I'm not sure that there is a two class system by design. That is certainly true for desert societies, but come cultures are MUCH more complex than two. Even Marx's comrades were three classes, also in Brave New World.

I'm for distributed sustainable energy budgets for high tech cultures. That means your energy budget depends on the climate you find yourself in, and is somewhat outside of your control. Cheap fossil fuels are nice for a time, but their regeneration cycle is too long to be sustainable over the long term.

However, every inch of this planet has plenty of ambient energy lying around, just not necessarily in a usable form. Getting it into a usable form is NOT a one-size-fits-all mass produced solution, and can't be. Anybody who says, just end the use of fossil fuels tomorrow, has not looked at the cost. I'm blessed in the Pacific Northwest with four major sustainable sources of energy at different times of the year, and with the new batteries, we can do even better.

As for climate change- there really are only two sustainable strategies- adapt and use the changes in weather to generate usable electricity, grow more food, store excess carbon in our graves. Or try to fight with outlandish ideas like eliminating fossil fuels, putting powdered aluminum in orbit to throw energy away, or the stupid carbon tax that will never work anyway.

My money is that cultures and species that adapt instead of trying to fight, will win out in the long run. I place that bet due to the history of this planet- when conditions change, species that adapt to the new conditions live, everybody else goes extinct.

My error in conflating that and utilities, so apologies. But my impression is that's what's been behind Net Neutrality, to effectively turn the pipes to the Internet into a regulated utility. And to make broadband a basic human right.

Yes, but a closer analogy would be ATT or other phone companies, or Western Union. Different type of utility, still as necessary to business. But what if say, the electric company could say "You are small fry, the local aluminum mill pays us more for electricity, so you get no service at your house today"?
 
 

How can govt. second-guess a business's motives when a business charges more for carrying something that costs them more to carry. Without degrading into govt. effectively dictating their pricing structure.

 
You know as much about TCP/IP as I do. Exactly how does a bit from one source "cost more to carry" than a bit from another source? All bits coming in from the backbone are the same. The only question is the size of the pipe coming in from the backbone, not the content of the bits. So that explanation simply doesn't hold.
 
 

They don't go far enough, regulation-wise, for you?

 
Or with freedom. The regulation should be towards maximum freedom of association- a company *should* be free to block traffic from a source they don't want to do business with, or slow down any packets for content they don't like. Discrimination and bigotry *should* be legal, be it baking a cake for gays, allowing black people at the lunch counter, or restricting netflix from eating up the common internet pipe.

I disagree -- the fault is both with the media dominance and liberal hive mind mentality.

Any speech the left doesn't like is "hate" speech. And almost amazingly, they (the Left) gets to define what "hate" speech is. How convenient.

Brendan Eich was forced out at Mozilla because he donated money to a group that thinks we shouldn't redefine an institution (marriage) that's been around for millenia.

Thus, the left goes off on the mob mentality and their two minutes of hate, and the message is sent loud and clear: March in lock-step with us or we will harass, follow, intimidate, shame you on social media, and ultimately destroy you, your family, your livelihood, you lives.

Look at how black twitter is celebrating the fact that George Zimmerman got shot in the face today.

Look at the the leftoids who are STILL calling for Officer Darren Wilson's death, even though his use of force against Saint Swisher Sweets Mike Brown was legally justified (and necessary to protect his own life).

It's the same Marxist / Alinsky tactic our little brownshirt wannabe uses around here.

There was ONE GUY who was willing to, and had the resources to be able to, stand against that tide and point out how shameless the left is -- the late Andrew Breitbart.

Now?

The doomday preppers are right -- society is on a tipping point and about to collapse.

Common carrier laws don't determine either how much you'll charge nor how much you'll make, they merely dictate that you can't discriminate in what you carry.

As in, you can't choose customer A over customer B just for the hell of it.

Now, personally, I'm against common carrier laws because I'm against freedom of communication and against dictating required associations, but that is an entirely different matter than money as well.

Yes we should. We should adapt our lifestyles to *local* conditions, where possible. That means diversifying our culture by geographical regions, and gasp, paying attention to natural weather sources and barriers.

Problem is after 9/11 we didn't do enough. When US Intelligence was pretty sure bin Laden was at Tora Bora, we should have dropped a nuke. The reason ISIS and other assholes are emboldened is because we didn't do enough after 9/11. We abandoned Iraq, retreated in Afghanistan... now look.

I never had a problem kicking Taliban or Hussein ass, I had a problem with the whole Nation Building. Fuck that. Nuke 'em, and if the roaches take over and turn it into another terrorist sandbox nuke them too.

So then when we decided to go after Saddam Hussein is was a "rush to war" that took 14 months and gave Saddam all the time in the world to bury planes in the desert and move chemical warheads to Syria so the media and democrats (but I repeat myself) could lie and say there were no WMD in Iraq when even Kerry and Hitlary Clinton said there were WMD's in Iraq when Bill Clinton was using cigars to penetrate interns in the oval office.

It floors me after that, after the Democrat congress in 2006 crashed the economy and Obama skullfucks the economy's corpse repeatedly saying oh, it's getting better when the labor force participation rate is historically low... and let's just say I'm surprised anyone with at least a room temperature IQ would trust a Democrat to run for Dog Catcher.

I see an article that millenials don't blame Obama. Proof right there that millenials are morons. The economy is in the toilet because of Obamanomics.

Oh well. Part of me is glad they're miserable and have no real prospects for meaningful employment. If you voted for Obama -- you deserve every ounce of pain you're getting.

"But even if we're wrong, shouldn't we do SOMETHING??? After all, It's for the Children!!"

It's getting hard to tell the difference between liberal idiocy and parody.

Like the twitter meme that went around -- "Rape last minutes, death lasts forever. You don't need a gun."

Sadly, that bit of unbridled stupidity appears to be legit and not a parody.

RepRap comes close, but I was more referring to a full on http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Self-replicating_machine. RepRap can print something like 90% of its parts, but there are still parts within itself that it cannot manufacture as of yet.

Especially once the tech matures to the point where 3d printers can make 3d printers.....

There's still quite a bit of difference between public access to 3d printer files and public access to 3d printers.

I'm surprised he didn't include a "BSD IS DYING, NETCRAFT CONFIRMS IT" in the article.

I don't know that anymore.

The Macintosh I had no lid.

No Lace Cards? I had Apple IIe's to work with, loads of fun to be had there.

So a free market is bad when everybody is able to invest, but is good when a chosen few are able to invest?