenda to sites that are in favor of their view. Or even if they don't go this far, they could slow down sites that they don't like.
Based on your statements, I think that you believe Network Neutrality places rules on how fast internet is, and how much ISPs can charge for it. I've heard that version of it a lot on various anti-network-neutrality sites. I can assure that that it does not mean that, except to those lobbyists who are trying to redefine the term to make it sound bad. The politicians have made it look like a debate between two approaches, when it isn't a debate, it is simply hijacking a common sense rule.
First of all, version numbers actually mean something, they aren't just arbitrary. To software, major version numbers usually indicate some level of incompatibility: plug-in compatibility, bookmark formats, etc. To users, it usually indicates some visible overhaul and learning curve. It has psychological impact as to whether or not they upgrade, and they may alot time to learn some new stuff or expect some problems. To IT managers, it means test it out before deploying it. Or wait for version.1 before messing with it. Minor version number changes indicate minor changes but generally backward compatible. Below that is just tiny bug fixes but no new features. Some installer systems actually use this information to determine what can exist side-by-side, and when to automatically update.
So using an arbitrary version number system messes up those things. They should stick with the industry best practice that they have been using for years.
The sanity of the Firefox team is under question as of late. From what I can remember:
* Incrementing the major version number with every slight tweak is annoying. * Worse yet, the reasoning behind it is stupid. They just want their version number to be big, like IE. * Major feature creep: they keep talking about the browser as an OS, and 3D acceleration, and stuff that has no purpose in a browser. * The long-standing issues about Firefox are being ignored: primarily memory and performance.
I was going to post the same thing! Only I would have said 3.8. Close enough: They need to stop this before we get to Firefox 27, sometime in mid December.
Slashdot Mirror
Caveat: I've never tried this, but it got me thinking...
Ethernet hardware doesn't have error correcting, except to retransmit if there are collisions. Error checking would work since CRCs would still be sent. The problem is there would be no mechanism for retransmission. But the serial solution has that same problem. You can send CRCs with your packets, but you can't request a retransmission. But for Ethernet, that is up to the higher layers like TCP. A bigger problem is that the Ethernet speed autonegotiation won't work. You might be able to disable that on the card.
The error handling problem arises with serial too. You would have to send a CRC on each packet, but you would have no way to retransmit if there was an error.
Here, the Chinese government is deciding which businesses will be featured more prominently on the internet, which makes a big impact on that companies business. I keep getting called a tinfoil hat when I propose that ISPs could do the same thing. But here is a real world example of it. If you can filter and prioritize web sites, you can control business.
Some Web content blocked from appearing on U.S.-based sites in China appears on Chinese sites, he said. In some cases, China has redirected searches through U.S. services to a Chinese service, and its censorship of foreign services drives consumers to Chinese alternatives, he added.
The latter example sounds much like Verizon (and others) who redirect DNS lookup failures to their own search engine.
Since you seem to know the source, can you list it? Does opensecrets know this? This is contrary to their mission and if they are ignoring it that paints them badly, and if they don't know it you should tell them!
The last 30 seconds of the video specifically mention that.
EULAs are thorny.
Suppose I work for a company and the IT department installed a piece of software on that computer. Must I abide by the EULA?
Or the reverse: Suppose I install a piece of software, must the company abide by the EULA, or just the individual? What if the EULA states that the publisher can remotely access my workstation or use our company trademarks in their promotional materials? The individual installing and using the software probably doesn't even have the power to make those decisions. So do they apply?
What if a minor installed the software?
Following the money doesn't seem to work here. The telecom industries are giving equally to both parties.
http://www.opensecrets.org/industries/indus.php?ind=B08
AT&T and Verizon are the biggest lobbyists in the telephone industry by 10:1 and 5:1 respectively. Most of the money went to Obama, naturally, but he supports Network Neutrality. The next 4 on the list are Republicans. Looking at the "Party Split" graph, 2010 the Democrats got 4.3 million and the Republicans got 4.2 million. The "Telephone Utilities to House" graph does show the Republicans receiving somewhat more money, but it is fairly even in the house.
I don't see any definitive conclusion from this.
