[quote]usmccds423 wrote:
I get that, I was just bustin your chops a little. It just seems to me that coming from one end of the spectrum (how is the government going to fuck this up this time) is just as counter productive as the opposite end (government is always the answer). [/quote]
Counter productive? I guess, maybe. But one approach prevents shit like Patriot Act and other losses of freedom, the other ushers that shit right in.
I see one as inherently less dangerous.
[quote]countingbeans wrote:
[quote]usmccds423 wrote:
I get that, I was just bustin your chops a little. It just seems to me that coming from one end of the spectrum (how is the government going to fuck this up this time) is just as counter productive as the opposite end (government is always the answer). [/quote]
Counter productive? I guess, maybe. But one approach prevents shit like Patriot Act and other losses of freedom, the other ushers that shit right in.
I see one as inherently less dangerous. [/quote]
That approach can just as easily stone wall needed legislation simply because it’s the government doing the regulating.
[quote]usmccds423 wrote:
[quote]countingbeans wrote:
[quote]usmccds423 wrote:
I get that, I was just bustin your chops a little. It just seems to me that coming from one end of the spectrum (how is the government going to fuck this up this time) is just as counter productive as the opposite end (government is always the answer). [/quote]
Counter productive? I guess, maybe. But one approach prevents shit like Patriot Act and other losses of freedom, the other ushers that shit right in.
I see one as inherently less dangerous. [/quote]
That approach can just as easily stone wall needed legislation simply because it’s the government doing the regulating. [/quote]
Well, given the current culture in this country, and the path our government has taken for the last, say 200 years, there very little doubt in my mind we won’t be regulating everything that needs to be regulation and even stuff that doesn’t. So I consider my opinion/approach the minority…
I’m not worried about anything getting blocked, lol.
[quote]MattyG35 wrote:
[quote]SexMachine wrote:
[quote] MattyG35 wrote:
Also, I don’t think having fission/fusion knowledge in the public domain is dangerous. To have the resources to do anything with that would negate the fact that it is in the public sphere
[/quote]
It was a thought experiment to convey the intention of esotericism. Perhaps a better example would be a recipe for a biological weapon made from readily available, everyday materials. I would consider it legitimate for such information to be restricted. Once you concede that some knowledge is dangerous and needs to be restricted, you then have to consider what kinds of knowledge, who should do the restricting and how, who should watch the watchmen(checks and balances/independent oversight), who should be initiated into esoteric knowledge, the responsibilities and duties of the initiates. And all of that comes back to legitimate authority, where it resides and how power is derived from it. Those are metaphysical questions. But regardless of the ultimate source of authority, its specific legitimacy or lack thereof in a particular case, the principle of absolute freedom in the pursuit of truth is at best an unrealisable ideal and at worst an existential threat in and of itself.[/quote]
If it was readily available, then the point is moot.[/quote]
The recipe wasn’t available. The recipe is the knowledge that should legitimately be suppressed.
Ideally, I think the internet should be completely rolled back. Completely restrict its access with a select few using it for essential commerce and academia. Globalisation and the internet are spiritually regressive forces of modernity(nihilism).
[quote]SexMachine wrote:
Ideally, I think the internet should be completely rolled back. Completely restrict its access with a select few using it for essential commerce and academia. Globalisation and the internet are spiritually regressive forces of modernity(nihilism).[/quote]
You don’t really believe you’ll be one of those “select few” do you?
The 'select few" will be the highly capable sociopaths that don’t spend time on internet forums but instead spend 80-100 hours per week building their personal productivity to maximize the violence on others.
Regarding the comments that “conservatives earn their gov’t money”. I think that statement is a little too broad.
I hope its clear from my shitty little drawing that many businesses have simply made getting gov’t contracts their business goal. From their initial lobbying investment (if it’s even necessary) they get a much larger return. From this government officials have simply bought themselves with their own money.
Let’s look at the largest government contractors
Lockheed martin - ~$36B from government contracts, ~$45B total revenue, 80% from government
Boeing - ~$19B from government contracts, $~87B total revenue, ~21% from gov’t
Northropp Grumman - ~$17B from gov’t contracts, ~$25B total revenue, ~68% from gov’t
General Dynamics - ~$15B from gov’t contracts, ~$32B total, ~50% from gov’t
Raytheon - ~$15B from gov’t contracts, ~$24B total, ~62.5% from gov’t
So from this we see that many companies get a good portion of their revenue from government contracts.
