Scientific consensus means nothing - and in general is totally wrong. (Galileo, Einstien, etc all had to fight against the consensus for years)
Wow. That's really ignorant. The cranks mentioned are certainly no Einstein or Copernicus.
First off, I hate to spell check because spelling doesn't necessarily correlate with intelligence, but you did misspell Einstein... Just a typo, I hope.
You assert: the scientific community is "in general totally wrong"... wow. How do you even know that? Based on what evidence? Maybe you're a representative of the Martian scientific council?
I do know you're science illiterate and trying to fake it though. Your comment is so goofy, it's empirical evidence of that.
Why do we accept today that Copernicus was correct? Because his theory was accepted by the scientific community consensus of course. To make that perfectly clear, we know it's true because the scientific consensus tells us so and because they've proven it with telescopes and space exploration, which btw only came as a result of the scientific consensus accepting the Copernicus theory on its merits long before space exploration or modern telescopes were possible or even conceived.
Actually, it was the Church that stifled Copernicus because it was resistant to science informing them and replacing mysticism. Today the anti-science mystics would be Big Oil, and some fundamentalists spreading ignorance to protect themselves and resist the well founded science establishing man made global climate change.
Einstein's theories were taken up very quickly on their merits despite him being somewhat of an unknown outsider. In fact, based on the merits of his work, he went from being an unknown to revolutionizing some areas if physics in about a year, and building on that a decade later. His work was rapidly embraced on its merits, and he quickly came to personify the merits of the peer review system and scientific consensus.
The idea that you'd attempt to portray him as evidence that the scientific consensus is "generally... totally wrong"... that is just extremely ignorant.
The critics of global warming have had their chances, and continue to have the opportunity, to prove the scientific community wrong. They have failed, and their shifting theories are continually debunked and even regarded with ridicule for being so laughably specious and designed to prey on the public's scientific illiteracy. They are regarded as cranks in the scientific community.
The notion you'd compare those cranks to Einstein or Copernicus... amazing. You must either be a silly troll, an incredibly ignorant person, or someone paid to spread BS on the web.
I think for a lot of people wisecracking is about not giving a shit and letting things go to hell because people can't be bothered. I know a lot of people who say they care, but really don't, nor do they do shit about it. They will joke around willingly though.
Unfortunately much of the public seems to think a hurricane expert is also an expert on global climate change. They're not. So the fossil fuel industry goes and funds these people and preys on the largely scientifically illiterate public. It's the same thing tobacco lobbyists did. Exact same tricks. Find a fringe, fund them, and prop them up as the opposition.
Only global climate change may kill literally hundreds of millions in a short period in a conservative estimate, and do damage to the environment that could take perhaps centuries to fix with technologies we don't even have yet. The worst case scenario is really unthinkable: massive global destabilization due to starvation caused by crop failures and drought across Africa; and potentially Europe, Asia, and the Americas as well to a lesser degree. That could very likely lead to increases in global instability, territorial wars, terrorism, nuclear and other arms proliferation, and even a nuclear exchange or terrorist act.
There's no valid debate in the larger scientific community nor is there any question man made global climate change is real. At this point we're long overdue to start investing in preventative medicine. It's simply insane to let this problem go and continue running high risks without taking out some insurance for what would literally be a global catastrophe.
The don't give a shit and ignorant attitude simply doesn't cut it any more.
Neither Bill Gray or Neil Frank have the necessary expertise to back up their claims.
I hate to be cruel but Bill Gray is 78 and already way past his prime but refusing to accept that the science has moved past his expertise. His method of predicting hurricanes is really quaint by today's standards of computer modeling. He uses basically the Farmer's Almanac method by comparison to the state of the art computer modeling. He wouldn't even know where to begin to make a predictive computer model of the relevant criteria for global climate.
For example, computer global climate models are now predicting radically different climate shifts, with a level of precision that extends to micro/regional climates developing within the larger system. Their predictive ability extends many years in advance. Some models have already proven to be accurate in predicting microclimate changes with a resolution as fine as only several miles across, and predictive of micro climates that operate counter to the larger trends.
That's a level of accuracy that would be virtually impossible to stubble on accidentally or by using Bill Grey's Farmer's Almanac methodology. The fact is Bill Gray has no capability to even understand how those models work. Much the same can be said for Neil Frank.
Robert Lidzen of MIT does not dispute man made global warming due to rise in CO2 or that global warming continuing would be a huge danger. He has an interesting theory that particulate matter in the atmosphere might cause more clouds, which could offset global warming by reflecting more solar energy. But so far he's alone in that theory and it's been criticized by many as overly narrow and optimistic.
The point is nobody credible disputes man made global warming, and the general scientific consensus is it's unfounded scientifically to hope the planet automatically counteracts our negative effects on it.
Here's an interesting tidbit from Wikipedia btw, apparently Lidzen is unwilling to put his money where his mouth is: The November 10, 2004 online version of Reason magazine reported that Lindzen is "willing to take bets that global average temperatures in 20 years will in fact be lower than they are now." Climatologist James Annan, who has offered multiple bets that global temperatures will increase, contacted Lindzen to arrange a bet. Annan offered to pay 2:1 odds in Lindzen's favor if temperatures declined, but said that Lindzen would only accept a bet if the payout was 50:1 or better in his favor and that no bet occurred.
In response, Lindzen denied telling Reason that he would bet at 1:1 odds that temperatures would be lower in 20 years than they are now, and stated that he would only bet if offered "much higher odds." According to Lindzen, he and Annan exchanged proposals for bets, but were unable to agree.
Global Warming deniers are the new Holocaust deniers.
Actually that's not even flamebait. It's a pretty accurate description.
The only people still denying man made global climate change are a fringe of real kooks and a bunch of fossil fuel lobbyists.
What would be the criteria to make a fair comparison to Nazis and the Brown Shirts? Doesn't profot driven genocide qualify for a legit Nazi analogy? I think it does.
I know that's a joke... but eh.. I don't see how it got a 5 for funny. 5 for crass maybe.
Seriously, if only half what the sceintific consensus predicts is left to happen, we're all going to be pretty damn sorry we didn't do more sooner. The not giving a shit attitude isn't going to cut it when all hell breaks loose.
When the oceans rise accelerates in the next decade and property taxes go up to the stratosphere to pay for sea walls and such, as propetry values plummet, I don't think anyone living near a coast will be laughing. Or hurrcaines devastating the gulf region. Or freak heat waves over 100' lasting a week or more in the midwest. And a bunch of other things from freak rains and flooding in some places to droughts in other places. If the whole country goes the way of New Orleans, who will be laughing?
