
So long Internet... it was nice knowing you
#1
Posted 24 April 2014 - 01:38 AM
I'm surprised I'm the first to post this today... this is quite possibly the worst news this nation has seen in a decade or more. I guess the one silver lining is that this isn't a court ruling or even a law. Just an agency making a ferociously bad policy decision, which can (and dog willing will) be altered in time - hopefully sooner rather than later.
I think most people simply don't understand what the problem is, but I'm surprised that Obama isn't executive ordering the crap out of this biatch. If *he doesn't get its significance, then we really are doomed.
The Deaf have lost their sense of "hearing";
Republicans have lost their sense of "common".
#2
Posted 24 April 2014 - 07:38 AM
GOP delenda est.
Resist!
#3
Posted 24 April 2014 - 07:48 AM
I know this is probably way too simplistic, so I look forward to getting edumacated.
"Anyone who has the power to make you believe absurdities has the power to make you commit injustices" Voltaire
#4
Posted 24 April 2014 - 07:59 AM
#5
Posted 24 April 2014 - 08:01 AM
Traveler, on 24 April 2014 - 07:48 AM, said:
I know this is probably way too simplistic, so I look forward to getting edumacated.
My understanding is that the pipes aren't intended to get bigger, just services that don't pay get throttled back at the inlet to allow the paying services a larger share of what bandwidth exists.
GOP delenda est.
Resist!
#6
Posted 24 April 2014 - 08:04 AM
"Anyone who has the power to make you believe absurdities has the power to make you commit injustices" Voltaire
#7
Posted 24 April 2014 - 08:12 AM
Traveler, on 24 April 2014 - 08:04 AM, said:
I think the greater concern is for future competitors to Netflix or World of Warcraft, but it's certainly possible that if your neighbors on the same service all stream movies every night you might find yourself paying for broadband and enjoying dialup throughput.
GOP delenda est.
Resist!
#9
Posted 24 April 2014 - 10:25 AM
In the cities this is a different animal. Most homes in cities can get to the internet from telephone companies, CLECs, ISPs, MSOs, Satellite and wireless systems. These are NOT heavily subsidized since they are low cost areas for the service providers. If they invest in the infrastructure to compete for your business, why should they have no say in what traffic goes over their pipes? The biggest abuser of this is Netflix, google, Microsoft and lately Apple. Each of these content providers pay nothing to the service provider yet force them to get bigger and faster pipes and networks to keep up with the bandwidth demand. If the model allows for the access provider to also own content, then the access provider should be able to give his own content preference. If the model is to have dumb pipes and let everyone subsidize the maintenance of these pipes like a utility model then the provider should treat all traffic the same.
But I simplified it too much. This is a really, really complex issue and gets into the weeds of technology quickly. I really don't see political speech as a factor here, its about making money. And who is going to pay? Either all of us via a tax, the content guys via a fee for use, the customer via some form of sales packages or the telco out of their own pocket with no way to recoup the money from anyone.
Kenneth Boulding
"A person who reads books lives a thousand lives. A person who never reads lives only one"
George Martin
"Is that a real poncho or a Sears poncho?"
Zappa
"and let not mankind bogart love"
Willie Nelson and Colbert
#10
Posted 24 April 2014 - 10:31 AM
Sure does look like the bait and switch.

Edited by Traveler, 24 April 2014 - 10:39 AM.
"Anyone who has the power to make you believe absurdities has the power to make you commit injustices" Voltaire
#11
Posted 24 April 2014 - 11:21 AM
— Fran Lebowitz
“One of the saddest lessons of history is this: If we've been bamboozled long enough, we tend to reject any evidence of the bamboozle. We’re no longer interested in finding out the truth. The bamboozle has captured us. It's simply too painful to acknowledge, even to ourselves, that we’ve been taken. Once you give a charlatan power over you, you almost never get it back.”
— Carl Sagan
Pray for Trump: Psalm 109:8
"Science is more than a body of knowledge; it is a way of thinking. I have a foreboding of an America in my children's or grandchildren's time - when the United States is a service and information economy; when nearly all the key manufacturing industries have slipped away to other countries; when awesome technological powers arc in the hands of a very few, and no one representing the public interest can even grasp the issues; when the people have lost the ability to set their own agendas or knowledgeably question those in authority; when, clutching our crystals and nervously consulting our horoscopes, our critical faculties in decline, unable to distinguish between what feels good and what's true, we slide, almost without noticing, back into superstition and darkness.”
— Carl Sagan
The Demon-Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark
1995
“As democracy is perfected, the office of president represents, more and more closely, the inner soul of the people. On some great and glorious day the plain folks of the land will reach their heart's desire at last and the White House will be adorned by a downright moron.”
— H.L. Mencken
On Politics: A Carnival of Buncombe
“The test of our progress is not whether we add more to the abundance of those who have much; it is whether we provide enough for those who have too little.”
— Franklin Delano Roosevelt
Second inaugural address January, 1937
#12
Posted 24 April 2014 - 11:37 AM
Traveler, on 24 April 2014 - 10:31 AM, said:
Sure does look like the bait and switch.
Meaning, ISP's will want to follow that awful cable channel model. How certain are they that this would be enabled?
I'd be all for charging by bandwidth use above some threshold (like for Netflix) as in a sense that kind of stuff *is* an abuse (a sentiment that infuriates my IT buddy) if they can leave the rest alone. Can the FCC consider that?
