Oh, great way to give propaganda to the enemy. Fucking dimwit. Why not just compare the Apache group to Al Qaeda because they're an umbrella group for "renegade" software developers like Al Qaeda is a terrorist umbrella group. In this day and age of terrorism being the new "think of the children!!!!" rallying cry for every attack on freedom, why choose the one comparison that gives a talking point to the forces who want to end freedom in their area?
I think there needs to be an intelligence meter along the lines of one of those rollercoaster "you must be this tall to get on the ride" signs for democratic participation. Anyone who seriously believes that this sort of thing exists to fight terrorism rather than monitor the public for potential signs of rebellious behavior or personalities that might one day become political rebels would fall well below the level of participating. I don't know how they could make it more obvious that their goal is social control, not bonafide anti-terrorist.
Disagree? When was the last time that you saw a terrorist on a social network like MySpace, posting hints about their desire to terrorize others? What are the odds that they would even join, since terrorism is more difficult the more exposed you are on "the grid?"
They put the content in the game, then locked it away. The ESRB did not know about this, rated it lower than it should have, and then people bought it based on the ESRB's rating, thus buying it under false pretenses. The FTC stepped in and actually did something free-market: "you will abide by the rating system that you agreed to sell your product under." Punishing fraud is one of the most basic things the government is supposed to do.
This is the company that has made a name for itself by removing right-wing blogs for "hate speech" from its index. Seems to me that it's precisely the darling of the net neutrality side that is guilty of making the ugly side of the argument, making it harder in some way to access content, a reality. It's not censorship, but it is a censor's mentality. Google has done the same with Google News like when they barred professional journalist and blogger Michelle Malkin (don't like her, but she is a published mainstream media journalist) from Google News for "not meeting editorial standards," but saw fit to allow StormFront to get indexed for a while.
Where is Google's pledge to make their fibre networks open to the public on a neutral basis? They bought up a lot of dark fibre a while ago. Where is their pledge to let people use it at fair, non-discriminatory rates for whatever protocols they want?
Why are blog hosts counted individually?
on
Apache down, IIS up
·
· Score: 3, Insightful
*.blogspot.com should be counted as together, same with typepad.com. With all of the spam blogs created to boost google rankings, these should be counted collectively so as to err on the side of caution.
I am grateful that the government doesn't act as my ISP. If they did, the Bush Administration could easily find some excuse to argue that they should be given carte blanch authority to spy on us.
Yes, Google, keep over-extending yourself as a company. Microsoft has a similar problem, but they are working hard to get this resolved. They jumped into a number of markets without any clear plan on how to make money. Google is doing precisely the same thing that Microsoft did, but they're a smaller company. If they keep this up, Microsoft may just have to sit back and wait for them to become so saturated with non-monetized services that they don't have the resources to invest in their core businesses.
Rep. Bob Goodlatte epitomizes what is wrong with Congress. He used to be my congresscritter when I was still in VA's 6th district. He runs unopposed. Literally. He's the only guy on the ballot. He represents a mostly rural district, but makes copyright issues his side issue. He's also passionately anti-hacker culture. The man is a scumbag to the nth degree because he takes large amounts of money from interests from outside of his district and pursues them from the safety of a district with no competition. He's actually what convinced me of the need for proportional representation.
A lot of the network neutrality supporters don't even understand the issue at all. Take this for example, where the NYT and a lot of bloggers think of this as an attack on the web, as though telecoms really want to block off websites instead of regulate bandwidth to things that are going to consume terabytes or more of bandwidth like hi-def video services.
The approach that would work best for assuaging free speech concerns is to beef up common carrier laws. Extend common carrier status laws to the point that any ISP or telecom that blocks legal speech in the United States loses all common carrier protection through every service it provides. Yes, make it a legal corporate death penalty statute so that the MPAA and RIAA can literally sue Verizon into irrecoverable bankrupcy through the DMCA if they start playing speech king-maker.
And here's the funny thing about the "democracy" angle. When domain names were "democratically" controlled, they were much more expensive than they are today. Democracy sucks ass at allocating resources compared to a competitive free market. I'll take my chances with the market over protections for either side, thank you.
