The problem with this line of argument is the old "correlation does not imply causation". The whole in your theory is that it absolutely is possible for 'ordinary' 'consumer grade' uses to peg the bandwidth as much as any server. People can leave a Skype HD video chat on 24/7. People can use rsync to mirror mirrors.kernel.org.

The style of argument you made has some connection the T-Totalers of prohibition. After all, if you can anecdotally point to some people who drank too much alcohol, and went off and murdered people, then why not make drinking alcohol illegal? The thing is, you need to make the rules and laws fit the actual problem. Don't block me from running a server just because you _assume_ I'll use more bandwidth than my neighbors. If the *real problem* is excessive bandwidth use- *make the rules and laws target that*. Making the rules target "commercial servers" instead of "levels of bandwidth use that kills everyone elses performance" only leads to a throttling of innovative _low bandwidth_ use of the internet that involves commercial servers.

The real issue is marketing bullshit and lies. ISPs want to market "unlimited bandwidth, no datacaps" because that sounds super awesome. The problem is that it is FRAUD. The internet, as described by FCC-10-201/NetNeutraly is "general purpose technology". If the cable companies want to sell me a "gmail pipeline", then market it as a "gmail pipeline". Don't market as "internet service", because without the ability to run a _low bandwidth commercial server_, it IS NOT INTERNET SERVICE.

You do realize you are on a comment subthread right? While you are correct that this is not what the ARTICLE is about, it is as a point in fact what the parent thread (that I started, and got modded 5 insightful) is about. Context matters.

My GG..P point was that yes, Netflix and other established players are able to do this. The problem, that Net Neutrality was trying to fix, was that ISPs, perhaps ones that offer their own voice and video and other high bandwidth services that Netflix is competing against, can throttle *new entrants to the field before they become big enough to be any kind of a competitor to the ISPs own voice and video offerings*. In other words- I agree with your sentiment that Netflix can and should do this, and that can and will ensure Netflix doesn't get throttled into oblivion. *My problem* is that anyone who wants to be the next Netflix, can be throttled into oblivion before being influental enough to ensure ISPs don't get away with throttling them into oblivion.

mod parent up. I do agree with that completely. I was really trying to be a voice of temperment against the juvenility of the Fuck Beta crowd. I have a slight sympathy in dice/slashdot's possible wish to shake off some portion of audience responsible for some of the viler comments. But your comment and a couple of the others have made me rethink it, and I agree, it is worthy of rebuke that the claim is they just haven't gotten around to a 'little' feature like that, several months after calling it a beta. For your and VortexCortex's and other's reasons, I agree- It does seem just plain wrong to keep calling it even a Beta rather than Alpha, and beyond that, to be imposing the Beta on the users. I can't argue with that logic. Soulskill- I urge you in meetings with your managers to discuss this point. It's not like you don't already have all the infrastructure in place already for direct linking comments. It does seem really hard to believe it would take much time to add the feature to the beta.

Psychologically the 8 years of the W administration, or rather the 6 that included GITMO, were devastating to me. It was all I could do to make it through each day. I had lived a life, pretty much believing in the propaganda that there was a fundamental difference that made my country better than the Russians and their "Gulag". The idea that we had our own "extralegal black hole", really, really, ate away at my psyche day after day, year after year. It wasn't just GITMO, but the clarity of the "extralegal black hole" issue of GITMO, was a focus. I've also watched HBO's documentary "Ghosts of Abu Ghraib" at least a dozen times. I've chosen to make it my lifes mission to never let my country forget about what it did. And to try my best to educate the younger generations about what a fundamental change those things were.

I always temper those things with reminders about slavery, and Rodney King, and millions of references to socially accepted rape in prisons, and prisons filled with non-violent 'criminals' only guilty of stupid things like growing a plant like cannabis.

I know many of the juvenile 'Fuck Beta' crowd around here will assume I'm a troll, or crazy. But I've just told you the truth. Nothing more. Nothing less.

