1. Look at the reasons why wind and solar have seen increased adoption in recent years. I think you'll see two key factors. First we see increasing tax benefits and subsidies for clean energy. Second, you'll see a lot of this activity kicked off around '06 or '07, when natural gas and oil prices were soaring to record highs. Both of these are clear indications that wind and solar still struggle to be economic, even at the margins.
2. Keep in mind TFA is not talking about on a US only scale, but a global one. Increases in wind capacity in the US are completely dwarfed by the number or coal plants being brought online in China on a nearly weekly basis. In terms of green / fossil fuel ratio, I think we're more likely to be actually moving backwards on a global scale.
I'm not opposed to clean energy. But the authors of TFA article have their head in the clouds.
There are no technological or economic barriers to converting the entire world to clean, renewable energy sources
I didn't read any further than this. If there aren't any economic barriers, then why does it need any sort of public backing or support. If wind and solar actually were an economic alternative to things like coal, then power companies would be switching without any other sort of incentive, simply to save money.
Now, one could certainly make the argument (though he doesn't) that fossil fuels produce negative externalities to society, and correcting for that clean energy is actually more economic in the long run for us all. However, correcting for market failures at a national political level is definitely a "barrier" in my mind, and even more so if he thinks we can expand this to a global scale.
The Android lead might be on a foundation of sand, however. Nearly every Android user I meet likes their 'droid, a few dislike it, and none love it. This is a distinct contrast with Blackberry and Apple, most of whose customers profess to love their phone (with the notable exception of folks using Blackberry touch screen devices).
^This
2 years ago my wife and I both had iPhone 3Gs, but couldn't stand using AT&T. We switched to Verizon when Motorola launched the Droid. For over a year I was content with mine, but she hated hers with a passion. We ordered her an iPhone 4 the day the pre-orders went up. After two days of playing around with it myself and remembering just how much more polished of an experience iOS is, I ordered one for myself too. It's unlikely either of us will try something else within the next two years or so.
I think that there's still a niche in in this market for something that's more polished than Android, but more open than iOS. None of these devices are going to be barn burners out of the gate, but if HP can establish itself there first, with time and patience I think they could grow to a genuine contender in this market space
The list of market manipulations of the market is endless.
Most of them, at least most of the effective ones, are also illegal, as they should be.
If that was supposed to be an argument for why we shouldn't oppose entrenched interests manipulating markets through government regulation, I find it unconvincing.
If anything I think it backs up my original point, market failures necessitate corrective action by the government in order to foster efficient competitive markets.
Now, that corrective action could as often be removing existing regulation (eg: allowing open access to larger portions of the wireless spectrum) as it is adding new regulation. But I find the premise that today's telcom environment should essentially remain the satus quo pretty shaky, to say the least.
Ok, I see what you're saying there. In principle, I agree with you here. Like I said before, I'm not opposed to large corporations simply because they are large corporations, nor because they are profitable.
What I oppose is when these companies use their size and resources to distort, what would otherwise be, efficient market outcomes through our legal and political process. In the case of net neutrality, it's companies manipulating regulators so that they benefit from government mandated limitations on competition, like a utility would, but without any of the restrictions on growth or anti-competitive behavior that utilities are usually subject to.
What do you mean "giant corporation thing"? Can you expand on that? I don't oppose all large corporations. I would argue that much of the anger against companies like Walmart and Enron is very misplaced.
What I do oppose is corporations that exert an influence on our political and legal process that is disproportionate to their role in our society and economy (eg: Tyson foods, Comcast, and various members of the RIAA/MPAA). They use our legal process to distort their respective portions of our economy away from the competitive, positive-sum, mutually beneficial markets they should be, and towards entrenched, zero-sum games that disproportionately benefit themselves.
I think we'll have to agree to disagree. I'd say in today's society, corporations might as well be superhuman. The laws are stacked in their favor. And the longer they remain that way, the more influence these companies have over stacking them even more in their favor.