Women are pushed into the workforce instead of being pushed into the kitchen. Instead of breaking the cycle and pushing women to rationally choose what they want, based on comparative advantages and disadvantages, things have just shifted from one sexism to another.
I'd like to call academic feminists "useful idiots" in that respect, but that'd be letting them off the hook as they have often whole-heartedly promoted the idea that women have no legitimate right to choose a traditional housewife role.
We aren't much closer to a culture where women choose the lifestyle that fits them. The pendulum has just swung from one extreme to another.
How many of these cases were privacy violations due to accidents, staff inexperience, etc.? Do you really want doctors getting in legal trouble over trivial violations their first time or a particular staffer's first time? That is a GREAT way to drive up their insurance costs which only benefits lawyers and the insurance industry. You, in turn, pay higher medical costs.
And whatever happened to innocent until proven guilty? This sounds a lot like the feminist tendency to say "she claimed she was rape, and women never lie about rape, thus she must have been raped." People get impassioned and complain all of the time for invalid reasons. People also complain out of ignorance, what they feel the law ought to be, etc. Broadcasting would be dead if every complaint sent to the FCC was taken at face value, and every slip of indecency were fined.
How about we work toward some real privacy like, I don't know, fighting to keep the DMV from selling our records, the IRS our tax records (they want to do that now), get laws passed making law enforcement DNA databases available only to the police and NEVER to insurance groups, the DoJ requiring mandatory data retention and things like that.
I bet you that they are also, down to an engineer, a company of very experienced engineers. This sort of organization would be nuts if they had a number of young engineers working for them, the types that would need more experienced people around to help them learn. Or would it make perfectly good sense to a business graduate? If they can't sink or swim, it's just that they really suck, not that they're young and inexperienced!
What would make working in an office a much more enjoyable environment is if there were fewer protections for thin-skinned people and you didn't have to feel like you had to "watch yourself" or an employee could complain like a toddler about hurt feewings to management and get you fired to avert a lawsuit. If people could be themselves more easily while working, that would help a lot.
YouTube is reportedly losing money as fast as the average dotcom in 2000. Over $1M/month now and climbing. Someone's got to find a way to monetize these services if they're going to be viable. What does Yahoo bring to this, to make it sustainable? Advertisements worth watching?
I keep reading bloggers talking about wanting net neutrality so they can have all of these nifty videos, but none of them have any idea how to monetize the services necessary to support online video applications. Take Instapundit, if Instapundit delivered a video to half of its readers a day, it would probably go through about a quarter to half a terabyte of bandwidth everyday.
What I would like to know is if there really is any money in the "amateur hour" video market. If there isn't, these services will quickly give way to professionally done content, be it from independent artists or major groups.
"Be it resolved that the legislature of the state of INSERT_STATE shall impose a fine on any vendor equal to twice the sale price of any game rated to be mature or adults only by a recognized authority within the video gaming industry for the offense of selling a game of this rating to a minor not accompanied by his or her legal guardian. In the event that the rating system should change, the rating authority shall be obliged to inform the attorney general whereby the attorney general shall take all necessary means to amend public policy to reflect the rating change. Legal guardians shall waive all right of litigation regarding the content of a game that is purchased in their presence except where the rating may have been issued due to fraudulent information delivered to the rating authority. Community decency standards shall not apply to the sale or rental of any video game, however such standards may be applied to any game rated mature (or equivalent) or higher when a public demonstration is performed."
Run for the hills! We might have to take responsibility!
Afterall, it was chemicals that created the public outrage over Waco and Ruby Ridge. Over 100 civilians were massacred at Waco. The mainstream media, acting as the official propaganda wing of the state, didn't bother to tell anyone what federal law enforcement knew: david koresh walked into town 4 days a week to go to Wal-Mart. These incidents happened because the very agencies that want to restrict your right to make a science experiment decided to "make an example" out of people with "cowboy mentalities."
To put it quite nicely, your government decided to pick a fight with armed people that might get a lot of people killed. The next time you see some politician calling for more state power, remember that. They want to make you more vulnerable to police brutality.
