I for one am strongly in favor of net neutrality, and I say that as a conservative. It's been unfortunate that this issue has been so politicized. It should be a bi-partisan issue, but I acknowledge that many on the elected right have it wrong. Lobbyists and technical misunderstanding have murkied the waters, but the average voter on the right should be able to support NN.

As many here have noted, providing last mile internet service is a natural monopoly/duopoly that a free market cannot effectively eliminate. The internet at large has many stake-holders, but the last mile is critical for usage. NN regulation is merely preemptive antitrust regulation. I think the railroad analogy is apt: if there's only one track to a buyer, the seller can rent it for the market rate, not at an arbitrarily high rate just because the track owner competes with the product seller in other endeavors. In the case of utilities and railroads, one can't go around supplying redundant tracks/roads/wires/pipes to the same house. ISPs that do compete usually do so via different mediums: wireless vs cable vs phone wire vs fiber.

Net Neutrality regulation mustn't be mistaken as a ruse for government control, it is for the sake of consumer protection and freedom.

When you select for resistant bacteria growing in the presence of antibiotics, there is usually a fitness tradeoff for that resistance. Suppose now instead that we have some virus-resistant organism we've engineered. This means all the virus receptors on the surface of the cell no longer bind virus particles, and if you've done this for *many* virus receptors, then you've mutated a lot of cell-surface proteins. I can't imagine this would go without fitness cost.

On the other hand, from studying influenza I can say that viruses evolve much faster than we do and if a variant (maybe adapted to another host) or subtype emerges that can bind your receptor anyway, then in effect you've selected out variants but not stopped the virus. Getting regular vaccines are still the way to go on this, IMO.

Since when did article postings come with gratuitous flamebait in addition to the link/info? Oh wait, this is slashdot..

That's like trying to use a frickin' flamethrower to melt snow....oh wait. :D

My resolution is: "Successfully help prevent *someone* from accomplishing their New Year's Resolution."

I refuse to help prevent *anyone else* from accomplishing their New Year's resolution.

Hence I am helping prevent someone (myself) from accomplishing their own New Year's resolution.

But if I successfully help prevent myself from accomplishing my New Year's resolution, then I have accomplished my New Year's resolution (I am someone).

But if I have accomplished my New Year's resolution, then I wasn't actually successful in helping prevent someone's (me or anyone else) New Year's resolution.

Thus, I have successfully helped prevent my New Year's resolution...and recurse!

Embrace the paradox. Happy 2011!

it is high-lighting all terms in all documents received from an internet search. How is that the same as a "highlight all button?" Whatever the case, highlighted searches have existed for a while, so why should this be patentable just because they batch the highlighting to all search results in a "network search"?

Kentucky had tourism. :-) I do however like their scenery as I have driven from Ohio to Florida or Atlanta.

Many will agree that this lawsuit was a poor response. However, it does prompt in my mind the power of the internet to hold in eternity the funniest, nastiest, and unluckiest moments of our lives. Many will say, "Good, he deserves it." But think about what this means generally: your mistakes can be immortalized in such a way that you may pay for them even after a long time has passed and even if you've apologized or repented of your actions. You can even be threatened and abused via e-mail. (Notwithstanding, it looks doubtful this fellow has done the former and purportedly he has received the latter.)

In brief, the internet + video can make the consequences of our actions much larger than they would otherwise be, and perhaps, disproportionately so.

Come get some, moon! Ooh, what now?

-Saturn

Are these items merely cosmetic (a la some blizzard promos) or do they actually confer advantage? If the latter, I could see this going in the direction of games like Magic the Gathering, where having more money IRL means you have a better chance of buying better cards and therefore winning. I'd hate to see an FPS video game go in that direction, since it's a very different genre than a collector's trading card game..

Negative attention is better than no attention!
-Apple (remembering Antenna-gate)

We are starting to go in circles so I will try to stop after this. I have not been trying to prove God or absolute morality to be true but only that the original "God is unjust to judge people" argument was a non-credible one.

My appeal to objectivity was a part of my aforementioned two-part argument. Similar to mathematical proof, if we suppose proposition Y given X, and X may assume two mutually exclusive states (say X1, X2), we have to prove Y given X1 or Y given X2 is true. If I want to show Y is not true, I have to show Y given X1 and Y given X2 are both faulty. Y was the original argument. X is morality. X1 is subjective/non-absolute morality. X2 is absolute morality. I have assumed both states of X for the sake of argument.

First, I think it is a misconception that belief comes without evidence or reason. To the contrary, people believe in what makes sense to them, although one's reasoning or evidence may be faulty. If I am convinced by the evidence for God--and to be sure it is reason not credulity that frames my beliefs--then absolute morality is just a logical conclusion based upon my God hypothesis.

As for empirical evidence, it is admittedly only suggestive that people ubiquitously try to define a morality of some kind for themselves since I can come up with other reasons for this phenomena, such as a "group survival mechanism." However, this does not preclude God from setting morality in place for our survival as well. So yes, people want to be "moral," whatever reason you ascribe to it.

Thank you for the discussion. I think I've learned better about atheist thought than before.

Great point. I agree completely in that sense. But it doesn't change the fact even if I have a subjective rule set, if I am the one being judged, I do not get to make objective statements about myself even if I had potential to be objective. This is about what is considered to be credible, not merely possible. People are not good at being objective when it comes to themselves or people they like, even if the rules happen to be arbitrary.

For example, why are slashdot moderators biased in this very thread? More importantly, why did the creators of slashdot come up with an intricate system in the first place to limit moderator abuse? People are self-interested and are not credible when judging themselves or even judging people they like or agree with, myself definitely included, so we keep looking for something more objective than ourselves.

If we are the only measuring stick out there, and there is no God, I fully accept your premise.

We disagree.

I prefer to give people the benefit of the doubt that they are open-minded, so that is helpful to know.

One premise is that truth exists regardless of whether people agree on it. If God does exist and His will is the definition for absolute morality, then it doesn't matter if people agree on what He said, the truth is still out there and may one day become more clear.

I can tell you whenever I am being peer-reviewed in a scientific journal, the interpretation of each reviewer on my findings are often at odds with me or with each other. It's actually expected and helpful, because it refines things. Given enough evidence, the hope is that the truth will become self-evident to everyone, and so will vindicate those who held on to it at first.

Morality isn't that different, if such a thing as absolute morality is out there, which I believe it is. The fact that we disagree in this area as well as others is to me just a part of what makes us human: we're finite, we make mistakes, we have to analyze and revise things, we like our own way, and learning is a process. I believe that truth, even if our perceptions of it change, does not change. The fun of life is searching for it, in whatever area you love.

My proposition was focussed on the observation that we seek objectivity in judgement. In particular, when it matters, we avoid self-judgement and use impartial third-parties--juries and/or judges--within our legal system to get this kind of objectivity.

If we suppose God does exist (I know you do not, but you do for the sake of argument) and we want to tell Him His judgements on us are wrong and unfair, we would require His kind of objectivity to be able to say so with certainty that He was wrong.

Why is it easier for us to look back in history and see that what people were doing seemed wrong and dastardly? We judge them by our moral values--rightly or wrongly but perhaps more quickly than with ourselves. Why? Because in ourselves we have to compete with our desires, our interests, and our justifications. Even if our moral values are subjective, others things frankly do get in the way and make us do less than what we ourselves believe in. That's being human I suppose. But if there were a perfect judge for humanity, it wouldn't be us, it would be Someone who has the purity and omniscience and objectivity to do so. Those who believe call Him God, those who don't call it wishful thinking.