Hah! Show's what you know. JFK was assassinated by a cruise missile being remotely piloted by Oswald on board TWA Flight 800 piloted by Johnson while on the way to Israel to pick up the Ark of the Covenant from the Illuminati. Don't you see?! The pieces all fit!
The book details how Israeli high-tech data mining and surveillance companies such as Comverse, Verint, NICE and more have become indispensable to the US intelligence community. Bamford asserts that the vast majority of surveillance of telephone transmissions are done via technology from Israeli companies. He then makes the jump that the American intelligence community is placing itself as risk and that the Israeli companies will access this same information.
Such conspiracy theories are tired and old.
As a reasonable, skeptical individual, I would personally be completely shocked to find out that absolutely none of this data was being passed on to Israeli security forces. At the very least, I would expect that Israeli intelligence has in some fashion managed to get access to information it needs through at least one of these companies. It would beggar belief that an organisation like Mossad had not availed itself of such an opportunity.
Frankly, in the times we live in, I would expect that all of these companies along with every other subcontractor, has already creamed off useful statistics and data and sold them to banks, credit agencies and marketers. This in fact would bother me more than data being passed to competent intelligence outfits, would would at least misuse it in a security conscious way.
This data is in some fashion being passed on to the Israeli security forces. It is in no way a conspiracy theory to suggest this, and any reasonable person would come to the same conclusion. Whether the American intelligence community is placing itself at risk by outsourcing like this is another matter.
Frankly, from the tone of the book, the American intelligence community appears to be a contradiction in terms.
Israeli's are right wingers. Right winger's don't need reasons, or logic, and they don't use much of them either. They do as they please until someone stands up to them.
In the current global climate, there's no point in having nuclear missiles. Those who could strike us are no longer interested and are now allies and those who are hostile and nuclear capable can't reach us.
All this was true at the beginning of the Bush presidency. None of it is true after.
Take this particular news story: There are no specific claims of any sort that I can see in any of the article links on either side. There aren't any specific correlations being asserted or presented between anything and anything else that I can tell, just a bunch of bitching on both sides.
What do you think the arguments of the UK government are based on? What evidence to you think they will present for their claims? They will trot out correlation studies like the dead horse they are, to be beaten in front of the media once again. This is always the case when they need any flimsy excuse to demonise video games.
The "correlationisnotcausation" whine-fest is completely beside the point, like a mass hallucination.
"Correlationisnotcausation" is the point. These ads would never have been aired without people accepting the validity of dubious and misleading correlation studies. Correlation is not and never will be causation, and in case you have doubts about this, I'll trot this link out again about Saturn's correlation with the S&P 500.
Correlation studies and other misapplications of statistics are behind this claim, and the injustice it represents. It's right to point that out.
For many of us on the pro-life side of the equation, choice is, in a sense, a secondary right to the right of an unborn child to live. Yes, a woman has a right to "choose" what she does (more or less) with her own body...until it involves the life of another.
To enforce such a view would be to intrude on the most basic and fundamental rights a person can have; the right to their own selves. If someone can not have that, then I do not see how they can have anything.
Although this exact figure is disputed heavily by both left and right wing sides of the argument they both generally agree that some 25 - 33 percent of all pregnancies end in abortion.....So, my opinion, put bluntly. It's murder - it is always murder.
Some 50% of pregnancies end in miscarriage. In your opinion should we hold a funeral for each and every miscarried fetus? Should there be a police investigation? Death certificate?
This is a very serious matter, because if fetuses are really full citizens, then all these things should happen. If they are, then women should submit themselves to monthly checkups, as happened in Romania under Ceauescu, so as to ensure a proper record of deaths is maintained. You cannot have one standard for some citizens and one for others.
However, I'm not so sure about your take on the 1st Amendment. It is for freedom of religion, not freedom from religion.
I think what a lot of religious people forget is that religion can be a very oppressive force for those that don't accept the majority view. I have personally found religion to be a very hostile force against me in my life.