Most of these tragedies and outrages could be prevented if...
1) The federal government stuck to its enumerated powers, none of which include the legal power to regulate fireworks and the chemicals that go into them except in terms of interstate **sales**. 2) Cops were required to do intelligence gathering before doing a raid. Funny how our "foot soldiers in the war on crime" can't be bothered to do the dirty work before doing the "fun stuff" like aim assault rifles at middle aged scientists and 80 year old couples accused of running meth labs. 3) Cops couldn't carry any weapon that couldn't be owned without a permit by any citizen not serving prison time. There's an ugly correlation between gun control and police disrespect for everyone from poor blacks to middle class white people...
to actually believe that crock of bull "the Internet treats censorship as damage and routes around it." I think a few Chinese and Egyptian bloggers would find something morbidly out of touch with that utopian view of things.
Ever use their web builder? It's crappy and unintuitive. I can't describe it except to say that this is the most likely way that they are going to see any real money from that product as is.
In China, it's state security and public stability. In the EU it's anti-racism, who can oppose that? And in the United States it's nothing short of making America safe for democracy through "campaign finance reform." What kind of commie bastard opposes public safety, supports racism and is in favor of letting others (special interests) run our government?
--for your age and skill level. Out of college, no one should be offering you a senior level job unless you are getting a CS/SWE/CE degree as a formality after years of experience. It's better to take a "Software Engineer I" (out of V-VII) even if it's a little below your skills.
If you are expecting to be a super-elite code ninja, forget it. If you can handle the basics, and handle them pretty well, you'll be fine. The big thing is STFU and stop complaining if you're like a lot of Americans with learning something on your own. Nothing says you're not fit to be a software developer or engineer more clearly than complaining about having to teach yourself new things.
Learn one statically-typed, major language like Java, C#, C++ or C well, then learn a scripting language decently. Get familiarity with build tools beyond bullshit like notepad and manually running the compiler ever compile. You'll be using full-blown IDEs or build scripts. Learn all of the basics about databases and networking that you can.
How can things like IPTV come into being if companies like Verizon are barred from building up and reserving the capacity to provide them? Why should Google, Microsoft, etc. be allowed access to that bandwidth since it's not impeding their ability to provide their services? Not allowing the telecoms and other large ISPs to do this would akin to not allowing Google to invest in dark fibre for its own purposes. Hmmm is that the smell of hypocrisy among the slashdot crowd once again?
Both sides are being dishonest here. The content companies have no right to the entire network, and the ISPs don't want to provide the full service that they sell. There is supposed to be an implicit gentleman's agreement that if someone buys a leased line, they won't face arbitrary tolls. That's the point that a lot of talking heads can't seem to understand. They think that the content companies want to be free-riders when all they want is to be able to deliver their content at full f$%^ing speed to their customers. The "toll" is more like a warlord in Africa charging a "toll" to let legitimate businesses use the government-built roads. The customers on both ends paid for the bandwidth. If there is a problem with not making enough money, then the ISPs need to go back and rethink the wisdom of charging only $15 for broadband.
The next time you get surprised by Congress' tone deafness, remember that they can get all worked up about a colleage getting raided, but not about a 80 year old couple getting raided under obviously horrendously false pretenses. They don't care about serving the public. Their approval ratings, both parties, are starting to approach single digits. If there was ever a time that it should be obvious that we live under the rule of an unaccountable, bifactional ruling party it would be now.
The telecoms have resorted to blatantly socialist rhetoric lately. Google, Microsoft and Yahoo are "da Man" who is trying to keep the people down by "making them pay the whole bill."
WTF?! Google, Microsoft and Yahoo probably pay more per month than all broadband users in the US combined for their bandwidth. The telecoms are just trying to avoid an ugly truth: $15 DSL that is 50% the speed of a several hundred dollar T1 is not a viable business. What we need is metered bandwidth.
Metered bandwidth would be good for several reasons. First of all, it would in the long run reduce the cost of providing extremely fast service to most people because they don't use that much bandwidth. Most broadband users could easily get by on 5GB/month for $10-$15, then $0.25-$0.50/GB downstream after that. Second, it would provide a financial disincentive for people to use file sharing software for illegal reasons, thus providing the "social solution" to the "social problem" of how to handle mass copyright infringement without DRM or legislation. Third, it would distribute the costs of funding network development fairly.
