Good point. Well, since my ISP is on this list, I wrote them this letter. Here's hoping they care.
I am writing to voice my concern that AT&T maintain net neutrality.
I noticed that AT&T is a "participating provider" in ESPN360.com (http://espn.go.com/broadband/espn360/affList).
As a customer, I'm not interested in this service, and want to make sure you're not passing this cost on to ALL your customers when only SOME of your customers would want this service. Are you charging me for this service?
I'd also like to say that I oppose any efforts to give preferential access to internet content for business reasons. For example, if you were to give faster connections to MySpace than to Facebook because you had a deal with MySpace, I would strongly oppose that and would consider switching carriers.
Thank you for your time. I look forward to your response.
Buying in bulk. ESPN gets a guaranteed X million dollars, no matter how many customers use the service. Maybe they would get 2X million if they sold individually, or maybe they'd only get X/10 million. They're exchanging potentially higher, but also potentially lower, income for guaranteed income.
Sure, I get that. I'd like a guaranteed X million dollars, too. But what's the benefit to the ISP? "Hey, want to make your service more expensive by charging all your customers for something many of them won't want?"
In Cuba, I believe they have been using a "sneakernet" to distribute information discreetly. It's high latency, but also high bandwidth and hard to detect or snoop. Another advantage: it's basically drag-and-drop simple.
1) Get a bunch of USB thumb drives 2) Put text files, photos, videos, or whatever on them 3) (Optional) Encrypt them 4) Pass them from person to person, copying them as needed
No transmissions to intercept, no technical expertise necessary. All you need is are the drives and a pair of sneakers to walk to your neighbor's house.
The argument that 1 download = 1 lost sale was always pretty silly. Obviously the demand for something that costs $0 is going to be greater than if it costs $20.
Also, if your ISP pays for Disney.com or whatever, the cost will be passed to you.
You hit the nail on the head. It IS ok for Disney to charge INDIVIDUALS money for using their site. It is NOT ok to charge EVERYONE on an ISP for the individuals who use their site.
I don't even understand the argument for charging the ISPs.
...you seem to have completely missed my main (unwritten) point, that this at least has a chance of being better than a lot of the other government spending I've seen in the last year.
I think we're on the same side here - that the bailouts are bad ideas. And I agree that this has a CHANCE of being better than some of the other spending. I just also think it has a chance of hurting innovation, rather than helping.
In a free market, the best product should win. In a subsidized market, the best product may lose to the subsidized one, which can be artificially cheap.
In all honesty, if we end up spending $100 billion and end up with some amazing battery technology as a result, I will consider it worth it. Better than a lot of the other trillions we've been throwing around.
Yes, IF. On the other hand, maybe GM will produce mediocre batteries, but will use its government subsidy to undercut and crush a great battery-producing startup. Or maybe batteries are a dead end, and fuel cells are the answer, but GM/Congress are not astute enough to figure it out.
Why are we betting on a proven loser? Why not just create an X-Prize for energy storage and let the best company win?
"The used game sale market is still depriving publishers of money because it gives consumers an all-too-easy alternative to buying a new game."
It's also depriving ME of money because these resellers aren't sharing the cash they make with Yours Truly.
Too bad that I have no more rights to a cut of resales than the publishers do.
In other news, video game publishers are hacked that you can still ride a REAL bicycle down a REAL trail, thereby depriving them of sales of their biking games.
I remember the days of taking Polaroids of friends, and snapping several so everyone got one.
That's cool. Wouldn't it be nice if you could do the same now - snap a digital picture and then Bluetooth it to the phone of everyone standing there?
I suppose an acceptable alternative would be that your pictures are uploaded to a web album in real time and you can immediately text a short URL to everyone...
Don't blame Nader, blame your lousy voting system that discourages a third party from forming.
This is my biggest political beef. People can't vote their conscience because they think they'll be "throwing their vote away." In a true democracy, you should not be ABLE to waste your vote.
Instead of making me pick one candidate, why not let me vote on each one - "For," "Against," or "No Opinion?" We would get a much more accurate reflection of what people think, instead of what they think everybody ELSE thinks.