The Catholic church still runs 90% of the schools in Ireland, and I, like virtually everyone else in the country, had no choice but to attend a Catholic primary and secondary school. It is not a happy experience to be marched down to mass when you don't believe in any of it, and don't practice any religion at home. The situation was in no way restricted to schools. Up to the 1980's it was common for non-Catholics in the workplace to stand up and make motions of prayer during the Angelus at noon so as not to stand out.
It is a very difficult thing to be a non-believer amid believers. I can tell you that dissension in these matters will evoke severe hostility. The situation that I and many others else in Ireland found ourselves in is the exact situation that the American first amendment was designed to avoid.
When religious people argue for prayers in schools, or courts, or legislature, they rarely consider the effect on non-believers. Religion does create a hostile work environment for just about anyone except the devout, and that's not something that any Government office should promote or enforce. If you want to go and pray or need time to do so, absolutely. But don't force a hostile environment on the people that don't want it.
Your first amendment is as much about freedom from religion as it is about freedom of religion.
The existence of a supernatural entity is not inherently a nonscientific problem. In essence it is very simple to find evidence for the existence of such a being. Just look for supernatural events. Since no-one has ever been able to find any, that is fairly strong evidence that supernatural beings don't exist. This is a reasonable and valid argument.
The argument that you also cannot prove that supernatural beings do not exist is a standard rebuttal to this, but does not stand up to scrutiny. You must provide evidence for such claims, not against them. Otherwise we will have to accept lack of disproof as evidence for everything. UFOs, 9/11 conspiracies, astrology, etc, etc, etc.
Theologists may have made academic careers out of following their beliefs, but this does not make their arguments valid. Any way you spin it Trinitarianism does not really make any sense. Theologists' job is to legitimize such arguments, and others like them, which are riddled with inconsistency and contradiction. It is no surprise then that they would assert that lack of contrary proof constitutes evidence or other such logical contortions.
The scientific methods can be applied to supernatural beings, and Dawkins is right to do so. Religion does not get a free pass in a world where everything around us can and should be studied and understood. The scientific methods has gotten humanity to where it is today and if we put artificial barriers on it then we'll only end up stuck in a developmental hole which we'll never escape from.
Re:Not very "Family Friendly" either
on
Watchmen Watched
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· Score: 4, Insightful
Maybe they're upset because Watchmen, despite its fairly uncompromising storytelling, was not what you would call and R rated comic. With the exception of Manhattan's big blue genitals, sexual references were fairly tame. Violence, while present, was rarely all that graphic, relying more on setting, dialogue and subtlety for it impact rather than outright gore. As to foul language, Watchmen contained it, but I cannot recall the novel being excessively laced with profanities in the manner of, say, Killzone 2 for example.
Regardless, this movie will disappoint fans. It must. As a medium, film is inherently incapable of producing a work with as much breath, depth and contrast as Watchmen, or any other graphic novel, or indeed any other type of novel at all. Movie buffs may disagree with me, but I think it stands to reason that no film of any reasonable length has the time and opportunity to engage with the viewer in the same way that a novel consistently engages with its reader.
A reader can hover over every frame in Watchmen for five minutes if they desire. A reader can dwell over a paragraph for a similar amount of time. A film director simply cannot avail of this kind of engagement in his movie, except in a handful of scenes. It is both a strength and a weakness of film as a medium, but it puts serious limitations on the medium.
People seem to have an irrational desire that their favorite novel/comic/game/whatever be paraded in front of the masses in the form of a movie. I cannot understand this point of view. If something is good, then it doesn't need validation in the form of a Hollywood epic complete with marketing campaigns and happy meal toy lines. If anything, good works should not be subjected to this kind of crass spectacle.
When I see "pundits" debating the "themes and imagery" of the Watchmen movie on TV talk shows, a little piece of my love for the novel will silently die.
Most people working in the construction industry do not have a Facebook account. Most probably do not have a MySpace account either. They also probably don't have a lot of access to legal options either.
