Yer SQL server crashin'? Lemme have a look at 'er...
Ah! Found it right here... possums! Ya gots possums livin' in yer SNA-box-thingie. Heh... SNA... that always did sound dirty. ANyways, lemme get my plinkin' rifle and my coon dog Skeeter, we'll git yer back up and runnin'!
Seein' as I'll be in there anyways, y'all want a RAM upgrade?
One of my interview-filters is to ask about favorite operating system, Linux distro, etc. If I find an Apple hater, or a Windows hater, or a Ubuntu-hater, or a RedHat-hater... they ain't gonna work in my company. Haters, in my experience, are universally team-breakers and disruptive, and nobody's so good that we need them that badly.
Ditto for software licensing models. I always ask about GPL awareness (if for no other reason than to ensure we get someone who understands why mixing GPL code copy-pasted from the Internet into a proprietary module is bad bad bad), and if I find someone to whom GPL is a "religion"... they don't work at my company either, for security reasons. I don't want someone whose philosophy tells them that intentionally disclosing protected proprietary source code is more moral than following the NDA you set your name to.
Ditto for attitudes about customers. If someone exhibits contempt for potential customers (including customers of the competition), they're out. Someone actually had the temerity to use the word "sheeple" in an interview once to describe how he viewed people who bought products made by the competition of a previous employer. Yeah. Gone.
Haters, purists, jackasses... they all have one thing in common. They're "right" because they're "smarter than everyone else, especially YOU", and that's the end of it. Experience, task-specific knowledge, position within the company, necessities of keeping cash-flow-positive, maintaining partnerships, generically being a decent human being... none of that matters to a hater or a purist. They know it all, and they'll do what they want regardless of instructions otherwise because they know better. By no means are all eccentric (meaning: Asperger's archetypes) IT folks haters or purists. I've worked with plenty who are productive, relatively easy to get along with, and valuable. Got a nice Aspi streak in my own personality. But since the topic at hand is "being THAT guy"... my policy is that if YOU'RE "that guy", you're out. Just not worth it.
(I got shitcanned for being The Heretic once, and I deserved it.)
Yup. With most browser default settings, if you have a Facebook account that you've logged into even once since you last completely cleared your cookies and cache, and you see a Facebook icon on any website you visit, Facebook records that you visited that website (regardless of whether you're currently logged into Facebook or not, it's going by cookie-tracking not login). If the website owner has a deal with Facebook to buy your profile info, your account information (name, location, friends list depending upon the most recent violation of Facebook's privacy policy or security stance, demographic information) are then sent to the website so they can greet you by name and present you with targeted ads.
And then that website visit, added to your history, helps to further refine Facebook's profile on you, and increases its cash value to advertisers. That's a lot of value, and is why Facebook is valued at 50 billion dollars. Each user is worth about 100 dollars to Facebook's valuation. Given the fractions-of-a-penny cost per exposure that bulk advertising costs, you can work out the math to figure out how many times they have to sell you to others to justify that price. You're getting sold more often than a Senator in an election year.
This would be a very bad thing, for so many reasons.
One-stop shopping for identity thieves
Ubiquitous Facebook tracking bugs associated with login objects which would more-or-less require that browsers accept third-party cookies. You thought Doubleclick was bad? Try putting them INSIDE your login sessions.
Zuckerberg holds privacy in contempt. He's said so, many times.
Facebook has repeated violated its own privacy policy, and will do so again. Your privacy is guaranteed to be broken with Facebook.
Facebook has a poor security record. See previous reference to identity theft.
Facebook has made it as difficult as possible to get out. Leaving Scientology is easier.
Facebook, as a for-profit company,is incentivized to pimp out your profile to anyone, for any reason, as long as there's a dollar to be made. If their balance sheet starts to look bad, all principles (such few as they already have) will go out the window.
I created a FaceBook account just to prevent others from doing so with my name, with no intention of using it. I never posted a thing, never "friended" anyone, never engaged in any activity whatsoever. Yet all of a sudden when I visit unrelated sites, I'm being greeted by the Facebook account name in various banners, etc. through Facebook's tracking. Deleting the account was a nightmare. I've had to use AdBlock and other anti-spyware software to block *.facebook.com, and I'm sure that even that is insufficient. Facebook has a profile on me, and you just and simply cannot opt out.