And when I "read WAY too much" into Obama's choice of giving himself a 1 year deadline instead of closing GITMO within a week of coming into office, I decided I wanted nothing more of being a well-paid part of that system. I'd rather starve. I'd rather die. I'd rather kill. Somehow I've found information warfare as my solace.

Actually, after a couple 5 year old kids started holding up protest placards in Utah, GoogleFiber backed off the 'servers' and made it just about 'commercial servers'.

If you want an example including a server- Quake3 server, making money for Id Software.

The point is that there is nothing about a server as opposed to a client, that makes it 'dangerous to the network' in a way that (back when we thought the FCC's Net Neutrality rule was enforceable, pre-verizon-ruling) can reasonably fall under the 'reasonable network management' NetNeutrality clause.

There is *no* technical reason why writing my own closed source competitor to a Quake3 server and running it from my residence should be blocked from the network. It is just normal internet udp/tcp over ip traffic. Doesn't hurt anyone. Doesn't cost the ISP more to pass the traffic than it does to pass Skype client traffic.

The whole point of NetNeutrality was to keep the ISP from being in the position to determine and shape the winning and losing applications, services, and devices that use the internet. The Network was supposed to treat them all Neutrally. packets are packets. Just like it's not the ISPs position to discriminate against packets going to a PlannedParenthood server, it should be their position to discriminate against packets going between my game or web server and clients around the globe. Sure, go ahead and balance my traffic equally with my neighbors. But if I'm using less traffic, upstream and down, than my neighbor Skype chatting with their grandparents and Netflixing in the evening, *then I should not have to pay more for the same amount of service, just because I use the service for different things*. The internet was supposed to be "general purpose technology" (that phrase was bandied about a lot in the FCC's Network Neutrality document).

Sorry ColdWetDog, you took your half court 3 pointer and air-balled. deconfliction is not my first account. In fact, if you imagined that anyone else _could have had_ that username with a lower UID, you would then have to presume that I was actually working for the NSA (which I'm not). My original account- jdogalt, has a UID about the same as yours. And if I'd gotten an account when I first read slashdot 5 days out of a week, I'd probably have a 4 digit UID or lower. In fact, I was posting to usenet (check alt.drugs, alt.philosophy.objectivism (i was young once)) since before the eternal september. (I think I first got a college account on KU's VAX when I was in high school at the age of 16 in 1991. I probably knew about usenet from my older brother who worked at SGI's ASD quite awhile before that. Now he is a VP at google)

Nice that you can afford a lawn. I quit my 6 figure salary job at VMWare in 2009 when I had a personal hardwall office in the Xerox-Parc campus (VMWare had just aquired a large chunk of the campus). I quit because when I saw Obama give himself a 1 year deadline to close GITMO, it was obvious to me he had no intention of really doing it. I also didn't like the laughable idea that I was one of four people whose fingerprint was authed for the non-smart-card usbkey containing the private key for the vmware linux guest packages.

Please name and describe as many of those levels as you can so that I can refute them.

However, I will admit that Soulskill just gave this response- which definitately settles some of my personal main issues with beta (and I don't have any reason to disbelieve Soulskill at this point in time)-

http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=4771749&cid=46207205

Soulskill:"

We have plans to implement direct linking to comments. It's been on our to-do list since before the recent expansion of the beta test. It's one of several features we simply haven't had time to implement yet.

Also, the way in which comments are displayed is still a work-in-progress as well. There will be improvements.
"

Lastly, bonus advise to Soulskill/Slashdot about the FirstPost issue- how about randomizing the time of article release to various IP. I.e. within a 30 minute block perhaps? Just a thought.... (but really, the classic moderation/comment system seems to be the well evolved solution to that already)