You know, if you told me three years ago that such a device would ever be available, I would have scoffed at your futurist notions. It's amazing to think just how much pirate sites like TV-links have accomplished since then.
The day of revelation came for me when my (decidedly non-techie) friends started using TV-links and sites like it, en-masse. I was quite stunned. Not at the concept, but at the uptake. I should have learned from bit-torrent not to underestimate the common user, but I did it again. The uptake has been massive, and it's not coming fisrt from geeks or technical people. This is a grassroots revolt. Almost everyone under 30 with a desktop or laptop uses these sites regularly to watch the programs they want, on demand. The entire concept of waiting a week for the next episode is almost alien to them by this point.
It stunned me, and continues to stun me, just how popular things like XBMC and Boxee have become. This is not like Napster and the music industry, or bit-torrent and the video industry. This is happening way, way faster, and the television industry is going to be blown out of the water by this one. Most TV networks have no idea and no experience of a consumer revolution, and even if they did, I'm not sure if they will be able to react in time.
TV networks need to act fast if they don't want to be left completely behind. They need to buy up one of these set-top box companies and start their own service pronto. personally, I don't think a single network will be able to act in time. I foresee syndication companies simply cutting out the TV middle man and starting their own services, selling directly to subscribers. At least when it comes to weekly shows and the like.
People are moving to TV on demand whether the industry likes it or not.
Actually I've talked to more than one Protestant that even consider Catholics to be non-Christian. It all seems a bit silly to me - If you consider Jesus holy, you're a Christian. If you don't, you're not.
The matter is somewhat more seriously defined than that. In general The Nicene Creed is regarded as the main Christianity test, in order to distinguish it from doctrines like Arianism, or other religions entirely like Judaism or Islam. Reading over it, it seems pretty clear that just about every modern day Christian sect accepts that creed in whole or in large part, even those that say they don't.
Please remove the "Mormons" tag. Not all Mormons think that way.
But most Mormons do. They are a fairly conservative bunch on the whole. The story is about a conservative, Republican, Mormon dominated legislature trying to get the internet to play by corporate rules. The "mormon" tag is just as appropriate as a "republican" or "conservative" or "corporations" tag on the story.
People can legitimately object to stereotypes and prejudices. But sometimes those stereotypes are things that are legitimately true and that need to be said, even if they do offend. Not allowing this leads to situations in which we now find ourselves. According to the UN, we can now no longer "defame" religions or their followers, no matter how much we disagree with their beliefs or practices.
Forget the rough stuff. Mormons, by dogma, can't drink coffee and tea. I personally think this is a stupid prohibition. Muslims, again by dogma, can't draw pictures of Mohammad. I personally think this a really stupid prohibition. Catholics( especially in third world countries), again by dogma, can't use condoms. I personally think this is an appallingly stupid prohibition which costs lives every single day. I think the people who follow these prohibitions are being unreasonable, inconsiderate and irresponsible.
My opinions here could land me in jail in many countries for being "bigoted" or for "stereotyping" or for "hate speech". Some people will say that I'm tarnishing the image of whole groups of people, or that not all people in those groups support these prohibitions. Tell that to the people living in Utah, or Saudi Arabia, or Italy, who have to put up with prohibitions imposed on them in the name of the silent religious majority.
In conclusion, it is not automatically "Wrong(TM)" to stereotype a religious community. In fact, when that communities religious practices start to infringe on others liberties, it is right to stereotype, lampoon and indeed "defame" those practices, and to force that community to reflect upon itself. Religion should never be except from criticism, and especially satire.
I returned and saw under the sun, that the race is not to the swift, nor the battle to the strong, neither yet bread to the wise, nor yet riches to men of understanding, nor yet favour to men of skill; but time and chance happeneth to them all
The internet is not and never has been a bunch of "roads". The internet is a series of interconnected post offices. Sure, there are "roads", the fibre and wires and cables that carry signals. But that's not what the internet is, just like the roads and the warehouses and the green vans are not what the post office is. The post office is a service that delivers post.