So my question is, if the government is your only, or primary/majority customer, are you really a business?
lol, ok SM, I hope you’re joking. You know that saying about going full retard, right?
[quote]tedro wrote:
[quote]TooHuman wrote:
I’m not sure where we are disagreeing. I think you might have assumed that I thought that treating ISP’s like other utilities would be a resounding success because of the their success of water, etc…
That’s not what i meant at all. Government takeover of “utilities” has been a disaster and will be always and forever.
Imagine a future where they are able to buy votes by providing “free” internet access to “underprivileged classes”.
THAT is where this is going.[/quote]
No worries, I understood your post and mostly agree. My point is that despite the current regulatory environment, ISP’s ARE competetive.[/quote]
There’s probably room to clarify what specifically you and I mean by ISP here.
Their are intermediary ISP’s that make up the biggest part of the internet like L3 that are competitive more so than the “last mile” ISP’s like Comcast, verizon, etc… which are relatively less competitive but are being challenged by smaller regional ISP’s that are unraveling the regulatory stranglehold slowly but consistently.
[quote]corndiggity wrote:
I think many people may be confusing ISPs with hosting providers. Joe Porn doesn’t pay ISPs any money. They likely pay a hosting service money for use of their servers and bandwidth. Someone like Netflix may own their own servers and pay for domain rights and whatnot.
ISPs simply provide customers with access to content. Many ISPs though are also in competition with content providers like Netflix. So they want to be able to limit netflix’s availability so people are forced to use their television services…
The idea behind net-neutrality is to stop the things many of you are worried about.
It is still more regulations though…[/quote]
The stated purpose of “net neutrality” is actually irrelevant because of regulatory capture. Moving it to title 2 will have exactly the opposite of its stated effect only you will have more participation from the likes of Netflix and google in the lobbying process which doesn’t help anyone who isn’t a shareholder.
[quote]TooHuman wrote:
You don’t really believe you’ll be one of those “select few” do you?
[/quote]
One’s position in the natural hierarchy is not what it is ultimately important. What is ultimately important is man’s spiritual transcendence which has nothing to do with his level of comfort, earthly possessions or position in life. Besides, I was talking about ideally and I’m not an idealist. I’m a realist. I know that modernity will carry on its inevitable course and that the “social cycle” cannot be reversed.
[quote]MattyG35 wrote:
lol, ok SM, I hope you’re joking. You know that saying about going full retard, right?[/quote]
lol, I was thinking the same thing.
[quote]pushharder wrote:
[quote]Mufasa wrote:
“…Conservatives tend to make money off of the government by EARNING IT…”
Wait…are you guys ready for this?
Wait…wait…
“…lolz…”
Mufasa[/quote]
I’m a contractor who makes money off the government by EARNING IT. And there’s nothing funny about it.
If you don’t believe me then bring your ass out to the northern Great Plains this week and I will show you. We’re short a couple of men precisely because there are too many lazy asses who are sitting home “…lolzing…” and waiting for their government checks.
Bring your insulated coveralls. Don’t bother bringing fucking mittens because you won’t have time to stand around with hands that aren’t busy doing something that requires your fingers working on something.
By the time you leave (which probably will be sometime during Day 1) you will no longer think conservatives don’t earn their money.
[/quote]
Well obviously you’re adding value independantly of whether you were doing it through a government contract or not.
I think you would agree that if you had direct access to the client’s instead of having to work through the government as a middle man, you could provide even more value and everyone would be even better off.
[quote]usmccds423 wrote:
[quote]MattyG35 wrote:
lol, ok SM, I hope you’re joking. You know that saying about going full retard, right?[/quote]
lol, I was thinking the same thing. [/quote]
As someone who shoots the shit with us idiots as much as he does, I’m going to go out on a limb and assume he is speaking from a purely ideological and impractical perspective…
Maybe I’m wrong.
[quote]usmccds423 wrote:
[quote]countingbeans wrote:
[quote]usmccds423 wrote:
[quote]countingbeans wrote:
So you guys are saying it takes the same amount of resources for Comcast to transmit an HD at a speed that prevents buffering, to 3-4 million users, at hones, for 2 hours straight, as it does to load a single facebook timeline at the same speed?[/quote]
No, what I’m saying is that an ISP shouldn’t be able to manipulate the speed at which the resources are provided. I agree they should absolutely be able to charge for the volume of resources used.
