No, there's no "fascinating question that makes this debate interesting". The government should prevent any market condition where a hostile monopoly may manifest. Full stop.

AT&T and Verizon has proven that they can and will abuse their oligopoly position and not compete. This will not change in any foreseeable circumstance short of being forced into a competitive landscape. The duty of government then is to lower the barrier to entry, which, in this case, the barrier is the amazing amount of cash AT&T and Verizon has to outbid everyone else.

And if you object to taxpayers subsidizing, then I can simply point you at the cost of running any government agency that (ostensibly?) promotes fair competition: e.g. SEC. The cost to hire lawyers, set up offices, conduct audits, litigate -- none of that is free. Do I see you label "preventing and punishing insider trading" as an "interesting debate since it has no objectively correct answer" in a cost analysis? No, of course not, because it's desirable and everything has an associated cost to begin with.

What? So let more deaf people be deaf and let them feel what it means to be deaf? That's one of the silliest things I've read.

What does that even mean? So we should stop looking for cures for cancer and stop using existing cures because people with cancer can't share their pain? I mean, It's not like existing deaf people can't get implants. Even if these people are so resistant to changing their situation and are adamant about preserving their culture, they don't have to drag others into it.

On the other hand, if we're all going to die just like them, then why does it matter? I'd rather have a fighting chance than to die.

Annnnnd we have people who domesticated them to make man's (and woman's!) best friends. I think it's pretty obvious who's right there. =D
In all seriousness, how is aging any different from a disease? That'd be akin to calling genetic diseases that manifest later in life a "natural occurrence".

While I agree with you on most points, I don't think the last sentence is warranted -- because people aren't perfect. Just because you can write a piece of code doesn't mean you should. 1) If the problem has been solved exactly like you wanted, and the resulting code has 5 years of bug fixing associated with it, it's probably a good idea to use it (contrived e.g. are you going to rewrite Linux?). 2) Why waste time solving a problem that's already been solved by someone else (assuming it aligns with your specs). Your job is to solve problems, not write code -- computer/code is there to help you solve problems. 3) If you launch a product on the internet with, say, a privacy bug because you wrote that piece of code yourself...well, your company may not be around long enough to fix that bug.

Can and will are two very different things. Just like you can go out and masturbate in front of the city hall in daylight, you (most likely) will not. Just like someone can fry their moral parts of his brain, doesn't mean he will (most likely fry some other portion, or a big portion altogether...if he manages to fry it in the first place). If everything happens with the merest possibilities, we'd either have a big black hole where the earth is right now, or you would've won the jackpot many times over.

Did I imply or accept programming as solely an art? Is there a line in the sand dividing what're traditionally considered art and non-art disciplines? I believe the answer to both is "no". I'm not sure what's been vindicated.

Your point being that it's an "art", implying not everyone can be good at it, implying people good at the art is few and far between, implying there's a shortage? If so, yes, I get that, and my point is that it isn't as much of an art as people want to say it is. If not, perhaps you can clarify your point and be less of an ass about it.

It's not the way the "art" is. It's poor teaching and a lack of will to learn. Sure, maybe not everyone can become an excellent programmer without putting in at least 15 years, but almost everyone can be a good programmer with a good few years of learning/training. And no, college doesn't teach you everything you need to know to be a good programmer.

Exactly. And the goal of educational websites is to promote education amongst the underserved -- targeting the "haves" is kinda counter to their state goals. And if any of the popular education sites misses that point, then in theory the "invisible hand" should guide the smarter education sites to offer low bandwidth versions (and this would quickly be reflected in enrollment counts).

I-frames may cost that much. However, most of the frames are P-frames (using VP8 parlance), which cost a lot less. There is even more room for compression when you consider temporal coherence in additional to adjacent block coherence. (There are Golden frames and alt-reference frames, but those are details of the algorithm/implementation.)

Lolwut? Did they make a lot of good first party games? Last I heard (a year or two ago), devs were complaining how bad sales on the Wii were.

I would agree with 2 out of the 4: open SDK and courting indies. I'm a dev, and yhy the hell do I care about open OS or open hardware? I'm not going to make my own hardware, and neither am I going to ask my customers to install custom OSes (which means the OS has to be full-featured and bug-free before I support said platform). Game developers need ways to make money (most likely just to put food on the table), not to fulfill some ideological desire.

I think the "casual gamer living room" is a myth. Just like the Nintendo Wii and the 0.5 games it sold per console sale.

Or if you read another site, they say Lenovo is getting 2000 patents and cross licensing the rest. I think this is a lot more consistent with the public statements from the horse's mouth, in addition to the higher trust I have for native sources.