This makes no sense. What bug? You searched for numbers you got the numbers. Sounds like google was working correctly at first and broken, not fixed, as the story went on.
The people who put pages of credit card numbers on the web like this have a problem, but it isnt googles problem, google cant fix it, and it's insane that they are expected to do so.
"When died in his 60s, he was intellectually about five years old. He could not have participated in the discussion we are now having."
That's probably below the line of having an understanding of right and wrong, sure. Such cases, as I wrote, are already acknowledged legally when they must be - courts do not today treat such people as having human rights, though they will try to avoid phrasing it like that it's a fact. And it's unavoidable.
"Here is the problem with your formulation; the transactional basis you have posited for ethics doesn't work for you in this case, so you are patching your model with a totally different ethical basis: aretaic ethics."
Actually it's not a patch on the model, it's a shift to an entirely different level of analysis. As I said, not everything that is wrong should be illegal, and not everything that is wrong is wrong for the same reason, or in the same way either. Torturing a moral agent is wrong, and torturing a non-agent animal is wrong, but they arent wrong in the same way or for the same reason (although torturing a moral agent may be said to be doubly wrong, since it fails by both yardsticks, whereas only one is applicable in the other case.)
"You are arguing that it is not immoral for an animal to kill a human, and I am arguing that it is immoral for a human to kill an animal."
If it is immoral for a human to kill an animal, then it would be likewise immoral for an animal to kill a human, yes. Were these two moral agents they would have an obligation to let each other be. My position is that known species of animals are not moral agents, they are incapable of moral right or wrong, their actions are not subject to our morality. It is not part of their world.
"I would also say that it would be immoral for a more advanced species to land on our planet and, unable to communicate with anything for whatever reason, proceed to exterminate all life on the planet."
Your moral outrage in such a situation would doubtless be impotent, and I would say misplaced as well. Your energy in such a situation would be better directed towards finding a way to communicate before we were exterminated. Only once that is accomplished would the moral argument have any force.
"It's the moral paradox that many people are aware of and which we suppress - the thought or knowledge that it is not morally right for us to kill and eat other animals, but we do it anyway because we think of the animals as less than ourselves."
That sounds like an awful position to be in, it must be a horrible strain to feel yourself so compromised. If you really believe this you should definitely become a vegetarian. Except plants are alive too... you poor thing, however shall you eat?
"On the fact that they are alive. Anything living animal has some moral standing. I don't see any reason to assert otherwise."
Are you a Jain? Do you walk barefoot and sweep the sidewalk as you walk to avoid stepping on a bug?
If so, I will respectfully disagree but give you credit for consistency and sincerity at least.
"The reason why rape is illegal is not because of the trauma that might be inflicted on people witnessing the rape, it is because of the trauma inflicted on the victim. "
And victims of rape are human beings, moral agents with rights that have been violated.
"That sentence is correct regardless of the species of the victim. I'm not talking about legal rights. It is objectively wrong to rape another animal, just as it is objectively wrong to kill one for pleasure."
Well now I know you did not grow up on a farm.
The notion of 'raping an animal' is just as ludicrously wrong as the notion of putting a wolf on trial for murdering sheep. Go witness the breeding of a cow or a horse sometime and get your eyes opened up.
Rape is penetration without consent. Consent is only a meaningful concept in regards to moral agents.
"It is an illustration of the possibility that abstract thought might not be restricted to humans."
I am certain that abstract thought is not restricted to humans, and eager for any evidence to demonstrate that it is not. Unfortunately this does not do it.
"That is absolutely not absurd."
Then file murder charges against a wolf. Or an alligator, a bear, a bull, I dont care. The next time a nonhuman kills a human in your area put him on trial for murder... come on. You really cant see how silly that is?
"Brooke Greenberg"
To avoid repeating myself, I just answered that line of thought here.
"I was asking "Why is it necessary for a chimp to show he can master human grammar?" You have not addressed that question."
Where I was talking about syntax you have substituted grammar. I am talking about syntax. And it would not be necessary for them to master *human* syntax specifically, were there any other syntax available to test them with I would have no objection. But it does seem that the ability to master syntax of some sort is a prerequisite for moral agency.
"If I understand your position, rights and obligations arise out of each other. In other words, if I expect you to respect my private property, then I have to respect yours. That seems reasonable, but this framework also seems to suggest that I can opt out of this arrangement; that I can steal from you as long as I'm OK with you stealing from me."
