As far as I'm aware, even though they voted to make these changes they haven't actually came into effect and the decision could be reversed. It turns out that 85% of the American public and 75% of the republican party are against it happening, So we will have to see.
The 85% is quite interesting as I wouldn't have thought 85% used the internet, just shows you how important the internet is.
FCC votes to repeal net neutrality
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It was a commercially financed decision. But there have been plenty of those in the US that have easily made into law, going back decades, even when the result was actively harmful to the US as a whole but benefited the specific sponsors.
So, we'll have to see. I'm not optimistic. Guess the swamp is quite healthy.
Edit:
85% may not use the internet, but a lot of small businesses rely on it, and there are a lot of those, could they not account for a lot of these extra objectors through action groups?
I know my small business owning friend groups together with other local business owners when she wants to object to something, and sometimes it has an effect.
You mustn't just dismiss those people, even if they aren't Facebook fanatics or heavy net users, an internet geared towards large commercial interests will be just as bad for small business as Shopping Malls
So, we'll have to see. I'm not optimistic. Guess the swamp is quite healthy.
Edit:
85% may not use the internet, but a lot of small businesses rely on it, and there are a lot of those, could they not account for a lot of these extra objectors through action groups?
I know my small business owning friend groups together with other local business owners when she wants to object to something, and sometimes it has an effect.
You mustn't just dismiss those people, even if they aren't Facebook fanatics or heavy net users, an internet geared towards large commercial interests will be just as bad for small business as Shopping Malls
If an injury has to be done to a man it should be so severe that his vengeance need not be feared. ... Niccolò Machiavelli
The government has been shrinking collective legal action for consumers for awhile now. The recent developments with the FCC and net neutrality are another page in that long story.mrbadger wrote:...could they not account for a lot of these extra objectors through action groups?
Admitting you have a problem is the first step in figuring out how to make it worse.
Has no-one stopped to think how much this is going to hurt the future development of the nation?
Honestly, It's like they are actively trying to hand their lead in the world over to places like China.
In the UK we have been benefiting greatly from some of the bizarre decisions made in the US in recent decades.
Such as after 911, they made it vastly harder for Chinese people to get education Visas, so they shifted en mass to Europe. Why on earth did they do that? I imagine there must have been some other reason and they used 911 as an excuse to push it through. The decision nearly crippled some Universities in America financially, but they still did it.
Is that still true? I don't know, but the damage is done, our universities are still filled with Chinese students, we collaborate with their universities on research that makes us millions (definitely the case at my uni).
Those students will have children and want those children to study abroad, and where will they send them? To the place they know.
And almost every UK university has people heavily recruiting in China now, plus our government won't be shutting that down for any stupid reasons.
They can't, we want all that money.
Honestly, It's like they are actively trying to hand their lead in the world over to places like China.
In the UK we have been benefiting greatly from some of the bizarre decisions made in the US in recent decades.
Such as after 911, they made it vastly harder for Chinese people to get education Visas, so they shifted en mass to Europe. Why on earth did they do that? I imagine there must have been some other reason and they used 911 as an excuse to push it through. The decision nearly crippled some Universities in America financially, but they still did it.
Is that still true? I don't know, but the damage is done, our universities are still filled with Chinese students, we collaborate with their universities on research that makes us millions (definitely the case at my uni).
Those students will have children and want those children to study abroad, and where will they send them? To the place they know.
And almost every UK university has people heavily recruiting in China now, plus our government won't be shutting that down for any stupid reasons.
They can't, we want all that money.
If an injury has to be done to a man it should be so severe that his vengeance need not be feared. ... Niccolò Machiavelli
How so? I didn't want to offend.Antilogic wrote:Words can not fully express how awful this statement is.Observe wrote:The worst that might happen, is that internet access will become even more expensive and/or restricted and people won't use it as much. That's not necessarily a bad thing! I don't see the world being greatly improved since internet access came along.
Whatever we now have, will surely be replaced by something else before long. Perhaps quantum entanglement or something will obsolete the wired/wireless system that we have now; just as cellular communications have largely replaced land-line phones.
We can be confident of only one thing - change. Well, two things: greed and change.
I am in my 70's and reached adulthood before the internet became widely available. I've had a long career in electronic and computer engineering - so I'm not averse to technology. That said, I see little benefit from the internet and frankly, a lot of downsides overall.
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brucewarren
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I disagree on two points.
a) Some folks, especially if they live in the hind end of nowhere kind of depend on the intwerwebz for actual stuffs. It's not all youtubes and wimmins with too little clothing. If they lose it it will make life harder for them.
b) I don't a have cell phone. I have a land line. It's an awful lot cheaper in terms of bytes per buck. Since I don't need a machine to tell me which foot to place in front of the other when walking down the street I have no need for a mobile connection in any case so I do my internetting at the PC as nature intended.