I am glad that someone did some academic research to prove this, but it seems unnecessary. Isn't the entire point of eliminating network neutrality just so that carriers can charge more for their existing bandwidth? They slow down a site, then charge you to restore the speed back to what it originally was. Or they charge you a fee to make your packets a higher priority than your neighbor's. Either way, no infrastructure changes were required. The highway analogy the article uses is spot-on.
Can someone explain to me why Republicans keep spewing this illogic about Net Neutrality? Why all the hate and rhetoric? It's really a very simple, and should be a non-partisan issue.
So Carmack is doing something for the good of society, and a commercial company chooses to add a roadblock. But rather than give up, he spends his own time to rewrite the algorithm in a way that avoids the patent. That is a phenomenal level of dedication to the open-source community. He doesn't have to release the code. He doesn't have to rewrite that section.
Thank you John.
If you can't think of a single good CEO in the real world, then I can see why a book where the entire world topples and burns and everyone in New York starves to death is too positive for you.
There needs to be a sane path to being able to prosecute the abuse of FB/Twitter/etc. in such a way it's leading to suicide, etc.
Okay, I see where you are going. You want to make sure that someone who is cyber bullying, like in the case of Megan Meier, they are held accountable. Or any other crime for that matter. But successful prosecution of a crime should have nothing to do with the TOS. The TOS does not need to say "You are forbidden to convince people on this site to commit suicide." The TOS is irrelevant. It doesn't need to list all the things that are crimes in order for them to be prosecuted.
I don't have a sign on my front door that says "By entering this house you agree not to commit the following crimes...." because it isn't needed. The law applies inside my house, and I don't have to spell it out. Same with a TOS. If someone enters my house and harms me, the DA doesn't bring charges for violating the TOS of my house. They bring charges for violating the law.
Ayn Rand makes heroes of CEOs of giant corporations -- the same people who, in real life, buy these laws and regulations
Actually, the book makes both heroes and villains out of those CEOs. In her world, there are 2 types of CEOs. Some are the ones that build the company up from nothing, who value the product and the quality of the creation. The others are the financial analyst/legal types who do it for the power. While Ayn Rand oversimplified everyone to being either black or white, don't accuse the her of glorifying corporations - for every "good" CEO in the Atlas Shrugged there are 100 "bad" CEOs.
It sounds to me like you just read the summary and stopped there. Or maybe I am just pretty dense. Why do you accept think this study disagrees with the other one? And if it did, why would you favor this study over the other one? If you read the articles, they are actually talking about two different things.
The original study is you scoff at is based on nearby measurements, while this new one is based on mathematical modeling. The original study measured plants at "around 9 becquerels per kilogram, much lower than the 500 Bq kg–1 safety limit for human consumption." Whereas the new study "provide[s] the first comprehensive estimates of contamination across Japan following the nuclear accident in 2011."
If you read the articles, they don't actually disagree. They have different purposes. One measures specific plants, and the other tries to guess overall radiation for the entire country. This new study merely recommends that "the Japanese government to carry out a more thorough assessment..." The article goes on to explain the discrepancy between the mathematical models and the actual soil samples. It says "once in soil, caesium will become bound to mineral components, which limits its uptake into plants." Aha!
...the chip's die actually has eight cores on board (two inactive), due to power and yield constraints...
So that means that some of these chips might have 7 or 8 cores functioning, but they still won't enable them because it would probably exceed their TDP. I wonder if it is possible to find out which cores are working and enable them? This might mean that once the yields go up they could start binning them and sell 7 and 8 core versions. The other interesting thing is that this chip won't perform as well as a 6-core chip with only 6 physical cores, because it will be harder to dissipate the heat when there are 2 cores just sitting there acting as an insulator.
This is breaking news so the details are not all there. What if they also got to the databases that push updates? I would like to know the definitive answer to that because Steam is one of the few things that I allow to send me automatic updates. I sure would hate to get a virus via steam. Fortunately, Steam runs as a non-administrative user but it still has write access to all the binaries in my steam folder, so that is still a lot of potential damage.
China Telecom, along with China Unicom, is being investigated over alleged monopolistic practices.
This shows that they are well prepared to be a telecom company in the US.
Thanks for the link.