If 1% of a broadband service's users are using up to 40% of the bandwidth (which Comcast has said is their problem), that's a lot of people paying to subsidize the costs of 1% enjoying the "full benefits" of the network. Why shouldn't that 1% pay for downloading 50GB,100GB (or in one guy's case, 600GB) of data?
I don't want to subsidize the infrastructure with my taxes anymore, and I don't want to pay the same rate for my ~5GB-10GB/month of bandwidth use as someone who uses 100GB+. I also don't want the government telling private businesses that they cannot reserve part of their networks for their own services. As long as they are providing you with the QoS that they advertise and contractually agree to provide you, why do you care if Verizon keeps 80% of the network for their IP TV service? If we get up to 10mbps as the standard rate, and they keep 40mbps for themselves, is that 10mbps any slower? Of course not. Your piece of the pie just keeps becoming more and more in real numbers as their network expands.
I don't want a refund. I want my money to go toward funding the FBI teams that are going after Rep. Jefferson. I want them expanded by several hundred agents and to have what happened to Jefferson to happen to the entire Congress. You want to save money? Bush the sons of bitches who spend nearly $2B on bridges to nowhere, $1B on repairing and then moving a perfectly good railroad and all of that other pork barrel crap. Sorry, they can keep my $18/year in exchange for the FBI continuing to go after these scumbags. I'd consider that some of the best $18 I've ever spent.
If they have sufficient evidence to meet a reasonable probable cause standard, why not just let them into the house to bug the device itself? There are devices out there for keyboards which have a few hundred KB of memory and that sit between the keyboard and the port on the back of the PC.
They don't need to block encryption, except to keep tabs on people that wouldn't meet the legal requirements. If they can't meet the legal requirements for a warrant to break into the suspect's house and bug them, then chances are the person hasn't committed a crime.
Slashdot Mirror
Oh, great way to give propaganda to the enemy. Fucking dimwit. Why not just compare the Apache group to Al Qaeda because they're an umbrella group for "renegade" software developers like Al Qaeda is a terrorist umbrella group. In this day and age of terrorism being the new "think of the children!!!!" rallying cry for every attack on freedom, why choose the one comparison that gives a talking point to the forces who want to end freedom in their area?
I think there needs to be an intelligence meter along the lines of one of those rollercoaster "you must be this tall to get on the ride" signs for democratic participation. Anyone who seriously believes that this sort of thing exists to fight terrorism rather than monitor the public for potential signs of rebellious behavior or personalities that might one day become political rebels would fall well below the level of participating. I don't know how they could make it more obvious that their goal is social control, not bonafide anti-terrorist.
Disagree? When was the last time that you saw a terrorist on a social network like MySpace, posting hints about their desire to terrorize others? What are the odds that they would even join, since terrorism is more difficult the more exposed you are on "the grid?"
You can buy faster broadband. Why aren't all of the people paying $15/month griping that their bandwidth is less than those paying $45/month?
They put the content in the game, then locked it away. The ESRB did not know about this, rated it lower than it should have, and then people bought it based on the ESRB's rating, thus buying it under false pretenses. The FTC stepped in and actually did something free-market: "you will abide by the rating system that you agreed to sell your product under." Punishing fraud is one of the most basic things the government is supposed to do.
This is the company that has made a name for itself by removing right-wing blogs for "hate speech" from its index. Seems to me that it's precisely the darling of the net neutrality side that is guilty of making the ugly side of the argument, making it harder in some way to access content, a reality. It's not censorship, but it is a censor's mentality. Google has done the same with Google News like when they barred professional journalist and blogger Michelle Malkin (don't like her, but she is a published mainstream media journalist) from Google News for "not meeting editorial standards," but saw fit to allow StormFront to get indexed for a while.
Where is Google's pledge to make their fibre networks open to the public on a neutral basis? They bought up a lot of dark fibre a while ago. Where is their pledge to let people use it at fair, non-discriminatory rates for whatever protocols they want?
