Seriously, this is what you answer with when I criticize product honestly and constructively? You honestly think that for example Microsoft would response to my suggestions with a "fuck you"? They would thank me for my input.
It's no wonder open source isn't going anywhere if the answer to any criticism is "fuck you".
Sometimes, a decision must be made in terms of which side on which to err. The decision that is made says a lot about the character of the person.
I like the idea of "better for ten guilty men to go free, than for one innocent man to be punished." I really do think the latter is a much greater injustice, particularly since karma (or something like it) is very real. Others have a completely opposite viewpoint. Apparently you have encountered one of those. They would rather hassle you in case you might be an astroturfer/fanboy/etc. They haven't much concern for whether you are a real person expressing a genuine preference.
I'd rather treat you with more civility than that, knowing that you might possibly be dishonest, knowing that you might deserve to receive a hard time that I won't end up giving to you. In the absence of absolute evidence, that's how I like to do things. I'd rather you feel like you pulled one over on me. That doesn't matter to me. But it would bother me to realize that I might have been less-than-courteous to someone who really was honestly representing a real opinion.
When in doubt, I know where I stand. Apparently the other responder does as well.
Maybe someone with more real-world experience using Java can clarify this for me.
When I look into Java's performance, I see lots of cases where it's "nearly as fast as compiled C/C++ code" etc. The (narrowly-defined) numbers do look pretty good. Yet I have a similar experience: most applications I use which are partially or wholly written in Java feel slow, particularly in terms of UI responsiveness.
Is this actually a contradiction? Is there anyone who incorporates Java into a major desktop application and (in terms of performance) does it well?
So don't use it. It's not like you have to do this to get a program to run. For those of us who like to type it's much faster than it is for those douchebags who can't get their hand off the mouse.
I didn't phrase it that way, AC, but I admit I was thinking something like that myself. It just seems like such a trivial thing to complain about. But then, I feel that way about everything that one need not choose to use, read, watch, think, listen to, etc.
If you tap the Windows key and start typing, like in previous versions it will start searching for what you typed. So that still works the same, at least.
Yeah, I use a GUI because I love typing commands so much.
I have no idea why this was modded up except that it suits someone's anti-CLI groupthink. Meta-commentary aside...
As others pointed out, the aforementioned steps involve using a search box. A search box is a component of a comprehensive GUI.
I'm typing this in Firefox on a full-blown KDE system myself. For Web browsing, a GUI is superior. However, I have a Konsole open with several tabs (i.e. instances of my shell) running as well. I use that for all the tasks I want to do for which a CLI is superior. That includes just about any time I want to perform an operation on multiple files with a single command. It also includes the most common system administration tasks, assuming of course you're equally comfortable doing it either way (CLI or GUI).
I also have Amarok running because a decent GUI tool is better for doing things like managing a playlist or skipping to a certain portion of an audio file, even though I could also do this with something like mplayer in a shell. I just don't share (what I perceive as) your aversion to typing. Once you can easily touch-type over 80 words per minute (i.e. your "control rate") you'll find that you choose a particular method because of how much you like it better for that class of task, not because of how much you dislike the alternative. Which you use becomes a matter of what you are trying to do.
Then you don't limit yourself or your thinking by getting stuck clinging to a particular way. I definitely prefer that over this "my camp vs. your camp" mentality that keeps coming up to some degree or another in every discussion.
It surprises me as one of the very few things I miss about Windows after moving to Linux was the Start menu. The Gnome main menu always seemed very sparse in comparison. What doesn't surprise me is that people used the XP menu more than on Vista or 7. Other than search and a few other minor things, the XP start menu is better. When I'm just sifting through it, I can find what I'm looking for much faster than the Vista click-a-thon.
It's possible I am misunderstanding you but... It sounds like you are using one particular desktop available to Linux (out of dozens) and concluding that using Linux means you must give up ever having an equivalent to a start menu. Have you really looked into it?
For example, KDE has a "start menu". So do several different window managers.
You forgot "jury". It goes between "ballot" and "ammo". Although the same egomaniacs who must have control have largely ruined the jury box.
