Obligatory "Starve The Beast" link. Neocons and others are so god damned crazy that responsible accounting, the likes of which most high school students could comprehend (aiming for lack of debt, cuz like, it's better to have money than to owe it), will probably not return to our leadership until the "ending badly" you spoke of comes even more to pass than it already has.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Starve_the_beast

The level of abuses - both the spying itself, subsequent known abuses of the data, and countless likely unknown abuses - has already done enough damage to the fabric of the ideal of democracy, that an open and straightforward conversation is not enough. When there are very real threats that people will be tortured to preserve government secrecy about this...

It's too late for the straightforward sensible conversation. Heads need to roll. Figuritively or literally. I stopped voting when Obama broke his 1 year GITMO pledge. I thought I would make an exception if Hillary was the only female top spot on one of the two main parties. I think this slashdot troll headline will make me give up on that. It'd be nice to see a non-male president of the U.S. But Hillary Clinton is day by day demonstrably failing to live up to the kind of standard which I would use if I could muster the belief that voting could help this in the same sensible fashion she is after. Things are *messed up*.

I also love the Roddenberry canon, but I disagree with your evaluation. I think you are missing the kind of "love of the contradictions" attitude that I think it shares with other religious canons. For instance, take money. We start with a vision of earth utopia 300 years in the future, where nobody is short on cash, short on food, short on housing, or short on medical care. NOBODY. And no more national wars on our planet. All that shit was *solved by smart people over a long period of time*. Or so the vision of utopia goes. But then comes the story of the voyage and exploration. Just as soon as we widen the sentient-social galactic camera angle to just a bit wider view, you see that all of a sudden, our side, is back to having wars (cardassians, borg, dominion). Oh, and I forgot the other big utopian factor- *NO STATE SPONSORED OR CONDONED TORTURE* (allegedly, we'll get to section 31 soon). But as soon as we meet the cardassians, the borg, the dominion, we see that our side is again no longer in any actual future utopia, but rather subject to the timeless problems stemming from the darwinian nature of life, just at a fractally increasing scale. In fact I love Gene Roddenberry's Andromeda because it takes this to the level of galaxies as large complex life forms, also in a straightforward darwinian struggle for survival at a larger scale. I'm sure someone could write a book about multiple 3D universes all born of 4D black holes in some similar struggle for survival, reproduction, durabiity, and otherwise continued existence. In general those complex systems that fight to exist, unsurprisingly populate existence (or at least, the fittest contenders among them). But now, lets not forget about God. The Trek canon also does an extremely good job of obvious sci-fi imaginings of many different God-like entities. That all (or most) interestingly "ring true" with what many spiritual people see as interaction with "God". Satans too. These stories I think help many anti-religious people to understand religious people, and vice versa. If there is any kind of art we need more of in the world, I think that is it. Or helping people of one religion, better understand those of another. Or even racists vs non-racists. Trek is overtly racial, with species taking place of races, and embracing significant cultural and biological differences. I.e. not trying to have a naive anti-racist view of "we are all created equal". We aren't. We are different. Some thrive and survive, some don't. Often it's a viscious cruel battle to see who does.

But I digress, getting back to your point- it's about embracing the contradiction. It's about the shades of gray. Utter, 100% loyalty to orders is something that needs to be shown and taught as horrendously dangerous. We do this with the history of WW2 and elsewhere. We do this with artwork like Trek. Trek shows a *balanced* view of what acting ethically means. Trek shows a *realistic* view of what kinds of situations military leaders and others face. Every kind of ordinary common corruption in today's world has been expertly dealt with by Trek (if you search for the steganographed theme played out in a fictional future).

To claim that ethics will ever boil down to anything other than the type of "maverick captain" scenarios described by trek is I think the problem with your opinion. The ethics of Trek may lead people in positions like Snowden to say- "To Hell With The Law. An unjust law is no law at all.". And that is a good thing. It is the final check and balance on society, more fundamental than even the concept of democracy. You have a choice. It's part of being alive. Get used to it.