In absolute seriousness. I'd sooner trust Ballmer or Ellison than Zuckerberg, and I'd rather not have to trust any of them.
...or help build them, get paid for doing so, and not be impoverished any more.
Of course, if you're demonizing and punishing "the rich" for the high crime of having money, the solution will be that money will leave the country, so there will be greater "equality" by lowering the top. After all, better that everyone have one coconut than someone has ten while everyone else has five, right?
Contents of boxes: a petri dish, a few tiny organic granules packed in dry ice, a test tube full of goo, and some guy wearing a trenchcoat with a video camera.
In 1976, pilot Viktor Belenko defected from the USSR, and flew his MiG-25 to Japan. The US and its allies had never had a chance to examine the MiG-25, having only seen it from a distance at airshows and tracked it at insanely high speeds by radar, so this was a golden opportunity. Just how had the Soviets manage to build a Mach 3+ interceptor?
Not exotic materials. To our surprise, the airframe was made of nickel-alloy stainless steel. Its speed capability was simply because it had a freakin' huge pair of engines... and those engines would be damaged by a full-speed run. You could do Mach 3 ONCE... then you had to overhaul the engines. But as an interceptor designed not for dogfighting but for shooting down bombers bearing nuclear weapons, you don't care about repeat missions; its job was to get out there and dump a load of air-to-air missiles. *
The biggest surprise was the radar. 600 kilowatts. Yeah, sure, try to jam a 600Kw radar. Not gonna happen. (For comparison, the radar in an F15, which itself was a response to the MiG-25, is about 15Kw) And even more amazing... it was not solid state. It was a TUBE radar! Those stupid backwards Soviets with their stone knives and bearskins! But wait... tubes are not vulnerable to EMP. This taught us that a lynchpin of Soviet defense against incoming US bombers would be to pop nukes about 100km up along its borders when incoming bombers were detected... to fry the sophisticated American avionics the American bombers relied upon... then shoot down any now-crippled aircraft with Mach 3 missile-platforms.
Upon realizing this, a massive program of EMP-hardening of military avionics and other control systems was undertaken.
* (The USSR thought they needed an aircraft with this speed because of the XB-70, which was a US bomber capable of Mach 2+. We never put the XB-70 into regular production, but the USSR had to plan for "what if the US actually did make B-70's?", and the MiG-25 was a mighty expensive response. The USSR was matching US military spending pretty much on a dollar-for-dollar basis with a much smaller economy. Goading the enemy into economic ruin through unsustainable defense spending ultimately brought down the Berlin Wall, and as I understand it has modern applications too... amazing how huge an economic lever a shoe-bomb or exploding panties can be, yes?)
I would worry that the operation of a magnetic catapult (or, for that matter, railgun artillery) would send out a huge, unmaskable burst of radio noise that announces to the world "Here I am! Railgun here! Come and blow me up!". I'm quite sure that the designers have this in mind; I'm not so sure that something can be done about it. It may, of course, be a situation of "sure, you know where our carrier is, so just what do you think you're going to do about it?" Any enemy capable of harming an aircraft carrier is likely to have the capability to know just where they are anyway... it's not like you can hide a quarter-mile-long hunk of metal from a satellite with look-down radar or IR capability. The cat-and-mouse naval battles like Midway are a thing of the past. That being said, I'm sure there's a carrier captain or two out there that would really prefer these things be shieldable.
Field artillery pieces are another matter. Revealing their location is an invitation to disaster. I suspect that generating enough energy to rapidly, repeatedly fire a tank-mountable gun is going to take more of a power supply than can be carried on a tank chassis, so the point may be moot, and rail guns will be either "Big Berthas" or ship-mounted only.
Personally, I am going to look for an excuse to cite their paper.
Here's one for you (and for commercial greenhouse-based farmers with multiple crops per greenhouse). Can the effectiveness of bee-based pollination inside greenhouses be increased by using similarly-patterned layouts in each greenhouse, then transporting "trained" hives from greenhouse to greenhouse? Can pollination-runs be accomplished faster with pattern-trained bees, thus allowing one hive to effectively pollinate more greenhouses per week? If bees "trained" to specific locations in a pattern head to that pattern preferentially, specific crops can be targeted.