*.blogspot.com should be counted as together, same with typepad.com. With all of the spam blogs created to boost google rankings, these should be counted collectively so as to err on the side of caution.
I am grateful that the government doesn't act as my ISP. If they did, the Bush Administration could easily find some excuse to argue that they should be given carte blanch authority to spy on us.
Yes, Google, keep over-extending yourself as a company. Microsoft has a similar problem, but they are working hard to get this resolved. They jumped into a number of markets without any clear plan on how to make money. Google is doing precisely the same thing that Microsoft did, but they're a smaller company. If they keep this up, Microsoft may just have to sit back and wait for them to become so saturated with non-monetized services that they don't have the resources to invest in their core businesses.
Rep. Bob Goodlatte epitomizes what is wrong with Congress. He used to be my congresscritter when I was still in VA's 6th district. He runs unopposed. Literally. He's the only guy on the ballot. He represents a mostly rural district, but makes copyright issues his side issue. He's also passionately anti-hacker culture. The man is a scumbag to the nth degree because he takes large amounts of money from interests from outside of his district and pursues them from the safety of a district with no competition. He's actually what convinced me of the need for proportional representation.
A lot of the network neutrality supporters don't even understand the issue at all. Take this for example, where the NYT and a lot of bloggers think of this as an attack on the web, as though telecoms really want to block off websites instead of regulate bandwidth to things that are going to consume terabytes or more of bandwidth like hi-def video services.
The approach that would work best for assuaging free speech concerns is to beef up common carrier laws. Extend common carrier status laws to the point that any ISP or telecom that blocks legal speech in the United States loses all common carrier protection through every service it provides. Yes, make it a legal corporate death penalty statute so that the MPAA and RIAA can literally sue Verizon into irrecoverable bankrupcy through the DMCA if they start playing speech king-maker.
And here's the funny thing about the "democracy" angle. When domain names were "democratically" controlled, they were much more expensive than they are today. Democracy sucks ass at allocating resources compared to a competitive free market. I'll take my chances with the market over protections for either side, thank you.
Women are pushed into the workforce instead of being pushed into the kitchen. Instead of breaking the cycle and pushing women to rationally choose what they want, based on comparative advantages and disadvantages, things have just shifted from one sexism to another.
I'd like to call academic feminists "useful idiots" in that respect, but that'd be letting them off the hook as they have often whole-heartedly promoted the idea that women have no legitimate right to choose a traditional housewife role.
We aren't much closer to a culture where women choose the lifestyle that fits them. The pendulum has just swung from one extreme to another.
How many of these cases were privacy violations due to accidents, staff inexperience, etc.? Do you really want doctors getting in legal trouble over trivial violations their first time or a particular staffer's first time? That is a GREAT way to drive up their insurance costs which only benefits lawyers and the insurance industry. You, in turn, pay higher medical costs.
And whatever happened to innocent until proven guilty? This sounds a lot like the feminist tendency to say "she claimed she was rape, and women never lie about rape, thus she must have been raped." People get impassioned and complain all of the time for invalid reasons. People also complain out of ignorance, what they feel the law ought to be, etc. Broadcasting would be dead if every complaint sent to the FCC was taken at face value, and every slip of indecency were fined.
How about we work toward some real privacy like, I don't know, fighting to keep the DMV from selling our records, the IRS our tax records (they want to do that now), get laws passed making law enforcement DNA databases available only to the police and NEVER to insurance groups, the DoJ requiring mandatory data retention and things like that.
I bet you that they are also, down to an engineer, a company of very experienced engineers. This sort of organization would be nuts if they had a number of young engineers working for them, the types that would need more experienced people around to help them learn. Or would it make perfectly good sense to a business graduate? If they can't sink or swim, it's just that they really suck, not that they're young and inexperienced!
What would make working in an office a much more enjoyable environment is if there were fewer protections for thin-skinned people and you didn't have to feel like you had to "watch yourself" or an employee could complain like a toddler about hurt feewings to management and get you fired to avert a lawsuit. If people could be themselves more easily while working, that would help a lot.