First, assume for a moment that I agree with you on the quality of the regulations as written - who do you think should enforce Network Neutrality then? Is this regulation bad enough to throw-out the entire thing and let a few monopolies control everyone's access to information?
Second, you say:
It's not an oversimplification, because the regulations are far-reaching and quite specific.
But the regulations you linked to har hardly far reaching or overly specific. I'm looking through them now, since the last time I looked into this it was still the "FCC's four principles."
If your goal is to convince people that allowing ISPs unchecked control over the internet is better than allowing the government to limit their power, this document sure isn't helping that point. It even cites network neutrality violations in there.
At the top-level, it has a summary of what they want:
i. Transparency. Fixed and mobile broadband providers must disclose the network
management practices, performance characteristics, and terms and conditions of their
broadband services;
ii. No blocking. Fixed broadband providers may not block lawful content, applications,
services, or non-harmful devices; mobile broadband providers may not block lawful
websites, or block applications that compete with their voice or video telephony
services; and
iii. No unreasonable discrimination. Fixed broadband providers may not unreasonably
discriminate in transmitting lawful network traffic.
That looks simple, clear, and reasonable. Then follows explanation, history, and justifications. The include examples of network neutrality violations, and the harm that they cause. Then on page 30 they go into more detail about the scope of the rules and definitions of broadband, internet access, etc. I'm impressed considering a government body made this. It reads like a judge's opinion in a lot of ways, tying together logic and law. It gets more specific as you go along, but I don't see it being too specific. Compare this to the thousands of pages that legislation usually is, and this looks very pleasing by comparison!
But I think you have drifed from your original point in the process of trying to shoot down this legislation. You said it contains:
...several [regulations] that fail to protect consumers as content creators, and actually make it more difficult and likely more expensive for them
Okay, so here you are complaining that the FCC regulations don't offer enough protection. Yet you advocated getting the government out of the way. So do you want to be protected from an ISP modifying your content, or do you not care? Personally, I'll take limited protections over none at all. If thatis the compromise we must make, then so bet it.
Let us get back to the original point Olorion brought-up. ISPs are seeking power that would allow them to silence people on the internet. You think that the FCC regulations are more heavy handed than the problem we are trying to fix, and I propose that we agree to disagree there. Yet from your criticism of the FCC, you seem to still want protections. So who should write them and how should they be enforced?
I get your point but your example could be improved. How about:
How would you like it if the post office told you that from now on unless you put two extra stamps on letters that go to certain recipients of their choosing, that each of your letters they would add a week to the delivery time of your first class mail?
The issue is largely about *unequal* treatment. And the issue is also on the receiver's end:
How would you like it if the post office told you that from now on, unless you paid them a fee, letters that came from certain recipients of their choosing, would add a week to the receipt time of your first class mail?
And it still isn't as gripping as network neutrality, because I can send letters through other means. There are other mail and freight carriers.
That's not true. Common carrier laws have been in place for *hundreds of years*. The US actually inherited them from British commonlaw, back when they were concerned that freight carriers could mess with cargo. This only became a problem when the courts ruled that voice calls sent over the internet is not a voice call.
It would seem far fetched if it hadn't happened already, and if they weren't asking for this ability. When someone asks for a law granting them some power, it is reasonable to assume they will use it. I have been meaning to compile a list of network neutrality violations for a while now, but we have had cases where ISPs have blocked or modified content. They come-up on Slashdot on occasion. We had common carrier laws long before the internet because historically freight carriers and phone companies did stuff like this. So this is not far fetched, it is history, it has happened.
Allowing government to regulate the Internet will do exactly the same thing
This extreme oversimplification has to stop. We aren't "giving the government the ability to regulate the internet" we are "restricting the ability for corporations to interfere with the internet." You are oversimplifying things so far that they actually mean the opposite. If we oversimplified every law to "giving the government the ability to regulate X" then we could argue against every single law. We shouldn't have laws telling companies that it is illegal to sell poisonous foods because that would be giving the government the ability to regulate food, and I don't want the government to tell me what food I can eat! We shouldn't have laws that make trespassing illegal because that would be giving the government the ability to regulate where I can go!