Linux isn't going to be for everyone, and I wish I understood why people think it has to be.
Ubuntu's bug #1 is "Microsoft has a majority market share," so apparently Ubuntu *does* want to be for everyone. And I'm saying that outside programmer circles, the command line is anathema.
Segways are always tilting forward and back. Bicycles are always tilting side to side. Trikes stay pretty level. That probably makes it easier to stitch together all the photos.
Put OS X on PC hardware and Apple will be the next king of silicon valley.
Maybe not. Windows has to support as many hardware configurations as you can come up with; OS X has to support only what Apple makes. Which means they can put less effort into compatibility and more into cool features.
Their image seems to be "expensive but worth it." With minority market share, I doubt they want to trade that for "basically the same as Windows."
"4. It should be possible to configure everything via GUI..."
Agreed. In my dual-booting Ubuntu/XP box, I have an integrated sound card and a PCI recording card.
In XP, the two play nicely together. If they didn't, I could use a GUI (Device Manager) to disable one temporarily.
In Ubuntu, no GUI setting could get all my output to come through the same card. To disable one, I had to open bash, figure out the name of the driver, blacklist that driver, and reboot.
Sure, this particular situation might affect a small number of users. But add up all the edge cases like these, and they affect many users.
Yes, bash is great - for programmers. Non-programmers should never need it. Everything should be configurable by the GUI.
Actually, that's not fair of me. I have a Microsoft mouse that probably still works to this day. It's just not optical and doesn't have a scroll wheel.
I have an optical MS mouse with scroll wheel and two side buttons, which serve as "change grenade type" and "womp" in Halo, and "browser forward" and "browser back" on the web.
It has served me well for many years already AND works great in Ubuntu. Thanks, Microsoft!:)
Keep in mind that the people you're arguing with are the same people who, despite countless examples that sex can lead to pregnancy, and zero examples of virgins getting pregnant, still believe Mary was a virgin.
It's quite clear that these are not people who believe in evidence supporting hypotheses.
You're knocking down a straw man. If religious people didn't understand that pregnancy requires sex, they wouldn't call the virgin birth "a miracle." This cause-and-effect was well known in Christ's day, too. When Mary said she was pregnant, Joseph's first reaction was to divorce her quietly. He knew what pregnancy required.
If you don't believe in God, of course you won't believe in miracles. But clearly a being who can create the laws of physics from scratch would not be bound by them. The code YOU write doesn't control YOUR life, you control IT. If you want it to do something different today, by golly it will. Why would God be unable to do the same?
Agreed. All I'm saying is it's hardly "geeks vs. corporations" if somebody wants to severely disable the internet. A lot of big, rich companies depend on the internet now.
Slashdot Mirror
Good point. Well, since my ISP is on this list, I wrote them this letter. Here's hoping they care.
Sure, I get that. I'd like a guaranteed X million dollars, too. But what's the benefit to the ISP? "Hey, want to make your service more expensive by charging all your customers for something many of them won't want?"
In Cuba, I believe they have been using a "sneakernet" to distribute information discreetly. It's high latency, but also high bandwidth and hard to detect or snoop. Another advantage: it's basically drag-and-drop simple.
1) Get a bunch of USB thumb drives
2) Put text files, photos, videos, or whatever on them
3) (Optional) Encrypt them
4) Pass them from person to person, copying them as needed
No transmissions to intercept, no technical expertise necessary. All you need is are the drives and a pair of sneakers to walk to your neighbor's house.
Not exactly ideal, but it has some advantages.
The argument that 1 download = 1 lost sale was always pretty silly. Obviously the demand for something that costs $0 is going to be greater than if it costs $20.
You hit the nail on the head. It IS ok for Disney to charge INDIVIDUALS money for using their site. It is NOT ok to charge EVERYONE on an ISP for the individuals who use their site.
I don't even understand the argument for charging the ISPs.
I think we're on the same side here - that the bailouts are bad ideas. And I agree that this has a CHANCE of being better than some of the other spending. I just also think it has a chance of hurting innovation, rather than helping.