Who will be laughing then when power consumption becomes mandated and taxed to bejezus becasue of some global crisis making the present oil shock seem like nothing? Or when there is mass starvation killing maybe a hundred million or more due to weather changes. Then terrorism goes totally out of hand. The global economy could suffer creating massive hurt everywhere, even in rural America.
Imagine for example massive and widespread starvation in Africa and places like NKorea, Pakistan, and many others who will also be struggling start exporting nuclear technology to countries in the midst of civil unrest who need bargaining chips to get aid for starving nations.
You might think you're being cute or a smart troll or something, but basically you just sound ignorant.
No, I think the "whingey" people are those of poor character who don't like to be reminded of their laziness, poor character, the harm they're doing to humanity and the planet, or their general unwillingness to give a shit or do their part and carry their own weight in the world.
The greatest whinging in the world are people who say "boo hoo, I can't sacrifice even a little bit to try and conserve power or pollute less, or do anything to stop screwing the rest of the world."
The entire world's scientific community agrees global warming is happening and the consequences will be catastrophic if left to continue. Anyone not concerned due to that is either a fool or just flat out immoral.
RTFA. The first sentence says 400 years or longer. If you actually read the stories you'll understand why, and get the point that it's hotter than it's been in a long time, and only getting hotter.
I have no more patience for these fools who don't have an interest in science or much of anything outside their own little self serving world. They don't read scientific journals, and who hence have no idea how important the global scientific consensus for global warming is. These people don't even give a half a shit literally hundreds of millions of poor people around the world suffer and die from drought, crop failures, and many other near-apocalyptic consequences if global warming is allowed to continue.
People often make crazy analogies to Nazis. But seriously, if half of what the entire global scientific community warns of comes to pass, then the ignorant and uncaring people doing nothing to prevent global warming are leading to a holocaust that will be literally tens, maybe as much as a hundred times worse than the holocaust in terms of suffering and lives lost. We're talking about tens to hundreds of millions dying due to climate change.
The resistance to accepting the global warming isn't based on scientific logic, or wisdom, or conscience, or anything that could be called credible or ethical.
It's just sheer intellectual laziness and choosing to let someone else die because people are unwilling to even slightly inconvenience oneself. That's shameful. The miniscule but well funded dissent is also backed by the fossil fuel industry and people who think their paychecks depend on perpetuating this tragedy so long as it falls on someone else. It's disgusting, tragic, shameful, and represents the worst in human nature.
These things are shams for PR and recruiting and nothing more. It's all BS.
They considered the US Automaker funded competition to "Design a bigger gas guzzling SUV that's built cheaper and less safe" but realized it didn't have the same PR and recruiting value. So, we get a new solar powered go-cart every year, then those students go on to design the next SUV and pickup for GM or Ford.
... but people need to get real about these competitions they have every year.
Every year American auto makers fund for a pittance several of these types of competitions. The results are always the same: some college kids design a vehicle that weighs practically nothing, runs on solar or such, and is totally impractical. Usually little more than a bicycle or go-cart. This has been going on much the same for decades.
And every time the results are the same:
1) US automakers get their names associated with some supposedly high-tech, innovative, and efficient technology as part of a low cost PR campaign in the form of a tiny grant to students.
2) The media is obligated to cover it as part feel good fluff: see, we're still leading the world in useless technology despite everything being made overseas! Aren't our students bright?!
3) Said automakers recruit off the various campuses engineers who then proceed to design SUV having absolutely nothing to do with afore mentioned efficient technology.
4) US makers continue declining.
S.O.S.
Wouldn't it be great if these students for once asked "how about granting us money to make something f'ing useful or hiring us to build what we made for a change?"
You don't seem to understand what a Natural Monopoly is. Here's Wiki's definition:
"In economics, a natural monopoly occurs when, due to the economies of scale of a particular industry, the maximum efficiency of production and distribution is realized through a single supplier"
For example, you can't efficiently have a bunch of competitors stringing up multiple lines to every house. The additional cost would more than offset any possible gain due to competition, for a BIG net loss. Another natural monopoly is cellular standards, which is why Europe has one standard and we're so stupid we have multiple standards in the US which have totally stagnated our cellular market development.
Also, there is nothing wrong and everything right with government subsidy and granting of monopolies inutilities provided it's done well and in the public interest. Which means strict oversight, regulation, and periodic bidding for operation rights to keep it efficient and honest.
Take for example how South Korea built out their internet using subsidy but then mandated truly competitive bidding for operators and kept them on a tight leash for the public interest. In the end you get a very fast network (10x faster than ours) and 90% of households with broadband creating web applications and opportunities for business and societal benefits we can barely even imagine here. The operators run very lean and efficient because they have to. Executives still get paid well enough to attract talent, and employees get good jobs, but there is no stock market getting rich off them, no CEOs making hundreds of millions a year, etc. As a public utility that's supercharging their economy with the world's best internet, it's a huge success. If Washington wasn't so corrupt, we'd adopt that model in a heartbeat.
Our problem is everybody in business is way too fucking greedy and government can't do anything like that for the people without being called socialist by a bunch of lobbyists from Wall Street who basically own Washington these days, and who get elected whoever will do their bidding.
The problem (from the telco's point of view) is that Google is paying only one company for the bandwidth it uses.
That's complete and utter horse shit. The entire infrastructure is ALREADY paid for by all the broadband consumers out there. When I use Google, my Telco is already getting paid for that, by me.
There is no shortage of broadband consumers, nor any shortage of funds to build out new infrastructure. This is simply a greedy move by Telcos to see how stupid people and government are to grant them a strangle hold on our entire future media from internet phones to internet TV, to internet movies on demand. A monopoly that would make the old Hollywood studio system or the old MaBell monopolies seem trivial by comparison.
Of course they're trying, they'd be stupid not to. If they win they can basically print their own money and weild more power than just about any other US corporation. In 10 years anyone controling contetn on the internet basically controls the country via the media. The only question is if people are stupid enough and our government corrupt enough to go for it.
If so, may as well grant a monopoly on drinking water to some MegaCorp next, because if we're stupid enough to lose Net Neutrality who knows what kind of stupid shit the US public will go for next.
Get a clue people:
WE BROADBAND CONSUMERS ARE ALREADY PAYING THE TELCO FOR THE BANDWIDTH WE USE AND THE INFRASTRUCTURE.