YouTube is reportedly losing money as fast as the average dotcom in 2000. Over $1M/month now and climbing. Someone's got to find a way to monetize these services if they're going to be viable. What does Yahoo bring to this, to make it sustainable? Advertisements worth watching?
I keep reading bloggers talking about wanting net neutrality so they can have all of these nifty videos, but none of them have any idea how to monetize the services necessary to support online video applications. Take Instapundit, if Instapundit delivered a video to half of its readers a day, it would probably go through about a quarter to half a terabyte of bandwidth everyday.
What I would like to know is if there really is any money in the "amateur hour" video market. If there isn't, these services will quickly give way to professionally done content, be it from independent artists or major groups.
"Be it resolved that the legislature of the state of INSERT_STATE shall impose a fine on any vendor equal to twice the sale price of any game rated to be mature or adults only by a recognized authority within the video gaming industry for the offense of selling a game of this rating to a minor not accompanied by his or her legal guardian. In the event that the rating system should change, the rating authority shall be obliged to inform the attorney general whereby the attorney general shall take all necessary means to amend public policy to reflect the rating change. Legal guardians shall waive all right of litigation regarding the content of a game that is purchased in their presence except where the rating may have been issued due to fraudulent information delivered to the rating authority. Community decency standards shall not apply to the sale or rental of any video game, however such standards may be applied to any game rated mature (or equivalent) or higher when a public demonstration is performed."
Run for the hills! We might have to take responsibility!
Afterall, it was chemicals that created the public outrage over Waco and Ruby Ridge. Over 100 civilians were massacred at Waco. The mainstream media, acting as the official propaganda wing of the state, didn't bother to tell anyone what federal law enforcement knew: david koresh walked into town 4 days a week to go to Wal-Mart. These incidents happened because the very agencies that want to restrict your right to make a science experiment decided to "make an example" out of people with "cowboy mentalities."
To put it quite nicely, your government decided to pick a fight with armed people that might get a lot of people killed. The next time you see some politician calling for more state power, remember that. They want to make you more vulnerable to police brutality.
Most of these tragedies and outrages could be prevented if...
1) The federal government stuck to its enumerated powers, none of which include the legal power to regulate fireworks and the chemicals that go into them except in terms of interstate **sales**.
2) Cops were required to do intelligence gathering before doing a raid. Funny how our "foot soldiers in the war on crime" can't be bothered to do the dirty work before doing the "fun stuff" like aim assault rifles at middle aged scientists and 80 year old couples accused of running meth labs.
3) Cops couldn't carry any weapon that couldn't be owned without a permit by any citizen not serving prison time. There's an ugly correlation between gun control and police disrespect for everyone from poor blacks to middle class white people...
to actually believe that crock of bull "the Internet treats censorship as damage and routes around it." I think a few Chinese and Egyptian bloggers would find something morbidly out of touch with that utopian view of things.
Ever use their web builder? It's crappy and unintuitive. I can't describe it except to say that this is the most likely way that they are going to see any real money from that product as is.
In China, it's state security and public stability. In the EU it's anti-racism, who can oppose that? And in the United States it's nothing short of making America safe for democracy through "campaign finance reform." What kind of commie bastard opposes public safety, supports racism and is in favor of letting others (special interests) run our government?
--for your age and skill level. Out of college, no one should be offering you a senior level job unless you are getting a CS/SWE/CE degree as a formality after years of experience. It's better to take a "Software Engineer I" (out of V-VII) even if it's a little below your skills.
If you are expecting to be a super-elite code ninja, forget it. If you can handle the basics, and handle them pretty well, you'll be fine. The big thing is STFU and stop complaining if you're like a lot of Americans with learning something on your own. Nothing says you're not fit to be a software developer or engineer more clearly than complaining about having to teach yourself new things.
Learn one statically-typed, major language like Java, C#, C++ or C well, then learn a scripting language decently. Get familiarity with build tools beyond bullshit like notepad and manually running the compiler ever compile. You'll be using full-blown IDEs or build scripts. Learn all of the basics about databases and networking that you can.