I dont think that I am suggesting it, but yes, that seems an accurate description of the reality. People do have the choice to go wild, to go outlaw, to rob and steal and rape until they are put down, and some people do so.
But those who behave like humans should be treated like humans.
"Your framework also suggests that children have no human rights until they have the developed the cognitive capabilities to understand their responsibilities. "
In a sense, yes. An infant is not an active moral agent, but that is still clearly what it is here to become. I would argue that this puts it in a special class of its own, but at worst, if we deny it any moral rights at that stage, aggression against it would still violate the rights of the infants parents or guardians.
"Likewise mentally handicapped people could be murdered since they can't understand the philosophical bases of the anti-murder bargain."
You may be the second person today to read that into what I am saying and I must think you do not know any mentally handicapped people, because in my experience that paints them with far too broad a brush.
That said, yes, there are some very severe cases where that would apply. But that is already acknowledged in law today - you may have heard of not guilty by reason of mental incapacity?
We dont just a priori define the mentally handicapped as animals, and we shouldnt, the strong presumption is that if you are human and not in a coma you are a moral agent. (And even in a coma you still retain rights based on the presumption you still have a chance to wake up. Only in extreme cases where it appears there is no chance left do we tend to pull the plug.) But at the same time we sometimes find people not responsible for their options, and at that point they do lose their rights, become subject to arbitrary detention, made wards of the state, etc.
"Likewise under your framework torturing an animal is OK, as long as the animal isn't capable of understanding the philosophical basis for why torturing animals is wrong."
This is emphatically incorrect.
Torturing an animal is not a violation of the animals rights, but the notion that anything that does not involve the violation of rights is "OK" is quite an unsupported leap. At the most there may be an argument to be made that this should not be intrinsically *illegal*. There are many things that are not OK, that are bad things, that nonetheless may not be illegal and maybe should not be illegal.
Torturing an animal, in particular, is a horribly dehumanizing thing to do - to yourself. Without taking a position at the moment on whether it should be illegal or not (it seems to me that's a deep subject and any good answer would probably be fairly long and nuanced, not a straightforward yes or no) it is certainly far from "OK."
If you have such trouble grasping the distinction between bullying each other and maintaining pack solidarity like every other species of social animals on one hand, and a moral agent who has a full theory of mind and the ability to sacrifice his own life for an abstract ideal, then I guess this conversation is simply beyond you at this point in your life.
"Exactly, well put. It is entirely moral for me to torment a retarded child, who can't understand or return respect to me."
Are you even trying?
If it's wrong to torture an animal it's certainly wrong to torture a child, and if you think a retarded child cannot understand or return your respect you clearly do not know any. So you failed to address the argument in a compound fashion - you shot at the wrong target, and missed everything!
Because morality involves rights and obligations. Your right to be left in peace is only half of it - the obligation to respect the same rights in others is the other half.
Unless an entity is at minimum capable of understanding that dialectic it's absurd to apply morality to them at all. They are not evil when they violate your rights (they dont understand that you have any rights, they arent capable of conceiving of rights, let along understanding how to respect them) - it's absurd to attribute moral failure or malice to an animal because they simply are not capable of such things.
And the other side of the same coin is, just as it would be absurd to charge a chimp for violating your rights (he is not a moral agent) it is absurd to attribute rights to the chimp for the very same reason.
"I see no reason not to entertain the possibility if the facts suggest that chimps are more like us than we thought."
Me either. I have followed chimp research with great interest and nothing would make me happier than to have come to a different conclusion. It would be great to have a non-human moral agent around if only to prove that it's possible. And it seems certain we will eventually discover one - but also certain that chimps are not it.
You think you can convey, discuss, or in any way address the subject of morality, of rights and obligations, by stringing together concrete nouns with no syntax?
What's happening there is not that the animal has learned the language and is using it properly, but that the animal has (just as I said) learned some words, sticks words together in creative ways, and human beings that are highly motivated to do so are often able to make the leap and attribute real meaning to their utterences. But they still havent the syntax, which means they are simply not capable of understanding or dealing with the concepts of morality.
I understand you disagree, but your rationale appears to be faulty.
"All animals do in fact have some moral standing."
On what basis do you assert thant?
"It is not OK to torture an animal, for example."