Jury nullification is mostly unknown these days. It's a final check against tyrannical laws. But in the USA it's not mentioned to those who serve on juries. That wasn't always the case at all.
Now it's more like a technical procedure where every step has nice, neat, clear instructions. The idea that the jury is a way to refuse enforcement of a law one feels is unjust or tyrannical is not officially allowed or endorsed anymore.
I'd argue that the ballot box is mostly irrelevant at the federal level, but can be truly important at the state and local levels. It's not a matter of the candidate for which one should vote. It's a matter of how an unknown person gets to become a famous political candidate, the financial and political support it takes for this to happen, the even larger levels of support it takes to win, and who gets to receive such support. That machine determines elections far more than ballots.
Voting doesn't mean very much when all available candidates are part of the same system. This is an inevitable outcome of a system where the "common person" would never achieve high office. It boils down to something other than merit and personal achievement. Those have been replaced with cronyism, corruption, and cynacism.
The most effective box these days is the soap box. The Internet is something different. Bullshit ideas actually have to defend their merits. It's not like TV with its unilateral, one-to-many nature. The soap box available to the average person has never been bigger or more powerful.
It's easier for me to believe that you are intending to defame this company. I find that more plausible than the idea you're going to successfully drum up sales by spamming an audience with a particularly advanced disdain for spam.
Not that it would surprise me. It's not like spammers would be the smartest or wisest sort of people who think things through and look at whether something is a good idea in the long term.
these "Movie Rights Group" parasites will get the rough treatment from the courts that they deserve.
Failing that, the Australian people can turn to a time-tested method of dealing with assholes: tar and feather them. Then post the videos all over the Internet. With a Creative Commons license.
The U.S. has plenty of spectrum for mobile broadband, but much of it is in the wrong hands, they said."
To the people who make the decisions, that's the exact same thing as a shortage. They don't see a changing of hands as a viable option. They are not generally willing to consider it. If something is perceived as finite, limited, and scarce then you can continue to justify what you charge for it. The rest is a matter of regulatory capture by the proxy of campaign contributions.
Hmm, can you give a link to the source code? Afaik we don't have source code to the sun java plugin. Openjdk's java plugin is a completely different project and does not work on many sites that are only tested with sun java.
No, I am using Sun's Java. On Gentoo the package is called "sun-jdk" and it includes the runtimes (there is also "sun-jre-bin" for the runtimes only, but I occasionally need the jdk what with this being a source-based distro... point is both have this nsplugin flag). Perhaps I should have said the more generic "install from upstream" rather than "compile from source". I'd have caught that if the subject were say, software freedom or a desire to modify the runtimes. In the context the actual availability of source code seemed like a useless technicality to me, as it had nothing to do with trying to help you realize you do in fact have an option regarding the browser plugin, though you are in fact correct.
At any rate, installing from upstream allows for this flexibility whereas the packages (.deb,.rpm, whatever) as provided from your distribution apparently have to make an assumption, according to your first post. That kind of fine-grained customization is a major reason why one would run a source-based distro in the first place. The nature of a binary distro means fewer options like this because assumptions like that have to be made by whoever builds everything for you. Generally they assume you will always disable or just won't use whatever you don't like so they tend to include everything and the kitchen sink. That's much easier for them than maintaining multiple versions of the same package, each with different build-time options.
Of course your disadvantage here is that you may have to install it outside of your package manager, which sucks.
I play too, but I disabled the browser plugin after installing Java. That's the thing - you can't JUST install the JRE, which would be a lot safer. You always get the browser plugin no matter what.
At least on Gentoo, the browser plugin is toggled by the "nsplugin" use flag. You can have a JRE or a JDK without a plugin.
That indicates you could have the same option on any other distro if you're willing to compile it from source. I'm not sure if that's true for Windows but there's no reason it couldn't be.
Bingo. Organized religion likes to pretend they are the font of moral wisdom, but history simply doesn't bear that truth out. That stance is merely a pretense to control their flock, to get them to do what they want them to do.
Hey, don't attack me, I'm just answering the question.
I happen to be in the "legalize but regulate and tax" camp, even for hard drugs.