The original complaint I filed with the FCC, then the Kansas Attorney General, and then back to the FCC is here-

http://cloudsession.com/dawg/downloads/misc/kag-draft-2k121024.pdf

Another slashdot echo of the EFF's take is here-

http://tech.slashdot.org/story/13/08/13/2148245/eff-slams-google-fiber-for-banning-servers-on-its-network

Ad hominem much tuppe666? My name is Douglas McClendon.

Here is my twist, I'll just post a paragraph from 10-201 (aka 'Net Neutrality')

FCC-10-201 Paragraph 13 (see appendix B for the entirety) ...
(Under Section Heading:)
The Internet’s Openness Promotes Innovation, Investment, Competition, Free Expression, and Other National Broadband Goals
13.
Like electricity and the computer, the Internet is a "general purpose technology" that enables new methods of production that have a major impact on
the entire economy.(12) The Internet’s founders intentionally built a network that is open, in the sense that it has no gatekeepers limiting innovation and
communication through the network.(13) Accordingly, the Internet enables an end user to access the content and applications of her choice, without
requiring permission from broadband providers. This architecture enables innovators to create and offer new applications and services without needing
approval from any controlling entity, be it a network provider, equipment manufacturer, industry body, or government agency.(14) End users benefit
because the Internet’s openness allows new technologies to be developed and distributed by a broad range of sources, not just by the companies that
operate the network. For example, Sir Tim Berners-Lee was able to invent the World Wide Web nearly two decades after engineers developed the
Internet’s original protocols, without needing changes to those protocols or any approval from network operators.(15) Startups and small businesses
benefit because the Internet’s openness enables anyone connected to the network to reach and do business with anyone else,(16) allowing even the
smallest and most remotely located businesses to access national and global markets, and contribute to the economy through e-commerce(17) and
online advertising.(18) Because Internet openness enables widespread innovation and allows all end users and edge providers (rather than just the
significantly smaller number of broadband providers) to create and determine the success or failure of content, applications, services, and devices, it
maximizes commercial and non-commercial innovations that address key national challenges -- including improvements in health care, education, and
energy efficiency that benefit our economy and civic life.(19)

http://hraunfoss.fcc.gov/edocs_public/attachmatch/FCC-10-201A1_Rcd.pdf

And here, I will emphasize a quote from Vint Cerf, about what IPv6 _ought_ to enable on the internet-

"
At Google we believe IPv6 is essential to the continued health and growth of the Internet and that by allowing all devices to talk to each other directly,
IPv6 enables new innovative services. ...
http://www.google.com/intl/en/ipv6/
"

Finally, I'll go back to quoting the actual Net Neutrality rule I accused GoogleFiber of violating (10-201 again, see .gov link above)

"
ii. No blocking.
Fixed broadband providers may not block lawful content, applications, services, or non-harmful devices; mobile broadband providers may not block
lawful websites, or block applications that compete with their voice or video telephony services;
"

Me, running a videogame server connected to my endpoint of the internet, *is a lawful service running on a non-harmful device". If Google wants to claim that I'm taking up too much in bandwidth resources, they are free at any time to stop committing the longstanding advertising fraud common in the residential ISP industry known as "unlimited bandwidth / no caps". There is a limit, there is a cap. Selective enforcement of vague ferengi print is how they enforce it. This also IMO has the side effect of chilling home served competitive services that might in fact prove more secure from eavesdropping than GMail and GoogleHangouts.

Go Die Troll.