How can things like IPTV come into being if companies like Verizon are barred from building up and reserving the capacity to provide them? Why should Google, Microsoft, etc. be allowed access to that bandwidth since it's not impeding their ability to provide their services? Not allowing the telecoms and other large ISPs to do this would akin to not allowing Google to invest in dark fibre for its own purposes. Hmmm is that the smell of hypocrisy among the slashdot crowd once again?
Both sides are being dishonest here. The content companies have no right to the entire network, and the ISPs don't want to provide the full service that they sell. There is supposed to be an implicit gentleman's agreement that if someone buys a leased line, they won't face arbitrary tolls. That's the point that a lot of talking heads can't seem to understand. They think that the content companies want to be free-riders when all they want is to be able to deliver their content at full f$%^ing speed to their customers. The "toll" is more like a warlord in Africa charging a "toll" to let legitimate businesses use the government-built roads. The customers on both ends paid for the bandwidth. If there is a problem with not making enough money, then the ISPs need to go back and rethink the wisdom of charging only $15 for broadband.
The next time you get surprised by Congress' tone deafness, remember that they can get all worked up about a colleage getting raided, but not about a 80 year old couple getting raided under obviously horrendously false pretenses. They don't care about serving the public. Their approval ratings, both parties, are starting to approach single digits. If there was ever a time that it should be obvious that we live under the rule of an unaccountable, bifactional ruling party it would be now.
The telecoms have resorted to blatantly socialist rhetoric lately. Google, Microsoft and Yahoo are "da Man" who is trying to keep the people down by "making them pay the whole bill."
WTF?! Google, Microsoft and Yahoo probably pay more per month than all broadband users in the US combined for their bandwidth. The telecoms are just trying to avoid an ugly truth: $15 DSL that is 50% the speed of a several hundred dollar T1 is not a viable business. What we need is metered bandwidth.
Metered bandwidth would be good for several reasons. First of all, it would in the long run reduce the cost of providing extremely fast service to most people because they don't use that much bandwidth. Most broadband users could easily get by on 5GB/month for $10-$15, then $0.25-$0.50/GB downstream after that. Second, it would provide a financial disincentive for people to use file sharing software for illegal reasons, thus providing the "social solution" to the "social problem" of how to handle mass copyright infringement without DRM or legislation. Third, it would distribute the costs of funding network development fairly.
If 1% of a broadband service's users are using up to 40% of the bandwidth (which Comcast has said is their problem), that's a lot of people paying to subsidize the costs of 1% enjoying the "full benefits" of the network. Why shouldn't that 1% pay for downloading 50GB,100GB (or in one guy's case, 600GB) of data?
I don't want to subsidize the infrastructure with my taxes anymore, and I don't want to pay the same rate for my ~5GB-10GB/month of bandwidth use as someone who uses 100GB+. I also don't want the government telling private businesses that they cannot reserve part of their networks for their own services. As long as they are providing you with the QoS that they advertise and contractually agree to provide you, why do you care if Verizon keeps 80% of the network for their IP TV service? If we get up to 10mbps as the standard rate, and they keep 40mbps for themselves, is that 10mbps any slower? Of course not. Your piece of the pie just keeps becoming more and more in real numbers as their network expands.
I don't want a refund. I want my money to go toward funding the FBI teams that are going after Rep. Jefferson. I want them expanded by several hundred agents and to have what happened to Jefferson to happen to the entire Congress. You want to save money? Bush the sons of bitches who spend nearly $2B on bridges to nowhere, $1B on repairing and then moving a perfectly good railroad and all of that other pork barrel crap. Sorry, they can keep my $18/year in exchange for the FBI continuing to go after these scumbags. I'd consider that some of the best $18 I've ever spent.
If they have sufficient evidence to meet a reasonable probable cause standard, why not just let them into the house to bug the device itself? There are devices out there for keyboards which have a few hundred KB of memory and that sit between the keyboard and the port on the back of the PC.
They don't need to block encryption, except to keep tabs on people that wouldn't meet the legal requirements. If they can't meet the legal requirements for a warrant to break into the suspect's house and bug them, then chances are the person hasn't committed a crime.