It wasn't an attack. It was more like, yes that is the "standard answer" provided by the establishment. It just happens not to coincide with reality. I didn't see anyone else pointing that out. Meanwhile, there is a downside: people who really do need this medicine will now have a harder time getting it, all in an effort to stop people from abusing drugs they will have few or no problems obtaining anyway...
The important thing is that the mean blood lead level in 1975 was 15.5 g/dl. The mean blood lead level today is less than 2g/dl.
That can't be right. That would be what, about a third of a kilogram of lead in the average person's body?
The average adult has about 5 pints of blood in their body. A pint is a little more than half a liter. So that's approximately 2.5 liters * 10 * 15.5, which works out to about 387 grams of lead. I think that's enough to kill a blue whale.
From reading the Wikipedia article on lead poisoning, I assume you meant micrograms.
Yes. We all know that requiring a prescription has prevented the abuse of other drugs such as oxycodone (Oxycontin). When that was made prescription-only, all the drug abusers and recreational users just gave up and admitted defeat.
Albuterol inhalers have been around for over twenty years. The patents are lapsed. Does anyone know why albuterol inhalers are prescription only?
Because in the "land of the free" we really hate the idea that adult people might decide for themselves what goes into their own bodies. That's what it boils down to.
If it were my decision to make, you could get just about anything over-the-counter that you like with no questions asked. The reason you'd still go to a doctor is because it's a really good idea and you'd be a fool not to seek good professional advice about important medical issues, not because someone threatens you with jail for circumventing a system.
The main role the FDA should have is to ensure honest labeling, i.e. that when you buy a drug, it is what it says it is and contains no harmful impurities. A secondary role would be continuing to require clinical trials before a company may make positive claims of efficacy for a given substance. But in the absence of such claims, there's no good non-nanny-state reason why an adult person should not be able to purchase and consume whatever he or she wants and then bear the consequences.
I saw a great shirt that said "The ATF should be a convenience store not a Gov Bureau."
In a free country, it would be.
The regulation of things like alcohol, tobacco and guns should have never involved the feds in the first place. The states are more than capable of handling it. The whole federalism thing works when it's tried.
That's usually what it takes to get bureaucrats to take notice. It doesn't matter how predictable the problems are. Once somebody dies, suddenly they see something as a problem.
I am ignorant about the inner workings of these inhalers. So I am curious, what's the reason they cannot simply use compressed air to provide the aerosol? Why must it be a CFC or albuterol?
He probably cares very little about the fact that the government created the infrastructure of the Internet. People like him don't really believe in minimal government (as they love to claim); they believe in a very strong, robust government--but one that works only in favor of private business. We of course see this in the financial industry, where at the top, losses are socialized and gains are privatized--with no real effort to end the "to big to fail" policy. These people are not capitalist, they are Marxists, but they're on the other side. They consistently LOVE government when it funds and protects private business, but hate it when it asks for anything back--like, oh say, protection of its citizens.
At least government is accountable to the people in functioning democracies. Corporations are tyrannical in nature, owing no accountability to the public. We've seen what happens to unregulated industries. "Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to fulfill it."
I know just what you mean. I really do believe in minimal government. But I don't play childish games with the definition of "minimal". There are three basic things government does well: national defense, law enforcement, and public works (roads, bridges, infrastructure, regulation of utilities, etc). A government that is unable to do those three things is less than minimal. It is inadequate and insufficient.
I'll add that for law enforcement, the only proper role here is to prevent one person from using force or fraud to deprive another person of their life, liberty, or property. I'm tired of the lives we destory and the money and effort we keep wasting trying to regulate what consenting adults do in their own homes.
Regarding Internet providers, the only reason they even have a network to administer is because tax dollars built it for them. There's another thing that built it for them: eminent domain, in the form of legally-granted right-of-way allowing them to dig up land and lay down lines. If not for the government handling this, the top-level ISPs would have to separately negotiate a contract with each individual homeowner whose land they want to dig up. We're talking perhaps millions of people, some reasonable, some unreasonable, some of whom would uphold their end of a contract, some of whom would be dishonest. It'd be a frickin' nightmare.