It is wrong to torture an animal because of the ill effect it has on "you" (the torturer) and possibly on others around you. This does not imply that the animal has any legal rights.
"Moreover, language and abstract thought are not requirements to have moral standing."
I disagree, on the basis that moral rules apply only in interactions with moral agents, and moral agency requires the ability to think abstractly (in order simply to comprehend moral obligations.) If you have a rationale for your contrary assertion it is not apparent.
"Elephants exhibit PTSD, for example. A young elephant that witnesses its mother being shot and killed will exhibit many of the same symptoms in later life that are associated with PTSD in humans."
And that relates to moral agency how?
Here's the point. Moral rules are two-way rules. I am expected to respect your rights, and you to respect mine. As long as we are both capable of understanding our rights and obligations that can work.
However, what if one of us is not mentally capable of understanding this? It would be absurd, in that situation, for one party to be expected to respect the 'rights' of a being who is not capable of understanding that respect or returning it.
"Physically, if you were well-trained you could run a deer to death from exhaustion."
*ROFL* obviously you have no experience with deer.
The most athletic human on earth racing a deer is going to be like my 8 year old niece on her bicycle trying to race against a stock car. You're insane if you think the human would have any chance at all. Not only can you come nowhere near the target in speed, you're even more outclassed in terms of endurance.
You are wrong. No chimpanzee has ever mastered ASL. They learn the equivalent of individual 'words' and use them in interesting ways, but they appear to lack any ability to understand the deeper underpinnings of true language. Syntax is beyond them.
A corporation is a legal fiction. Giving it the attributes of a natural person is just bad case law and bad reasoning.
Giving those attributes to a chimpanzee would make no more sense and be no better law. It might satisfy a certain sense of fairness in the context you give it, but the old saw about two wrongs not making a right applies.
Fortunately enough work has been done on other primates that we can be quite certain about their lack of capabilities here. Like most other animals their 'communication' system is based on involuntary responses rather than voluntary, and while their abilities are astonishingly advanced in comparison to some other species, they still clearly lack language, abstract thought, and thus moral agency.
If you are looking for sentient non-humans on the planet, I would say the cetaceans are a more likely place to find it, although the evidence so far says no there as well, the results are less conclusive at this point.
I dont disagree that there have been regressions in interface design, not at all. But that is an entirely different issue from an 'intuitive' interface. Good interfaces are no more intuitive than bad ones, because none of them are. But good interfaces are different from bad ones in many other ways.
"Babies naturally try to put everything in their mouth and we naturally hold babies near our nipples."
Exactly. That's an intuitive interface. No explanation is needed, there is no paradigm to grasp, no special sensory skills to develop, it just works.
Sure, you have to train them not to bite/chew too hard, but really you are picking a tiny nit with that. It's still far, far closer to 'intuitive' than anything that involves a display screen will ever be.
"Mint wasn't very intuitive to me... granted I only ran it for a few hours"
The nipple is the only intuitive interface. All others are learned.
If people would quit chasing an impossible goal of an intuitive interface and focus on making functional interfaces instead, it would be a huge improvement.
"Most singular" does not mean anything. It's gratuitous gibberish.
Most is a superlative, it only makes sense when comparing 3 or more things (plural.) No comparing was being done here, and "singular" is a word whose meaning allows no opportunity to augment it with a superlative. There is no more or less singular, no least or most singular, singular is simply singular.
It's not exactly shocking to see poor English in a slashdot writeup, but this one manages to be even worse than expected.
It *wont* be enough, but it's not because the technology isnt sufficient.
See the fiber to the home is sold as a panacea for problems that it wont actually address. If your uplink is throttled back to nearly nothing it doesnt matter a bit how wide your pipe is otherwise, it's still inadequate. A simple 1gb symmetrical dsl link over copper wire is something the ISPs have the ability to offer but absolutely refuse to. So what will they offer over fibre? 40mbps!!!! (But read the fine print, it's 256k up, and absolutely worthless except for 'consuming' their 'premium' offerings.)
Slashdot Mirror
I dont think we will ever agree but I do have a better understanding of your position and enjoyed the conversation. Thank you.
"Simple question: Why should Google filter or censor anything? Do we even want that?"
Simple answer. No. Hell no.
This makes no sense. What bug? You searched for numbers you got the numbers. Sounds like google was working correctly at first and broken, not fixed, as the story went on.