"Cycle the outer-circle bees through the greenhouses, the roma tomatoes are ready for pollination and we don't want the bees wasting time on the pepper plants in the inner zone."
Yes, the Doctrine was repealed in 1987. However, the FCC still enforces the same principle under the "Diversity" moniker, with the same methodology (programming must contain content X, Y and Z in the proportions the FCC requires or your broadcast license is revoked). The Fairness Doctrine is alive and well, under the auspices of their Chief Diversity Officer (yes, that's the title of the position and it has real authority), Mark Lloyd.
Crippling a company's ability to do business online is identical to welding their front door shut so nobody can get in. You can picket a company but you're not allowed to physically prevent people from getting in. It's the online equivalent of book-burning, except you're burning the books and the bookstore. There is no "right" to do that, online or otherwise.
It's not free speech. It's a crime. DDoS "hacktivists" are denying the rights of others to visit that website, and are no different at all from the thugs operating China's Great Firewall or the religious freakjobs dictating Australia's and Iran's Internet content. A zealot is a zealot, and they all need to be treated as the threat to freedom and human rights they are, regardless of their leanings. Their methods are the same: "I will decide for everybody else what they are forbidden to see, and use any means necessary to impose my will on others".
The FCC has been regulating the air waves for over 76 years! Never had a problem with that.
I have a lot of problems with how the FCC regulates the air waves.
The Fairness Doctrine is being leveraged to ensure that there are only two viable political parties. It ensconces in law that there are two, AND ONLY TWO, political viewpoints which are eligible for "fairness" enforcement. If there is an issue in which a particular viewpoint is expressed over broadcast media, the burden on the broadcaster is to provide equal time for "the opposing viewpoint"... as if there is just one. As far as the Fairness Doctrine is concerned, there are no Libertarians, no Greens, no Peace&Freedom, no John Birch, no Tea Party, no American Communists... only "conservatives" (Republicans) and "liberals" (Democrats). This is part of how the two main parties ensure that they're the only ones who get to play. And there has even been talk of using the law to shut down conservative talk radio altogether, to reduce the number of broadcast viewpoints to exactly one.
Ham radio operators are very familiar with the shortcomings of the FCC, and how the biggest political contributors get the frequency bands. The FCC is also deliberately ignoring the fact that one of its darlings, Bandwidth Over Power Lines, generates significant radio noise in amateur bands which would actually make the US non-compliant with treaties and international law concerning radio noise that interferes with the internationally agreed-upon ham bands.
The FCC also is empowered to enforce the ability of homeowners to deploy antennas, for reception and transmission. Court cases have held, time and time again, that homeowners' associations, municipalities and other mind-your-neighbors'-business groups cannot bar people from deploying antennas for legal use which meet building code and federal standards. However, the FCC has consistently shirked that duty for private users, concentrating entirely upon commercial operations.
The FCC, as it currently stands, is not someone you want to have any sort of power over your Internet connection, either directly or through your ISP. It is politicized, bought-and-paid-for by lobbyists, and is utterly unresponsive to public needs and concerns.
It's about big money and big government, nothing else.
Apple has a policy of not allowing apps in the app store to contain or distribute illegal content. Just because information is widely distributed that doesn't make it legal.
If you refuse to abide by the terms of a distributor or retailer, you don't get to sell through them.
My interests are not protected by "net neutrality". My interests are not protected by the government gaining legal power to dictate what traffic can and cannot flow. My interests are not protected by establishing a framework in which governmental authority over content classification is established. My interests are not served by the government being able to force one provider to subsidize others, as I know who ends up ultimately footing the bill. My interests are not protected by having spam, malware, media piracy, and DDoS traffic shielded, by law, from being removed from my ISP's network.
Establishing governmental power over communication doesn't increase freedom, folks. Who here thinks that "net neutrality compliance monitoring" frameworks won't be used for entirely legal (thanks to the law) warrantless searches, recording of individual usage patterns, and enforcement of least-common-denominator standards that forbid anyone from having more bandwidth and content than others? Who here thinks that this won't lead to nationalization of the infrastructure, thus giving the government the ability and power to ban content?
