We don't have the basic science for nuclear fusion, though. Mars is largely an engineering problem, not science.

SpaceX is building rockets, so they are doing things in line with going to Mars.

Space programs take a quite a long time to develop. The average government satellite takes around 12-16 years from development to operation. They have to think 10-20 years out.

Well, since the US economy dwarfs every other country's, I'm guessing that they should use more imperial measurements. Heck, if you can't do the math for three feet to the yard, how should you be trusted to use pi? Europeans probably get 1.33381 for an answer when they should get 1.33382.

You're right on. Just because someone doesn't want to buy a product at the price offered doesn't make it a market failure. It just means there wasn't a sale. Far too many people throw around the phrase "market failure" when what they really mean is "the market isn't doing what I want it to do."

I'm not sure what "right wing economists" ever said that the market should be closed to more than one provider. TFA missed out on the cause and effect.

Ma Bell didn't stifle innovation, the Federal government did. I know this because Ma Bell didn't pass any laws that restricted entry into the phone market. The government gave the entire market to Ma Bell, so they are the ones that stifled innovation and competition. They made some product choices that we can now ridicule, but half of slashdot readers have ridiculed their product development departments for bad product choices, too.

No, I didn't, but I'm not sure that matters. CUPS is just the underlying printing subsystem. I'm pretty sure that Mac users don't have to point a browser to http://localhost:631/ to add a printer, or use the Gnome/KDE GUIs. That can be the hard part of adding a printer. (They may have different drivers available than linux tends to, but I don't have any data on that.)

Printers and scanners are a common issue in linux. (Software modems were another, though less common now, of course.) And the drivers just don't work the same as the windows drivers. I still wind up setting up separate simplex and duplex "printers" most of the time.

Both giving away and selling the same product can work really well. For example, there's this Linux thing I've heard about that seems to be doing that.

It's very true in the economics world. The Austrian economists have been giving away books for as long as they've had a website, and they've found it increases the market for their printed books.

Groups like the American Radio Relay League have fought against this for a long time, as well as recently, too. There's talk of notching the BPL, and is done some places, but not everywhere. Since the feds took over the developing ownership rights of the spectrum with the FCC, it's their responsibility to ensure BPL providers aren't interfering with licensed spectrum users.

Why not? I pay my satellite TV provider for access to some basic channels, and extra for some others. Then other groups pay for advertising, and still others pay to have part or whole of their entire show played.

The FCC mandating how payments are made in the system will undoubtedly distort the market. The computer industry as a whole has consistently driven down prices and upped capability. When the government mandates certain bundles, such as not allowing ISPs to charge other ISPs for high usage, the ISPs will either 1) stop delivering that service in the same manner, or 2) charge us for it.

When Congress passed Obamacare and mandated that health care insurance companies that sold individual policies for minors ignore preexisting conditions, the insurance companies have nearly all stopped selling those policies. It's the natural cost-avoidance of unprofitable mandates.

Similarly, ISPs are either likely to stop selling unlimited bandwidth services, or pass all of those costs to the end consumer. I'm OK if Google cares enough about its content that they pay Comcast to deliver it, rather than Comcast charging me for it. One way or the other, the market will come up with an efficient, fair payment system.

The vast majority of shrill comments and ad hominem I've seen are on the pro-side. Yours is a blessed cool breeze, and I appreciate that.

The government has its hands in so many things, it's nearly impossible to find something that your tax dollars didn't help fund. Or, better yet, both fund and restrict, like tobacco.

To stick with a close analogy, roads and rail have been largely built by government dollars. However, UPS, FedEx, and USPS can charge different rates to different customers who ship large and small, and heavy and light packages.

With an Internet "utility" it's about impossible to provide different rates on speed of delivery, such as you can with a physical shipment. (Heck, higher latency traffic is generally more expensive, like satellite based providers.) Bandwidth and uptime are what they have that they can use for pricing.

The FCC has shown over its decades that it is not geek-friendly. It restricts speech (the seven word you can't say on television, the fairness doctrine), and it restricts technology (cell phones weren't allowed for about 20 years after the technology was developed).

I think what's most likely is that the FCC starts relying on an RFC/ANSI/W3C-like system -- slow, behind, though partially useful.

Ah, another Net Neutrality article on Slashdot. Be prepared for a suite of polite, reasoned arguments.

Note:Anti-Net Neutrality arguments are automatically marked down as "troll."

The claim that Net Neutrality is "government regulation of the Internet" is a lie perpetuated by politicians acting on behalf of the cable and telephone monopolies.

Correct. The FCC instituting new rules on Internet providers is in no way, shape, or form the government regulating the Internet. The FCC is now a separate business headquartered in the Conch Republic

The free market is allowed to have choices in services. Not so much in Government services, though.

Feel free to continue to ignore possible negative secondary consequences.

Well intentioned laws are not allowed to have bad consequences. If an Internet 911 call was dropped because the network provider was not allowed to give it priority, the network provider would be sued.