cdw38 - Slashdot User

Submission + - Comcast actively interferes with file-sharing (yahoo.com)

Submitted by

cdw38

on Friday October 19, 2007 @11:03AM

cdw38 writes: "The Associated Press claims to have confirmed, through nationwide tests, that Comcast uses company computers to discretely prevent full files to be downloaded via BitTorrent. According to the article, the technology used works by tricking the computers of those sharing the file and those downloading the file into disconnecting sometime during the download. Obviously, this method of preventing users from illegally sharing content also blocks (or greatly hinders the efficacy of) the sharing of legal files via peer-to-peer networks like Bittorrent. Comcast is denying these allegations, which means its virtually impossible for users to complain about this when there's really no hard proof Comcast is interfering and they refuse to admit this. What does Slashdot think?"

Submission + - A New Deal for Globalization (foreignaffairs.org)

Submitted by

cdw38

on Thursday June 28, 2007 @04:29PM

cdw38 writes: ""Globalization has brought huge overall benefits, but earnings for most U.S. workers — even those with college degrees — have been falling recently; inequality is greater now than at any other time in the last 70 years. Whatever the cause, the result has been a surge in protectionism. To save globalization, policymakers must spread its gains more widely. The best way to do that is by redistributing income."

Kenneth F. Scheve (Yale University) and Matthew J. Slaughter (Dartmouth Tuck School) present an interesting argument, blaming increasing protectionist sentiment in the U.S. on labor-market performance for all but the most skilled (professional degrees and doctorates) and "the recent absence of real income growth for many Americans" (over 96% of them, according to the article). After ultimately rejecting the adequacy of the current policy discussions to address this problem — those on Trade Adjustment Assistance (TAA) and on increasing investment in education — they propose that redistributing income, not by changing the income tax system but by altering the currently-regressive Federal Insurance Contributions Act (FICA) payroll tax, would allow the benefits of globalization to be more evenly shared in American society and to ultimately curtail protectionism in the U.S. What does Slashdot think?"

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