That's how it's already paid for and built. Why for example moms in South Korea can video conference to trade recipes and yak all day, while the kids play MMORPG simultaneously, on DSL lines 10x faster than ours, without paying a single penny more on their monthly bill. Because the infrastructure was already fucking paid for by the monthly fee, with enough left over to profit and build the next generation network despite their already being way faster than us. Their monthly fees are also lower than ours btw.
And as far as US network capacity goes, we have plenty, and it's cheap to build by comparison with all the money telcos are taking in from broadband subscriptions. They just don't want to give up the money. And why would they? If the US public is stupid enough to bend over and take it, of course they'll go for it.
GOOGLE or whoever is providing a service to ME, on the network I've leased from the Telco who are already getting paid. They have no call to get into extorting fees from content providers so as to control the media too.
Only a completely ignorant or just outright stupid person still doesn't get why Net Neutrality is important.
I like the way the article uses the false equivilency argument to inspire apathy in readers. Was this article posted by some Telco shill or what?
It's a great tactic to say "they're all the same" if one wants people to tune out and do nothing. Then who wins when the public is asleep? Easy, Big Telecom wins becasue they have the lobbying bucks and the decades long presnece in Washington.
The idea that Google and such even compare with the Telcos and CableCos in Washington, and their associated interests? Crazy. Google and like companies, despite their recent stock explosion, are still the wide eyed noobies founded by idealists compared with the bare knuckle Telecom lobbyists in Washington who've been working politicians on deregulation and media ownership issues for generations.
I also like how the author doesn't mention that Google and such companies are the only people defending consumer's right to the internet as it currently exists, where consumers pay for bandwidth and pay for the infrastructure to be built, and then get to choose what they want off the web. The Telcos propose a model where the consumer pays for bandwidth and infrastructure, and then the Telcos charge content providers on top of that to determine what consumers get.
It's basically paying twice for placed advertising and services. Any consumer who goes for that over what we have today, is a total F'ing idiot. But Telcom is spending big bucks to lobby this issue, and I'll bet they have people spamming forums with pro-deregulation BS too. They have tens of millions to spend on spinning this issue, and many billions to make afterall.
Except those are actually best in class built vehicles, unlike the GM equivilent models which are below average in reliability and have many problems in safety due to cheap construction and design. They didn't create the idiot SUV market. Blame GM and FORD for all those gas guzzling, roll over prone vehicles that not only kill their own passengers but endanger everyone on the road. Driving a SUV just screams low IQ.
Bottom line is that US makers have been making crappy vehicles while their executives make several times more than the highest paid Japanese auto exec, and while US companies are cutting pensions and screwing consumers. There's no excuse for it but rape and pillage in American business culture.
Yet another competition to design an entirely useless and impractical technology demonstrator; after which, the sponsors of the event the American Automakers, will have no problem recruiting the aspiring automotive engineers to build more SUV.
Or maybe I'm being cynical. Maybe GM really is planning a solar powered car sometime soon, with Honda, Toyota and other makers being really interested in hiring American English only speaking engineers who spent most of their college education in projects with not even the vaguest notion of practical design.
Wow, that makes me think how much more money Toyota could make this year if they stopped making such high quality reliable vehicles, and just bolted a crappy SUV body to a cheap truck chassis, and sold it for a giant profit, like GM did. It would probably take at least 5 years before consumers really caught on, and in the meanwhile execs and shareholders could make many billions. Of course then they'd implode and Hyundai (or whoever up and coming) would have incentive to beat them in quality and steal all their customers, the way GM has lost all their customers to Toyota. Yep, real geniuses we have in business in America these days.
From the Wall Street to the WSJ to the board room, the culture of short term thinking to screw the customer is pervasive. It's all about rape and pillage for the shareholders, kill the company (after offloading the stock to E-Trade suckers) and then invest somewhere else. Where will investors go once US business is depleted? China & India of course.
As others in this thread have pointed out, the linked article is plainly paid propaganda and disinformation and the chain of publication is also highly suspect. The author is a shill with connections to fossil fuel interests. Also, the "scientists" who question Man Made Climate Change are invariably shills funded by the fossil fuel industries.
One example of that sort of shoddy disinformation is the petition of "experts and scientists" against global warming they circulated a couple years ago.
Basically it happened like this: There was a petition validating global climate change that was signed by many of the top world scientists, top climatologists, physicists, chemists, etc, many of them Nobel Prize winners. The relevant scientific credentials were unassailable. They are literally the best scientific minds in the world, people who are one in 10 million. There is consensus in the scientific community that climate change is man made and very real.
To rebut that the lobbyists for Big Fossil Fuels circulated a petition to assail Climate Change, and only reported those who agree with their petition. They did not account for what percentage disagreed with their petition. Also, they targeted the petition to various smaller interest groups and trade associations with conservative bias and in conservative regions. They managed to collect quite a few supportive signatures (and discarded those who were not) from people like dentists, mechanics, and others. Only problems were their lack relevant expertise and that the petition literally trolled a large number of unqualified people to find some that would sign. Even worse, many of those listed as signatures later complained that they had not signed. Absurd.
But these are people preying on people's desires to remain ignorant and hear what they want to hear. Just like smoking disinformation paid for by Big Tobacco in the past.
That's a comple non-sequiter and really ignorant or a deliberate lie.
9-11 was due to individual sites lacking the SERVER capacity to hand traffic, causing server crashes and such. The fiber backbone and the last mile had PLENTY of bandwidth to carry the traffic. So the argument that the net needs toll lanes to handle capcity, that is just complete and utter bullshit.
The telcos just want the power to throttle traffic at their whim to create a new revenue model which is basically bandwidth protection and extortion. Toll booths are the perfect analogy.
And no, there is NO market competition becasue all packets going over the internet must pass through each company network at some point, at which point it can be killed, throttled, whatever.
So each packet is actually going through multiple monopolies that are now able to charge fees from a position of monopoly. NOT going across multiple networks that are competing to lower fees. BIG DIFFERENCE.
Right, the local Bells and Verizon and such are quickly moving to stake out regional monopolies and cooperating with each other to be deregulated so they may shut out real competition. Each stands to benefit immensely by collaborating to shut down real competition so they may collectively drive rates through the roof. Now they're collectively moving to get into the content and filtering business so they can extort bandwidth protection money and collude further with Big Media and Big Retail companies who also want to see their competition stifled and are happy to pay the Telcos to do so.