It only makes sense to handle this the way it was actually done. Since their business wouldn't be possible without great taxpayer investment, it only makes sense that the public has an interest in regulating these monopolistic corporations like any other utility. We did the hardest part of their job for them. Now they owe us. The whole debate is ridiculous. If this were water or sewage or electricity we wouldn't even be having these arguments about it.
A desire for minimal government is not the same thing as a desire for anarcho-capitalism. I believe the distinction has been deliberately confused by cowardly individuals whose ideas would not withstand honest debate (and who don't have the guts to respond to that by changing their ideas). It's an age-old rhetorical (and PR) tactic. If you cannot win on merit, use underhanded tactics like associating your opponent with something truly undesirable, then speak about them as though they had always been the same thing. It tends to sway uneducated masses who don't understand reason and critical thinking but love to feel "right".
What scares me about net neutrality is that people actually believe a private company running a private network doesn't have the right to regulate its network traffic however they see fit.
You really don't know how the telecoms came to run that "private" network, do you?
Put it this way: if they built it with their own money, your argument would be on much firmer ground.
Well then, I feel dumb. FWIW everyone else missed the typo too... if you tag a story typo it makes a jabber bot yell at me so I look harder at the text to find things like that.
Well damn. I was so used to Rob Malda's thick skin:-). If he ever felt dumb, he never told anyone so far as I know. No offense was really intended, just that Slashdot could really use a good copy editor sometimes. It would add that professional touch. I could do this. Typos like that practically leap out at me. I think the brains of most people unconsciously auto-correct things like that "box of" error and they don't easily notice. Mine does that too and the intent of the sentence is quite clear, only I'm aware that such an "auto-correction" took place, if that makes sense.
As far as tags go, that feature is broken for me. When tags first came out, they seemed to work for me. Since then, I have never once applied a tag to a story, refreshed the main page, and then see my tag in place. It appears to add the tag but refreshing the page makes it go *poof*. After a while I gave up. I'm guessing this is something other than a technical problem. I must have pissed in someone's cornflakes at some point (that wouldn't surprise me). I'm not really complaining because this is a free account, though it would be nice to know why.
Slashdot Mirror
Seriously, this is what you answer with when I criticize product honestly and constructively? You honestly think that for example Microsoft would response to my suggestions with a "fuck you"? They would thank me for my input. It's no wonder open source isn't going anywhere if the answer to any criticism is "fuck you".
Sometimes, a decision must be made in terms of which side on which to err. The decision that is made says a lot about the character of the person.
I like the idea of "better for ten guilty men to go free, than for one innocent man to be punished." I really do think the latter is a much greater injustice, particularly since karma (or something like it) is very real. Others have a completely opposite viewpoint. Apparently you have encountered one of those. They would rather hassle you in case you might be an astroturfer/fanboy/etc. They haven't much concern for whether you are a real person expressing a genuine preference.
I'd rather treat you with more civility than that, knowing that you might possibly be dishonest, knowing that you might deserve to receive a hard time that I won't end up giving to you. In the absence of absolute evidence, that's how I like to do things. I'd rather you feel like you pulled one over on me. That doesn't matter to me. But it would bother me to realize that I might have been less-than-courteous to someone who really was honestly representing a real opinion.
When in doubt, I know where I stand. Apparently the other responder does as well.
Maybe someone with more real-world experience using Java can clarify this for me.
When I look into Java's performance, I see lots of cases where it's "nearly as fast as compiled C/C++ code" etc. The (narrowly-defined) numbers do look pretty good. Yet I have a similar experience: most applications I use which are partially or wholly written in Java feel slow, particularly in terms of UI responsiveness.
Is this actually a contradiction? Is there anyone who incorporates Java into a major desktop application and (in terms of performance) does it well?
So don't use it. It's not like you have to do this to get a program to run. For those of us who like to type it's much faster than it is for those douchebags who can't get their hand off the mouse.
I didn't phrase it that way, AC, but I admit I was thinking something like that myself. It just seems like such a trivial thing to complain about. But then, I feel that way about everything that one need not choose to use, read, watch, think, listen to, etc.
Who threw it to you?
If you tap the Windows key and start typing, like in previous versions it will start searching for what you typed. So that still works the same, at least.
Yeah, I use a GUI because I love typing commands so much.