Please be nice VortexCortex. I for one thank Soulskill for that response. And I thank you VortexCortex for a comment you made long ago about how we may possibly once again in the future be able to trust our computers (open source hardware designs shipped with the hardware, allowing users to do things such as compare power draw under simulation and reality to ensure extra hardware/software isn't running alongside the published design). And Soulskill, I'll take your word and start playing a little nicer. And Dave Schroeder- it would be kind of cool if you would weigh in with some respectful commentary as well. That previous slashdot article about a scientist being systematically harassed by a corporation rings entirely too true with my own experiences. If you have some friends in government, I would deeply appreciate your looking into my case.

http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=4766259&cid=46193879

1) the fresh user experience involves by default full expansion of 0 and -1 comments. This is pure poison. Much as I laud the side of the debate that paints us commenters as *contributors* rather than just 'audience', the fact is that there are as many poisonous comments as golden ones. Exposing new users to the site to all of those instead of hiding score:0/-1 by default and 1-lining score:1/2 will simply leave new visitors with the wrong impression of the site (IMHO)

2) for me, the ability to direct link to comments is critical. This seems missing, and as yet I've seen no promise to implement it in beta or keep its aspect of classic around permanently. For instance, I like to share specific comment subthreads, like this one, between myself and active duty US Navy Information Warfare Officer Dave Schroeder from 8 months prior to the Snowden revelations-

http://news.slashdot.org/comme... [slashdot.org]

snippets of context include-

"
That's one problem with cyber (Score:5, Insightful)
Attribution.

Disclaimer: I am a Navy Information Warfare Officer.
First, it's important to note that the White House didn't confirm the suspected source. It was anonymous officials who said this appeared to originate "from China" -- take that as you will.
" ...

"
A couple of things:

1. I thought your Google manifesto was very good (I know it's a work in progress).
2. I think you're reading WAY too much into certain things. ... ... ...

Back to the other issues. I'm a little disappointed you called so many of my responses straw men; they're not in any respect.

I have not seen any serious calls for "backdoors" in secure protocols. You're completely misunderstanding what even the FBI wants: you're imagining a scenario where "the Man" has a secret backdoor to any running system, encryption, or secure protocol, anywhere. That is not only false, it actually would be gravely detrimental to our own security: we -- individuals, the civilian sector, the government, the military -- rely on the security of these protocols. It's similar to the belief among some that NSA has a "secret backdoor" ...
"

"commercial use of..." huh?? Are people who sell knick knacks on Ebay engaging in "commercial use of consumer grade contracts"? (yes, they are). Are people who agree to view advertisements on gmail in exchange for 'free' use of a service that costs money to run engaging in "commercial use of consumer grade contracts" (yes, they are). Network Neutrality was intented to prevent giving ISPs arbitrary power over such things. Without it, ISPs can charge consumers extra to visit, e.g. Netflix, or FoxNews, or PlannedParenthood. ISPs *should not have* that arbitrary ability to discriminate amongst traffic. It should be none of their business whether or not the primary profiteer of my used bandwidth is Microsoft via Skype, or myself personally.

In all fairness, there are some things I like about beta, and some things I don't. I think the animosity is stemming from the apparent inflexibility on the idea of maintaining classic as an alternative indefinitely for those who prefer it. And perhaps for not fixing some things (aforementioned via direct linked historical comment) that could use fixing before deploying it on all (or even 25% of) users.

http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=4766259&cid=46193879

http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=4766259&cid=46193879

You forgot to mention (if I'm not mistaken) how the court practically invited the FCC simply to invoke common carrier regulation as the legally proper way to achieve it's Net Neutrality anti-discrimination rules. While the "FCC tried", the FCC also _has not tried_ to reinstate Net Neutrality via its legal authority to regulate common carriers that way (vs 'information services'). The FCC, also, after a year and a lot of press, has never given me a single sentence of analysis of my 53 page Net Neutrality complaint I filed with them, via the Kansas Attorney General's Office, over GoogleFiber's (terms of service) blocking of residential servers. (after my cause inspired some protesters in Utah, Google backed down and narrowed the blockage to 'commercial servers', whatever that means. I.e. a Quake3 server is a commercial server making money for Id Software. Somehow that is OK, but god forbid any innovator in their own home makes a profit)