have a great deal of respect for you

Sorry, I should have made it more obvious that I was writing tongue in cheek about the monarchy. Not about SpaceX though. I'm pretty impressed.

It doesn't work to do this with a democratic government. We need a monarchy :-(

It seems to me that SpaceX is on the path to a solution that might be affordable by a single administration, though.

> People who have to use their own money / satisfy investors / secure a loan tend to plan ahead and think about how much they need and why.
People who have their hand out tend to ask for whatever they can get and think about how to spend it later.

Sure. Clever phrasing. The first group is satisfying self interests. The second is hoping to do something charitable or somehow beneficial to others, and still be able to buy groceries. We have different spreadsheets. For instance everyone who's not Levar Burton of TV fame.

Don't I wish.

A cynic might argue that the key difference in this case was that, for a change, the ISP's, and not merely defendants, were challenging the subpoenas; but of course we all know that justice is 'blind'.

An ingrate might bemoan the Court's failure to address the key underlying fallacy in the "John Doe" cases, that because someone pays the bill for an internet account that automatically makes them a copyright infringer; but who's complaining over that slight omission?

A malcontent like myself might be a little unhappy that it took the courts ten (10) years to finally come to grips with the personal jurisdiction issue, which would have been obvious to 9 out of 10 second year law students from the get go, and I personally have been pointing it out and writing about it since 2005; but at least they finally did get there.

And a philosopher might wonder how much suffering might have been spared had the courts followed the law back in 2004 when the John Doe madness started; but of course I'm a lawyer, not a philosopher. :)

Bottom line, though: this is a good thing, a very good thing. Ten (10) years late in coming, but good nonetheless. - R.B. )

They could totally turn themselves around if they offered exactly what just about everybody wants..
 
A ROCK SOLID home multifunction office machine. Rock Solid meaning slick bomb-proof drivers as well as a machine that didn't crap out on a black and white report because the yellow ink was low. This machine would also need a paper feed that didn't require the moon to be in proper alignment during a squirrel sacrifice in order to feed mostly whatever you put it in.
 
Then, offer them like cell phones. Charge less up front but only a bit less. Quit selling junk and hoping to cheat everybody on ink. Let me sign up for a quality service and ink renewal plan that works like a cheaper version of a smart phone. Make it as trouble free and pain free as your average smart phone. I'll sign up tomorrow.

Our roads need to be repaired almost constantly. How does this improve the situation? How about a dumb road that does it's job for 80 years straight?

If Boeing was interested in getting people into space, more than a handful of them would be there. The fact is that it has taken a company that was outside of the system, with a tiny fraction of Boeing's funding, to make more progress than Boeing has.

And of course it's in the U.S. interest to make sure the Russians have an active and completely up-to-date source of rocket engines for their nuclear missles.

In this vein, I wonder what it is we are paying the Chinese to do?

+1 Amen

Well, we'll have to differ then. The free market is an ideal, but a self-executing free market is a rarity. No regulation (or no government) is a nice jingle but there will always be something. (Is anyone saying more regulation/govenrment for its own sake? No, but they can be nasty side effects.) It's the law itself. Even the criminal law is a form of regulation—especially unlikely to be banned—and yes amending, sometimes repealing, it can improve it. That said, I do sympathize with the libertarian perspective (versus dogma) and think the government can be seen as just another ... corporation. Which means, regulate with care, not never.

"Robber baron" just sounds cool. I don't think we have classic monopolies like oil and steel, but less the landscape is pretty messed up, and getting worse so with the repeal of Glass-Steagal and so on..... Just my 2 against $2 trillion.

And I suppose big business loves non-regulation, with the opportunities of monopoly. So win-win?

I'll agree that regulation risks just shifting wealth from one corporate interest to another. Also, that regulaiton introduces its own barriers to competition. But to condemn regulation per se is mindless. We got enough of the robber barons ages ago.

Now, back to my question.... which way will things tilt, and how much will the public interest matter.

Well said. I would be even more specific and say you don't want the carriers to discriminate or, god forbid, they'll redefine common carriers. ;-) I'm not sure most congresspeople understand the issue anywhere near as well as they understand who is for or against—politics.

Pretty damn well. You can't believe the difference things like lifting the bar to pre-existing conditions makes to families like ours. That they could have better job with this behemoth project, I don't doubt. That they would have done a better job if the other half Congress hadn't been obstuctionist jerks, I don't doubt either. Growing pains, not fault with the basic concept.

To drift back on topic: ditto for net neutrality. Sometimes we do better without the market carved into big corporate fiefdoms and fake competition.