In the end it'll be consumers who get jacked in higher prices on internet goods, higher service fees, and shittier service with less choices. Not to mention what this might help companies like MSNBC do to the alternative news media, small blogs and such. For example, A lot of people here rip on Microsoft but now it's perfectly legal for MS to pay a fiber backbone provider like WorldCom to hobble traffic from Slashdot if they want. And how would Slashdotter's respond? Booo hooo is all we could do as it would be hard to prove, have no legal recourse, and based on the Net Neutrality apathy the "community" as it exists would do shiat. And besides, they could be shut down too. Pretty chilling.
The major Telcos/Cablecos essentially have non-compete agreements between each other. Why? Because none of them stand to gain by real competition, (i.e. from small ISPs) and all stand to gain immensely by collaborating to shut out small ISP while and preventing any competition that would offer alternatives to the business models of upsells and bandwidth protection rackets they want to move to.
The free market only works when a business can enter the market using a model that is more efficient and pro-consumer. But the major providers have deregulated monopolies on the last mile and backbone, so there is no marketplace where small ISP can survive in the long run without regulatory protection. If the major Telcos collude to get themselves deregulated and then also collude to collectively screw consumers, then there is no free market, it's just an illusion of competition maintained by a few giant corps who are acting as one. Each of which enjoy far higher profits by colluding to screw customers than either would by getting into real competition, so the motive is clear.
People really are foolish to miss that Telcos are colluding against the public good and that neither government nor the market is going to help them if they don't wake up and exert some political and market pressure.
We (consumers) are driving this change with our internet usage patterns. The network infrastructure if evolving; let it do it's thing without legislation.
Pfft. That's a load.
Consumers are driving R&D for better and cheaper bandwidth, which they're already paying for.
What's driving internet deregulation is Telco's desire to expand monopoly power and drive up profits using unethical means that have been denied them so far.
I and nobody supporting Net Neutrality has any problem with QOS based routing. But the loss of Net Neutrality lobbied by Big Telcos goes way beyond that. They're now legally freed to extort protection money for bandwidth and have no obligation to even attempt fair distribution of bandwidth to consumers and web sites in good faith. Again, as the law now stands one company is perfectly legally allowed to pay a Telco to strangle to death a rival company. And they will do that and all kinds of dirty tricks now, and the Telcos will jack up profits like the mob running a protection racket. That's just not ethical or good for society.
Net Neutrality should be the rule and exceptions carved out on a case by case basis as justified. Not the exact opposite.
Congress has whored itself to lobbiests against the public good, yet again.
I think it's important to differentiate between protocol based prioritisation and toll based prioritisation.
We're talking about source and destination address based filtering which is exactly what ISP are now free to do with Net Neutrality being gutted.
For example, If company A decides to pay ISPx to hobble or even kill company B's packets, at ANY HOP, that's now perfectly legal and there is no regulation barring that. For a really nasty example of what is now perfectly legal: a Telco could choose not to forward any commerce packets to any site they choose to hobble for any reason, and could respond with an error response to the consumer's browser making it appear it's the web site's fault. Now that's 100% perfectly legal.
Also, small ISP are already getting muscled out becasue Telcos were already deregulated and now have no obligation to licence to 3rd part ISP. So they're slowly jacking up the fees to 3rd party ISP and gradually giving them inferior bandwidth, to slowly drive them out of business. My small ISP is being forced out of business just that way, despite it consistantly being one of the highest customer rated ISP in the country, and has been for almost a decade.
Indeed, people are going to be pissed off -- which is why I expect some ISPs to stay away from packet discrimination. People who care about it will simply flock there.
ahhh.. only problem with that: Telcos already lobbied for and won deregulation so that they don't even have to license service to other ISP now. So, they're slowly squeezing the small ISP out of the market and consolidating monopolies not only on the last mile but on ISP level as well. Oh, and the Telcos are remerging to control the backbone, ISP, and last mile, while being deregulated to get into the content business as well, reversing about 75 years of consumer protection against monopolies controlling the national scale production and distribution of media monopolies.
So yes, they do hold all the cards now, and no, there is nothing to stop them from totally anti-competitive practices so long as they ratchet it up slowly enough to keep the public unaware. Something they've done very well so far. Gotta love the "I don't have to give a shiat because the invisible hand of the free market will take care of it" type argument after deregulation has already granted Telcos monopoly powers. Talk about clueless. Those people are the equivalent of Fundamental Evangelicals with their total lack of critical thinking and taking things on faith out of laziness.
There are some justifications for guaranteed bandwidth. For example, one could see a portion of the net being split off for VOIP use only and it would make sense to protect that from spikes in pron DLing or whatever. So yes, I can see some arguments for protected bandwidth. But this whole debate is smoke screen for a monopoly grab and deregulation. Net Neutrality should be the norm and exceptions carved out of that on a case by case basis where justified. NOT the other way around.
The loss of Net Neutrality goes way beyond that and strips every protection against monopoly on the internet. FACT: with the loss of Net Neutrality, anyone who doesn't have a contract with a Telco assuring them a chunk of bandwidth (i.e. everyone except the largest companies) no longer has any right to be on the internet and can be completly shut down. Blocking traffic is completly at the discretion of Telcos now.
What the loss of Net Neutrality does is to completely deregulate the internet and allow Telcos to shut down any site they choose. That's no exaggeration. Now, there are no consumer protections and no guidelines on what's fair and what's not in regards to filtering.
Anyone who thinks the free market is going to ensure fair competition is a real dunce. History shows the natural outcome of a completely unfettered market is an anti-competitive monopoly. That's why we had to regulate to prevent monopolies for pete's sake!
To make matters worse, other deregulation a while ago means Telco monopolies are no longer required to offer their lines service to small ISP. In other words they don't even have to share their government sanctioned monopoly on the last mile anymore. So, there goes the competitive market as small ISP are gradually squeezed out over the coming years.
This is going to lead to aggressive and highly anti-competitive Telcos running turf wars on an unfettered and unethical internet. Fair competition will vanish quickly. If for example a rival company (insert mega-corp of choice) wants to pay more to shut down your bandwidth than you can pay to buy your bandwidth, that's perfectly legal now. If Oracle for example had wanted to pay to buy People Soft's internet bandwidth to depress their stock price and ease the takeover, perfectly legal now. If MS wans to pay confidentially to hobble Linux servers or companies using them, again, perfectly legal now.
