Comcast and others could profit from Bittorrent while maintaining network neutrality. They may not be doing so and probably don't see "bit torrent a a good thing right now," but their desired solution is not one that I agree with. If Comcast chooses to overcharge light users (like me) and undercharge heavy users (like our hypothetical bittorrent users), that is a flaw in their business model, not a flaw with net neutrality.

As for the content delivery folks, which I assume to understand are the content creators, aren't they also paying for their bandwidth on the other end? Which major content creators are using Bittorrent or other forms of p2p sharing right now? Even if they are using p2p, their users are still paying for the bandwidth. In any case, it seems to me that as long as the bandwidth were being paid for, Comcast wouldn't complain -- except that the content being carried over their bandwidth competes with their own content. That's the crux of the issue; Comcast doesn't want to treat other content creators fairly and is looking for excuses to fight net neutrality.

"If comcast could profit from bit torrent then they will be happy for it because, when done correctly, bit torrent more efficiently broadcasts across the edges of the network rather than the backbone."

So, you don't think that the average Bittorrent user pays for higher-priced plans than the average non-user? Network neutrality allows charging users for their network usage, it is meant to prevent discrimination based on type of usage. I think it is probably safe to say that people downloading lots of content on the internet (and uploading lots) pay to have faster service than people who don't use it much.

Or perhaps we could say that buying NeXT to get Steve Jobs back was a bet the company risk.

I'd add that the concept of "compendium of all human knowledge" included a whole lot of stuff that can't be cited. Unfortunately, Wikipedia decided that it was supposed to compete with Brittanica and other traditional encyclopedias and needed academic citations. All of a sudden humans who knew things outside the realms of academia were lesser again, and people who knew how to make a citation were greater, even if they didn't understand what they were citing.

I myself stopped participating after having an extended argument related to a minor edit I made, but the other guy had a citation. While I had real world experience on the issue and the other guy didn't, he had the citation. When I finally got the book he cited through inter-library loan, it turned out he had completely misunderstood the text.

I think Wikipedia or something like it will evolve to include different tags that let people determine if they want to read uncited or irrelevant information.

Hey, at least they're calling it a tax. In California they call it "raising fees." Either way, it seems like politicians are never willing to tax the rich, but are happy to jack up taxes on the young.

The Slashdot community doesn't pretend to be unbiased, and why should it? The important thing is that you, as a reader, be able to interpret and understand what others say.

To expand a bit, the way capitalism is supposed to work involves equal access to information and markets. Currently there is extreme inequality, which is why broadband access is so expensive, and that expense makes access to information and market even more unequal in today's wired world.

Latin America is majority urban, and most people in rural areas still are relatively close to cities. The remote areas, such as the Amazon, have the lowest population density. Your statement just isn't true, at least in that region.

Having spent several years living in Ecuador, I can say that broadband access does matter. Just because other things also matter, such as water, food, roads, and whatnot, doesn't mean that one of the key infrastructural elements of communication and creativity in the world today is unimportant. Yes, I believe that the top priorities must be health care and education, since they are the basis of what can be provided to help people improve their lives, but other infrastructural issues are important, and indeed are among the tools that can improve health care and education.

The real problem however is not costs. The real problem is inequality. This makes the few powerful and they then manipulate prices to their own benefit. Infrastructure is much cheaper to set up, because normal laborers make a fraction of what people in the first-world make, yet the rates for using that infrastructure are much higher in absolute terms.

The sum of human knowledge is far greater than the sum of academic knowledge. At one time, Wikipedia seemed like a place in which everybody could contribute to share their knowledge. That time is long gone, and now a certain class of people who think of themselves as academically superior run the site. It now strives to be a better Britannica, rather than a completely different and grander project.

Does Wikipedia have value? Obviously. Is it what I thought it was 5 years ago? No. Do I wish it were? Yes.

And to those who think the only issues that non-academics know about, I ask them, does an anthropologist know more about a culture than the group s/he studies? In SOME ways, perhaps yes, but not in all. Does the agronomist know more than the third-world peasant? In some ways, but not all. Does the linguist know more than the guy who grew up in a multilingual society? In some ways. The new Wikipedia order is blocking those other viewpoints and it looks like the only way to get them back is to move on to another project. That's sad.

There probably will be lawsuits (I am not a lawyer, but I do work at a disability advocacy organization and it looks to me like blocking access to e-books violates the ADA). For example, you might be interested in the Reading Rights Coalition (http://www.readingrights.org/), which is currently organizing against the Authors Guild and includes numerous organizations. I also recommend signing their petition insisting that everybody be given equal access to e-books.

My guess is that the Authors Guild will try to create a system in which you must be registered as blind or dyslexic, etc., in order to be given access to the screen reading software that is built into the Kindle for all books. However, in the long run I don't think that will hold up in court.

I tried using Hulu. It was designed not to let me press the pause button and let the entire show download over my cheap DSL (my usual practice with any flash videos that are higher bandwidth than my internet). It would only buffer the next several seconds, I assume to prevent me from downloading the entire file. I never went back and had to go back to using other sources of television that exist online...

There is always debate about Stallman and Freedom in these articles. However, if we just look at the suggestion it makes, this article is totally practical. It just says to make clear what license the (javascript) software is using, and if it is F/OSS to say where the code can be acquired. It also says to let the USER decide what to do based on that information. And the methods for doing those suggestions are simple and straightforward.

Really, I think this is an excellent pragmatic response to a situation of growing importance that in no way would mean a major burden to programmers, users, or anybody.

You know, I am not a lawyer, but I wonder how the Americans with Disabilities Act could affect this in the end? Essentially, Amazon.com was offering a reasonable accommodation permitting any blind person to read any of the e-books that they sell. As I understand it, businesses are required to provide reasonable accommodations for disabled customers. At this point, the publishers are basically making an unreasonable insistence on reducing accessibility. I think it unlikely that they will be able to successfully block the feature.

After all, programs like JAWS already make many major applications and the web accessible. Imagine if web pages started blocking access to their websites for screen readers? It would be ridiculous, and this is too.

I know this doesn't respond completely to the question, but I really recommend the default install that comes with the EEE Linux model. I got the EEE because I knew that I didn't like Windows and that I didn't like fussing with installing Linux on a laptop. It works great, it's very very very fast, it uses IceWM (which I have always liked), it is easy to configure (by editing a simple text file), and it is Debian based, which allows for easy software installation. The only significant negative is that it is based on a fairly old Debian, meaning that the default repositories are a bit outdated in their software.

Furthermore, it meant that I was encouraging a manufacturer to sell Linux pre-installed. I literally put my money where my mouth was. Now, it is too late for you to do that, so I recommend you go to the eeeuser.com forums, where you will find fairly knowledgable forum support for your question. Best of luck.