It's one of the classic failings of free market economics, recognized as far back as Adam Smith. Once it becomes more profitable for companies to influence laws in their favor than it is for them to invest in their product, every assumption we have about market economics goes out the door.
Net neutrality was supposed to be a step to balancing a system that was already stacked in favor of entrenched companies, and they've managed to turn into essentially the exact opposite of that.
Bravery has nothing to do with it. The telcom and cable inustries are incredibly insular markets with massive barriers to entry. In the case of ground lines, most municipalities only grant rights of way to the local telco and cable co. It's actually illegal in most major population centers for the "little guy" to lay a network. In the case of wireless spectrum, the government only distributes spectrum at public auctions. In the most recent auction (for the 700mhz band), Verizon won most of the spectrum by spending nearly $10 billion. Not much room for the little guy there either. Make no mistake, these are not competitive markets. And the entrenched companies that operate in these markets will spend ungodly amounts of money influencing our political process to make sure that they stay that way.
It took me a minute to find the whole in your argument, as your reasoning seems solid on the surface. But there is a hole there. You say
Government doesn't exist to protect the rights of the citizens who are consuming over those who are producing.
Which is mostly true. But neither does government exist to protect rights of producers over consumers, or over other producers for that matter, which is what's happening here. You see the telcos and cable cos have been awarded exclusive rights to wireless spectrum and rights of ways for ground infrastructure by the US government. These are not open and free markets that they deal in. Even if you had the capital to start a telco, you can't simply start broadcasting on the 700mhz spectrum, that belongs to Verizon. Nor can you simply lay fiber optic cable throughout a city, even if you offer to compensate that landowners.
These rights are awarded to the telcos at the exclusion of all other citizens. They are given preference by the law to operate their business with minimal competition from outsiders. What most here argue is that there must be some regulation to balance this. Otherwise you get an inneficient, uncompetitive market that only benefits the providers and not the rest of the citizenship. And the regulation that most propose is that telcos, while they remain free to structure their pricing for networks however they wish, should be required to treat all data passing over that network the same.
That is the very crux of net neutrality. And it's what millions have been pushing for for years. The supposed "net neutrality" bill here essentially lacks that central requirement. That's what everyone is upset about.
While TFA does a lot of ranting and raving about the upcoming regulation, it doesn't actually give any details about what's in the regulation. One of the linked articles does a bit better, telling you what the bill lacks (seemingly any restrictions on paid prioritization, which makes me wonder how you can actually call it a "net neutrality" bill at all), but doesn't say anything about what the bill does include.
Can someone please tell me what's actually in this bill?
As disconcerting as the story is, I don't think it's all that much of a concern that this will become the norm across the US. It's just simply unsustainable. Going to a theater is a leisure activity, and it's subject to strict competition. Not just from other leisure activities that audiences can opt for, but also from option of watching the very same movies at home. Theaters owners, of all people, should be well aware of this, as they've seen their audiences decline significantly as home theater systems have improved and grown cheaper over the past decade or so.
Even now, I regularly opt to wait for a film to be released on DVD rather than take the chance of having to deal with a bad audience in a theater. While strict security measures may stave off lawsuits from the MPAA, it's only going to push audiences away from the theaters that choose to implement such policies in the long run.
So it's $80 billion? Did everyone else fail to notice the other number in TFS? Total defense spending is $664 billion, which leaves $584 billion on non intelligence related defense spending. How much of that $584 billion is spent on military forces meant to defend against a cold war style enemy vs the kind of threats the US faces today? My guess would be a large portion of it. Of the $80 billion on intelligence, how much is appropriate for the kinds of threats the US faces today? My guess would be a significantly larger portion than the rest of the defense budget.
Would I like to see a significantly lower defense budget for the US? Absolutely. But intelligence seems like entirely the wrong portion of our national defense to cut it from, given current conditions.
Podcasts have already replaced my drive time radio. I would probably watch them on my TV if there was an easy way to get them on my XBox.