[/quote]
So on a Wednesday night when 35 million people are watching TRON in HD from netflicks, the ISP can’t prioritize Netflix so their customers are happy?
Yeah, sounds just like the conditions government would create. [/quote]
No.
Comcast is required to provide the service it is contractually required to provide. If they say 50mb/s, they have to provide 50mb/s regardless of what it is for.
I should get what I pay for no matter what I am doing on the internet. [/quote]
You don’t have a contract that requires them to provide AT 50mb/s. As far as I know, that’s never been the case. It even says it on your graphic: “UP TO 50mb/s”. Which means you could, at any time, be receiving at 30, 20, 10.
If the traffic through your neighborhood is high, your speeds will drop. Best case is 50. I would bet most people don’t ever get the fastest they pay for simply due to the language and the ISPs don’t have to provide at those speeds.
I haven’t read much about this topic in a while. When I initially heard about it, what I read was more about cable companies trying to tier their internet service to users due to the fact that people were getting their TV from streaming and other sources and dropping their cable subscriptions.
The tiers would be like this: Simple browsing would cast so much. If you wanted to access You Tube, you would have to pay a specific fee. If you wanted to access Netflix as well, you would then pay even more.
This is all to recoup losses due to dropped cable subscriptions. ISPs not charging for use of the internet at certain speeds, but charging HOW and what you access by tiered subscriptions.
What I see you all discussing sounds completely different that what I had read in the past.
[quote]MattyG35 wrote:
lol, ok SM, I hope you’re joking. You know that saying about going full retard, right?[/quote]
I know realistically it cannot be done in any society today, but ideally scientific and metaphysical knowledge would be withheld from the masses. This is not a new or even particularly radical idea. Plato’s Republic explains the need for esotericism. It becomes even more important in the postmodern age. Certain types of knowledge, when widely revealed lead to the annihilation of civilisations. The Enlightenment and with it the industrial revolution and organised nihilism led to the collapse of European civilisation. That is the metaphysical basis of the authentic right. The old right or authentic right opposes modernity which is a nihilistic force. It is the anti-God force. Or what some would call “evil” although “chaos” is a better description.
If you read nothing else of my copypasta, read the last 5 paragraphs.
President Barack Obama recently came out in favor of both “net neutrality” and the FCC changing the way that Internet service providers, or ISPs, are regulated. Shortly thereafter, Sen. Ted Cruz opined “‘Net Neutrality’ is Obamacare for the Internet; the Internet should not operate at the speed of government.” Obama’s and Cruz’s statements fed into the popular misconception that the proposed FCC reclassification is the same thing as net neutrality. It’s not. The policies are distinct, though both are bad ideas.
What Net Neutrality Is and Is Not
Net neutrality is about how traffic flows through the Internet. When someone sends a message over the Internet, it gets broken up into tiny bits called “packets.” Each packet gets passed around from node to node, eventually arriving at its destination. It’s like if you tore up a letter, put the parts in different envelopes, and then mailed each of them separately. When the packages arrive at their destination, they’re reassembled in the proper order so you can view the content.
Net neutrality is a policy that mandates that all packets be treated the same regardless or source, destination, or content, with very limited exceptions for traffic that’s illegal, malicious, or unwanted.
Sometimes people use “net neutrality” to refer to a whole swath of policy ideas that are not net neutrality. For example, some people think it’s unfair that Internet speeds are usually faster in urban areas than in rural areas where there hasn’t been as much investment in infrastructure, arguing for “net neutrality” as a solution.
Title II Regulation
To address perceived problems like slower access in rural areas, some people have advocated changing the way ISPs are regulated. Under Title II regulation, part of the Communications Act of 1934, in addition to a slew of other regulatory burdens, ISPs could be subjected to universal service requirements. That means they would be required to ameliorate bottlenecks caused by comparatively slow local infrastructure. Just like telephone companies are required to wire up every house more or less regardless of cost, ISPs would be required to bring all infrastructure up to a minimum standard. Let’s be clear about somethingâ??it makes no economic sense from a society-wide perspective to make such a large investment to serve so few people. It’s a handout to rural Internet consumers, pure and simple.
