To be fair, there is no obligation by any enterprise to support every person who wishes to make use of it: there are no laws that state you must extend the same level of support to everyone, and there are no laws saying that your business decisions must place ethical treatment of other businesses and individuals over profits.

Granted, it is more ethically sound to extend the same benefits of access to smaller (and less-profitable) publishers as to the 'big names', but since when has Apple marketed itself as an 'ethical' company?

Had google made the same decision, they (given their oft-repeated ambitions to 'do no evil') would be roundly--and rightly--criticized: they have made an ethical stand, and as such they need to stick to it.

Apple has always been after people's money. Apple has always pandered to the least common denominator. Yes, there is no surprise here--just as there will be no surprise when, after a few dozen facebook protests and a bit of bad press, they "decide" to "extend" the functionality in a few months to certain "partner organizations" or however the press release will put it.

It would certainly be a marketing coup, especially if the corporations who decided to adopt it put out a browser plugin or something to ensure 'lock-in' to their proprietary 4->6 gateway services on the consumer side....

Since when have politicians started going so far as to read the bills they submit?

And you're asking for -thought- and -understanding-? Are you from a paralell universe or something?

Is this really any different from the rhetoric they've been using for the past however-many years now?

I wouldn't be eager for the war to actually heat up these days, though. Hyundai's been making some pretty spiffy cars lately; be a shame to have their production interrupted.

Yes, I am fully aware of the dangers of non-regulated traffic shaping. Hell, I experience a variant on it every day--the place I work at has a very aggressive web filter; they recently put in a new rule that filters out anything mentioning some specific incidents that could be construed as critical of the parent organization.

It's just the slightest bit big-brotherish.

I would like a lot more competition in the ISP world, but sadly I don't think that's very likely either--so for the time being, I'm beginning to look at VPNs so that I can figure out how to route around content blockage, should my home provider (AT&T's the only game in town there) get overly frisky with the deep-packet-inspection.

And yes, I do realize that people can participate or not as they wish--but good luck getting the metagovernment platform adopted -without- broad-based support.

So, given that there's apparently no oversight and no interest by amazon in ensuring a quality service, why would anyone want to enter that site? It sounds like schmuckbait to me.

I think part of the reason why there are so many opponents to Neutrality at the moment is because of a mischaracterization--which may be the result of simple ignorance--of the FCC's actions as condoning government control of content-as-in-opinions, rather than content-as-in-format.

I've seen many people promulgating this notion (which, frankly, hasn't been helped by the FCC's past actions regarding, e.g., nipples and the superbowl) as being a 'government takeover' of the internet.

I like the idea of metagovernment, but sadly I don't think enough people are willing to put in the time and effort to make it work. Most people are lazy and content to let other people do the work of running the country, so long as it doesn't make their lives inconvenient.

http://ngrams.googlelabs.com/graph?content=fuck&year_start=1500&year_end=2008&corpus=0&smoothing=0

Here, take a broader look.

People may complain about filthy language these days, but daaaaaamn! Our founding fathers must have had -filthy- mouths, and I'd -really- like to know what that spike in the late 1500s was about.

Tell me, how are you proposing to measure the words and thoughts of those who did not take the time to put them down in a form that later generations could refer to?

Because if you have a time machine, I've got some business plans that could make us both filthy rich...

18 and 19's not legal anymore?

When did that happen?

They already did. This judge's decision was based on a prior decision that went against the RIAA doing the same thing.

So, what would the internet version of an 'ambulance chaser' be, considering how easy it is to attach ads to search terms?

I came in to say more or less the same thing, though if the AR portion was overlaid over a view through the glasses rather than a full-screen camera version, that would probably be a bit more practical for things like, y'know, walking.

Most people are confused by all the marketing that AV and firewall vendors spew out, together with the anecdotes of their friends about "Well, AV doesn't work 'cuz I got a virus that one time" and all that other nonsense.

Honestly, IMHO, you should -always- consider your network to be compromised in some fashion. Always keep an eye out for clues of infiltration--strange network traffic, odd lack of response, uncharacteristic behaviors--and, though you'll doubtless waste some time on false positives, you'll end up saving a lot more time should something show up than you would if you ignored it.

Besides, half the crap can be set up to run automatically; glancing over some logfiles every day when you login to check your email doesn't take that long.

To give to grandma, so she can have an email appliance just like the one she used to have that hooked up to the TV and the phoneline, back in the late '90s.