Clever monkey, you always have to tranq them first.

I never understood why the conservative position was that government regulation is a last resort in times where corporate or ogliarchical regulation is in full effect. The free market is only expressed as a lack of government interference when you happen to already be in control, or allied with those who are.

I understand the sentiment of not wanting government interference into daily life very well. What I don't understand is why the conservative voice seems to think that the government is the only source of tyranny we have. Corporations exert a huge influence on how we're allowed to live, as do religious organizations to a lesser level. I don't want any of them controlling me.

Now, I absolutely understand the conservative point about not letting any of those groups mix. I'm an ardent believer of what Adam Smith wrote on that topic when he first proposed to the British nobility that capitalism and the merchant class should be allowed to exist unpetrubed. But what does the conservative voice suggest as an alternative?

I don't see why not, as cutting off the link due to non-payment is different than going "Oh, this packet is from Level3's Netflix connection, so I'm going to block it!". At least, a good piece of legislation wouldn't have issues with it. As for what could get through congress...

The laws might prop up the business model, and make life suck for a number of people (especially consumers), but they have already failed at doing what they once were. They're just trying to buy enough time to survive while they adapt, now that they've realized the need.

I expect any kind of change like that to go through similar practices: after all, the Luddites destroying tractors didn't prevent the mechanization of agriculture. Society as a whole routes around these defective chunks. It's just really annoying waiting for the legal and business worlds to catch up.

Big difference between a politician calling for Assange to be brought up on treason charges (Wait, wasn't that Sarah Palin? She doesn't even count, she's a joke! Who doesn't even know where Russia or Sweeden are on a map!) and the government doing it. The Obama administration's response? "We're looking into our laws to see if have the grounds to do anything to him" while also putting pressure on his financial sources. And probably getting Sweeden to drum up the rape charges.

Was that more than they should have? Yes, in my opinion. And a lot of people in the US (especially the newspapers) agree with me on that. But please don't go hyperbolic based on the ravings of a madwomen.

The murder/arrest/expulsion of journalists and news sources who disagree with you? That's a big one for me.

From the point of economics, if the cost of creating materials drops to zero (i.e. Replicators can make food, building materials, all other kinds of goods) then economics as we know it - and subsequently business - would cease to exist in a short period of time. Power would probably be an easily solved equation, since the cost of creating exotic materials for solar, nuclear fission, nuclear fusion, etc would drop (and research into physics and chemistry would explode due to the removal of synthesis in the scientific method). I bet there would indeed be significant backlash (or, cynically, the inventor would be shot and his research destroyed by the industry-government establishment) in the short term, but in the long run society would have a sudden and huge shift in the way it operates.

Land would be more important than any kind of material goods, intellect/technical skills/artistry would rise in importance, and politics would remain relatively the same. Social hierarchies would change for a bit as the people who hunger for power figure out how to get back on top.

I imagine a large chunk of crime would drop off (No need to rob the store if I can get what it makes for free), except for organized crime which would just shrink (The people at the top are about power, not money. The foot-soldiers are just far less interested in playing along).

Unemployment would rise - and with it suicide rates - but it would also no longer be an indicator of what it means now. That is, unless the current power structure imprints itself during the transformative period by creating a large bureaucratic superstructure that sucks up most of the surplus population designed to prevent the shift in mobility - but that wouldn't last very long since money would no longer exist in any meaningful form.

Basically, as I see it, it sounds like what happened in Star Trek was possible because the existing power structures in society were destroyed right around the advent of warp and replicator technology. A society without a WW3-level leveling of politics as we know it would probably get to the same place, where the power was now within appointment to leadership (which would be one part nepotism and one part ability).

I actually think TNG deals with this in a few episodes. I don't know about others, since all I've seen are TNG and Enterprise (and Enterprise was sci-fi for the CW audience, without the level of nuance TNG had).

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Tl;dr:
Economics can be nudged, but never stopped. If prices drop to 0, society follows and the buggy whip makers will eventually get crushed if they try and stop it.

So what we're really all saying is that the problem with net neutrality regulations are that humans who seek power and control for personal gain will inevitably use any kind of leverage they can to drive value from this control, and the only kinds of people able to gain this leverage are those who are willing to play in the game of seeking personal power.

The only way out of this cycle is to refresh the technological underpinnings of information and materials transfer in society more quickly than the overarching power structure of policy-as-leverage can adapt to it.

I'm pretty sure both Adam Smith and Karl Marx came to that conclusion, in different ways.

Addendum: download and play Cave Story, or get it for WiiWare. Contends for "Greatest Video Game Ever", and the PC version is freeware. It can be hard at times, but the gameplay and story presentation just draws you in.

As a student of game design, AAA console titles are generally designed to be conservative in gameplay and copy what's out there, polish it a bit, and sell it with new art. Now, that's not even close to being ALL of what's out there, but if GTA IV, CoD, and Mass Effect 2 aren't your cup of tea (and you do enjoy Heavy Rain) then the big-advertising-budget titles will likely never appeal to you in the way it sounds you want them to.

If you're willing to buy a game without a proven track record, look at the indie scene (Steam has a good starting selection) and some of the other great titles that have been passed over like Beyond Good and Evil or Psychonauts. They're usually more Grim Fandango or Alice than the bigger games, and you might like them more.

Yeah, but that sucked. That's why it wasn't the first tablet to succeed in the market.

80% or so of all web-backend postings I see are PHP/Java/.NET or the like. The other 20% are all Python (usually Django, though I prefer Pylons myself) and Ruby. If you want to pick up another language just so you can be future-proof, go with Ruby. I haven't learned it yet (I do javascript myself, and use PHP or Python when I do backend), it seems to be a more common request than any of the others you listed.

The same Wowio who managed to not pay the webcomic authors whose work they were selling?

My only fear about Firefly is that if I made it continue, we would never have gotten Dr. Horrible, and Nathan Fillion wouldn't have been able to star in the also excellent crime drama Castle.

Or, you know, the whole cast got Joss'd.

I couldn't agree more. The problems they're having will go away as the engineering and practices fill the gaps, and as the networks adapt to actual use conditions. The power we give them now will never go away. Only Cincinnatus gave up his dictatorship, and nobody in a board room is anything like him.