In exchange for the added regulatory burdens, the FCC has the power to set prices at a level that allows ISPs to make money. If that power were exercised, the cost of Internet access would no longer be subject to market forces. This is the default “public utility” model. Most advocates of net neutrality, including President Obama, don’t want that to happen, suggesting the FCC make an exception for ISPs. But that process of making an exception, called “forbearance,” isn’t automatic. There are legal obstacles. If forbearance fails, we can expect a concerted lobbying effort by the ISPs to make sure rates are set as high as possible.
Weighing the Risks
Set aside for a moment whether the worst-case scenarios raised by net neutrality and regulatory reclassification advocates are terribly likely. They’re not, as even this popular pro-neutrality cartoon attests. The nightmare outcome? The Internet becomes more expensive and less convenient for consumers, and it becomes harder for small content producers to compete.
That’s what might conceivably happen. Here’s what actually is happening, right now:
We know, indisputably, thanks to the heroic disclosures by Edward Snowden and the tireless work of journalists like Laura Poitras and Glenn Greenwald, that the federal government is attempting to use the Internet to build a global Panopticon, capable of accessing everyone’s personal information at any time for any reason or no reason.
We also know that one way the government is trying to accomplish this is by securing the cooperation of private companies. You can attempt to thwart surveillance by using encryptionâ??but encryption only protects data in transit. Once it’s received and decrypted, it’s an open book. If the government can compromise private data custodians, encryption loses a lot of its efficacy. This is exactly what happened to Google, which had its internal traffic bugged by the NSA.
Sometimes instead of outright sabotage, the government pressures companies into turning over information about their customers. See, for example, the brave efforts of Ladar Levison, head of now-defunct secure email provider Lavabit, to protect his customersâ??including Edward Snowdenâ??from the government’s prying eyes.
But not all tech companies have the spine of Lavabit. What we risk doing by ramping up the government’s regulatory authority over the Internet is to make it easier for the government to pressure ISPs, many of which are data custodians, to get what they want.
Is it crazy to think the government might use its “legitimate” regulatory authorities to bully private actors? Let’s consider the financial sector, one of the most heavily regulated parts of the economy.
In his book The Financial Crisis and the Free Market Cure, former BB&T chief John Allison relates how Bernanke’s Federal Reserve blackmailed healthy banks into taking TARP money they didn’t want:
The day after TARP passed, we were contacted by our regulators. This was an informal contact over the phone. I received a very carefully stated nondocumentable message. The essence of the message was that although BB&T had substantially more capital than it needed under long-established regulatory standards, given the current economic environment, the regulators were going to create a news set of capital standards. They did not know what the standards would be. However, they were "very concerned" that we would not have enough capital under these new standards unless we took the TARP capital. They had a regulatory team in place to reexamine our capital position immediately unless we took the TARP funding. The threat was very clear. (pp. 170-171)
Another example is the government’s “Operation Choke Point” program, which puts pressure on banks to refuse to deal with people engaged in perfectly legal businesses the Obama administration, for one reason or another, doesn’t like.
“Net neutrality” and public-utility style regulation are about Internet freedom, just not the way advocates think. Comcast and Netflix, two of the main parties in the public debate, are squabbling about who should bear the financial burden of building and maintaining the costly infrastructure needed to deliver streaming video to consumers. There’s no dire threat to freedom hinging on the outcome of that fight. The threat to Internet freedom is government control. That means that if you care about liberty, you should oppose Net neutrality and Title II reclassification.
[quote]cueball wrote:
You don’t have a contract that requires them to provide AT 50mb/s. As far as I know, that’s never been the case. It even says it on your graphic: “UP TO 50mb/s”. Which means you could, at any time, be receiving at 30, 20, 10. [/quote]
Yes, I know (I posted the pic) and point that out in a subsequent post. That is a capabilities issue though. They, as far as I know, aren’t purposely throttling speed. I would be pissed if they were and I was one of their customers.
[quote]pushharder wrote:
[quote]SexMachine wrote:
Ideally, I think the internet should be completely rolled back. Completely restrict its access with a select few using it for essential commerce and academia. Globalisation and the internet are spiritually regressive forces of modernity(nihilism).[/quote]
No.[/quote]
Ideally. Hypothetically. Not for realz.