The loss of Net Neutrality means there is now no regulation and turns the internet and Telcos into monopolies capable of extorting protection money, and calling that protection: perfectly legal fees.
I really can't believe the lack of awareness and apathy on this issue from supposedly tech savvy people.
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Wow. That's really ignorant. The cranks mentioned are certainly no Einstein or Copernicus.
First off, I hate to spell check because spelling doesn't necessarily correlate with intelligence, but you did misspell Einstein... Just a typo, I hope.
You assert: the scientific community is "in general totally wrong"
I do know you're science illiterate and trying to fake it though. Your comment is so goofy, it's empirical evidence of that.
Why do we accept today that Copernicus was correct? Because his theory was accepted by the scientific community consensus of course. To make that perfectly clear, we know it's true because the scientific consensus tells us so and because they've proven it with telescopes and space exploration, which btw only came as a result of the scientific consensus accepting the Copernicus theory on its merits long before space exploration or modern telescopes were possible or even conceived.
Actually, it was the Church that stifled Copernicus because it was resistant to science informing them and replacing mysticism. Today the anti-science mystics would be Big Oil, and some fundamentalists spreading ignorance to protect themselves and resist the well founded science establishing man made global climate change.
Einstein's theories were taken up very quickly on their merits despite him being somewhat of an unknown outsider. In fact, based on the merits of his work, he went from being an unknown to revolutionizing some areas if physics in about a year, and building on that a decade later. His work was rapidly embraced on its merits, and he quickly came to personify the merits of the peer review system and scientific consensus.
The idea that you'd attempt to portray him as evidence that the scientific consensus is "generally
The critics of global warming have had their chances, and continue to have the opportunity, to prove the scientific community wrong. They have failed, and their shifting theories are continually debunked and even regarded with ridicule for being so laughably specious and designed to prey on the public's scientific illiteracy. They are regarded as cranks in the scientific community.
The notion you'd compare those cranks to Einstein or Copernicus... amazing. You must either be a silly troll, an incredibly ignorant person, or someone paid to spread BS on the web.
yea, I know. My point remains the same.
I think for a lot of people wisecracking is about not giving a shit and letting things go to hell because people can't be bothered. I know a lot of people who say they care, but really don't, nor do they do shit about it. They will joke around willingly though.
A fringe of many non-qualified people.
Unfortunately much of the public seems to think a hurricane expert is also an expert on global climate change. They're not. So the fossil fuel industry goes and funds these people and preys on the largely scientifically illiterate public. It's the same thing tobacco lobbyists did. Exact same tricks. Find a fringe, fund them, and prop them up as the opposition.
Only global climate change may kill literally hundreds of millions in a short period in a conservative estimate, and do damage to the environment that could take perhaps centuries to fix with technologies we don't even have yet. The worst case scenario is really unthinkable: massive global destabilization due to starvation caused by crop failures and drought across Africa; and potentially Europe, Asia, and the Americas as well to a lesser degree. That could very likely lead to increases in global instability, territorial wars, terrorism, nuclear and other arms proliferation, and even a nuclear exchange or terrorist act.
There's no valid debate in the larger scientific community nor is there any question man made global climate change is real. At this point we're long overdue to start investing in preventative medicine. It's simply insane to let this problem go and continue running high risks without taking out some insurance for what would literally be a global catastrophe.
The don't give a shit and ignorant attitude simply doesn't cut it any more.
Neither Bill Gray or Neil Frank have the necessary expertise to back up their claims.
I hate to be cruel but Bill Gray is 78 and already way past his prime but refusing to accept that the science has moved past his expertise. His method of predicting hurricanes is really quaint by today's standards of computer modeling. He uses basically the Farmer's Almanac method by comparison to the state of the art computer modeling. He wouldn't even know where to begin to make a predictive computer model of the relevant criteria for global climate.
For example, computer global climate models are now predicting radically different climate shifts, with a level of precision that extends to micro/regional climates developing within the larger system. Their predictive ability extends many years in advance. Some models have already proven to be accurate in predicting microclimate changes with a resolution as fine as only several miles across, and predictive of micro climates that operate counter to the larger trends.
That's a level of accuracy that would be virtually impossible to stubble on accidentally or by using Bill Grey's Farmer's Almanac methodology. The fact is Bill Gray has no capability to even understand how those models work. Much the same can be said for Neil Frank.
Robert Lidzen of MIT does not dispute man made global warming due to rise in CO2 or that global warming continuing would be a huge danger. He has an interesting theory that particulate matter in the atmosphere might cause more clouds, which could offset global warming by reflecting more solar energy. But so far he's alone in that theory and it's been criticized by many as overly narrow and optimistic.
The point is nobody credible disputes man made global warming, and the general scientific consensus is it's unfounded scientifically to hope the planet automatically counteracts our negative effects on it.
Here's an interesting tidbit from Wikipedia btw, apparently Lidzen is unwilling to put his money where his mouth is:
The November 10, 2004 online version of Reason magazine reported that Lindzen is "willing to take bets that global average temperatures in 20 years will in fact be lower than they are now." Climatologist James Annan, who has offered multiple bets that global temperatures will increase, contacted Lindzen to arrange a bet. Annan offered to pay 2:1 odds in Lindzen's favor if temperatures declined, but said that Lindzen would only accept a bet if the payout was 50:1 or better in his favor and that no bet occurred.
In response, Lindzen denied telling Reason that he would bet at 1:1 odds that temperatures would be lower in 20 years than they are now, and stated that he would only bet if offered "much higher odds." According to Lindzen, he and Annan exchanged proposals for bets, but were unable to agree.
Actually that's not even flamebait. It's a pretty accurate description.
The only people still denying man made global climate change are a fringe of real kooks and a bunch of fossil fuel lobbyists.
What would be the criteria to make a fair comparison to Nazis and the Brown Shirts? Doesn't profot driven genocide qualify for a legit Nazi analogy? I think it does.
Geeze, looks like another idiot choose to grace Slashdot with yet another Anonymous Coward troll.
Lead Paint? Similac?
I know that's a joke... but eh.. I don't see how it got a 5 for funny. 5 for crass maybe.
Seriously, if only half what the sceintific consensus predicts is left to happen, we're all going to be pretty damn sorry we didn't do more sooner. The not giving a shit attitude isn't going to cut it when all hell breaks loose.