Net neutrality has been wrapped in a noble flag, but when you look at the consequences and what it enables, it's a very bad deal which ultimately only serves Big Brother and people who don't like to pay for media and software. I, for one, am quite happy that we dodged this particular bullet... this time, anyway.
When a government is given a power, or a new regulatory agency is created, it is usually with the best intentions. However, once the new power or new agency is in existence, it is a tool that comes readily to any willing hand. After the benevolent creators of the power/agency are gone, the not-so-benevolent people who always pollute government will use that tool for empire-building or to oppress. This happens every time, without fail. And unlike other tools which are easy to take away from someone who misuses them, regulation and governmental power once granted tend to require armed uprisings to get rid of.
Net neutrality and global laws covering things like "no child porn" are fine things on the surface, but once the apparatus is in place global suppression of political and personal speech WILL happen, and U.N. seizure of the communication backbone (de facto if not de jure) WILL happen. The tool is there, and it will attract generalisimos, zealots, beloved leaders and other maggots. They will seize those tools, and wield those tools.
I'd rather have to fight a corporation than a government. Corporations are softer targets in so many other ways, can be led around by the nose with an application of cash, and don't have police powers. When you fight governments you ultimately have to kill people. Between the two, I'd prefer to have to spend than shoot, though in extremis I'm willing to do either.
The only "freedom" a large portion of Slashdotters care about is the "freedom" to download music and movies they don't pay for, and easy access to anime tentacle goat porn. They hide it under "political freedom" rants, but look at the activity levels and trolling levels of threads that have to do with political censorship vs. threads that have to do with copyright enforcement. If you measure what's important to people based upon what they are sufficiently motivated to actually say or do something about, we have to conclude that Saudi women being stoned to death and Chinese bloggers being jailed and tortured is lower on the list than the ability to grab a torrent of Tron.
Slashthink is Slashgreed. I wish I were wrong about that, but I'm not.
Slashdot Mirror
...perhaps some storage in manure...
Yeah, I remember 7200.8 Seagate drives too...
Yer SQL server crashin'? Lemme have a look at 'er...
Ah! Found it right here... possums! Ya gots possums livin' in yer SNA-box-thingie. Heh... SNA... that always did sound dirty. ANyways, lemme get my plinkin' rifle and my coon dog Skeeter, we'll git yer back up and runnin'!
Seein' as I'll be in there anyways, y'all want a RAM upgrade?
Amen.
One of my interview-filters is to ask about favorite operating system, Linux distro, etc. If I find an Apple hater, or a Windows hater, or a Ubuntu-hater, or a RedHat-hater... they ain't gonna work in my company. Haters, in my experience, are universally team-breakers and disruptive, and nobody's so good that we need them that badly.
Ditto for software licensing models. I always ask about GPL awareness (if for no other reason than to ensure we get someone who understands why mixing GPL code copy-pasted from the Internet into a proprietary module is bad bad bad), and if I find someone to whom GPL is a "religion"... they don't work at my company either, for security reasons. I don't want someone whose philosophy tells them that intentionally disclosing protected proprietary source code is more moral than following the NDA you set your name to.
Ditto for attitudes about customers. If someone exhibits contempt for potential customers (including customers of the competition), they're out. Someone actually had the temerity to use the word "sheeple" in an interview once to describe how he viewed people who bought products made by the competition of a previous employer. Yeah. Gone.
Haters, purists, jackasses... they all have one thing in common. They're "right" because they're "smarter than everyone else, especially YOU", and that's the end of it. Experience, task-specific knowledge, position within the company, necessities of keeping cash-flow-positive, maintaining partnerships, generically being a decent human being... none of that matters to a hater or a purist. They know it all, and they'll do what they want regardless of instructions otherwise because they know better. By no means are all eccentric (meaning: Asperger's archetypes) IT folks haters or purists. I've worked with plenty who are productive, relatively easy to get along with, and valuable. Got a nice Aspi streak in my own personality. But since the topic at hand is "being THAT guy"... my policy is that if YOU'RE "that guy", you're out. Just not worth it.
(I got shitcanned for being The Heretic once, and I deserved it.)