And that - lack of scientific knowledge to benefit humanity - is in a nutshell, precisely what the Schedule-1-ness of cannabis has given humanity. Yes, I know there are very rare, and very tightly controlled exceptions to the prohibition on medical studies, but seriously, I'm still waiting for the declassified report that explains that cannabis was invented by the CIA or KGB or some such. Sadly the only other plausible theory I have is shameful incompetence for generations on the part of our leaders. Or complicity in a conspiracy to profit on an invented vice market. Or... seriously people, chime in with theories. I've been smoking a lot of herb for half my life- a couple decades now. And those are the best theories I have...

disclaimer: complainant here: The terms say "prohibited". Look it up.

disclaimer: complainant here who hasn't RTFA yet. My standard response to the business issue is this quote from the FCC Network Neutrality document-

FCC-10-201 Report and Order Preserving the Open Internet:
(*** emphasis mine ***)
"
Startups and small businesses benefit because the Internet’s openness enables ***anyone connected to the network to reach and do business with anyone else***,(16) allowing even the smallest and most remotely located businesses to access national and global markets, and contribute to the economy through e-commerce
"

"If you're using the service more, you should expect to pay more."

disclaimer: complainant here: I agree with this. But there is not an option for it, nor an option to _not use the service more_ *and pay the same* (just happening to be running an openarena game server instead of skyping like your next door neighbor, but using no more bandwidth than your neighbor).

disclaimer: complainant here who hasn't RTFA yet. My standard response to the business issue is this quote from the FCC Network Neutrality document-

FCC-10-201 Report and Order Preserving the Open Internet:
(*** emphasis mine ***)
"
Startups and small businesses benefit because the Internet’s openness enables ***anyone connected to the network to reach and do business with anyone else***,(16) allowing even the smallest and most remotely located businesses to access national and global markets, and contribute to the economy through e-commerce
"

disclosure: complainant here- I'd consider it a favor if someone would mod the parent up. The comment it is responding to is 4-informative, and seems in my view to give sanction to the whitewashing of- well, if everybody has been making these blatant marketing lies about unlimited bandwidth while massaging the network for their maximum profits and convenience (engineering lazyness in part) at the expense of free speech empowerment for residential users (I would argue perhaps the most important class of internet end-points or edges)... Anyway, you get my point.

disclosure: complainant here. I disagree, as mentioned elsewhere about any legitimacy to commercial vs non-commercial. The point I make there is - when you trade your eyeball attention at google ads in exchange for an advanced gmail cloud service, you are engaging in commercial internet traffic. By capitalistic theory, you wouldn't be doing it if you didn't feel you'd profit from it. And in this case, the profit can be measured in dollars. Next, the way your last sentence sounds makes sense, but again, you are mistankenly tying different levels of SLA with "commercial/noncommercial". Correlation is not causation, though this is another case where that gets easily confused. I.e, call it "high-grade vs low-grade" service all you like and charge different prices. Just don't tell me that how much I profit personally as an end-user from a fixed number of packets determines how much I get charged from them. We don't need that extra taxman in the picture.

dislosure- complainant here: The *point* is that I don't care what they "don't care about". What I care about is being *free* to run that carpenter website, without feeling *guilty that I am willfully violating the simple and clear wording of a contract I entered into*.

That is the problem.

disclosure: complainant here. And I'm pointing out that the Network Neutrality rules forbid the blocking of traffic to *any/all* legal devices. They don't get to, either in their switches and routers, or in their terms of service, decide that my linux pc running an openarena server has less worthy traffic than my neighbor uploading lol-cat videos to youtube. Otherwise the network operators would be in too great a position to effectively shape and dominate the internet devices marketplace. Which of course they'd all love to do. Even Google.

What about a linux pc running an apache/web and openarena/game servers serving personal photos to friends and family? How about a custom carpenter showing off his work for potential customers to see and a phone number to call to arrange payment and shipment? Where exactly do you draw that line? Network Neutrality is about the idea that the network operator doesn't get to draw that line. They have to treat traffic as traffic. It doesn't matter whether it was a carpenter's server eating up traffic, or a chronic lol-cat youtube uploader. They have to deal with such congestion in ways that do not give preference to any lawful application, service, or device. Otherwise it won't be long till only Google branded, or Google certified devices are allowed to be used with your Google connection (bit of an exageration, the actual road forward will be subtler, but with as much as they can get away with that helps drive up their overall profits).