When I subscribe to an ISP, I am not paying to drive on their "information superhighway". I am paying them to deliver packets from to other IP addresses, and to deliver packets from other IP addresses to me. This is the internet. This is the way it has always been and this is the way it is as it scales upwards from users to ISPs, to Telcos.
Now big Telcos want to turn around to companies like Google and Twitter who are making money and charge them more for deliveries simply because they are deemed able to afford it. In addition, they also want to charge you more for delivering your packets to and from these companies sites. This is bullshit and everyone with half a brain knows that it cannot be allowed to stand.
When I pay for a stamp and post my letter, I don't expect the post office to turn around and say; "Oh, you're sending correspondence to your great uncle? Suit you sir. But I'm afraid that will cost you a bit extra owing to the fact that your great uncle is a man of some means. You'll have to buy a special stamp." Or "Hmmm sir. It seems your business made quite a lot of money last year, and management feels you can afford to pay an extra few pence for deliveries." Is this acceptable? Can anyone justify that?
And don't give me bullshit about "international stamps, etc". That's not what this is about. True, bandwidth corresponds to charging by weight, but on the internet, there are no foreign countries. Every computer is a local one. If you want to separate sites in Europe from one in the States then you may as well just shut the whole network down altogether, because you will have irreparably broken it.
Can anyone give one morsel of justification for why delivering my packets to google.com should cost more or less than delivering to slashdot.org? Do I give a flying fiddlers what kind of "tubes" were used to send them? Do I weep for the packets waiting milliseconds in the queue while mine is processed? Do I contemplate the strain on networks caused by shameless charlatans like myself who actually use the bandwidth they paid for? No, because the whole point of a post office is that I don't have to care how you get my letter there, I just pay you to do it.
Packets are packets are packets. IPs are IPS are IPs. Data is Data is Data. There are no tubes, no roads, no cars, no tiers, no premium IPs or domain names. Net neutrality is the only sane answer.
I don't think anyone believed for a minute that any government worker would idly sit on a data goldmine, and not utilize to its full capability.
They can't. Not with the Tabloid newspapers screaming "Something Must Be Done" every time some brat drinks themselves to death, or a knife is drawn outside of a nightclub.
The British public support this measure and others like it every single morning when they buy sensationalist, right wing papers whose sole objective seems to be to prevent the Government from acting in any kind of reasonable or rational way. Hence CCTV mania, databases and ID cards.
People are not oblivious to this. You must understand that most people in the UK want this. England has always been a very right wing country, and its press and politics reflects that. The only thing keeping the country sane at this point is the BBC and the conservative upper classes. May the gods help us all.
Slashdot Mirror
Hah! Show's what you know. JFK was assassinated by a cruise missile being remotely piloted by Oswald on board TWA Flight 800 piloted by Johnson while on the way to Israel to pick up the Ark of the Covenant from the Illuminati. Don't you see?! The pieces all fit!
As a reasonable, skeptical individual, I would personally be completely shocked to find out that absolutely none of this data was being passed on to Israeli security forces. At the very least, I would expect that Israeli intelligence has in some fashion managed to get access to information it needs through at least one of these companies. It would beggar belief that an organisation like Mossad had not availed itself of such an opportunity.
Frankly, in the times we live in, I would expect that all of these companies along with every other subcontractor, has already creamed off useful statistics and data and sold them to banks, credit agencies and marketers. This in fact would bother me more than data being passed to competent intelligence outfits, would would at least misuse it in a security conscious way.
This data is in some fashion being passed on to the Israeli security forces. It is in no way a conspiracy theory to suggest this, and any reasonable person would come to the same conclusion. Whether the American intelligence community is placing itself at risk by outsourcing like this is another matter.
Frankly, from the tone of the book, the American intelligence community appears to be a contradiction in terms.
Israeli's are right wingers. Right winger's don't need reasons, or logic, and they don't use much of them either. They do as they please until someone stands up to them.