I would suggest getting a Roku. You can pick one up for as cheap as $60. It will stream Netflix, Amazon VoD, and (soon) Hulu+. Not only that, but their channel store has content from most of the major video podcast producers, including Revision3, TWiT, and Whiskey Media.
This was my experience as well. My wife and I both watched BSG religiously through the entire series. When they announced Caprica, it didn't really sound like what I was looking for after BSG ended, but since I liked BSG so much I decided to give it a shot. My wife made it about halfway through the first season before giving up on it. I stuck it out to the end, hoping that it would eventually pick up. It never did, and I didn't come back for the second season.
Caprica failed because it was a bad spin-off that had almost nothing to do with the original show that it was supposed to be based on, not because of anything to do with cable TV as a business model.
There is no reason to believe they won't try and push that up the stack if they feel users will accept it.
I can think of two reasons right off the top of my head.
1. There's a big difference between moving from a completely locked down system (nearly all cell phone development prior to the app store) to a slightly less locked down system and moving from a completely open development environment to a more locked down one.
2. Apple does not command the mind and market share in the desktop sphere that it does in the mobile sphere, and thus cannot dictate the direction of the entire market the way they do in mobile.
ooh just thought of a third one..
3. Lower barriers to exit in the desktop space. No ETFs and no cost at all to switch to Linux. Even an OEM copy of Windows is only half as much as even a subsidized smart phone. Also, no need to switch hardware as both Windows and Linux will run on what you have if you're switching from a Mac.
I see this argument a lot, and while it makes sense on the surface, if you actually sit down and do the math it seems pretty empty to me. Take a top game from ten years ago, I'll go with Deus Ex for an example. Looking at Amazon I see I can buy a new copy of Deus Ex for a low as $17. I think it's safe to assume that this is a fairly typical price drop for a game over the course of 10 years. Now $17, while cheap, is still a bit too much money for us to simply write off completely. However, we're not spending this $17 today, we're spending it 10 years from now, which means we have to discount it. Inflation typically hovers around 3-4% and the rate on a relatively risk free investment (your opportunity cost for that $17) is historically around 5-6%. So for the sake of simplicity, let's just assume a discount rate of 10%.
If you do the math, that puts the present value of having to repurchase that game you're so afraid of losing at about $6.50. But wait, we're not done yet. That's the value if you're absolutely 100% certain that you're going to have to repurchase that game, which we're not. To figure out that real cost of "renting" that game, you'll need to multiply your present worth by your expected probability that Valve will actually go out of business, and not unlock your games before doing so. So if we think Valve has a 50% chance (a fairly high number IMO) of going out of business, then the present value of the expected cost of re-purchasing that game is only about $3.25. If you think Valve has a 20% chance of going out of business (probably a more realistic number), then the value drops to $1.30.
Call me unconvinced that an expected $1.30 is something to get all up in arms about, especially when it's probably less than the tax I pay if for some reason I decide not to buy on STEAM.
I see a lot of hate for STEAM in game reviews on sites like Amazon, but step into any PC gaming forum and almost everyone there practically refuses to use anything but STEAM. I have to admit I'm in the latter category, but I find the polarizing nature of STEAM to be rather fascinating.
I can somewhat understand the haters' point of view. If all you want to do is simply play the game you bought, then having to install and run 3rd party software might seem a bit frustrating to me. However, I've always found the benefits of STEAM vastly outweigh the potential drawbacks. For starters, let me just say that if you're purchasing boxed copies of games that require STEAM to play, you're doing it wrong. Not only you missing out on one of the biggest things that makes STEAM so great, bypassing the retailer and downloading straight to your hard drive, but games are generally cheaper on STEAM as well, sometimes even shockingly so.
Throw in a built in community, no need to keep track of CD keys, automatic patching (and now driver updates if you have an AMD/ATI video card), cloud support for game saves, and pre-loading for day one purchases, and the benefits start outweighing the costs pretty quick.
