I don't want my robot body to be indistinguishable. I want it to be a giant fucking robot with shoulder mounted lasers and an ion cannon mounted in the chest.
We don't need regulation, we need competition. If you had 4 or 5 cable companies in your area, they'd have to be competitive, so they would want to give you a good value and better services (for example: a la carte services).
I have no argument for your second point since it does sound like a good idea to me.
I'm not for or against net neutrality, but I believe that with the proper amount of competition that the ones who are attempting to act crazy will end up either changing or going out of business.
2/3 of them are designed to help, but a lot of things designed to help end up doing more harm than good.
Kudos to the poster that wanted to separate the physical medium and the actual service.
Sounds like the argument about solid state vs. tube amps for guitars. What will happen is that some people that have no idea will form opinions based on (insert person who likes expensive wine) here, most people will not be able to tell the difference side by side, and people who are actually around the stuff all the time will be the only ones who will ever be able to tell (and then be very loud about the fact that true aged wine is the only "real" wine...like artifically aged is fake somehow). There will also be a small contingent of people who will say the "new" wine is better, and whine when some wine snob makes fun of the new stuff.
Personally, I'll just be getting drunk on whatever tastes good.
Although this is an extremely late reply (been gone for the xmas holidays), I felt that I should clarify something: My parents actually use TXU, and have for a number of years. The one thing that never fails is that at minimum once a year (usually two or three times) they overestimate the amount of electricity used and my parents get a grossly overpriced electric bill. It is usually sorted out by the next month, but it is still a hassle for them. The funniest thing about it is that one of the local news stations in Longview, TX reported on someone who that happened to the night after this story hit slashdot.
I would welcome this with open arms if I wasn't scared the company would screw it up. However, they do have a track record (at least where I have personally seen) of demanding overstated payment now and fixing the problem later.
As with all great advances in technology, people will end up losing jobs because the technology will take over for them. However bad I feel for these people, it creates a bigger problem than that.
Imagine, if you will, a world where something with technology goes wrong (I know, hard to imagine). Now imagine getting those "estimated" bills from your electric company every other month or so (you people who live in north Texas in the country know which bills I'm talking about...the ones that are 3x higher than normal). For those of you who have never seen an estimated bill, basically it means that for whatever reason they could not read your meter that month, be it because a big dog prevented the guy who comes out to look at it or lines were down everywhere because no one believed in the possibility of snow in your area. The bill is always a lot higher than your normal bill for that time of year, leaving you with less money for other less important things like food.
I would hate to see those things coming every couple of months due to network problems. They happen too often to some people already, and this sounds to me like it would compound the problem. Save some guy's job and let him keep driving out to see what the meter actually says. It would take more than a tree against a power line to stop someone from doing that at least.
The thing that gets me is that it's not people in technical fields that care...most of us don't care who you are or where you came from. I personally don't give a flying crap if you're a 9000 lb hermaphrodite named Menke who eats only what you can kill in the supply closet. The only people who care are government extremists, feminists who believe equality means numbers and not oppertunities, and the people that were too stupid to pass exams to get into the field in the first place. Soon these people will insult well trained, intelligent women everywhere by proposing that qualifications for men and women should be different in order to get more females interested.
Slashdot Mirror
It's funny, but not everyone uses a comma to separate. Some countries use a period instead.
Probably a not-insubstantial portion, but I don't think its as big of a portion as you think. They're just the loudest and most annoying portion.
Last Thursdayism at its finest.
I miss GimpShop
There was no 0 complaint state. I complained before it became law.
I don't want my robot body to be indistinguishable. I want it to be a giant fucking robot with shoulder mounted lasers and an ion cannon mounted in the chest.
It's not even 'the rich'. My apartment complex has a sheriff that gets free rent to patrol the place after hours.
Forget Grandma, what about Aunt Tilly?
Will we end up with stupidphones? I'll take two.
I think we should start at 932,678....oh, wait.
We don't need regulation, we need competition. If you had 4 or 5 cable companies in your area, they'd have to be competitive, so they would want to give you a good value and better services (for example: a la carte services).
I have no argument for your second point since it does sound like a good idea to me.
I'm not for or against net neutrality, but I believe that with the proper amount of competition that the ones who are attempting to act crazy will end up either changing or going out of business.
2/3 of them are designed to help, but a lot of things designed to help end up doing more harm than good.
Kudos to the poster that wanted to separate the physical medium and the actual service.
Sounds like the argument about solid state vs. tube amps for guitars. What will happen is that some people that have no idea will form opinions based on (insert person who likes expensive wine) here, most people will not be able to tell the difference side by side, and people who are actually around the stuff all the time will be the only ones who will ever be able to tell (and then be very loud about the fact that true aged wine is the only "real" wine...like artifically aged is fake somehow). There will also be a small contingent of people who will say the "new" wine is better, and whine when some wine snob makes fun of the new stuff.
Personally, I'll just be getting drunk on whatever tastes good.
Although this is an extremely late reply (been gone for the xmas holidays), I felt that I should clarify something: My parents actually use TXU, and have for a number of years. The one thing that never fails is that at minimum once a year (usually two or three times) they overestimate the amount of electricity used and my parents get a grossly overpriced electric bill. It is usually sorted out by the next month, but it is still a hassle for them. The funniest thing about it is that one of the local news stations in Longview, TX reported on someone who that happened to the night after this story hit slashdot.
I would welcome this with open arms if I wasn't scared the company would screw it up. However, they do have a track record (at least where I have personally seen) of demanding overstated payment now and fixing the problem later.
>Do they really not have anyone capable of writing a decent simple Windows 2k/XP program?
I was wondering the same thing about Microsoft.
As with all great advances in technology, people will end up losing jobs because the technology will take over for them. However bad I feel for these people, it creates a bigger problem than that. Imagine, if you will, a world where something with technology goes wrong (I know, hard to imagine). Now imagine getting those "estimated" bills from your electric company every other month or so (you people who live in north Texas in the country know which bills I'm talking about...the ones that are 3x higher than normal). For those of you who have never seen an estimated bill, basically it means that for whatever reason they could not read your meter that month, be it because a big dog prevented the guy who comes out to look at it or lines were down everywhere because no one believed in the possibility of snow in your area. The bill is always a lot higher than your normal bill for that time of year, leaving you with less money for other less important things like food. I would hate to see those things coming every couple of months due to network problems. They happen too often to some people already, and this sounds to me like it would compound the problem. Save some guy's job and let him keep driving out to see what the meter actually says. It would take more than a tree against a power line to stop someone from doing that at least.
The thing that gets me is that it's not people in technical fields that care...most of us don't care who you are or where you came from. I personally don't give a flying crap if you're a 9000 lb hermaphrodite named Menke who eats only what you can kill in the supply closet. The only people who care are government extremists, feminists who believe equality means numbers and not oppertunities, and the people that were too stupid to pass exams to get into the field in the first place. Soon these people will insult well trained, intelligent women everywhere by proposing that qualifications for men and women should be different in order to get more females interested.