I guess it's inevitable Netflix and the like would come along, but it goes to show you what happens when people lean way heavily on a good that's in the public sphere. And I don't think the right answer is that upgrades in the infrastructure should be so continual, and continually rapid, to enable anything so ah-ha the fault is all on the provider. *Somebody's* got to pay for that infrastructure. So here we are ...
It did happen here. - Banty 11/9/2016
#13
Posted 24 April 2014 - 12:50 PM
— Fran Lebowitz
“One of the saddest lessons of history is this: If we've been bamboozled long enough, we tend to reject any evidence of the bamboozle. We’re no longer interested in finding out the truth. The bamboozle has captured us. It's simply too painful to acknowledge, even to ourselves, that we’ve been taken. Once you give a charlatan power over you, you almost never get it back.”
— Carl Sagan
Pray for Trump: Psalm 109:8
"Science is more than a body of knowledge; it is a way of thinking. I have a foreboding of an America in my children's or grandchildren's time - when the United States is a service and information economy; when nearly all the key manufacturing industries have slipped away to other countries; when awesome technological powers arc in the hands of a very few, and no one representing the public interest can even grasp the issues; when the people have lost the ability to set their own agendas or knowledgeably question those in authority; when, clutching our crystals and nervously consulting our horoscopes, our critical faculties in decline, unable to distinguish between what feels good and what's true, we slide, almost without noticing, back into superstition and darkness.”
— Carl Sagan
The Demon-Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark
1995
“As democracy is perfected, the office of president represents, more and more closely, the inner soul of the people. On some great and glorious day the plain folks of the land will reach their heart's desire at last and the White House will be adorned by a downright moron.”
— H.L. Mencken
On Politics: A Carnival of Buncombe
“The test of our progress is not whether we add more to the abundance of those who have much; it is whether we provide enough for those who have too little.”
— Franklin Delano Roosevelt
Second inaugural address January, 1937
#14
Posted 24 April 2014 - 12:52 PM
I'm being only mildly hyperbolic. I am having a hard time thinking of a government decision in the last couple of decades worse than this one (citizens united? maybe?)
The Deaf have lost their sense of "hearing";
Republicans have lost their sense of "common".
#15
Posted 24 April 2014 - 12:54 PM
Signed Comcast.
GOP delenda est.
Resist!
#16
Posted 24 April 2014 - 01:13 PM
Sinan, on 24 April 2014 - 10:25 AM, said:
Say wha??
We the people will end up paying. It's either us via tax, us via the content guys passing along their expenses to us, us by purchasing those sales packages, or us when the telco passes along their expenses to us. It will all end up as another way to pull more money upward.
How can I be expected to distinguish BS from reality when so much of my reality is utter BS?!
#17
Posted 24 April 2014 - 01:15 PM
drdredel, on 24 April 2014 - 12:52 PM, said:
I'm being only mildly hyperbolic. I am having a hard time thinking of a government decision in the last couple of decades worse than this one (citizens united? maybe?)
Look, I am all-for NN but the fact of the matter is that there are actual issues here that infrastructure providers need addressed. Maybe the best way to raise public awareness about this and get these things fixed is by having consumers actually get hit with these costs in a measurable way. This isn't even a law or a court ruling, it is just a regulatory decision.
The clever banner Traveler posted above might seems like some dystopic vision of the future but flat-rate metered Internet use is actually something fairly sensible. I don't like the idea of all this deal-cutting for content providers stuff either, but this is not a religious crusade.
#18
Posted 24 April 2014 - 01:15 PM
— Fran Lebowitz
“One of the saddest lessons of history is this: If we've been bamboozled long enough, we tend to reject any evidence of the bamboozle. We’re no longer interested in finding out the truth. The bamboozle has captured us. It's simply too painful to acknowledge, even to ourselves, that we’ve been taken. Once you give a charlatan power over you, you almost never get it back.”
— Carl Sagan
Pray for Trump: Psalm 109:8
"Science is more than a body of knowledge; it is a way of thinking. I have a foreboding of an America in my children's or grandchildren's time - when the United States is a service and information economy; when nearly all the key manufacturing industries have slipped away to other countries; when awesome technological powers arc in the hands of a very few, and no one representing the public interest can even grasp the issues; when the people have lost the ability to set their own agendas or knowledgeably question those in authority; when, clutching our crystals and nervously consulting our horoscopes, our critical faculties in decline, unable to distinguish between what feels good and what's true, we slide, almost without noticing, back into superstition and darkness.”
— Carl Sagan
The Demon-Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark
1995
“As democracy is perfected, the office of president represents, more and more closely, the inner soul of the people. On some great and glorious day the plain folks of the land will reach their heart's desire at last and the White House will be adorned by a downright moron.”
— H.L. Mencken
On Politics: A Carnival of Buncombe
“The test of our progress is not whether we add more to the abundance of those who have much; it is whether we provide enough for those who have too little.”
— Franklin Delano Roosevelt
Second inaugural address January, 1937
#19
Posted 24 April 2014 - 01:19 PM
HockeyDon, on 24 April 2014 - 01:13 PM, said:
We the people will end up paying. It's either us via tax, us via the content guys passing along their expenses to us, us by purchasing those sales packages, or us when the telco passes along their expenses to us. It will all end up as another way to pull more money upward.
1 user(s) are reading this topic
0 members, 1 guests, 0 anonymous users