All this was true at the beginning of the Bush presidency. None of it is true after.
What do you think the arguments of the UK government are based on? What evidence to you think they will present for their claims? They will trot out correlation studies like the dead horse they are, to be beaten in front of the media once again. This is always the case when they need any flimsy excuse to demonise video games.
"Correlationisnotcausation" is the point. These ads would never have been aired without people accepting the validity of dubious and misleading correlation studies. Correlation is not and never will be causation, and in case you have doubts about this, I'll trot this link out again about Saturn's correlation with the S&P 500.
Correlation studies and other misapplications of statistics are behind this claim, and the injustice it represents. It's right to point that out.
To enforce such a view would be to intrude on the most basic and fundamental rights a person can have; the right to their own selves. If someone can not have that, then I do not see how they can have anything.
Some 50% of pregnancies end in miscarriage. In your opinion should we hold a funeral for each and every miscarried fetus? Should there be a police investigation? Death certificate?
This is a very serious matter, because if fetuses are really full citizens, then all these things should happen. If they are, then women should submit themselves to monthly checkups, as happened in Romania under Ceauescu, so as to ensure a proper record of deaths is maintained. You cannot have one standard for some citizens and one for others.
You should realize where your logic will lead us.
I think what a lot of religious people forget is that religion can be a very oppressive force for those that don't accept the majority view. I have personally found religion to be a very hostile force against me in my life.
The Catholic church still runs 90% of the schools in Ireland, and I, like virtually everyone else in the country, had no choice but to attend a Catholic primary and secondary school. It is not a happy experience to be marched down to mass when you don't believe in any of it, and don't practice any religion at home. The situation was in no way restricted to schools. Up to the 1980's it was common for non-Catholics in the workplace to stand up and make motions of prayer during the Angelus at noon so as not to stand out.
It is a very difficult thing to be a non-believer amid believers. I can tell you that dissension in these matters will evoke severe hostility. The situation that I and many others else in Ireland found ourselves in is the exact situation that the American first amendment was designed to avoid.
When religious people argue for prayers in schools, or courts, or legislature, they rarely consider the effect on non-believers. Religion does create a hostile work environment for just about anyone except the devout, and that's not something that any Government office should promote or enforce. If you want to go and pray or need time to do so, absolutely. But don't force a hostile environment on the people that don't want it.
Your first amendment is as much about freedom from religion as it is about freedom of religion.
The existence of a supernatural entity is not inherently a nonscientific problem. In essence it is very simple to find evidence for the existence of such a being. Just look for supernatural events. Since no-one has ever been able to find any, that is fairly strong evidence that supernatural beings don't exist. This is a reasonable and valid argument.
The argument that you also cannot prove that supernatural beings do not exist is a standard rebuttal to this, but does not stand up to scrutiny. You must provide evidence for such claims, not against them. Otherwise we will have to accept lack of disproof as evidence for everything. UFOs, 9/11 conspiracies, astrology, etc, etc, etc.
Theologists may have made academic careers out of following their beliefs, but this does not make their arguments valid. Any way you spin it Trinitarianism does not really make any sense. Theologists' job is to legitimize such arguments, and others like them, which are riddled with inconsistency and contradiction. It is no surprise then that they would assert that lack of contrary proof constitutes evidence or other such logical contortions.
The scientific methods can be applied to supernatural beings, and Dawkins is right to do so. Religion does not get a free pass in a world where everything around us can and should be studied and understood. The scientific methods has gotten humanity to where it is today and if we put artificial barriers on it then we'll only end up stuck in a developmental hole which we'll never escape from.
Maybe they're upset because Watchmen, despite its fairly uncompromising storytelling, was not what you would call and R rated comic. With the exception of Manhattan's big blue genitals, sexual references were fairly tame. Violence, while present, was rarely all that graphic, relying more on setting, dialogue and subtlety for it impact rather than outright gore. As to foul language, Watchmen contained it, but I cannot recall the novel being excessively laced with profanities in the manner of, say, Killzone 2 for example.