I'm not one of those who buys into the idea that technological progress is somehow automatic either. It comes about through sweat, blood and tears. If no one wants to develop a thing, or if said thing isn't actually possible it won't happen. We don't have general purpose AI. We don't all have flying cars and we don't have interstellar space travel. Maybe I'm pessimistic but I don't believe we ever will.
a) Some folks, especially if they live in the hind end of nowhere kind of depend on the intwerwebz for actual stuffs. It's not all youtubes and wimmins with too little clothing. If they lose it it will make life harder for them.
b) I don't a have cell phone. I have a land line. It's an awful lot cheaper in terms of bytes per buck. Since I don't need a machine to tell me which foot to place in front of the other when walking down the street I have no need for a mobile connection in any case so I do my internetting at the PC as nature intended.
I'm not one of those who buys into the idea that technological progress is somehow automatic either. It comes about through sweat, blood and tears. If no one wants to develop a thing, or if said thing isn't actually possible it won't happen. We don't have general purpose AI. We don't all have flying cars and we don't have interstellar space travel. Maybe I'm pessimistic but I don't believe we ever will.
I wonder how people got on before the internet? It's great for research, I'll grant that. On the other hand, going down to the public library or traveling to a university town that had a better library was part of the 'journey' of discovery; involving getting out of the house and interacting with 'real' people and situations. Perhaps even meeting 'in the flesh' one's wife-to-be at said library...brucewarren wrote:...a) Some folks, especially if they live in the hind end of nowhere kind of depend on the intwerwebz. If they lose it it will make life a bit harder for them...
Bottom line: Do I like it? Yes. Do I need it? No. Would my life be better off without it? Perhaps.
From 2000-2003 I did most of my CS degree without internet access in my room.
It was in the labs, but in my room I had books, lots of books, and that was where most of my CS education came from. I spent hundreds of pounds on textbooks each semester. Not just required textbooks, but ones I thought might be useful.
These days I rely extensively on the internet, because the range of topics I need to cover is quite large, and they change too fast to use books. I still have a lot of those books I bought, but I keep them for sentimental reasons only.
Nor to I recommend printed texts to my students any more, apart from as suggested reading. My primary sources are always web based now.
Information is best found where you find it most easy to absorb.
For me that was via books in my room. I could have stayed in the labs and used the net more, or the uni library I suppose (though in all my time under and post grad I never did do that). These days the main source of information has shifted online.
Books are still better in some ways, they are not the first port of call for the vast majority of us when trying to find something out, or learn a new subject.
The world has changed. Books aren't dead, they likely won't ever die, but the world has moved on from them being the main source of information storage.
It was in the labs, but in my room I had books, lots of books, and that was where most of my CS education came from. I spent hundreds of pounds on textbooks each semester. Not just required textbooks, but ones I thought might be useful.
These days I rely extensively on the internet, because the range of topics I need to cover is quite large, and they change too fast to use books. I still have a lot of those books I bought, but I keep them for sentimental reasons only.
Nor to I recommend printed texts to my students any more, apart from as suggested reading. My primary sources are always web based now.
Information is best found where you find it most easy to absorb.
For me that was via books in my room. I could have stayed in the labs and used the net more, or the uni library I suppose (though in all my time under and post grad I never did do that). These days the main source of information has shifted online.
Books are still better in some ways, they are not the first port of call for the vast majority of us when trying to find something out, or learn a new subject.
The world has changed. Books aren't dead, they likely won't ever die, but the world has moved on from them being the main source of information storage.
If an injury has to be done to a man it should be so severe that his vengeance need not be feared. ... Niccolò Machiavelli
100 years back in time, replace Internet by telephone, and you will have your answerObserve wrote:I wonder how people got on before the internet? It's great for research, I'll grant that. On the other hand, going down to the public library or traveling to a university town that had a better library was part of the 'journey' of discovery; involving getting out of the house and interacting with 'real' people and situations. Perhaps even meeting 'in the flesh' one's wife-to-be at said library...
Bottom line: Do I like it? Yes. Do I need it? No. Would my life be better off without it? Perhaps.
net neutrality is just not going to be enforced by the FCC. They expect that competition and customer relations will maintain net neutrality. So this is not an exploding TNT.
It’s more like a virus that will slowly hit us with minor symptoms at first, and then when it is too late to stop it, it will go terminal. Cable companies may have national competition, but not local. The have sectors that they control and they do not overlap each other. So your stuck with whoever provides your zip code. And many of these providers are just Comcast by another name. DSL is the only competition locally.