And of course the biggest argument in STEAM's favor actually has little to do with STEAM at all. Simply put, in a day and age when it's rarely ever a question of if a publisher will require some sort of online authentication for their game, but more a question of what form that authentication will take, STEAM is far and away the least of all evils.
Have you used it? Because I have and after doing so I prefer the second of those two options. The problem is that many sites that support HTML5 (which works find on my Droid) default to Flash (which in my experience is every bit as bad as TFA makes it out to be) if they detect it to be installed. I'll take halfway decent HTML5 on a fraction of the sites I visit over what I've experienced with Flash any day.
This has been my experience as well with my Droid. I realize that the droid is a bit slower than other Android phones, but I hadn't had any trouble with watching HTML5 video on it, so I expected similar results with Flash. I was wrong. The few times I did get it to play, after let the player buffer for several minutes (on WiFi) it played in the single digit frame rates. I uninstalled it after a few days, as sites that had HTML5 video available still defaulted to Flash if they detected it. Having access to HTML5 video on only a portion of sites is preferable to me to having Flash for Android available on all sites. That should say something about just how bad it is.
I didn't say this was a good thing. In fact in my OP I specifically say that it is a problem. But it's not a problem that falls within the domain of net neutrality. Once again, net neutrality is not a catch all for all ISP regulation. Its purpose is to correct a specific market failure. That doesn't mean that there aren't other problems, but trying to lump them in with net neutrality doesn't help the discussion, and only gives opponents more targets.
But, in regards to net neutrality, the question is whether or not AT&T objects to the FCC requiring them to be neutral in the way they implement "paid prioritization". As long as all other streaming video services on their network are subject to the same fees, then it's still neutral. The purpose of net neutrality is to address specific conflicts of interest that ISPs, especially the cable cos, face between providing Internet service to their customers and selling their own services on their networks. It's not a catch-all for network regulation that so many people seem to interpret it as.
Slashdot Mirror
I have several thoughts in response here.
1. Look at the reasons why wind and solar have seen increased adoption in recent years. I think you'll see two key factors. First we see increasing tax benefits and subsidies for clean energy. Second, you'll see a lot of this activity kicked off around '06 or '07, when natural gas and oil prices were soaring to record highs. Both of these are clear indications that wind and solar still struggle to be economic, even at the margins.
2. Keep in mind TFA is not talking about on a US only scale, but a global one. Increases in wind capacity in the US are completely dwarfed by the number or coal plants being brought online in China on a nearly weekly basis. In terms of green / fossil fuel ratio, I think we're more likely to be actually moving backwards on a global scale.
I'm not opposed to clean energy. But the authors of TFA article have their head in the clouds.
Um... no
Roughly 70% of the cost of just about anything you buy is labor.
There are no technological or economic barriers to converting the entire world to clean, renewable energy sources
I didn't read any further than this. If there aren't any economic barriers, then why does it need any sort of public backing or support. If wind and solar actually were an economic alternative to things like coal, then power companies would be switching without any other sort of incentive, simply to save money.
Now, one could certainly make the argument (though he doesn't) that fossil fuels produce negative externalities to society, and correcting for that clean energy is actually more economic in the long run for us all. However, correcting for market failures at a national political level is definitely a "barrier" in my mind, and even more so if he thinks we can expand this to a global scale.
The Android lead might be on a foundation of sand, however. Nearly every Android user I meet likes their 'droid, a few dislike it, and none love it. This is a distinct contrast with Blackberry and Apple, most of whose customers profess to love their phone (with the notable exception of folks using Blackberry touch screen devices).
^This
2 years ago my wife and I both had iPhone 3Gs, but couldn't stand using AT&T. We switched to Verizon when Motorola launched the Droid. For over a year I was content with mine, but she hated hers with a passion. We ordered her an iPhone 4 the day the pre-orders went up. After two days of playing around with it myself and remembering just how much more polished of an experience iOS is, I ordered one for myself too. It's unlikely either of us will try something else within the next two years or so.