Regardless, this movie will disappoint fans. It must. As a medium, film is inherently incapable of producing a work with as much breath, depth and contrast as Watchmen, or any other graphic novel, or indeed any other type of novel at all. Movie buffs may disagree with me, but I think it stands to reason that no film of any reasonable length has the time and opportunity to engage with the viewer in the same way that a novel consistently engages with its reader.
A reader can hover over every frame in Watchmen for five minutes if they desire. A reader can dwell over a paragraph for a similar amount of time. A film director simply cannot avail of this kind of engagement in his movie, except in a handful of scenes. It is both a strength and a weakness of film as a medium, but it puts serious limitations on the medium.
People seem to have an irrational desire that their favorite novel/comic/game/whatever be paraded in front of the masses in the form of a movie. I cannot understand this point of view. If something is good, then it doesn't need validation in the form of a Hollywood epic complete with marketing campaigns and happy meal toy lines. If anything, good works should not be subjected to this kind of crass spectacle.
When I see "pundits" debating the "themes and imagery" of the Watchmen movie on TV talk shows, a little piece of my love for the novel will silently die.
...if this predicament seems particularly cruel...
Governments can be held accountable for their actions.
Most people working in the construction industry do not have a Facebook account. Most probably do not have a MySpace account either. They also probably don't have a lot of access to legal options either.
Hey! It's certainly a proven long term storage solution. Just ask King Ramesses II.
You know, if you told me three years ago that such a device would ever be available, I would have scoffed at your futurist notions. It's amazing to think just how much pirate sites like TV-links have accomplished since then.
The day of revelation came for me when my (decidedly non-techie) friends started using TV-links and sites like it, en-masse. I was quite stunned. Not at the concept, but at the uptake. I should have learned from bit-torrent not to underestimate the common user, but I did it again. The uptake has been massive, and it's not coming fisrt from geeks or technical people. This is a grassroots revolt. Almost everyone under 30 with a desktop or laptop uses these sites regularly to watch the programs they want, on demand. The entire concept of waiting a week for the next episode is almost alien to them by this point.
It stunned me, and continues to stun me, just how popular things like XBMC and Boxee have become. This is not like Napster and the music industry, or bit-torrent and the video industry. This is happening way, way faster, and the television industry is going to be blown out of the water by this one. Most TV networks have no idea and no experience of a consumer revolution, and even if they did, I'm not sure if they will be able to react in time.
TV networks need to act fast if they don't want to be left completely behind. They need to buy up one of these set-top box companies and start their own service pronto. personally, I don't think a single network will be able to act in time. I foresee syndication companies simply cutting out the TV middle man and starting their own services, selling directly to subscribers. At least when it comes to weekly shows and the like.
People are moving to TV on demand whether the industry likes it or not.
Surely you mean C# programmers?
What is bigoted about adding a "mormon" tag when over 80% of the Utah state legislature are members of the LDS church?
The matter is somewhat more seriously defined than that. In general The Nicene Creed is regarded as the main Christianity test, in order to distinguish it from doctrines like Arianism, or other religions entirely like Judaism or Islam. Reading over it, it seems pretty clear that just about every modern day Christian sect accepts that creed in whole or in large part, even those that say they don't.
But most Mormons do. They are a fairly conservative bunch on the whole. The story is about a conservative, Republican, Mormon dominated legislature trying to get the internet to play by corporate rules. The "mormon" tag is just as appropriate as a "republican" or "conservative" or "corporations" tag on the story.
People can legitimately object to stereotypes and prejudices. But sometimes those stereotypes are things that are legitimately true and that need to be said, even if they do offend. Not allowing this leads to situations in which we now find ourselves. According to the UN, we can now no longer "defame" religions or their followers, no matter how much we disagree with their beliefs or practices.