The people who put pages of credit card numbers on the web like this have a problem, but it isnt googles problem, google cant fix it, and it's insane that they are expected to do so.
"When died in his 60s, he was intellectually about five years old. He could not have participated in the discussion we are now having."
That's probably below the line of having an understanding of right and wrong, sure. Such cases, as I wrote, are already acknowledged legally when they must be - courts do not today treat such people as having human rights, though they will try to avoid phrasing it like that it's a fact. And it's unavoidable.
"Here is the problem with your formulation; the transactional basis you have posited for ethics doesn't work for you in this case, so you are patching your model with a totally different ethical basis: aretaic ethics."
Actually it's not a patch on the model, it's a shift to an entirely different level of analysis. As I said, not everything that is wrong should be illegal, and not everything that is wrong is wrong for the same reason, or in the same way either. Torturing a moral agent is wrong, and torturing a non-agent animal is wrong, but they arent wrong in the same way or for the same reason (although torturing a moral agent may be said to be doubly wrong, since it fails by both yardsticks, whereas only one is applicable in the other case.)
"You are arguing that it is not immoral for an animal to kill a human, and I am arguing that it is immoral for a human to kill an animal."
If it is immoral for a human to kill an animal, then it would be likewise immoral for an animal to kill a human, yes. Were these two moral agents they would have an obligation to let each other be. My position is that known species of animals are not moral agents, they are incapable of moral right or wrong, their actions are not subject to our morality. It is not part of their world.
"I would also say that it would be immoral for a more advanced species to land on our planet and, unable to communicate with anything for whatever reason, proceed to exterminate all life on the planet."
Your moral outrage in such a situation would doubtless be impotent, and I would say misplaced as well. Your energy in such a situation would be better directed towards finding a way to communicate before we were exterminated. Only once that is accomplished would the moral argument have any force.
"It's the moral paradox that many people are aware of and which we suppress - the thought or knowledge that it is not morally right for us to kill and eat other animals, but we do it anyway because we think of the animals as less than ourselves."
That sounds like an awful position to be in, it must be a horrible strain to feel yourself so compromised. If you really believe this you should definitely become a vegetarian. Except plants are alive too... you poor thing, however shall you eat?
"On the fact that they are alive. Anything living animal has some moral standing. I don't see any reason to assert otherwise."
Are you a Jain? Do you walk barefoot and sweep the sidewalk as you walk to avoid stepping on a bug?
If so, I will respectfully disagree but give you credit for consistency and sincerity at least.
"The reason why rape is illegal is not because of the trauma that might be inflicted on people witnessing the rape, it is because of the trauma inflicted on the victim. "
And victims of rape are human beings, moral agents with rights that have been violated.
"That sentence is correct regardless of the species of the victim. I'm not talking about legal rights. It is objectively wrong to rape another animal, just as it is objectively wrong to kill one for pleasure."
Well now I know you did not grow up on a farm.
The notion of 'raping an animal' is just as ludicrously wrong as the notion of putting a wolf on trial for murdering sheep. Go witness the breeding of a cow or a horse sometime and get your eyes opened up.
Rape is penetration without consent. Consent is only a meaningful concept in regards to moral agents.
"It is an illustration of the possibility that abstract thought might not be restricted to humans."
I am certain that abstract thought is not restricted to humans, and eager for any evidence to demonstrate that it is not. Unfortunately this does not do it.
"That is absolutely not absurd."
Then file murder charges against a wolf. Or an alligator, a bear, a bull, I dont care. The next time a nonhuman kills a human in your area put him on trial for murder... come on. You really cant see how silly that is?
"Brooke Greenberg"
To avoid repeating myself, I just answered that line of thought here.
"I was asking "Why is it necessary for a chimp to show he can master human grammar?" You have not addressed that question."
Where I was talking about syntax you have substituted grammar. I am talking about syntax. And it would not be necessary for them to master *human* syntax specifically, were there any other syntax available to test them with I would have no objection. But it does seem that the ability to master syntax of some sort is a prerequisite for moral agency.
"If I understand your position, rights and obligations arise out of each other. In other words, if I expect you to respect my private property, then I have to respect yours. That seems reasonable, but this framework also seems to suggest that I can opt out of this arrangement; that I can steal from you as long as I'm OK with you stealing from me."
I dont think that I am suggesting it, but yes, that seems an accurate description of the reality. People do have the choice to go wild, to go outlaw, to rob and steal and rape until they are put down, and some people do so.