As of now Comcast claims that they will respect net neutrality, and so long as they do, I think they all will. We will see.
It’s more like a virus that will slowly hit us with minor symptoms at first, and then when it is too late to stop it, it will go terminal. Cable companies may have national competition, but not local. The have sectors that they control and they do not overlap each other. So your stuck with whoever provides your zip code. And many of these providers are just Comcast by another name. DSL is the only competition locally.
As of now Comcast claims that they will respect net neutrality, and so long as they do, I think they all will. We will see.
I dont believe them. They are the company with no credibility.Incubi wrote: As of now Comcast claims that they will respect net neutrality
Spotty/terrible customer support, over-priced and a poor performing service.
Really, there's nothing to believe them on, - this isnt even a lie. They wanted Net Neutrality gone so that they can disregard it legally. And they got it. Everyone knows it.
What we are seeing, is big business free enterprise in operation. Correspondingly, we are also seeing growing interest in cities offering 'public broadband' so their citizens can have affordable internet. There is nothing stopping a community from being its own ISP and sharing the costs in the form of taxes.
^--- This.Kapakio wrote:100 years back in time, replace Internet by telephone, and you will have your answerObserve wrote:I wonder how people got on before the internet? It's great for research, I'll grant that. On the other hand, going down to the public library or traveling to a university town that had a better library was part of the 'journey' of discovery; involving getting out of the house and interacting with 'real' people and situations. Perhaps even meeting 'in the flesh' one's wife-to-be at said library...
Bottom line: Do I like it? Yes. Do I need it? No. Would my life be better off without it? Perhaps.
A new technology doesn't come packaged with everything that ends up depending on it. First, it has to grow and be adopted.
However, it is becoming increasingly clear that "teh internetz" will become a necessary tool for people to have access to. Even now, you can't easily find a service that doesn't have a "download our app so you can pay bills, check your service, make changes, live life..." "Billing" for just about everything is rapidly starting to be taken over by internet-hosted transactions. Banking, ordering product, even groceries and transportation, it's all moving "online."
Of course, the one problem is that "online" is like the "Wild Wild West" - It's a domain occupied by legitimate users mixed in with the worst sorts of criminals one can find... It's rife with fraud, "hacking" and every other despicable thing one can imagine, right now. That's the real problem with this new beast - It's extremely difficult to police and to make "safe" for all its users and that's the only thing that is holding it back from being even more pervasive and necessary.
IMO, we'll eventually see it broken down into several layers, one or two of which are nothing but secured data pipes to finally push things past what it is right now. (Yes, I know, if someone wants to get it, they can get to it... There's got to be a revolution there before it can truly be as secure as possible.)
I lol'd...fiksal wrote: Something something government is bad. Something something death star. Something something complete.
I agree. It will look like they are respecting it at first, but they will slowly strip it until it is gone and to late to fix. The FCC will penalize them for it still, but it will be like giving rich person a parking ticket. My only hope here is that the watchdogs will be diligent and avoid loosing credibility to conspiracy theories.fiksal wrote:I dont believe them. They are the company with no credibility.Incubi wrote: As of now Comcast claims that they will respect net neutrality
Spotty/terrible customer support, over-priced and a poor performing service.
Really, there's nothing to believe them on, - this isnt even a lie. They wanted Net Neutrality gone so that they can disregard it legally. And they got it. Everyone knows it.
I’ll find an article on what the FCC will still do and post it.
https://www.fcc.gov/restoring-internet-freedom I don’t trust this even.
The title "Restoring Internet Freedom" immediately tells me it's a propaganda piece. I didn't even bother reading it past that point as I already know it will have nothing substantive to say on the matter other than "Keep Calm and Grip the Edge of the Table When You're Bent Over It."Incubi wrote:...
I’ll find an article on what the FCC will still do and post it.
https://www.fcc.gov/restoring-internet-freedom I don’t trust this even.
My butt already hurts and I keep imagining someone's hands on my shoulders... This is not a comforting feeling for me.
Morkonan wrote:I lol'd...fiksal wrote: Something something government is bad. Something something death star. Something something complete.
I try
Well if you read it, it still sounds like a propaganda piece.Morkonan wrote:The title "Restoring Internet Freedom" immediately tells me it's a propaganda piece. I didn't even bother reading it past that point as I already know it will have nothing substantive to say on the matter other than "Keep Calm and Grip the Edge of the Table When You're Bent Over It."Incubi wrote:...
I’ll find an article on what the FCC will still do and post it.
https://www.fcc.gov/restoring-internet-freedom I don’t trust this even.
My butt already hurts and I keep imagining someone's hands on my shoulders... This is not a comforting feeling for me.