Forget the rough stuff. Mormons, by dogma, can't drink coffee and tea. I personally think this is a stupid prohibition. Muslims, again by dogma, can't draw pictures of Mohammad. I personally think this a really stupid prohibition. Catholics( especially in third world countries), again by dogma, can't use condoms. I personally think this is an appallingly stupid prohibition which costs lives every single day. I think the people who follow these prohibitions are being unreasonable, inconsiderate and irresponsible.
My opinions here could land me in jail in many countries for being "bigoted" or for "stereotyping" or for "hate speech". Some people will say that I'm tarnishing the image of whole groups of people, or that not all people in those groups support these prohibitions. Tell that to the people living in Utah, or Saudi Arabia, or Italy, who have to put up with prohibitions imposed on them in the name of the silent religious majority.
In conclusion, it is not automatically "Wrong(TM)" to stereotype a religious community. In fact, when that communities religious practices start to infringe on others liberties, it is right to stereotype, lampoon and indeed "defame" those practices, and to force that community to reflect upon itself. Religion should never be except from criticism, and especially satire.
The internet is not and never has been a bunch of "roads". The internet is a series of interconnected post offices. Sure, there are "roads", the fibre and wires and cables that carry signals. But that's not what the internet is, just like the roads and the warehouses and the green vans are not what the post office is. The post office is a service that delivers post.
When I subscribe to an ISP, I am not paying to drive on their "information superhighway". I am paying them to deliver packets from to other IP addresses, and to deliver packets from other IP addresses to me. This is the internet. This is the way it has always been and this is the way it is as it scales upwards from users to ISPs, to Telcos.
Now big Telcos want to turn around to companies like Google and Twitter who are making money and charge them more for deliveries simply because they are deemed able to afford it. In addition, they also want to charge you more for delivering your packets to and from these companies sites. This is bullshit and everyone with half a brain knows that it cannot be allowed to stand.
When I pay for a stamp and post my letter, I don't expect the post office to turn around and say; "Oh, you're sending correspondence to your great uncle? Suit you sir. But I'm afraid that will cost you a bit extra owing to the fact that your great uncle is a man of some means. You'll have to buy a special stamp." Or "Hmmm sir. It seems your business made quite a lot of money last year, and management feels you can afford to pay an extra few pence for deliveries." Is this acceptable? Can anyone justify that?
And don't give me bullshit about "international stamps, etc". That's not what this is about. True, bandwidth corresponds to charging by weight, but on the internet, there are no foreign countries. Every computer is a local one. If you want to separate sites in Europe from one in the States then you may as well just shut the whole network down altogether, because you will have irreparably broken it.
Can anyone give one morsel of justification for why delivering my packets to google.com should cost more or less than delivering to slashdot.org? Do I give a flying fiddlers what kind of "tubes" were used to send them? Do I weep for the packets waiting milliseconds in the queue while mine is processed? Do I contemplate the strain on networks caused by shameless charlatans like myself who actually use the bandwidth they paid for? No, because the whole point of a post office is that I don't have to care how you get my letter there, I just pay you to do it.
Packets are packets are packets. IPs are IPS are IPs. Data is Data is Data. There are no tubes, no roads, no cars, no tiers, no premium IPs or domain names. Net neutrality is the only sane answer.
Grandparent:
Parent:
I'm sorry, but one or other of you appears to have posted in the wrong thread.
In fact you need an MBA to unlearn that there are boom-bust cycles.
In fact the true formula was:
e^x
and the inability of everyone to understand it.
They can't. Not with the Tabloid newspapers screaming "Something Must Be Done" every time some brat drinks themselves to death, or a knife is drawn outside of a nightclub.
The British public support this measure and others like it every single morning when they buy sensationalist, right wing papers whose sole objective seems to be to prevent the Government from acting in any kind of reasonable or rational way. Hence CCTV mania, databases and ID cards.
People are not oblivious to this. You must understand that most people in the UK want this. England has always been a very right wing country, and its press and politics reflects that. The only thing keeping the country sane at this point is the BBC and the conservative upper classes. May the gods help us all.