I have no idea why this was modded up except that it suits someone's anti-CLI groupthink. Meta-commentary aside...
As others pointed out, the aforementioned steps involve using a search box. A search box is a component of a comprehensive GUI.
I'm typing this in Firefox on a full-blown KDE system myself. For Web browsing, a GUI is superior. However, I have a Konsole open with several tabs (i.e. instances of my shell) running as well. I use that for all the tasks I want to do for which a CLI is superior. That includes just about any time I want to perform an operation on multiple files with a single command. It also includes the most common system administration tasks, assuming of course you're equally comfortable doing it either way (CLI or GUI).
I also have Amarok running because a decent GUI tool is better for doing things like managing a playlist or skipping to a certain portion of an audio file, even though I could also do this with something like mplayer in a shell. I just don't share (what I perceive as) your aversion to typing. Once you can easily touch-type over 80 words per minute (i.e. your "control rate") you'll find that you choose a particular method because of how much you like it better for that class of task, not because of how much you dislike the alternative. Which you use becomes a matter of what you are trying to do.
Then you don't limit yourself or your thinking by getting stuck clinging to a particular way. I definitely prefer that over this "my camp vs. your camp" mentality that keeps coming up to some degree or another in every discussion.
It surprises me as one of the very few things I miss about Windows after moving to Linux was the Start menu. The Gnome main menu always seemed very sparse in comparison. What doesn't surprise me is that people used the XP menu more than on Vista or 7. Other than search and a few other minor things, the XP start menu is better. When I'm just sifting through it, I can find what I'm looking for much faster than the Vista click-a-thon.
It's possible I am misunderstanding you but ... It sounds like you are using one particular desktop available to Linux (out of dozens) and concluding that using Linux means you must give up ever having an equivalent to a start menu. Have you really looked into it?
For example, KDE has a "start menu". So do several different window managers.
I took the local brew.
Good fucking choice. Seriously.
You forgot "jury". It goes between "ballot" and "ammo". Although the same egomaniacs who must have control have largely ruined the jury box.
Jury nullification is mostly unknown these days. It's a final check against tyrannical laws. But in the USA it's not mentioned to those who serve on juries. That wasn't always the case at all.
Now it's more like a technical procedure where every step has nice, neat, clear instructions. The idea that the jury is a way to refuse enforcement of a law one feels is unjust or tyrannical is not officially allowed or endorsed anymore.
I'd argue that the ballot box is mostly irrelevant at the federal level, but can be truly important at the state and local levels. It's not a matter of the candidate for which one should vote. It's a matter of how an unknown person gets to become a famous political candidate, the financial and political support it takes for this to happen, the even larger levels of support it takes to win, and who gets to receive such support. That machine determines elections far more than ballots.
Voting doesn't mean very much when all available candidates are part of the same system. This is an inevitable outcome of a system where the "common person" would never achieve high office. It boils down to something other than merit and personal achievement. Those have been replaced with cronyism, corruption, and cynacism.
The most effective box these days is the soap box. The Internet is something different. Bullshit ideas actually have to defend their merits. It's not like TV with its unilateral, one-to-many nature. The soap box available to the average person has never been bigger or more powerful.
http://www.caps-clothings.com/
It's easier for me to believe that you are intending to defame this company. I find that more plausible than the idea you're going to successfully drum up sales by spamming an audience with a particularly advanced disdain for spam.
Not that it would surprise me. It's not like spammers would be the smartest or wisest sort of people who think things through and look at whether something is a good idea in the long term.
these "Movie Rights Group" parasites will get the rough treatment from the courts that they deserve.
Failing that, the Australian people can turn to a time-tested method of dealing with assholes: tar and feather them. Then post the videos all over the Internet. With a Creative Commons license.
To the people who make the decisions, that's the exact same thing as a shortage. They don't see a changing of hands as a viable option. They are not generally willing to consider it. If something is perceived as finite, limited, and scarce then you can continue to justify what you charge for it. The rest is a matter of regulatory capture by the proxy of campaign contributions.
Hmm, can you give a link to the source code? Afaik we don't have source code to the sun java plugin. Openjdk's java plugin is a completely different project and does not work on many sites that are only tested with sun java.