When the oceans rise accelerates in the next decade and property taxes go up to the stratosphere to pay for sea walls and such, as propetry values plummet, I don't think anyone living near a coast will be laughing. Or hurrcaines devastating the gulf region. Or freak heat waves over 100' lasting a week or more in the midwest. And a bunch of other things from freak rains and flooding in some places to droughts in other places. If the whole country goes the way of New Orleans, who will be laughing?
Who will be laughing then when power consumption becomes mandated and taxed to bejezus becasue of some global crisis making the present oil shock seem like nothing? Or when there is mass starvation killing maybe a hundred million or more due to weather changes. Then terrorism goes totally out of hand. The global economy could suffer creating massive hurt everywhere, even in rural America.
Imagine for example massive and widespread starvation in Africa and places like NKorea, Pakistan, and many others who will also be struggling start exporting nuclear technology to countries in the midst of civil unrest who need bargaining chips to get aid for starving nations.
You might think you're being cute or a smart troll or something, but basically you just sound ignorant.
No, I think the "whingey" people are those of poor character who don't like to be reminded of their laziness, poor character, the harm they're doing to humanity and the planet, or their general unwillingness to give a shit or do their part and carry their own weight in the world.
The greatest whinging in the world are people who say "boo hoo, I can't sacrifice even a little bit to try and conserve power or pollute less, or do anything to stop screwing the rest of the world."
The entire world's scientific community agrees global warming is happening and the consequences will be catastrophic if left to continue. Anyone not concerned due to that is either a fool or just flat out immoral.
That's one pathetic troll.
RTFA. The first sentence says 400 years or longer. If you actually read the stories you'll understand why, and get the point that it's hotter than it's been in a long time, and only getting hotter. I have no more patience for these fools who don't have an interest in science or much of anything outside their own little self serving world. They don't read scientific journals, and who hence have no idea how important the global scientific consensus for global warming is. These people don't even give a half a shit literally hundreds of millions of poor people around the world suffer and die from drought, crop failures, and many other near-apocalyptic consequences if global warming is allowed to continue. People often make crazy analogies to Nazis. But seriously, if half of what the entire global scientific community warns of comes to pass, then the ignorant and uncaring people doing nothing to prevent global warming are leading to a holocaust that will be literally tens, maybe as much as a hundred times worse than the holocaust in terms of suffering and lives lost. We're talking about tens to hundreds of millions dying due to climate change. The resistance to accepting the global warming isn't based on scientific logic, or wisdom, or conscience, or anything that could be called credible or ethical. It's just sheer intellectual laziness and choosing to let someone else die because people are unwilling to even slightly inconvenience oneself. That's shameful. The miniscule but well funded dissent is also backed by the fossil fuel industry and people who think their paychecks depend on perpetuating this tragedy so long as it falls on someone else. It's disgusting, tragic, shameful, and represents the worst in human nature.
These things are shams for PR and recruiting and nothing more. It's all BS. They considered the US Automaker funded competition to "Design a bigger gas guzzling SUV that's built cheaper and less safe" but realized it didn't have the same PR and recruiting value. So, we get a new solar powered go-cart every year, then those students go on to design the next SUV and pickup for GM or Ford.
... but people need to get real about these competitions they have every year.
Every year American auto makers fund for a pittance several of these types of competitions. The results are always the same: some college kids design a vehicle that weighs practically nothing, runs on solar or such, and is totally impractical. Usually little more than a bicycle or go-cart. This has been going on much the same for decades.
And every time the results are the same:
1) US automakers get their names associated with some supposedly high-tech, innovative, and efficient technology as part of a low cost PR campaign in the form of a tiny grant to students.
2) The media is obligated to cover it as part feel good fluff: see, we're still leading the world in useless technology despite everything being made overseas! Aren't our students bright?!
3) Said automakers recruit off the various campuses engineers who then proceed to design SUV having absolutely nothing to do with afore mentioned efficient technology.
4) US makers continue declining.
S.O.S.
Wouldn't it be great if these students for once asked "how about granting us money to make something f'ing useful or hiring us to build what we made for a change?"
You don't seem to understand what a Natural Monopoly is. Here's Wiki's definition:
"In economics, a natural monopoly occurs when, due to the economies of scale of a particular industry, the maximum efficiency of production and distribution is realized through a single supplier"
For example, you can't efficiently have a bunch of competitors stringing up multiple lines to every house. The additional cost would more than offset any possible gain due to competition, for a BIG net loss. Another natural monopoly is cellular standards, which is why Europe has one standard and we're so stupid we have multiple standards in the US which have totally stagnated our cellular market development.
Also, there is nothing wrong and everything right with government subsidy and granting of monopolies inutilities provided it's done well and in the public interest. Which means strict oversight, regulation, and periodic bidding for operation rights to keep it efficient and honest.
Take for example how South Korea built out their internet using subsidy but then mandated truly competitive bidding for operators and kept them on a tight leash for the public interest. In the end you get a very fast network (10x faster than ours) and 90% of households with broadband creating web applications and opportunities for business and societal benefits we can barely even imagine here. The operators run very lean and efficient because they have to. Executives still get paid well enough to attract talent, and employees get good jobs, but there is no stock market getting rich off them, no CEOs making hundreds of millions a year, etc. As a public utility that's supercharging their economy with the world's best internet, it's a huge success. If Washington wasn't so corrupt, we'd adopt that model in a heartbeat.
Our problem is everybody in business is way too fucking greedy and government can't do anything like that for the people without being called socialist by a bunch of lobbyists from Wall Street who basically own Washington these days, and who get elected whoever will do their bidding.
That's complete and utter horse shit. The entire infrastructure is ALREADY paid for by all the broadband consumers out there. When I use Google, my Telco is already getting paid for that, by me.
There is no shortage of broadband consumers, nor any shortage of funds to build out new infrastructure. This is simply a greedy move by Telcos to see how stupid people and government are to grant them a strangle hold on our entire future media from internet phones to internet TV, to internet movies on demand. A monopoly that would make the old Hollywood studio system or the old MaBell monopolies seem trivial by comparison.
Of course they're trying, they'd be stupid not to. If they win they can basically print their own money and weild more power than just about any other US corporation. In 10 years anyone controling contetn on the internet basically controls the country via the media. The only question is if people are stupid enough and our government corrupt enough to go for it.
If so, may as well grant a monopoly on drinking water to some MegaCorp next, because if we're stupid enough to lose Net Neutrality who knows what kind of stupid shit the US public will go for next.
