Ah, let me amend this by mentioning I was utterly unaware of the existence of a 'news' channel on the cable networks, and that this is what was being discussed. I stopped watching TV a long time ago (don't even have the ability anymore). I was referring to an hour half/hour show which appears over the airwaves locally here, which nonetheless goes by the title "Fox News".
You've got to remember, when dealing with average Americans (and I say this as an American), to subtract 8 years of mental age for every 10 years of physical age.
There are, of course, exceptions - most of those exceptions are on this forum right now.
FOX News doesn't use the public airwaves.
Ahh...no, I'm pretty sure Faux News is available over the airwaves. I say this because I've never had cable TV, and I've (inadvertently) seen their shows before. Don't know where you came up with that one - did you hear it on one of their episodes?
YOU DON'T HAVE A RIGHT TO THE INTERNET.
You know, there's been a bit of talk about changing that. Not that I expect that to happen anytime soon (and why the internet? You'd think you'd hear about making electricity a right before net access).
Just throwing that out there.
How on Earth are you going to get citizens to vote up/down on hundreds of thousands of employees?
Don't forget the postal service. They employ nearly a million people all by themselves. Also, Joe might take offense at not getting that mail carrier office and, ahem, go postal on you. (Sorry, I had to say it).
Ugh, that was a horror story!
I have DSL through Fairpoint where I'm at, and I've got to say I'm pretty lucky compared to you. While my speeds are modest (~320KB/s down and ~80KB/s up), they're constant (as expected from DSL) - I don't have to worry about peak usage times or any other kind of slowdown. There's never a complaint about using too much bandwidth - I've run my connection at max both ways for entire months before (seriously, 24/7 for a whole month) without issue.
The customer service used to suck, but - and I hate to say this - since they declared bankruptcy in order to dump the union, it's improved considerably. My final complaint - that I couldn't pay my internet provider online - has been resolved, and I'm pretty content with the situation.
The only other ISP in the area is Time Warner, and from what I've heard they're more expensive and less reliable, although you can get faster speeds (if you're online at 3 am).
The whole problem is the private ownership of the infrastructure. Move the infrastructure to public ownership on a state, county, or city/town basis (my preference is for the latter), and lease access to ISPs, and you not only have a new avenue for competition but a means for local communities to collect a little revenue on the side.
Yes. Public infrastructure leased by private ISPs is really the way to go. But you're right, I can't even imagine the screaming and crying that would result if this were ever proposed in Congress.
ROFL! Ahh, what a riot! Yep, that pretty much sums up all the libertarian arguments I've heard on
Just as an aside, what ever happened to the real libertarians? You know, the ones that were just to the right of the anarchists, but hated money just as much as government? Where did they go? Did they all die out in the 80's, or something?
I am a company and I filter internet access for my employees. Is that unfair to the sites I'm filtering?
Yes. But it's your business, you censor free speech all you'd like. Your employees are free to access their favorite sites at home.
I am a company and I have some slight performance issues out to the internet for employees, to speed things along I prioritize traffic to and from business related websites we commonly use. Is that unfair to the sites that aren't being prioritized?
Yes. But it's your business, you censor free speech all you'd like. Your employees are free to access their favorite sites at home.
What if instead of me as the company doing it for my own employees I am an ISP that provides this to business customers. Is that unfair to anybody?
Yes. Only now, you're censoring the free speech of the public, which is a violation of the Constitution, at least in spirit.
What if I sell it to consumers, is that unfair to the sites?
No, not really. What you do or do not charge for your service has no relation to individual websites, so long as it's the same for everyone.
What if this is the only option I provide, is that unfair to the sites?
Yes. You are selectively enabling certain sites while crippling others at your whim. What kind of messed up mind doesn't find this unfair?
if this is the solution to piracy, then why aren't more people electing to eschew their copyrights, and go down this route?
It's called the Creative Commons (CC) license, and many artists are marketing their works under it.
And why, if it helps obscure artists get recognition, aren't more obscure artists using this technique?