Yup. With most browser default settings, if you have a Facebook account that you've logged into even once since you last completely cleared your cookies and cache, and you see a Facebook icon on any website you visit, Facebook records that you visited that website (regardless of whether you're currently logged into Facebook or not, it's going by cookie-tracking not login). If the website owner has a deal with Facebook to buy your profile info, your account information (name, location, friends list depending upon the most recent violation of Facebook's privacy policy or security stance, demographic information) are then sent to the website so they can greet you by name and present you with targeted ads.
And then that website visit, added to your history, helps to further refine Facebook's profile on you, and increases its cash value to advertisers. That's a lot of value, and is why Facebook is valued at 50 billion dollars. Each user is worth about 100 dollars to Facebook's valuation. Given the fractions-of-a-penny cost per exposure that bulk advertising costs, you can work out the math to figure out how many times they have to sell you to others to justify that price. You're getting sold more often than a Senator in an election year.
This would be a very bad thing, for so many reasons.
I created a FaceBook account just to prevent others from doing so with my name, with no intention of using it. I never posted a thing, never "friended" anyone, never engaged in any activity whatsoever. Yet all of a sudden when I visit unrelated sites, I'm being greeted by the Facebook account name in various banners, etc. through Facebook's tracking. Deleting the account was a nightmare. I've had to use AdBlock and other anti-spyware software to block *.facebook.com, and I'm sure that even that is insufficient. Facebook has a profile on me, and you just and simply cannot opt out.
In absolute seriousness. I'd sooner trust Ballmer or Ellison than Zuckerberg, and I'd rather not have to trust any of them.
So this is what drama looks like in the open source world?
One of several flavors. This is the "commercial company tries to elbow its way into a position of de facto control" flavor.
Others include:
Any others to add? Let's hear 'em!
[sarchasm]
I'll be the one to decide what's unethical around here, thank you very much.
[/sarchasm]
...or help build them, get paid for doing so, and not be impoverished any more.
Of course, if you're demonizing and punishing "the rich" for the high crime of having money, the solution will be that money will leave the country, so there will be greater "equality" by lowering the top. After all, better that everyone have one coconut than someone has ten while everyone else has five, right?
Contents of boxes: a petri dish, a few tiny organic granules packed in dry ice, a test tube full of goo, and some guy wearing a trenchcoat with a video camera.
CT: Warning, gizmag features really intrusive advertising) this year – the most outrageous examples of high-end overkill from 2010
No kidding. AdBlock identified and blocked 15 tracking items, and I'm sure it didn't get them all.
6) Flying car. With unicorn horn gearshift.
Oh, that's not so bad. You have the leftover narwahl horn from extracting its blubber for item 2, so there's your gearshift!
No wasted parts. You're green now!
In 1976, pilot Viktor Belenko defected from the USSR, and flew his MiG-25 to Japan. The US and its allies had never had a chance to examine the MiG-25, having only seen it from a distance at airshows and tracked it at insanely high speeds by radar, so this was a golden opportunity. Just how had the Soviets manage to build a Mach 3+ interceptor?
Not exotic materials. To our surprise, the airframe was made of nickel-alloy stainless steel. Its speed capability was simply because it had a freakin' huge pair of engines... and those engines would be damaged by a full-speed run. You could do Mach 3 ONCE... then you had to overhaul the engines. But as an interceptor designed not for dogfighting but for shooting down bombers bearing nuclear weapons, you don't care about repeat missions; its job was to get out there and dump a load of air-to-air missiles. *
The biggest surprise was the radar. 600 kilowatts. Yeah, sure, try to jam a 600Kw radar. Not gonna happen. (For comparison, the radar in an F15, which itself was a response to the MiG-25, is about 15Kw) And even more amazing... it was not solid state. It was a TUBE radar! Those stupid backwards Soviets with their stone knives and bearskins! But wait... tubes are not vulnerable to EMP. This taught us that a lynchpin of Soviet defense against incoming US bombers would be to pop nukes about 100km up along its borders when incoming bombers were detected... to fry the sophisticated American avionics the American bombers relied upon... then shoot down any now-crippled aircraft with Mach 3 missile-platforms.
Upon realizing this, a massive program of EMP-hardening of military avionics and other control systems was undertaken.
A fascinating story, the moreso because it's true.
