I know someone who had an issue with TWC. He got the phone number of the president's office on gethuman, and threatened to get the state Attorneys General involved and he actually got a call back that very day, and resolved to his satisfaction by the next day. I don't think he could have gotten that kind of a response from a governmental agency, but I also don't think he would have gotten that kind of response without the threat of government action.

Actually, I used to be worried about small companies being represented, but now I'm not so sure that is a problem. I think that a "small company" with respect to the net neutrality is not some mom and pop storefront that needs to pay to make sure their site doesn't lag, but rather, a bandwith hogging SocialStreamingPaymentP2P startup whose "scalable" business plan depends on getting relatively low cost access to end users even after they cash in their lottery ticket through an IPO or acquisition.

I'm not sure that public policy should be determined in order to help those companies, and to promote such a winner-take-all environment.

Yes, but...

The question of whether the Internet is essential infrastructure that should be run as a public utility does not resolve the question of net neutrality. It simply changes the process by which the question gets resolved.

In fact, if the internet was run as a public utility, I think that it would be less likely to support net neutrality, for 2 reasons. First, net neutrality tends to level the playing field between large companies and small start ups. However, large companies tend to have much more political power than smaller companies, so if the question of net neutrality was determined purely in the political realm then net neutrality opponents would appear to have an advantage.

Second, net neutrality tends to favor content owners over distribution channels. If content owners were still private companies, but the distribution channel was publicly owned, I think the public would tend to side more with giving power to the publicly owned internet utility companies and demand that companies like Disney or Google or What's App pay to play.

However, in a world where the benefits of getting rid of net neutrality went to your local city instead of, say, Comcast, the decisionmaking calculus of whether net neutrality is a good idea or not might change substantially.

I think the author would have done better to say "Web marketers will be able to understand and predict the interactions of people the way mechanical engineers understand and predict the interactions of objects." There's no need to bring science into it at all.

How about....because advances in materials technology over the last hundred years have allowed many members of the upper middle class to afford light shafts and gigantic golf club heads that have disproportionately made hitting the ball long distances, straight, much easier than it used to be. However, putting has remained at about the same level of difficulty as it always has been. So the game is greatly changed, and they are examining a rules change to re-balance the difficulty of the long game and the short game to be more consistent with what it was long ago.

Unless their plan was to go into bankruptcy! Then their business model works perfectly and may even be emulated!

Actually, the whole point of the 2nd amendment is that the government should not have a monopoly on the use of deadly force. The ability of any individual to use justifiable lethal force ensures that individuals are not merely wards of the state, dependent on a (possibly corrupted) army or police force to defend themselves from bad people. That is the "free state" that is being referred to in the text.

People who argue that the point of the second amendment is to possibly use arms against the government are being far too literal (just as those who argue that the point of the second amendment is to form state militias are too).

IANAL, but based on accounts that I have read elsewhere, PA only requires two-party consent if there is an expectation of privacy. Since this was recorded in the middle of a classroom with dozens of kids in it, there should not be an expectation of privacy; therefore this crappy ruling should be overturned on appeal.

Real actuary speaking here. Societies generally put resources into producing things that the society wants. They put more resources into things that they want more of *relative to other things that they don't want as badly*. It is that relative allocation that is important. If we didn't want to live longer lives, we would spend our resources on present day consumption rather than on medical services. The fact that the cost of health care keeps going up and up is merely a reflection of the fact that (in the 1st world) we have (more than) enough food, adequate shelter, and plenty of shiny things to keep us happy, so what we really want to spend money on is a pill that keeps our bodies younger for longer. So unless we "unlearn" all the things that give us this phenomenal productivity (through natural catastrophe, war, plague, etc.), we don't have to worry about decline.

One lecturer put it well by saying that he couldn't wait until we are spending 99% of GDP on health care, because at that point all of our wants and needs for food, shelter, entertainment, intellectual challenge, etc will be satisfied for pocket change so the only thing actually worth putting society's resources into is extending life.

The BYTE editorial that the cover was based on was about how new technologies were shrinking computing, such as the 3.5" disk and the Osborne 1. The toshiba "tv-on a watch" was a fail but it's interesting that they noted 2 products of actual historical significance. The editors also made the astute observation that "Osborne is currently seeking approval from the FAA to operate the unit on board a plane". Only took 3 decades!

... only if their goal is to actually create a company that manufactures flying cars. If, however, their goal is to take a lot of people's money without giving them any legally recognized equity ownership or role in corporate governance, then I think that publicity is exactly what they need.

We should probably sue both Accuweather and NASA just to cover our bases.

I think it is more accurate to say that knowledge is not inherited. But interestingly the correction wouldn't change the veracity of your statement.

So then it is inflammable?

Worst apparent negative prefix ever.

I have to interject my $0.02 because I don't think you have seen through to the logical conclusion of your position. What if a group of people decided that they didn't like the rules of the government, so they begin to campaign against the entire government itself? Should they have the freedom to do that?

And when that proves unsuccessful, they start an armed revolt to change the government. Should they have the freedom to do that?

And when they are successful, they begin to rewrite every law in the book. Should they have the freedom to do that?

One of the laws that they add says that if you fire somebody because of a political contribution, they will imprison you or take your money. Should they have the freedom to do that? If not, why not? Shouldn't they have the freedom to not associate with people who would do that kind of firing?

It is impossible to say everyone should have the freedom to make whatever associations they want because every freedom granted is a limitation on somebody else's freedom to stop you from doing that thing. Re-read your Coase.

So instead of making an appeal to any particular fundamental right (which you won't be able to get everyone to agree to anyways), you need to get everyone to agree to a *process* for making the rules, and once everyone agrees to abide by the rules that are made through the proper process, then you follow that process and abide by the laws you like and go through the process to change the laws you don't. It's obvious that you disagree with this law, but do you have a much better way of making laws than the sort of representative democratic republic generally followed in the US (other than declaring RightSaidFred99 supreme monarch)? Not once in any of your comments have you mentioned that you felt that the law was improperly passed, merely that it is a bad law because it impinges on the freedom of people you would prefer to have freedom and gives freedom to people who you would prefer did not.