But those who behave like humans should be treated like humans.
"Your framework also suggests that children have no human rights until they have the developed the cognitive capabilities to understand their responsibilities. "
In a sense, yes. An infant is not an active moral agent, but that is still clearly what it is here to become. I would argue that this puts it in a special class of its own, but at worst, if we deny it any moral rights at that stage, aggression against it would still violate the rights of the infants parents or guardians.
"Likewise mentally handicapped people could be murdered since they can't understand the philosophical bases of the anti-murder bargain."
You may be the second person today to read that into what I am saying and I must think you do not know any mentally handicapped people, because in my experience that paints them with far too broad a brush.
That said, yes, there are some very severe cases where that would apply. But that is already acknowledged in law today - you may have heard of not guilty by reason of mental incapacity?
We dont just a priori define the mentally handicapped as animals, and we shouldnt, the strong presumption is that if you are human and not in a coma you are a moral agent. (And even in a coma you still retain rights based on the presumption you still have a chance to wake up. Only in extreme cases where it appears there is no chance left do we tend to pull the plug.) But at the same time we sometimes find people not responsible for their options, and at that point they do lose their rights, become subject to arbitrary detention, made wards of the state, etc.
"Likewise under your framework torturing an animal is OK, as long as the animal isn't capable of understanding the philosophical basis for why torturing animals is wrong."
This is emphatically incorrect.
Torturing an animal is not a violation of the animals rights, but the notion that anything that does not involve the violation of rights is "OK" is quite an unsupported leap. At the most there may be an argument to be made that this should not be intrinsically *illegal*. There are many things that are not OK, that are bad things, that nonetheless may not be illegal and maybe should not be illegal.
Torturing an animal, in particular, is a horribly dehumanizing thing to do - to yourself. Without taking a position at the moment on whether it should be illegal or not (it seems to me that's a deep subject and any good answer would probably be fairly long and nuanced, not a straightforward yes or no) it is certainly far from "OK."
If you have such trouble grasping the distinction between bullying each other and maintaining pack solidarity like every other species of social animals on one hand, and a moral agent who has a full theory of mind and the ability to sacrifice his own life for an abstract ideal, then I guess this conversation is simply beyond you at this point in your life.
"Exactly, well put. It is entirely moral for me to torment a retarded child, who can't understand or return respect to me."
Are you even trying?
If it's wrong to torture an animal it's certainly wrong to torture a child, and if you think a retarded child cannot understand or return your respect you clearly do not know any. So you failed to address the argument in a compound fashion - you shot at the wrong target, and missed everything!
Uh, and?
If you do X then Y will hurt you is something a cockroach can understand, it has nothing whatsoever to do with the issue of moral agency.
"Why should that be necessary?"
Because morality involves rights and obligations. Your right to be left in peace is only half of it - the obligation to respect the same rights in others is the other half.
Unless an entity is at minimum capable of understanding that dialectic it's absurd to apply morality to them at all. They are not evil when they violate your rights (they dont understand that you have any rights, they arent capable of conceiving of rights, let along understanding how to respect them) - it's absurd to attribute moral failure or malice to an animal because they simply are not capable of such things.
And the other side of the same coin is, just as it would be absurd to charge a chimp for violating your rights (he is not a moral agent) it is absurd to attribute rights to the chimp for the very same reason.
"I see no reason not to entertain the possibility if the facts suggest that chimps are more like us than we thought."
Me either. I have followed chimp research with great interest and nothing would make me happier than to have come to a different conclusion. It would be great to have a non-human moral agent around if only to prove that it's possible. And it seems certain we will eventually discover one - but also certain that chimps are not it.
You think you can convey, discuss, or in any way address the subject of morality, of rights and obligations, by stringing together concrete nouns with no syntax?
What are YOU on?
What's happening there is not that the animal has learned the language and is using it properly, but that the animal has (just as I said) learned some words, sticks words together in creative ways, and human beings that are highly motivated to do so are often able to make the leap and attribute real meaning to their utterences. But they still havent the syntax, which means they are simply not capable of understanding or dealing with the concepts of morality.
"I don't agree, see my replies above"
I understand you disagree, but your rationale appears to be faulty.
"All animals do in fact have some moral standing."
On what basis do you assert thant?
"It is not OK to torture an animal, for example."
