Needs a DOT NET!!! tag.

^ Wish granted.

Remember those days back in 1984 when everything made sense...

Oh... it just boggles my mind at how backward their thinking is. Apparently, they don't spend much time on the intarwebs.

It was hilarious to watch the third Republican representative (Joe Wilson) say his piece while reading off a notecard.

A) He reminded me of listening to fellow students take turns reading aloud in English class in the 5-6th grade range. Eventually you got to the one dim kid in class, that still has to use 90% of his brain to merely process the letters into words; with slight halts and stutters, and vague attempts to add inflection and emotion to the language that fail miserably.

B) His presentation makes it blatantly obvious that he has absolutely no understanding or actual personal opinion on the issue at all, he is simply parroting the lines of some lobbyist / campaign contributor.

People criticize Obama for having "teleprompter charisma"... I'd say that shows that he understands what he is speaking about enough to voice his own opinion, or at the very least that he is intelligent enough to fake it (which is still more comforting than the alternative). In that short clip, Joe Wilson came across as being only barely literate.

>> ^vaporlock:
Remember those days back in 1984 when everything made sense...


"Remember the good ol' 1980s, when things were so uncomplicated?"

Sorry, did you mean something else?

Actually, there is a part of me that says: If they own the lines, why shouldn't they control what goes over it however they want?

Of course I know all the reasons for net neutrality, such as encouraging innovation and preventing large businesses from stifling small startups. But if I owned parcel shipping service, I wouldn't want the government to tell me I couldn't charge extra for priority service. You could apply the same metaphor to any number of other services. Some amusement parks allow people to buy expensive VIP tickets that cut to the head of lines. Direct flights might cost more than a flight with a bunch of connections, and the concord was really pricey. All those examples make sense.

Why does the same thing not apply to internet service providers, except for the fact that we are accustomed to net neutrality and will be pissed if things change? I'm actually a little torn on this issue.

>> ^MaxWilder:
Actually, there is a part of me that says: If they own the lines, why shouldn't they control what goes over it however they want?
Of course I know all the reasons for net neutrality, such as encouraging innovation and preventing large businesses from stifling small startups. But if I owned parcel shipping service, I wouldn't want the government to tell me I couldn't charge extra for priority service. You could apply the same metaphor to any number of other services. Some amusement parks allow people to buy expensive VIP tickets that cut to the head of lines. Direct flights might cost more than a flight with a bunch of connections, and the concord was really pricey. All those examples make sense.
Why does the same thing not apply to internet service providers, except for the fact that we are accustomed to net neutrality and will be pissed if things change? I'm actually a little torn on this issue.


In part, it's because they want things both ways. They want to keep the special protections they get for being common carriers (i.e. they're not responsible for the content in the pipes), but they also want to be able to monitor that content and charge differently for different sources/uses. Common carriers are called that precisely because they don't differentiate among the content they carry...if they do differentiate, then by definition, they're no longer common carriers. At that point, they become liable for all the child porn and terrorist speech they transmit.

On a different tack, I shudder to think of the added complexity when they try to handle billing and routing based on both endpoints of every connection. Reliability of the internet would hit an all-time low.

*quality

Boosting this quality contribution up in the Hot Listing - declared quality by Tymbrwulf.

>> ^MilkmanDan:
It was hilarious to watch the third Republican representative (Joe Wilson) say his piece while reading off a notecard.
A) He reminded me of listening to fellow students take turns reading aloud in English class in the 5-6th grade range. Eventually you got to the one dim kid in class, that still has to use 90% of his brain to merely process the letters into words; with slight halts and stutters, and vague attempts to add inflection and emotion to the language that fail miserably.
B) His presentation makes it blatantly obvious that he has absolutely no understanding or actual personal opinion on the issue at all, he is simply parroting the lines of some lobbyist / campaign contributor.
People criticize Obama for having "teleprompter charisma"... I'd say that shows that he understands what he is speaking about enough to voice his own opinion, or at the very least that he is intelligent enough to fake it (which is still more comforting than the alternative). In that short clip, Joe Wilson came across as being only barely literate.


I was disappointed that no one yelled "you lie!"

I love how this has become a campaign against BIG SOCIALIST GOVERNMENT. I gotta hand it to the telecoms for knowing which direction to spin when the wind turns. Here's another way to spin it, BIG CORPORATE GOVERNMENT backing their moves to monopolize.

I do see some of the logic in allowing telecoms to prioritize packets, however the telecoms and big businesses in general have shown themselves to be anything but scrupulous when there's money involved. Its a situation that's ripe for abuse, and the people who want control of the reins have shown themselves more than capable of beating the horse till it dies.

>> ^MaxWilder:
Actually, there is a part of me that says: If they own the lines, why shouldn't they control what goes over it however they want?
Of course I know all the reasons for net neutrality, such as encouraging innovation and preventing large businesses from stifling small startups. But if I owned parcel shipping service, I wouldn't want the government to tell me I couldn't charge extra for priority service. You could apply the same metaphor to any number of other services. Some amusement parks allow people to buy expensive VIP tickets that cut to the head of lines. Direct flights might cost more than a flight with a bunch of connections, and the concord was really pricey. All those examples make sense.
Why does the same thing not apply to internet service providers, except for the fact that we are accustomed to net neutrality and will be pissed if things change? I'm actually a little torn on this issue.


That's because you seem to be confused about the issue.

To take your parcel service analogy and put it into the correct context, think of it not as charging an individual more for different teirs of shipping priority, but more like charging amazon.com one rate with next day delivery, and newegg.com the same rate and shipping everything ground.

When I see things like Net Neutrality being fought so hard against by the cable and telephone companies, I really start to think that if any industry needs to be taken over by the government it's them. Some countries have gone so far as to make unrestricted internet access a right of their citizenry, pushing prices down and bandwidth up. But I forget we can't do that in the US, that'd cut into the massive corporate profits and that's just plain UNAMERICAN!