I think that there's still a niche in in this market for something that's more polished than Android, but more open than iOS. None of these devices are going to be barn burners out of the gate, but if HP can establish itself there first, with time and patience I think they could grow to a genuine contender in this market space
Ah, sorry. Didn't look at the poster and thought I was replying to BobMcD.
The list of market manipulations of the market is endless.
Most of them, at least most of the effective ones, are also illegal, as they should be.
If that was supposed to be an argument for why we shouldn't oppose entrenched interests manipulating markets through government regulation, I find it unconvincing.
If anything I think it backs up my original point, market failures necessitate corrective action by the government in order to foster efficient competitive markets.
Now, that corrective action could as often be removing existing regulation (eg: allowing open access to larger portions of the wireless spectrum) as it is adding new regulation. But I find the premise that today's telcom environment should essentially remain the satus quo pretty shaky, to say the least.
Ok, I see what you're saying there. In principle, I agree with you here. Like I said before, I'm not opposed to large corporations simply because they are large corporations, nor because they are profitable.
What I oppose is when these companies use their size and resources to distort, what would otherwise be, efficient market outcomes through our legal and political process. In the case of net neutrality, it's companies manipulating regulators so that they benefit from government mandated limitations on competition, like a utility would, but without any of the restrictions on growth or anti-competitive behavior that utilities are usually subject to.
Thanks for the clarifications. TFA had me very confused.
What do you mean "giant corporation thing"? Can you expand on that? I don't oppose all large corporations. I would argue that much of the anger against companies like Walmart and Enron is very misplaced.
What I do oppose is corporations that exert an influence on our political and legal process that is disproportionate to their role in our society and economy (eg: Tyson foods, Comcast, and various members of the RIAA/MPAA). They use our legal process to distort their respective portions of our economy away from the competitive, positive-sum, mutually beneficial markets they should be, and towards entrenched, zero-sum games that disproportionately benefit themselves.
I think we'll have to agree to disagree. I'd say in today's society, corporations might as well be superhuman. The laws are stacked in their favor. And the longer they remain that way, the more influence these companies have over stacking them even more in their favor.
It's one of the classic failings of free market economics, recognized as far back as Adam Smith. Once it becomes more profitable for companies to influence laws in their favor than it is for them to invest in their product, every assumption we have about market economics goes out the door.
Net neutrality was supposed to be a step to balancing a system that was already stacked in favor of entrenched companies, and they've managed to turn into essentially the exact opposite of that.
Bravery has nothing to do with it. The telcom and cable inustries are incredibly insular markets with massive barriers to entry. In the case of ground lines, most municipalities only grant rights of way to the local telco and cable co. It's actually illegal in most major population centers for the "little guy" to lay a network. In the case of wireless spectrum, the government only distributes spectrum at public auctions. In the most recent auction (for the 700mhz band), Verizon won most of the spectrum by spending nearly $10 billion. Not much room for the little guy there either. Make no mistake, these are not competitive markets. And the entrenched companies that operate in these markets will spend ungodly amounts of money influencing our political process to make sure that they stay that way.
It took me a minute to find the whole in your argument, as your reasoning seems solid on the surface. But there is a hole there. You say
Which is mostly true. But neither does government exist to protect rights of producers over consumers, or over other producers for that matter, which is what's happening here. You see the telcos and cable cos have been awarded exclusive rights to wireless spectrum and rights of ways for ground infrastructure by the US government. These are not open and free markets that they deal in. Even if you had the capital to start a telco, you can't simply start broadcasting on the 700mhz spectrum, that belongs to Verizon. Nor can you simply lay fiber optic cable throughout a city, even if you offer to compensate that landowners.
These rights are awarded to the telcos at the exclusion of all other citizens. They are given preference by the law to operate their business with minimal competition from outsiders. What most here argue is that there must be some regulation to balance this. Otherwise you get an inneficient, uncompetitive market that only benefits the providers and not the rest of the citizenship. And the regulation that most propose is that telcos, while they remain free to structure their pricing for networks however they wish, should be required to treat all data passing over that network the same.