It is wrong to torture an animal because of the ill effect it has on "you" (the torturer) and possibly on others around you. This does not imply that the animal has any legal rights.
"Moreover, language and abstract thought are not requirements to have moral standing."
I disagree, on the basis that moral rules apply only in interactions with moral agents, and moral agency requires the ability to think abstractly (in order simply to comprehend moral obligations.) If you have a rationale for your contrary assertion it is not apparent.
"Elephants exhibit PTSD, for example. A young elephant that witnesses its mother being shot and killed will exhibit many of the same symptoms in later life that are associated with PTSD in humans."
And that relates to moral agency how?
Here's the point. Moral rules are two-way rules. I am expected to respect your rights, and you to respect mine. As long as we are both capable of understanding our rights and obligations that can work.
However, what if one of us is not mentally capable of understanding this? It would be absurd, in that situation, for one party to be expected to respect the 'rights' of a being who is not capable of understanding that respect or returning it.
"It sounds like an enlightened idea"
No, it sounds like the exact opposite actually. Like a sly way to attack enlightenment values and push society back towards the dark ages.
"Physically, if you were well-trained you could run a deer to death from exhaustion."
*ROFL* obviously you have no experience with deer.
The most athletic human on earth racing a deer is going to be like my 8 year old niece on her bicycle trying to race against a stock car. You're insane if you think the human would have any chance at all. Not only can you come nowhere near the target in speed, you're even more outclassed in terms of endurance.
You are wrong. No chimpanzee has ever mastered ASL. They learn the equivalent of individual 'words' and use them in interesting ways, but they appear to lack any ability to understand the deeper underpinnings of true language. Syntax is beyond them.
Pretty much, yes.
A corporation is a legal fiction. Giving it the attributes of a natural person is just bad case law and bad reasoning.
Giving those attributes to a chimpanzee would make no more sense and be no better law. It might satisfy a certain sense of fairness in the context you give it, but the old saw about two wrongs not making a right applies.
Fortunately enough work has been done on other primates that we can be quite certain about their lack of capabilities here. Like most other animals their 'communication' system is based on involuntary responses rather than voluntary, and while their abilities are astonishingly advanced in comparison to some other species, they still clearly lack language, abstract thought, and thus moral agency.
If you are looking for sentient non-humans on the planet, I would say the cetaceans are a more likely place to find it, although the evidence so far says no there as well, the results are less conclusive at this point.
Fine, let me revise my statement;
"Even the nipple is not fully intuitive, and no computer interface is going to be any more intuitive than that."
Better? Doesnt weaken my point, looks like it makes it stronger.
I dont disagree that there have been regressions in interface design, not at all. But that is an entirely different issue from an 'intuitive' interface. Good interfaces are no more intuitive than bad ones, because none of them are. But good interfaces are different from bad ones in many other ways.
"Babies naturally try to put everything in their mouth and we naturally hold babies near our nipples."
Exactly. That's an intuitive interface. No explanation is needed, there is no paradigm to grasp, no special sensory skills to develop, it just works.
Sure, you have to train them not to bite/chew too hard, but really you are picking a tiny nit with that. It's still far, far closer to 'intuitive' than anything that involves a display screen will ever be.
"Mint wasn't very intuitive to me... granted I only ran it for a few hours"
The nipple is the only intuitive interface. All others are learned.
If people would quit chasing an impossible goal of an intuitive interface and focus on making functional interfaces instead, it would be a huge improvement.
"Most singular" does not mean anything. It's gratuitous gibberish.
Most is a superlative, it only makes sense when comparing 3 or more things (plural.) No comparing was being done here, and "singular" is a word whose meaning allows no opportunity to augment it with a superlative. There is no more or less singular, no least or most singular, singular is simply singular.
It's not exactly shocking to see poor English in a slashdot writeup, but this one manages to be even worse than expected.
It *wont* be enough, but it's not because the technology isnt sufficient.
See the fiber to the home is sold as a panacea for problems that it wont actually address. If your uplink is throttled back to nearly nothing it doesnt matter a bit how wide your pipe is otherwise, it's still inadequate. A simple 1gb symmetrical dsl link over copper wire is something the ISPs have the ability to offer but absolutely refuse to. So what will they offer over fibre? 40mbps!!!! (But read the fine print, it's 256k up, and absolutely worthless except for 'consuming' their 'premium' offerings.)