No, I am using Sun's Java. On Gentoo the package is called "sun-jdk" and it includes the runtimes (there is also "sun-jre-bin" for the runtimes only, but I occasionally need the jdk what with this being a source-based distro... point is both have this nsplugin flag). Perhaps I should have said the more generic "install from upstream" rather than "compile from source". I'd have caught that if the subject were say, software freedom or a desire to modify the runtimes. In the context the actual availability of source code seemed like a useless technicality to me, as it had nothing to do with trying to help you realize you do in fact have an option regarding the browser plugin, though you are in fact correct.
.rpm, whatever) as provided from your distribution apparently have to make an assumption, according to your first post. That kind of fine-grained customization is a major reason why one would run a source-based distro in the first place. The nature of a binary distro means fewer options like this because assumptions like that have to be made by whoever builds everything for you. Generally they assume you will always disable or just won't use whatever you don't like so they tend to include everything and the kitchen sink. That's much easier for them than maintaining multiple versions of the same package, each with different build-time options.
At any rate, installing from upstream allows for this flexibility whereas the packages (.deb,
Of course your disadvantage here is that you may have to install it outside of your package manager, which sucks.
I play too, but I disabled the browser plugin after installing Java. That's the thing - you can't JUST install the JRE, which would be a lot safer. You always get the browser plugin no matter what.
At least on Gentoo, the browser plugin is toggled by the "nsplugin" use flag. You can have a JRE or a JDK without a plugin.
That indicates you could have the same option on any other distro if you're willing to compile it from source. I'm not sure if that's true for Windows but there's no reason it couldn't be.
Bingo. Organized religion likes to pretend they are the font of moral wisdom, but history simply doesn't bear that truth out. That stance is merely a pretense to control their flock, to get them to do what they want them to do.
I think the key word there is "organized".
Hey, don't attack me, I'm just answering the question.
I happen to be in the "legalize but regulate and tax" camp, even for hard drugs.
It wasn't an attack. It was more like, yes that is the "standard answer" provided by the establishment. It just happens not to coincide with reality. I didn't see anyone else pointing that out. Meanwhile, there is a downside: people who really do need this medicine will now have a harder time getting it, all in an effort to stop people from abusing drugs they will have few or no problems obtaining anyway...
That can't be right. That would be what, about a third of a kilogram of lead in the average person's body?
The average adult has about 5 pints of blood in their body. A pint is a little more than half a liter. So that's approximately 2.5 liters * 10 * 15.5, which works out to about 387 grams of lead. I think that's enough to kill a blue whale.
From reading the Wikipedia article on lead poisoning, I assume you meant micrograms.
Abuse
Yes. We all know that requiring a prescription has prevented the abuse of other drugs such as oxycodone (Oxycontin). When that was made prescription-only, all the drug abusers and recreational users just gave up and admitted defeat.
It's okay. Babies don't have jobs and cars so they can't drive to drugstores to buy Ventolin. See, it's self-correcting!
Albuterol inhalers have been around for over twenty years. The patents are lapsed. Does anyone know why albuterol inhalers are prescription only?
Because in the "land of the free" we really hate the idea that adult people might decide for themselves what goes into their own bodies. That's what it boils down to.
If it were my decision to make, you could get just about anything over-the-counter that you like with no questions asked. The reason you'd still go to a doctor is because it's a really good idea and you'd be a fool not to seek good professional advice about important medical issues, not because someone threatens you with jail for circumventing a system.
The main role the FDA should have is to ensure honest labeling, i.e. that when you buy a drug, it is what it says it is and contains no harmful impurities. A secondary role would be continuing to require clinical trials before a company may make positive claims of efficacy for a given substance. But in the absence of such claims, there's no good non-nanny-state reason why an adult person should not be able to purchase and consume whatever he or she wants and then bear the consequences.
I saw a great shirt that said "The ATF should be a convenience store not a Gov Bureau."
In a free country, it would be.
The regulation of things like alcohol, tobacco and guns should have never involved the feds in the first place. The states are more than capable of handling it. The whole federalism thing works when it's tried.
That's usually what it takes to get bureaucrats to take notice. It doesn't matter how predictable the problems are. Once somebody dies, suddenly they see something as a problem.
