Duh! Aliens had email well before we did... 1800s! Try 4000 BC with the popular pyramids!
Clearly you didn't see the "Tired of moving stone by slave hand? Get your stone moving ray gun - click here"
what a scam that was!

** disclaimer - I didn't try to hard to find something supporting the claim

Simple, clear laws are best. Ones that lawyers can't understand because they are too straight forward.

There are 2 things I think it must protect, and should be enforceable.

1) an ISP cannot determine where a customer can and where a customer cannot go on the internet - i.e. all IPs are accessible at all times
2) an ISP cannot charge a customer extra to visit any particular end-point (IP) - including ports.

Whatever legislation that the FCC is proposing *may* cover these 2 things. If so, great. If not, shame!

I can imagine no rules about:
* volume of data - charging me more for high volume, I can understand that. False advertising falls under other laws, along with contract law. If I agree that anything over 50 GB produces an extra charge, and that is what I agreed to, and therefore I expect a charge. However, that means a measurement should also be presented/available at all times if I'm interested... proof and track-ability is essential then.
* bandwidth guarantees - paying for ensuring that I have minimum bandwidth, I can understand paying extra too. Again false advertising falls under other laws.
* connections that occur in other countries are not guaranteed. i.e. if China blocks you from accessing their end-points from the US, tough luck. Your ISP is not involved.

false advertising law explained

We don't need crazy laws that a child cannot understand.

I seriously don't understand why these concepts are so difficult to accept de facto. It has essentially been this way for a long time. Forcing it to not change would be relieving. I would imagine that the ISPs would be able to use legislation like this to play nice with each other too. i.e. "you can't, ISP A block ISP B because you will be causing a violation of law X"

not true - Even sirens are difficult to identify where emergency vehicles are coming from
-- sirens -- which is why they have multiple tones, etc. coming from it... and that doesn't work all that well... thus the lights, plus.

Think of it this way - if you have 4 or more cars emitting tones say 440Hz at an intersection, you wouldn't have a clue if it was coming from the right, left on falling from the sky. You might know that it is getting oddly darker around you, but nothing more.

wouldn't it be awesome with everyone driving around with a siren? OOh ya!

Putting extra noise makers on a car is solving a problem that doesn't exist. This screams of over-thinking a non-problem, and smells of crap between the ears.

I hate to see the day that laws are brought in like this, i.e. before one person is hit *because* he/she couldn't hear it.

PS: My car will have cannon sounds coming from it, between periods of deathly silence.

I think you missed the subtext of the smaller government => bigger military.

FTFY

If it were possible, though, the world would be full of smart people with interesting things to say.

We'd have rainbows everywhere with butterflies flying through the field.
there would be no need for governments or lawyers because everything would be wonderful.

Oh and chocolate rivers and strawberry mountains...

yawn!

sleepy time.

Most likely is that the Canadian scientists involved are not allowed to talk about anything they are doing, ( gag order ), especially this new stuff. But if one can get the information from other sources, the CBC can let the Canadians know that Canadians are involved in science still, although we're not allowed to talk about that either.

I regret getting an ATI for my desktop at work. (yes Linux)
- Using 2 monitors is sketchy at best... the performance dropped with the 2nd monitor. 3D support is OK on one monitor, but not so good on dual. I miss the cube. Xinerama or separate desktops?! that's crap ATI! Twinview is better from NVidia.
- I have frequent system crashes because of the proprietary video driver (once a week is frequent), and have to hand configure the xorg.conf to remove crap from the display, etc. Waste of time.

The OSS for the video card worked for 2D, but not 3D. If that's all you need, the OSS driver is great.

On the other hand, my NVidia works great at home. No performance problems. Haven't had a crash related to graphics in a long, long time. Of course I'm using the proprietary driver too.

I play games -- yes 3D -- and there are many more than 2 -- (that I've purchased... recently too). Use Wine as well to play several that way.
NVidia is solid for me. Reliable. I don't know about how they [nvidia] screwed up lately with the newer cards and drivers for Linux, but I don't want to spend time configuring a system to do 3D. ATI doesn't just do that yet... to me, it is pain. NVidia still is faster to set up and way more stable.

Bring your LAN party with you!

I'm sure the network you set up on Mars will be as quick as on Earth. Wait, are you setting it up?