* (The USSR thought they needed an aircraft with this speed because of the XB-70, which was a US bomber capable of Mach 2+. We never put the XB-70 into regular production, but the USSR had to plan for "what if the US actually did make B-70's?", and the MiG-25 was a mighty expensive response. The USSR was matching US military spending pretty much on a dollar-for-dollar basis with a much smaller economy. Goading the enemy into economic ruin through unsustainable defense spending ultimately brought down the Berlin Wall, and as I understand it has modern applications too... amazing how huge an economic lever a shoe-bomb or exploding panties can be, yes?)
I would worry that the operation of a magnetic catapult (or, for that matter, railgun artillery) would send out a huge, unmaskable burst of radio noise that announces to the world "Here I am! Railgun here! Come and blow me up!". I'm quite sure that the designers have this in mind; I'm not so sure that something can be done about it. It may, of course, be a situation of "sure, you know where our carrier is, so just what do you think you're going to do about it?" Any enemy capable of harming an aircraft carrier is likely to have the capability to know just where they are anyway... it's not like you can hide a quarter-mile-long hunk of metal from a satellite with look-down radar or IR capability. The cat-and-mouse naval battles like Midway are a thing of the past. That being said, I'm sure there's a carrier captain or two out there that would really prefer these things be shieldable.
Field artillery pieces are another matter. Revealing their location is an invitation to disaster. I suspect that generating enough energy to rapidly, repeatedly fire a tank-mountable gun is going to take more of a power supply than can be carried on a tank chassis, so the point may be moot, and rail guns will be either "Big Berthas" or ship-mounted only.
Personally, I am going to look for an excuse to cite their paper.
Here's one for you (and for commercial greenhouse-based farmers with multiple crops per greenhouse). Can the effectiveness of bee-based pollination inside greenhouses be increased by using similarly-patterned layouts in each greenhouse, then transporting "trained" hives from greenhouse to greenhouse? Can pollination-runs be accomplished faster with pattern-trained bees, thus allowing one hive to effectively pollinate more greenhouses per week? If bees "trained" to specific locations in a pattern head to that pattern preferentially, specific crops can be targeted.
"Cycle the outer-circle bees through the greenhouses, the roma tomatoes are ready for pollination and we don't want the bees wasting time on the pepper plants in the inner zone."
Research into application into cost savings.
Next experiment:
Investigations into the Correlation Between Cynicism and Technically-Oriented Social Network Participation
Yes, the Doctrine was repealed in 1987. However, the FCC still enforces the same principle under the "Diversity" moniker, with the same methodology (programming must contain content X, Y and Z in the proportions the FCC requires or your broadcast license is revoked). The Fairness Doctrine is alive and well, under the auspices of their Chief Diversity Officer (yes, that's the title of the position and it has real authority), Mark Lloyd.
Crippling a company's ability to do business online is identical to welding their front door shut so nobody can get in. You can picket a company but you're not allowed to physically prevent people from getting in. It's the online equivalent of book-burning, except you're burning the books and the bookstore. There is no "right" to do that, online or otherwise.
It's not free speech. It's a crime. DDoS "hacktivists" are denying the rights of others to visit that website, and are no different at all from the thugs operating China's Great Firewall or the religious freakjobs dictating Australia's and Iran's Internet content. A zealot is a zealot, and they all need to be treated as the threat to freedom and human rights they are, regardless of their leanings. Their methods are the same: "I will decide for everybody else what they are forbidden to see, and use any means necessary to impose my will on others".
The FCC has been regulating the air waves for over 76 years! Never had a problem with that.
I have a lot of problems with how the FCC regulates the air waves.
The Fairness Doctrine is being leveraged to ensure that there are only two viable political parties. It ensconces in law that there are two, AND ONLY TWO, political viewpoints which are eligible for "fairness" enforcement. If there is an issue in which a particular viewpoint is expressed over broadcast media, the burden on the broadcaster is to provide equal time for "the opposing viewpoint"... as if there is just one. As far as the Fairness Doctrine is concerned, there are no Libertarians, no Greens, no Peace&Freedom, no John Birch, no Tea Party, no American Communists... only "conservatives" (Republicans) and "liberals" (Democrats). This is part of how the two main parties ensure that they're the only ones who get to play. And there has even been talk of using the law to shut down conservative talk radio altogether, to reduce the number of broadcast viewpoints to exactly one.
