Because they're paying for their Internet connection. It's not up to AT&T, Comcast, Verizon, or anyone else to tell me whether or not I should be able to go to Amazon's website or the local bookstore down the street's website. Amazon is paying for a bigger pipe, bigger servers, etc. Their website is already going to be faster/more responsive, sure. And IIRC I've seen local commercials in the OTA broadcasts of the Superbowl (probably because the Network has a deal set up with their affiliates across the country). Allowing Amazon to pay ISPs to "prioritize" their packets (or really to de-prioritize their competition) would be kinda like saying Wal-mart paying affiliates to not air competitor's ads (or I guess really delaying the broadcast of those ads to later time). -- Worst analogy ever.
ISPs are basically trying to get a bite of the apple from you and the site you're visiting. You've both paid for your connection, there are peering agreements so it doesn't cost them any extra for you to visit Amazon or the local bookstore's site, yet they want the local bookstore to pay extra to every ISP to keep their packets flowing to anyone equally. And as much as I'm sure you would pay extra to have your packets get priority, good luck winning a money battle with Amazon on who gets higher priority with your customer's ISP.

Are you saying that a cop should be able to tell you to stop filming them doing a traffic stop? (or really their job while in a public place; undercover operations notwithstanding, I concede that filming an undercover cop could be a bad thing)

No, like a song called Ironic with no examples of irony in it. (sorry, just bugged me for a while now)

The "health plan" as it stands is completey stupid sure, but I don't think it qualifies as "shredding the Constitution" as you so elequintly put it. Shall we just overlook the fact that his predecessor began (and he has kept up) the unconstitutional practice of wiretapping every phone line in the country? Sorry, I just had to point that out.

I'm not even a programmer, and I know that your last statement is wrong. Did you modify the code (yes/no). If yes are you distributing those modifications? (yes/no). If no, you have nothing to worry about. If yes, you've become a devloper, and as per the GPL, you are required to give the same freedom to anyone who wants your code the same freedom you were given when you recieved your code. If you answerd no to the first question (Did you modify the code), then what's the beef? Unless you are mirroring, but then, you're probably not doing that from a small office's network connection. So really, the question of narrowly defining when you are or not a user isn't artificial. If you choose to modify GPL code and release it, congratulations, you've made yourself a developer. Now kindly play nice and share your code, since, by virtue of you now being a developer and distributer of GPL'd code, you are bound by the GPL to give everyone else the same freedom the original devolpers gave you (the freedom to view and modify the source code to your heart's content).

Yeah, but I live in Quincy (you had mentioned the rehab center here once, so I know you know where it is), and I may just pop over there sometime (if I can ever get my parents to take the kids for a weekend). We'll compare evil-Xs. So, if someone at Felber's says some leprechaun looking guy came in here looking for you, it would be me. (yes, I've got that much Irish in me)

Ok, only one glaring flaw with your argument. If you go to the coffee shop and use the internet there, who do you think they get the connection from? You'll still be supporting the monopoly, only indirectly. And if everyone goes to places with free wifi, those cofee shops will have to get bigger pipes, which will either mean no more free wifi, or higher prices (which is the shop's right, I'm not going to argue that), but the net result is that they give more money to the monopoly ISP. The telcos got a lot of tax breaks to upgrade the networks, which they only half-assed. Yes, there are some small ISPs that do a great job maintaining and upgrading networks (usually these are rural telephone co-ops, the one in my area has had FOIS to most of thier customers for years, and are in the middle of rolling it out to all of them). But to say that the answer is to not support the major telcos by going to coffee shops and using the connections there is kinda silly, since the coffee shops get internet from somewhere (I'm not aware of any coffee shops running a backbone connection, and I would love to see a list of those who are operating as backbone carriers). Sometimes the answer, unfortunately, is the government (after all, the Interstate Highway system isn't all bad)

BTW: Almost everywhere else on the net (including your forums), I'm Arrach. And may I once again say it's about time someone else comes in here who doesn't go along with the "everything spiritual is bunk" groupthink that slashdot seems to have. I have noticed several christians in the forums, but I don't recall anyone else subscribing to alternate belief systems. Anyway, again, greetings and salutations. Hope to chat again

Actually, MS has a nice thing called Microsoft Supplimental Update Services (basically allowed admins to set up a server to act as a local repository for all things MS Patch related). Having set up a few in my time, it was really handy for testing on small groups (I actually had set it up to do initial pushes to techs and sys admins first, then IT department, and wouldn't authorize patches for everyone else until I was satisfied that the patches wouldn't bork everything). It was also nice since you could download all the patches to a local server and not eat up your bandwidth when everyone came into work and powered thier computers on (we had updates set to run overnight, but since nobody ever bothered doing that, our bandwidth would get all eaten up by machines powering up and fetching updates). Anyway, I digress, simple fact is that the program exists, and is free even.