That is the very crux of net neutrality. And it's what millions have been pushing for for years. The supposed "net neutrality" bill here essentially lacks that central requirement. That's what everyone is upset about.
While TFA does a lot of ranting and raving about the upcoming regulation, it doesn't actually give any details about what's in the regulation. One of the linked articles does a bit better, telling you what the bill lacks (seemingly any restrictions on paid prioritization, which makes me wonder how you can actually call it a "net neutrality" bill at all), but doesn't say anything about what the bill does include.
Can someone please tell me what's actually in this bill?
As disconcerting as the story is, I don't think it's all that much of a concern that this will become the norm across the US. It's just simply unsustainable. Going to a theater is a leisure activity, and it's subject to strict competition. Not just from other leisure activities that audiences can opt for, but also from option of watching the very same movies at home. Theaters owners, of all people, should be well aware of this, as they've seen their audiences decline significantly as home theater systems have improved and grown cheaper over the past decade or so.
Even now, I regularly opt to wait for a film to be released on DVD rather than take the chance of having to deal with a bad audience in a theater. While strict security measures may stave off lawsuits from the MPAA, it's only going to push audiences away from the theaters that choose to implement such policies in the long run.
So it's $80 billion? Did everyone else fail to notice the other number in TFS? Total defense spending is $664 billion, which leaves $584 billion on non intelligence related defense spending. How much of that $584 billion is spent on military forces meant to defend against a cold war style enemy vs the kind of threats the US faces today? My guess would be a large portion of it. Of the $80 billion on intelligence, how much is appropriate for the kinds of threats the US faces today? My guess would be a significantly larger portion than the rest of the defense budget.
Would I like to see a significantly lower defense budget for the US? Absolutely. But intelligence seems like entirely the wrong portion of our national defense to cut it from, given current conditions.
Podcasts have already replaced my drive time radio. I would probably watch them on my TV if there was an easy way to get them on my XBox.
I would suggest getting a Roku. You can pick one up for as cheap as $60. It will stream Netflix, Amazon VoD, and (soon) Hulu+. Not only that, but their channel store has content from most of the major video podcast producers, including Revision3, TWiT, and Whiskey Media.
This was my experience as well. My wife and I both watched BSG religiously through the entire series. When they announced Caprica, it didn't really sound like what I was looking for after BSG ended, but since I liked BSG so much I decided to give it a shot. My wife made it about halfway through the first season before giving up on it. I stuck it out to the end, hoping that it would eventually pick up. It never did, and I didn't come back for the second season.
Caprica failed because it was a bad spin-off that had almost nothing to do with the original show that it was supposed to be based on, not because of anything to do with cable TV as a business model.
There is no reason to believe they won't try and push that up the stack if they feel users will accept it.
I can think of two reasons right off the top of my head.
1. There's a big difference between moving from a completely locked down system (nearly all cell phone development prior to the app store) to a slightly less locked down system and moving from a completely open development environment to a more locked down one.
2. Apple does not command the mind and market share in the desktop sphere that it does in the mobile sphere, and thus cannot dictate the direction of the entire market the way they do in mobile.
ooh just thought of a third one..
3. Lower barriers to exit in the desktop space. No ETFs and no cost at all to switch to Linux. Even an OEM copy of Windows is only half as much as even a subsidized smart phone. Also, no need to switch hardware as both Windows and Linux will run on what you have if you're switching from a Mac.
I see this argument a lot, and while it makes sense on the surface, if you actually sit down and do the math it seems pretty empty to me. Take a top game from ten years ago, I'll go with Deus Ex for an example. Looking at Amazon I see I can buy a new copy of Deus Ex for a low as $17. I think it's safe to assume that this is a fairly typical price drop for a game over the course of 10 years. Now $17, while cheap, is still a bit too much money for us to simply write off completely. However, we're not spending this $17 today, we're spending it 10 years from now, which means we have to discount it. Inflation typically hovers around 3-4% and the rate on a relatively risk free investment (your opportunity cost for that $17) is historically around 5-6%. So for the sake of simplicity, let's just assume a discount rate of 10%.