Hell, you might not even have to water cool your computers.

But seriously... the network to Earth would be a secondary issue. Setting up a remote Google with ba-gi-gabytes of cache would be much more useful, for example. Ooo... how exciting. And Fedex to Mars... And a good cnc.

I'm already thinking what a huge thing it would be to get all that going.

Fun!

I think you meant to say, "we all live in the past." The present just hasn't reached our consciousness yet. As for the future, well, that's another story.

Though I get what you are sayin', I don't think that would be true. Iff there were no ISS, there probably would be a huge increase in how much it would cost to put people up into space. For one, maintaining the shuttle program for the Hubble would not have happened, so it might be the $50B Hubble telescope, or the nice idea that never was.

The ISS kept (keeps) the space program in operation, and without it, I doubt there would be much drive to keep going back into space. The ISS is more than just NASA too. Don't forget about ESA, that probably wouldn't have existed, the CSA that barely is, in Canada, and the RSFA (Russia) that would be much worse off without it.

This is a big deal throughout the world, and is a significant contribution to space exploration, etc.

If you don't care about space exploration, then fine. $100B is a bunch of money. But then we can compare with other big recent expenses like oil spills, $3 billion for the BP disaster in the gulf canada.com -- which arguably didn't help humanity in any good way. Or, $750B for the Iraq war and the $300B for the Afghanistan war and the $28B for higher security (at airports? really?)... Then a $100B starts looking like the good looking sister. infoplease.com

Numbers at these huge values are always deceiving on what they bring and value they produce. Saying that spending x on y would do better is nonsense... it would bring something equally increased, but, also, something completely different. Spend it on oil spills and we'd have great oil pick up technology and nothing for space... Or maybe we would have some really nice houses and crappy oil pick up technology still, and nothing for space. It looks like the $30B for security brought us much better civic spying technology. I wonder if that is improving humanity? Maybe not as much as the ISS after all.

There are 2 things further

1) The deal - apparently - precludes using OSS. This is bad no matter how you look at it. This means something perfectly useful - and productive - won't be allowed.
2) I've used the MS Virtualization software and it really didn't work well at all. It was certainly the worst of the bunch.

Why anyone would really choose that kind of agreement is beyond foolish to me. Good luck to them.

I have to agree that a mix of different software makes tons of sense. AD is hard to beat -- and makes sense to use it. Exchange is hard to match, but there are reasonable alternatives... and I think everything else is a question mark.

It's time for them to pay up, I have a monument or two just dying to spring forth!

such clarity!

awesomeness.

This is how it works:

I watch a show - if it is 480i, 480p, 720p, 1080i, 1080p, or whatever is in a theater... I watch a show. If it stinks, I feel shafted. If it is entertaining, I'm pretty happy.

3D, resolution, whatever are just enhancements of the presentation of the story we enjoy... if there is one. From children to nearly-deads, this is the fact. Story over video quality. Resolution is an enhancement.

Since you are a videophile, your life revolves around the gimmicks. I make games -- same thing. But for every (insert technology)-phile there are 1000 don't cares, and 100 wish they could tell the difference.

I certainly won't go out and buy a 3D tv... unless my current one explodes by accident. It does 1080i and it is pretty nice (I've had it since before 1080p existed). Can I tell the difference between 1080i and 1080p?... not usually - especially when watching a story. Can I tell the difference between 480i and 1080i, yup. Does it make my life miserable? nope.

The real question is, "is it enhancing the story?"
If it is nearly always 'yes', then its needed and will sell, but sadly, it is nearly always 'no'. Gimmick.

Lets face it, 3D tvs are about as useful as a kick to the balls. I'm not going to be wearing shutter glasses in the kitchen while I cook and watch some lame ass 3D show to fill in my waiting periods. And at 30-40 feet, a 1080p show looks no better than a 480i tv show.

Don't get me wrong - I love HD, but to claim it isn't a gimmick? it certainly is.
Is it better? yup.
Is it enhancing the story 9x? no. I'd estimate, maybe 10% better. I still go to the movie theater because it is completely engulfing me, but the video quality in a theater, isn't the reason I go.

Not quite. This is a term from ancient Egypt Dedi or Djedi - Lucas probably got Jedi from this and perhaps the idea of a wizard like person.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dedi