Lucas claims this is not a revenge plot.

Wait until they find the body of the Windows Phone fanboy.

Yeah, keep in mind Apple recently bought "Beats by Dre" which is a music streaming service (in addition to the headphones by the same name). Apple Radio (Apple's music streaming service) has been in the iPhone for a while. There's a very good reason Apple doesn't want their users to be able to listen to free radio on their iPhone.

Good point. I wonder if they would ever actually do this? It's definitely non-trivial, but they may have people with the capability of doing that.

Walking: 3mph.
Segway: 12mph.

They *should*, if their goal of legitimizing Open Source video drivers is true.

Legitimizing Linux gaming is not really dependent on having open source the drivers. It is dependent on having good drivers. Valve does not have a stated goal of supporting open source. Their goal is to sell games.

This article is spot on. I've experienced this when working with 3D objects on Thingiverse. It allows you to "remix" someone's work, but that is a fork. It doesn't really allow for collaboration. Lots of times I've found someone's .SCAD model and improved it but I have no way to contribute it back to them other than to post a comment and hope they notice. So some objects have dozens of "remix" forks, which have more forks, etc.

Lots of people make their objects to work for just themselves. It's the hardware equivalent of "works on my machine!" It's great that they have a way to publish and get the object out there. It allows other people do the "systems engineering" and figure out how to make the part work in general. But most of that engineering work gets lost. So many times I download an object, only to find it didn't quite work. I improve it, and then nobody else gets to benefit from that. It's kinda sad.

FYI: The article says they aren't using VPN. They are fooling Hulu's geolocating system since it is based on DNS.

The concept of geoblocking digital data is silly. New Zealand could solve this problem by simply making it illegal.

Headline: Supernovae May Not Be Standard Candles; Is Dark Energy All Wrong?
Summary: Does this mean dark energy may not be real, or that it may just be slightly weaker than we previously thought?
Articles: It is slightly weaker than we previously thought. Not significantly though.

This is a really good fair question. I thought about this because in my reply to the article, I cited this same example.

So which private company paid which private company? In this case, Netflix paid Comcast. Isn't that... odd? Netflix paid Comcast even though Comcast did absolutely nothing?

So imagine if Comcast wasn't a monopoly. I can think of 3 possibilities: 1) Comcast would have upgraded their infrastructure. 2) Customers would have moved to another ISP who had more bandwidth. 3) Comcast would have paid Netflix to colocate their servers within Comcast's network, since it saves Comcast from having to upgrade their infrastructure.

Because Comcast is a monopoly, they profited from *not* upgrading their service. That's maddening! But that is what monopolies do: they profit from extorting other companies using their monpoly power, rather than profiting from providing a good product. So the net result is that Comcast customers don't have better bandwidth. So what happens when another content provider has bandwidth problems with Comcast customers? Perhaps the company will fold. Or perhaps they will do what Netflix did, continuing the ugliness.

Now here's a criticism of my argument: What did the FCC's network neutrality do to prevent this scenario? I'm not sure it actually helped. Can someone chime-in on that? What does the new regulation do for deals like this between ISPs and content providers? I'm not sure there is a solution here other than competition.

The article is full of colorful language about network neutrality advocates, but also some sound reasoning that is unfortunately based on technical misunderstandings or misinformation. Once you look past the mischaracterizations (it's a political piece, after all - you speak to your audience and insult everyone who disagrees with you before you even consider making a point!), it's actually not that bad. There are lots of items in it that I'd like to respond to, as if I could fix the author's misunderstandings, but I'll just pick a one:

That's what we want, but that isn't what is happening. The ISPs have little economic incentive to invest in infrastructure since they are mostly monopolies. That's why Comcast chose, instead of upgrading their bandwidth when customers started watching Netflix, to pressure Netflix into co-locating servers within Comcast's network. They only could do that because they are a monopoly. Comcast customers could not choose to switch to another provider, and Netflix cannot choose to route around Comcast.

This sounds like someone citing their ignorance on a topic as evidence that something didn't happen. In general, the authors need to recognize that:
- ISPs are tied to cable/telecom monopolies.
- ISPs can't pick different "business models" without impacting individuals' free speech.
- We learned these lessons from what came before the internet. :-) Clearly they never had to dial-up to Prodigy to see one "web site" and then use Compuserve to see another one, then dial AOL to email someone else.
- We've had real issues without Network Neutrality.

It will be interesting to see how "broken" the internet is in 10 years. Usually those predicting doom and gloom fade away. We shall see, eh?

Assuming you're aware that it requires an online server when you buy it.

I recently bought LEGO Batman 3 since I love the LEGO games and enjoyed the previous two Batman games in the series. None of them have ever had an online component. LEGO Batman 3 has no online multiplayer, it only has single player and split screen co-op.

Guess what? It requires an online connection to some server somewhere. This isn't mentioned in the Steam page anywhere. If you can't connect to the server, you can't play the game.

I hadn't thought to check if it required an Internet connection to play because why the fuck should it?!! (And if I had checked, I almost certainly wouldn't have found out about it because none of the reviews mention that fact.)