Ham radio operators are very familiar with the shortcomings of the FCC, and how the biggest political contributors get the frequency bands. The FCC is also deliberately ignoring the fact that one of its darlings, Bandwidth Over Power Lines, generates significant radio noise in amateur bands which would actually make the US non-compliant with treaties and international law concerning radio noise that interferes with the internationally agreed-upon ham bands.
The FCC also is empowered to enforce the ability of homeowners to deploy antennas, for reception and transmission. Court cases have held, time and time again, that homeowners' associations, municipalities and other mind-your-neighbors'-business groups cannot bar people from deploying antennas for legal use which meet building code and federal standards. However, the FCC has consistently shirked that duty for private users, concentrating entirely upon commercial operations.
The FCC, as it currently stands, is not someone you want to have any sort of power over your Internet connection, either directly or through your ISP. It is politicized, bought-and-paid-for by lobbyists, and is utterly unresponsive to public needs and concerns.
It's about big money and big government, nothing else.
Because it's... fun?
Jeff Bezos: "You're reading it wrong."
:)
Apple has a policy of not allowing apps in the app store to contain or distribute illegal content. Just because information is widely distributed that doesn't make it legal.
If you refuse to abide by the terms of a distributor or retailer, you don't get to sell through them.
My interests are not protected by "net neutrality". My interests are not protected by the government gaining legal power to dictate what traffic can and cannot flow. My interests are not protected by establishing a framework in which governmental authority over content classification is established. My interests are not served by the government being able to force one provider to subsidize others, as I know who ends up ultimately footing the bill. My interests are not protected by having spam, malware, media piracy, and DDoS traffic shielded, by law, from being removed from my ISP's network.
Establishing governmental power over communication doesn't increase freedom, folks. Who here thinks that "net neutrality compliance monitoring" frameworks won't be used for entirely legal (thanks to the law) warrantless searches, recording of individual usage patterns, and enforcement of least-common-denominator standards that forbid anyone from having more bandwidth and content than others? Who here thinks that this won't lead to nationalization of the infrastructure, thus giving the government the ability and power to ban content?
Net neutrality has been wrapped in a noble flag, but when you look at the consequences and what it enables, it's a very bad deal which ultimately only serves Big Brother and people who don't like to pay for media and software. I, for one, am quite happy that we dodged this particular bullet... this time, anyway.
That's precisely the issue.
When a government is given a power, or a new regulatory agency is created, it is usually with the best intentions. However, once the new power or new agency is in existence, it is a tool that comes readily to any willing hand. After the benevolent creators of the power/agency are gone, the not-so-benevolent people who always pollute government will use that tool for empire-building or to oppress. This happens every time, without fail. And unlike other tools which are easy to take away from someone who misuses them, regulation and governmental power once granted tend to require armed uprisings to get rid of.
Net neutrality and global laws covering things like "no child porn" are fine things on the surface, but once the apparatus is in place global suppression of political and personal speech WILL happen, and U.N. seizure of the communication backbone (de facto if not de jure) WILL happen. The tool is there, and it will attract generalisimos, zealots, beloved leaders and other maggots. They will seize those tools, and wield those tools.
I'd rather have to fight a corporation than a government. Corporations are softer targets in so many other ways, can be led around by the nose with an application of cash, and don't have police powers. When you fight governments you ultimately have to kill people. Between the two, I'd prefer to have to spend than shoot, though in extremis I'm willing to do either.
The only "freedom" a large portion of Slashdotters care about is the "freedom" to download music and movies they don't pay for, and easy access to anime tentacle goat porn. They hide it under "political freedom" rants, but look at the activity levels and trolling levels of threads that have to do with political censorship vs. threads that have to do with copyright enforcement. If you measure what's important to people based upon what they are sufficiently motivated to actually say or do something about, we have to conclude that Saudi women being stoned to death and Chinese bloggers being jailed and tortured is lower on the list than the ability to grab a torrent of Tron.
Slashthink is Slashgreed. I wish I were wrong about that, but I'm not.
Compared to Mao, Hitler and Stalin and Caesar and Po Pot were rank amateurs.