In a free market, the best product should win. In a subsidized market, the best product may lose to the subsidized one, which can be artificially cheap.
...for a girl.
Yes, IF. On the other hand, maybe GM will produce mediocre batteries, but will use its government subsidy to undercut and crush a great battery-producing startup. Or maybe batteries are a dead end, and fuel cells are the answer, but GM/Congress are not astute enough to figure it out.
Why are we betting on a proven loser? Why not just create an X-Prize for energy storage and let the best company win?
It's also depriving ME of money because these resellers aren't sharing the cash they make with Yours Truly.
Too bad that I have no more rights to a cut of resales than the publishers do.
In other news, video game publishers are hacked that you can still ride a REAL bicycle down a REAL trail, thereby depriving them of sales of their biking games.
Fine, but it's either subscription or ads. You don't get to do both.
Yes, I was kidding. I didn't know what cosmic rays could or couldn't penetrate, so I aimed low. :)
Yep - digital is easier to share and harder to restrict than analog. It's nearly impossible to do both simultaneously, as DRM failures have proved.
And that is why you wrap it up in black construction paper before storing.
That's cool. Wouldn't it be nice if you could do the same now - snap a digital picture and then Bluetooth it to the phone of everyone standing there?
I suppose an acceptable alternative would be that your pictures are uploaded to a web album in real time and you can immediately text a short URL to everyone...
"We just realized we could produce more content by borrowing from and building on the work of others. Ow! C'mon, guys!"
This is my biggest political beef. People can't vote their conscience because they think they'll be "throwing their vote away." In a true democracy, you should not be ABLE to waste your vote.
Instead of making me pick one candidate, why not let me vote on each one - "For," "Against," or "No Opinion?" We would get a much more accurate reflection of what people think, instead of what they think everybody ELSE thinks.
You're right, that should be the way to do it, but it didn't work in my case.
Ubuntu's bug #1 is "Microsoft has a majority market share," so apparently Ubuntu *does* want to be for everyone. And I'm saying that outside programmer circles, the command line is anathema.
Segways are always tilting forward and back. Bicycles are always tilting side to side. Trikes stay pretty level. That probably makes it easier to stitch together all the photos.
Maybe not. Windows has to support as many hardware configurations as you can come up with; OS X has to support only what Apple makes. Which means they can put less effort into compatibility and more into cool features.
Their image seems to be "expensive but worth it." With minority market share, I doubt they want to trade that for "basically the same as Windows."
Agreed. In my dual-booting Ubuntu/XP box, I have an integrated sound card and a PCI recording card.
In XP, the two play nicely together. If they didn't, I could use a GUI (Device Manager) to disable one temporarily.
In Ubuntu, no GUI setting could get all my output to come through the same card. To disable one, I had to open bash, figure out the name of the driver, blacklist that driver, and reboot.
Sure, this particular situation might affect a small number of users. But add up all the edge cases like these, and they affect many users.
Yes, bash is great - for programmers. Non-programmers should never need it. Everything should be configurable by the GUI.
I have an optical MS mouse with scroll wheel and two side buttons, which serve as "change grenade type" and "womp" in Halo, and "browser forward" and "browser back" on the web.
It has served me well for many years already AND works great in Ubuntu. Thanks, Microsoft! :)
Assuming this correlation means anything, which it may not, it's more likely to be this:
The less popular your browser is, the better/faster it has to be to compete.
You're knocking down a straw man. If religious people didn't understand that pregnancy requires sex, they wouldn't call the virgin birth "a miracle." This cause-and-effect was well known in Christ's day, too. When Mary said she was pregnant, Joseph's first reaction was to divorce her quietly. He knew what pregnancy required.
If you don't believe in God, of course you won't believe in miracles. But clearly a being who can create the laws of physics from scratch would not be bound by them. The code YOU write doesn't control YOUR life, you control IT. If you want it to do something different today, by golly it will. Why would God be unable to do the same?
Agreed. All I'm saying is it's hardly "geeks vs. corporations" if somebody wants to severely disable the internet. A lot of big, rich companies depend on the internet now.