They are. Getting your stuff online is pretty much essential for any artists these days. I've even found a few obscure artists that I never would have discovered otherwise via torrenting. The reasons you aren't noticing this are probably because:
And if they are, why aren't they getting the recognition they're being promised?
And what about people who don't want to be stuck reading off dead trees, or having to watch movies in overpriced cinemas, or having to listen to music at designated times and places, for a lot of money?
Why these people get their music and movies for free! Yay! Honestly, this question seems more directed at asking what's wrong with copyright, rather than free sharing
Where is the incentive to produce quality musical recordings, or release movies for home use?
Don't worry, the users will fill in this gap in no time - in fact, they already are. There doesn't need to be incentive on the artists part, the fans will quickly convert their works into some form of distributable media
Not to mention, there seems to be this incorrect assumption that you can halve the income of artists, and we'll be none the worse for wear.
Actually, the grandparent said half an order of magnitude, which is a 5x reduction. That's actually not true, in any case: artists see very little of the money made from the cds and dvds of their work - the greater part of income earned from those sales feeds the production company's advertising costs, salaries, and legal fees. So, actually it would mean a reduction in advertising, unnecessary corporate management, and lawyers. Not a great loss.
If we artificially restrict the income of artists, then the net result will be less artists.
Yes, that's correct.
I'm sorry, but what you're describing sounds pretty much like a death knell for our culture. We'd be stuck back in the cultural dark ages, when the few artists that existed only created for a commission, and only the rich would have access to a culture.
Quite incorrect. You are assuming artists only create for the sake of fame and fortune, when in fact real artists create works because of passion. The reason that artists were only available to the wealthy back in the day was because it took a great deal of resources to support their art, and they would otherwise be unable to afford such things. This is no longer true today; now anyone can produce content on a tiny budget, and need not spend every waking moment creating, for that matter - they can get real jobs to support themselves and their art. This is the truth of today, this is the truth that the **AA's are trying to hide.
Writing that last paragraph made me realize that the system hasn't actually changed that much - the production companies have merely taken the place of the wealthy patrons of the past. And since art is of no real use to an evil corporation, they simply copy (freely) what they get from the artist and dole it out in measured amounts to the public.
Also, consider this: even if you were correct and utterly free sharing of all artistic works becoming the norm causes all artists to disappear from the face of the earth overnight, there is still more content floating around right now than any person could absorb in 20 lifetimes - more content isn't really necessary at this point. The more likely scenario, that an overall reduction in the rate of content generation would occur, is quite OK by me - I could do without some of the garbage that's out there right now, nevermind what's coming down the pipe.
Actually, the sandboxing in javascript is very effective, which has led to all sorts of hacks and add ons to the initial language to escape the sandbox - usually for legitimate reasons
Not saying that XSS isn't a real security issue, but that's not a flaw in javascript (XSS attacks are bound by the sandbox like any other bit of javascript), that's a case of not properly scrubbing user input, same as SQL injection.
Perhaps a CPU/GPU "jail" combined with a locked down language?
Actually, most of the big players are more concerned right now with how to relax restrictions on cross-domain scripting while maintaining some semblance of security. It's needed for more interactive web-apps, you see.
If you want more secure scripting, get a browser that doesn't support json or ajax. Better yet, just use NoScript like the rest of us, and laugh at all the IE fools.
What are these "ads" things that you refer to? Never seen any.
I think ads are these things (images? blocks of text?) that Internet Explorer puts into webpages to annoy and distract their users. I could be wrong, though - I've never seen them either, since I don't use Microsoft products.
Actually, I believe the blue and green alerts have been removed from the scale. I recall reading an article where DHS said they were confusing too many people (that is to say, people thought they were actually going to be used at some point).
So now it's just yellow, orange, and red. Pretty inspiring, huh?
On the contrary, it goes to prove how corrupt our government has become, that it no longer abides by its own standards.
If you want to put yourself on the map, publish your own map.