I am ignorant about the inner workings of these inhalers. So I am curious, what's the reason they cannot simply use compressed air to provide the aerosol? Why must it be a CFC or albuterol?
He probably cares very little about the fact that the government created the infrastructure of the Internet. People like him don't really believe in minimal government (as they love to claim); they believe in a very strong, robust government--but one that works only in favor of private business. We of course see this in the financial industry, where at the top, losses are socialized and gains are privatized--with no real effort to end the "to big to fail" policy. These people are not capitalist, they are Marxists, but they're on the other side. They consistently LOVE government when it funds and protects private business, but hate it when it asks for anything back--like, oh say, protection of its citizens. At least government is accountable to the people in functioning democracies. Corporations are tyrannical in nature, owing no accountability to the public. We've seen what happens to unregulated industries. "Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to fulfill it."
I know just what you mean. I really do believe in minimal government. But I don't play childish games with the definition of "minimal". There are three basic things government does well: national defense, law enforcement, and public works (roads, bridges, infrastructure, regulation of utilities, etc). A government that is unable to do those three things is less than minimal. It is inadequate and insufficient.
I'll add that for law enforcement, the only proper role here is to prevent one person from using force or fraud to deprive another person of their life, liberty, or property. I'm tired of the lives we destory and the money and effort we keep wasting trying to regulate what consenting adults do in their own homes.
Regarding Internet providers, the only reason they even have a network to administer is because tax dollars built it for them. There's another thing that built it for them: eminent domain, in the form of legally-granted right-of-way allowing them to dig up land and lay down lines. If not for the government handling this, the top-level ISPs would have to separately negotiate a contract with each individual homeowner whose land they want to dig up. We're talking perhaps millions of people, some reasonable, some unreasonable, some of whom would uphold their end of a contract, some of whom would be dishonest. It'd be a frickin' nightmare.
It only makes sense to handle this the way it was actually done. Since their business wouldn't be possible without great taxpayer investment, it only makes sense that the public has an interest in regulating these monopolistic corporations like any other utility. We did the hardest part of their job for them. Now they owe us. The whole debate is ridiculous. If this were water or sewage or electricity we wouldn't even be having these arguments about it.
A desire for minimal government is not the same thing as a desire for anarcho-capitalism. I believe the distinction has been deliberately confused by cowardly individuals whose ideas would not withstand honest debate (and who don't have the guts to respond to that by changing their ideas). It's an age-old rhetorical (and PR) tactic. If you cannot win on merit, use underhanded tactics like associating your opponent with something truly undesirable, then speak about them as though they had always been the same thing. It tends to sway uneducated masses who don't understand reason and critical thinking but love to feel "right".
What scares me about net neutrality is that people actually believe a private company running a private network doesn't have the right to regulate its network traffic however they see fit.
You really don't know how the telecoms came to run that "private" network, do you?
Put it this way: if they built it with their own money, your argument would be on much firmer ground.
Well then, I feel dumb. FWIW everyone else missed the typo too... if you tag a story typo it makes a jabber bot yell at me so I look harder at the text to find things like that.
Well damn. I was so used to Rob Malda's thick skin :-). If he ever felt dumb, he never told anyone so far as I know. No offense was really intended, just that Slashdot could really use a good copy editor sometimes. It would add that professional touch. I could do this. Typos like that practically leap out at me. I think the brains of most people unconsciously auto-correct things like that "box of" error and they don't easily notice. Mine does that too and the intent of the sentence is quite clear, only I'm aware that such an "auto-correction" took place, if that makes sense.
As far as tags go, that feature is broken for me. When tags first came out, they seemed to work for me. Since then, I have never once applied a tag to a story, refreshed the main page, and then see my tag in place. It appears to add the tag but refreshing the page makes it go *poof*. After a while I gave up. I'm guessing this is something other than a technical problem. I must have pissed in someone's cornflakes at some point (that wouldn't surprise me). I'm not really complaining because this is a free account, though it would be nice to know why.
Thanks for catching the typo!
So that's twice now you missed the "a box of 24 color box of" error?
Well, you're definitely a Slashdot editor.