Get a clue people:
WE BROADBAND CONSUMERS ARE ALREADY PAYING THE TELCO FOR THE BANDWIDTH WE USE AND THE INFRASTRUCTURE.
That's how it's already paid for and built. Why for example moms in South Korea can video conference to trade recipes and yak all day, while the kids play MMORPG simultaneously, on DSL lines 10x faster than ours, without paying a single penny more on their monthly bill. Because the infrastructure was already fucking paid for by the monthly fee, with enough left over to profit and build the next generation network despite their already being way faster than us. Their monthly fees are also lower than ours btw.
And as far as US network capacity goes, we have plenty, and it's cheap to build by comparison with all the money telcos are taking in from broadband subscriptions. They just don't want to give up the money. And why would they? If the US public is stupid enough to bend over and take it, of course they'll go for it.
GOOGLE or whoever is providing a service to ME, on the network I've leased from the Telco who are already getting paid. They have no call to get into extorting fees from content providers so as to control the media too.
Only a completely ignorant or just outright stupid person still doesn't get why Net Neutrality is important.
I like the way the article uses the false equivilency argument to inspire apathy in readers. Was this article posted by some Telco shill or what?
It's a great tactic to say "they're all the same" if one wants people to tune out and do nothing. Then who wins when the public is asleep? Easy, Big Telecom wins becasue they have the lobbying bucks and the decades long presnece in Washington.
The idea that Google and such even compare with the Telcos and CableCos in Washington, and their associated interests? Crazy. Google and like companies, despite their recent stock explosion, are still the wide eyed noobies founded by idealists compared with the bare knuckle Telecom lobbyists in Washington who've been working politicians on deregulation and media ownership issues for generations.
I also like how the author doesn't mention that Google and such companies are the only people defending consumer's right to the internet as it currently exists, where consumers pay for bandwidth and pay for the infrastructure to be built, and then get to choose what they want off the web. The Telcos propose a model where the consumer pays for bandwidth and infrastructure, and then the Telcos charge content providers on top of that to determine what consumers get.
It's basically paying twice for placed advertising and services. Any consumer who goes for that over what we have today, is a total F'ing idiot. But Telcom is spending big bucks to lobby this issue, and I'll bet they have people spamming forums with pro-deregulation BS too. They have tens of millions to spend on spinning this issue, and many billions to make afterall.
Except those are actually best in class built vehicles, unlike the GM equivilent models which are below average in reliability and have many problems in safety due to cheap construction and design. They didn't create the idiot SUV market. Blame GM and FORD for all those gas guzzling, roll over prone vehicles that not only kill their own passengers but endanger everyone on the road. Driving a SUV just screams low IQ.
Bottom line is that US makers have been making crappy vehicles while their executives make several times more than the highest paid Japanese auto exec, and while US companies are cutting pensions and screwing consumers. There's no excuse for it but rape and pillage in American business culture.
Yet another competition to design an entirely useless and impractical technology demonstrator; after which, the sponsors of the event the American Automakers, will have no problem recruiting the aspiring automotive engineers to build more SUV. Or maybe I'm being cynical. Maybe GM really is planning a solar powered car sometime soon, with Honda, Toyota and other makers being really interested in hiring American English only speaking engineers who spent most of their college education in projects with not even the vaguest notion of practical design.
Wow, that makes me think how much more money Toyota could make this year if they stopped making such high quality reliable vehicles, and just bolted a crappy SUV body to a cheap truck chassis, and sold it for a giant profit, like GM did. It would probably take at least 5 years before consumers really caught on, and in the meanwhile execs and shareholders could make many billions. Of course then they'd implode and Hyundai (or whoever up and coming) would have incentive to beat them in quality and steal all their customers, the way GM has lost all their customers to Toyota. Yep, real geniuses we have in business in America these days.
From the Wall Street to the WSJ to the board room, the culture of short term thinking to screw the customer is pervasive. It's all about rape and pillage for the shareholders, kill the company (after offloading the stock to E-Trade suckers) and then invest somewhere else. Where will investors go once US business is depleted? China & India of course.
As others in this thread have pointed out, the linked article is plainly paid propaganda and disinformation and the chain of publication is also highly suspect. The author is a shill with connections to fossil fuel interests. Also, the "scientists" who question Man Made Climate Change are invariably shills funded by the fossil fuel industries.
One example of that sort of shoddy disinformation is the petition of "experts and scientists" against global warming they circulated a couple years ago.
Basically it happened like this: There was a petition validating global climate change that was signed by many of the top world scientists, top climatologists, physicists, chemists, etc, many of them Nobel Prize winners. The relevant scientific credentials were unassailable. They are literally the best scientific minds in the world, people who are one in 10 million. There is consensus in the scientific community that climate change is man made and very real.
To rebut that the lobbyists for Big Fossil Fuels circulated a petition to assail Climate Change, and only reported those who agree with their petition. They did not account for what percentage disagreed with their petition. Also, they targeted the petition to various smaller interest groups and trade associations with conservative bias and in conservative regions. They managed to collect quite a few supportive signatures (and discarded those who were not) from people like dentists, mechanics, and others. Only problems were their lack relevant expertise and that the petition literally trolled a large number of unqualified people to find some that would sign. Even worse, many of those listed as signatures later complained that they had not signed. Absurd.
But these are people preying on people's desires to remain ignorant and hear what they want to hear. Just like smoking disinformation paid for by Big Tobacco in the past.
That's a comple non-sequiter and really ignorant or a deliberate lie.
9-11 was due to individual sites lacking the SERVER capacity to hand traffic, causing server crashes and such. The fiber backbone and the last mile had PLENTY of bandwidth to carry the traffic. So the argument that the net needs toll lanes to handle capcity, that is just complete and utter bullshit.
The telcos just want the power to throttle traffic at their whim to create a new revenue model which is basically bandwidth protection and extortion. Toll booths are the perfect analogy.
And no, there is NO market competition becasue all packets going over the internet must pass through each company network at some point, at which point it can be killed, throttled, whatever.
So each packet is actually going through multiple monopolies that are now able to charge fees from a position of monopoly. NOT going across multiple networks that are competing to lower fees. BIG DIFFERENCE.