If you do the math, that puts the present value of having to repurchase that game you're so afraid of losing at about $6.50. But wait, we're not done yet. That's the value if you're absolutely 100% certain that you're going to have to repurchase that game, which we're not. To figure out that real cost of "renting" that game, you'll need to multiply your present worth by your expected probability that Valve will actually go out of business, and not unlock your games before doing so. So if we think Valve has a 50% chance (a fairly high number IMO) of going out of business, then the present value of the expected cost of re-purchasing that game is only about $3.25. If you think Valve has a 20% chance of going out of business (probably a more realistic number), then the value drops to $1.30.
Call me unconvinced that an expected $1.30 is something to get all up in arms about, especially when it's probably less than the tax I pay if for some reason I decide not to buy on STEAM.
I see a lot of hate for STEAM in game reviews on sites like Amazon, but step into any PC gaming forum and almost everyone there practically refuses to use anything but STEAM. I have to admit I'm in the latter category, but I find the polarizing nature of STEAM to be rather fascinating.
I can somewhat understand the haters' point of view. If all you want to do is simply play the game you bought, then having to install and run 3rd party software might seem a bit frustrating to me. However, I've always found the benefits of STEAM vastly outweigh the potential drawbacks. For starters, let me just say that if you're purchasing boxed copies of games that require STEAM to play, you're doing it wrong. Not only you missing out on one of the biggest things that makes STEAM so great, bypassing the retailer and downloading straight to your hard drive, but games are generally cheaper on STEAM as well, sometimes even shockingly so.
Throw in a built in community, no need to keep track of CD keys, automatic patching (and now driver updates if you have an AMD/ATI video card), cloud support for game saves, and pre-loading for day one purchases, and the benefits start outweighing the costs pretty quick.
And of course the biggest argument in STEAM's favor actually has little to do with STEAM at all. Simply put, in a day and age when it's rarely ever a question of if a publisher will require some sort of online authentication for their game, but more a question of what form that authentication will take, STEAM is far and away the least of all evils.
Have you used it? Because I have and after doing so I prefer the second of those two options. The problem is that many sites that support HTML5 (which works find on my Droid) default to Flash (which in my experience is every bit as bad as TFA makes it out to be) if they detect it to be installed. I'll take halfway decent HTML5 on a fraction of the sites I visit over what I've experienced with Flash any day.
This has been my experience as well with my Droid. I realize that the droid is a bit slower than other Android phones, but I hadn't had any trouble with watching HTML5 video on it, so I expected similar results with Flash. I was wrong. The few times I did get it to play, after let the player buffer for several minutes (on WiFi) it played in the single digit frame rates. I uninstalled it after a few days, as sites that had HTML5 video available still defaulted to Flash if they detected it. Having access to HTML5 video on only a portion of sites is preferable to me to having Flash for Android available on all sites. That should say something about just how bad it is.
I didn't say this was a good thing. In fact in my OP I specifically say that it is a problem. But it's not a problem that falls within the domain of net neutrality. Once again, net neutrality is not a catch all for all ISP regulation. Its purpose is to correct a specific market failure. That doesn't mean that there aren't other problems, but trying to lump them in with net neutrality doesn't help the discussion, and only gives opponents more targets.
But, in regards to net neutrality, the question is whether or not AT&T objects to the FCC requiring them to be neutral in the way they implement "paid prioritization". As long as all other streaming video services on their network are subject to the same fees, then it's still neutral. The purpose of net neutrality is to address specific conflicts of interest that ISPs, especially the cable cos, face between providing Internet service to their customers and selling their own services on their networks. It's not a catch-all for network regulation that so many people seem to interpret it as.