Also note, that we are talking about monopolies here. So the argument against government interference doesn't apply. The government has created this mess by screwing up telecommunications law to the point where no one could switch to a neutral ISP even if they wanted to.
The reality is that ISPs are trying to control the flow of content over the internet for their own profit. We have had network neutrality protections in place since before the internet existed (they were called "Common carrier" laws) because of historical violations of the same type, and they have served us well. We should not allow the protections to be removed under the guise that no one would bother to violate them.
I'm sure that your arguments make perfect sense within some definition of network neutrality. If you could, please reply to this stating what you think network neutrality means because I would like to know how you came to your conclusions. Unfortunately, the term keeps getting hijacked by companies with a political agenda. Network neutrality is supposed to mean that ISPs cannot modify or shape internet traffic. And based on that simple rule, your conclusions are not correct. Let me explain:
Pro NN: Netflix and Google Win.
Anti NN: AT&T and Comcast Win.
No one "wins" if NN is repealed. Currently, we have NN and everyone is doing just fine. If we lose NN, AT&T and Comcast can cheat by blocking a site then charging an extra fees to get it back. This is how they plan to make money off of it, without having to upgrade their infrastructure. I think calling that "winning" is a bad idea, since nothing good comes out of it.
Pro NN: The End User will end up paying more for service.
Anti NN: The End User will not have fair access to other services
This is really the same issue as the first point. If we retain NN, the end user pays exactly what they are paying now. If NN is repealed, it means that ISPs can provide unfair access, then charge a special fee to get fair access back. It means the end user pays more to get the same thing. Or they just get unfair access.
Pro NN: You cannot offer a service with a connection that included internet as a secondary option... I am breaking NN laws because I am offering my service faster to customers and internet access as a secondary service is slower.
Network Neutrality does not state that you cannot offer a service faster to customers and internet access as a slower service. *All* networks are this way. The internet network is always faster than the external network.
Anti NN: ISP can decide who they want to slow down or block just because they are in competition with them. So lets block Vonage or Skype because it Interfears with their Telephone business. Or netflix or hulu.
This a the big ticket, but you only hit the smallest piece of it. Some other examples: ISPs could change advertisements on pages. Imagine a mom and pop advertises their local toy shop, but WalMart pays an ISP to remove those ads and replace them with ads for WalMart. Or an ISP alters pages that are critical critical about the ISP. Or perhaps they redirect websites that are critical of their political agenda to sites that are in favor of their view. Or even if they don't go this far, they could slow down sites that they don't like.
Based on your statements, I think that you believe Network Neutrality places rules on how fast internet is, and how much ISPs can charge for it. I've heard that version of it a lot on various anti-network-neutrality sites. I can assure that that it does not mean that, except to those lobbyists who are trying to redefine the term to make it sound bad. The politicians have made it look like a debate between two approaches, when it isn't a debate, it is simply hijacking a common sense rule.
Fair question.
First of all, version numbers actually mean something, they aren't just arbitrary. To software, major version numbers usually indicate some level of incompatibility: plug-in compatibility, bookmark formats, etc. To users, it usually indicates some visible overhaul and learning curve. It has psychological impact as to whether or not they upgrade, and they may alot time to learn some new stuff or expect some problems. To IT managers, it means test it out before deploying it. Or wait for version .1 before messing with it. Minor version number changes indicate minor changes but generally backward compatible. Below that is just tiny bug fixes but no new features. Some installer systems actually use this information to determine what can exist side-by-side, and when to automatically update.
So using an arbitrary version number system messes up those things. They should stick with the industry best practice that they have been using for years.
I bet it is tough to do in Javascript.
The sanity of the Firefox team is under question as of late. From what I can remember:
* Incrementing the major version number with every slight tweak is annoying.
* Worse yet, the reasoning behind it is stupid. They just want their version number to be big, like IE.
* Major feature creep: they keep talking about the browser as an OS, and 3D acceleration, and stuff that has no purpose in a browser.
* The long-standing issues about Firefox are being ignored: primarily memory and performance.
I was going to post the same thing! Only I would have said 3.8. Close enough: They need to stop this before we get to Firefox 27, sometime in mid December.
Ironically, getting nothing is exactly what he wants. It's funny how much time we spend trying to get people to stop wasting our time.