Right, the local Bells and Verizon and such are quickly moving to stake out regional monopolies and cooperating with each other to be deregulated so they may shut out real competition. Each stands to benefit immensely by collaborating to shut down real competition so they may collectively drive rates through the roof. Now they're collectively moving to get into the content and filtering business so they can extort bandwidth protection money and collude further with Big Media and Big Retail companies who also want to see their competition stifled and are happy to pay the Telcos to do so. In the end it'll be consumers who get jacked in higher prices on internet goods, higher service fees, and shittier service with less choices. Not to mention what this might help companies like MSNBC do to the alternative news media, small blogs and such. For example, A lot of people here rip on Microsoft but now it's perfectly legal for MS to pay a fiber backbone provider like WorldCom to hobble traffic from Slashdot if they want. And how would Slashdotter's respond? Booo hooo is all we could do as it would be hard to prove, have no legal recourse, and based on the Net Neutrality apathy the "community" as it exists would do shiat. And besides, they could be shut down too. Pretty chilling. The major Telcos/Cablecos essentially have non-compete agreements between each other. Why? Because none of them stand to gain by real competition, (i.e. from small ISPs) and all stand to gain immensely by collaborating to shut out small ISP while and preventing any competition that would offer alternatives to the business models of upsells and bandwidth protection rackets they want to move to. The free market only works when a business can enter the market using a model that is more efficient and pro-consumer. But the major providers have deregulated monopolies on the last mile and backbone, so there is no marketplace where small ISP can survive in the long run without regulatory protection. If the major Telcos collude to get themselves deregulated and then also collude to collectively screw consumers, then there is no free market, it's just an illusion of competition maintained by a few giant corps who are acting as one. Each of which enjoy far higher profits by colluding to screw customers than either would by getting into real competition, so the motive is clear. People really are foolish to miss that Telcos are colluding against the public good and that neither government nor the market is going to help them if they don't wake up and exert some political and market pressure.
Pfft. That's a load.
Consumers are driving R&D for better and cheaper bandwidth, which they're already paying for.
What's driving internet deregulation is Telco's desire to expand monopoly power and drive up profits using unethical means that have been denied them so far.
I and nobody supporting Net Neutrality has any problem with QOS based routing. But the loss of Net Neutrality lobbied by Big Telcos goes way beyond that. They're now legally freed to extort protection money for bandwidth and have no obligation to even attempt fair distribution of bandwidth to consumers and web sites in good faith. Again, as the law now stands one company is perfectly legally allowed to pay a Telco to strangle to death a rival company. And they will do that and all kinds of dirty tricks now, and the Telcos will jack up profits like the mob running a protection racket. That's just not ethical or good for society.
Net Neutrality should be the rule and exceptions carved out on a case by case basis as justified. Not the exact opposite.
Congress has whored itself to lobbiests against the public good, yet again.
We're talking about source and destination address based filtering which is exactly what ISP are now free to do with Net Neutrality being gutted.
For example, If company A decides to pay ISPx to hobble or even kill company B's packets, at ANY HOP, that's now perfectly legal and there is no regulation barring that. For a really nasty example of what is now perfectly legal: a Telco could choose not to forward any commerce packets to any site they choose to hobble for any reason, and could respond with an error response to the consumer's browser making it appear it's the web site's fault. Now that's 100% perfectly legal.
Also, small ISP are already getting muscled out becasue Telcos were already deregulated and now have no obligation to licence to 3rd part ISP. So they're slowly jacking up the fees to 3rd party ISP and gradually giving them inferior bandwidth, to slowly drive them out of business. My small ISP is being forced out of business just that way, despite it consistantly being one of the highest customer rated ISP in the country, and has been for almost a decade.
ahhh.. only problem with that: Telcos already lobbied for and won deregulation so that they don't even have to license service to other ISP now. So, they're slowly squeezing the small ISP out of the market and consolidating monopolies not only on the last mile but on ISP level as well. Oh, and the Telcos are remerging to control the backbone, ISP, and last mile, while being deregulated to get into the content business as well, reversing about 75 years of consumer protection against monopolies controlling the national scale production and distribution of media monopolies.
So yes, they do hold all the cards now, and no, there is nothing to stop them from totally anti-competitive practices so long as they ratchet it up slowly enough to keep the public unaware. Something they've done very well so far.
Gotta love the "I don't have to give a shiat because the invisible hand of the free market will take care of it" type argument after deregulation has already granted Telcos monopoly powers. Talk about clueless. Those people are the equivalent of Fundamental Evangelicals with their total lack of critical thinking and taking things on faith out of laziness.
There are some justifications for guaranteed bandwidth. For example, one could see a portion of the net being split off for VOIP use only and it would make sense to protect that from spikes in pron DLing or whatever. So yes, I can see some arguments for protected bandwidth. But this whole debate is smoke screen for a monopoly grab and deregulation. Net Neutrality should be the norm and exceptions carved out of that on a case by case basis where justified. NOT the other way around.
The loss of Net Neutrality goes way beyond that and strips every protection against monopoly on the internet. FACT: with the loss of Net Neutrality, anyone who doesn't have a contract with a Telco assuring them a chunk of bandwidth (i.e. everyone except the largest companies) no longer has any right to be on the internet and can be completly shut down. Blocking traffic is completly at the discretion of Telcos now.
What the loss of Net Neutrality does is to completely deregulate the internet and allow Telcos to shut down any site they choose. That's no exaggeration. Now, there are no consumer protections and no guidelines on what's fair and what's not in regards to filtering.
Anyone who thinks the free market is going to ensure fair competition is a real dunce. History shows the natural outcome of a completely unfettered market is an anti-competitive monopoly. That's why we had to regulate to prevent monopolies for pete's sake!
To make matters worse, other deregulation a while ago means Telco monopolies are no longer required to offer their lines service to small ISP. In other words they don't even have to share their government sanctioned monopoly on the last mile anymore. So, there goes the competitive market as small ISP are gradually squeezed out over the coming years.
This is going to lead to aggressive and highly anti-competitive Telcos running turf wars on an unfettered and unethical internet. Fair competition will vanish quickly. If for example a rival company (insert mega-corp of choice) wants to pay more to shut down your bandwidth than you can pay to buy your bandwidth, that's perfectly legal now. If Oracle for example had wanted to pay to buy People Soft's internet bandwidth to depress their stock price and ease the takeover, perfectly legal now. If MS wans to pay confidentially to hobble Linux servers or companies using them, again, perfectly legal now.
The loss of Net Neutrality means there is now no regulation and turns the internet and Telcos into monopolies capable of extorting protection money, and calling that protection: perfectly legal fees.
I really can't believe the lack of awareness and apathy on this issue from supposedly tech savvy people.