Article on Yahoo Finance via the AP I wish I know more about what this meant long term, scanned several times today to and was surprised there was no discussion of this and its implications, and it seemed a big enough coup that there might be opinions on both sides (though that part may be incorrect, in which case, sorry if this thread is misplaced). Any thoughts?
Tim Berners Lee once said his worst fear was American corporations making people pay for the internet. As much as I hate the FCC, I'm concerned Tim's nightmare is coming true
This ruling is getting blown out of proportion in my mind. It's a simple organic statute problem, the FCC tried to do something that had no logical link to the statute from which their power was granted. If Congress feels it's a problem they can go back and amend the statute to grant the FCC the power to make these decisions through the statute. This isn't a watershed opinion in my opinion.
I hope this is just a bump in the road, and a point that shows that the FCC's duties and responsibilities need clarification, and not that it means they should butt out and allow whatever conglomerate currently holds the reins to the interwebs bandwidth to decide when, how, and how much interwebz you can consume at what rate. Quick, someone ask Al Gore.
I understand you were just joking, but Al Gore doesn't get enough credit for what he did with the internet. The truth is that we all might not be using the internet right now if it wasn't for Gore. Gore saw the internet and intranet being used in govt. and limited applications. He was the one who helped bring it into general use. He was at least partially correct when he said he was responsible for the internet. He was. So while it's funny that people make fun of him for a quote he never really said, he often doesn't get the credit he deserves regarding the internet.
I know. I wasn't trying to relect negatively on your post in anyway. It just reminded me of all the stupid jokes made at his expense over a quote he never really said and the deserved credit he never gets.
You know, everytime I see a "Al Gore Invented the Internet" discussion, I always think....what if cheaters didn't prevail and Gore did become President like he was supposed to. I wonder how the world would have been....
This is very bad. Hopefully Congress figures out some way to prevent massive internet companies like Comcast (who already have phenomenally ****ty service) from making "bandwidth" another status symbol for wealthy ****heads to lord over working people.
Highly educated folk would be everywhere, Iraq would be stable, Bin Laden would be killed, the rest of the world wouldn't hate us. The economy would be in perfect condition. Afghanistan would not have a corrupt government in charge
Nice sarcasm. It's an interesting question - we'd have a Republican administration right now and maybe people would have been fed up enough with big government to have elected Ron Paul last term. We also still would have gotten into the various wars but the media coverage would have been much more friendly because the democrats were running them.
Nice tinfoil asshattery. You can't be serious about your last comment. Even liberals don't think that FOX news is being *run* by repubs. Ya, they are the only network to be that biased towards one side but it's because FOX wants to be that much less of a news program, not because they are being forced.
Back in 1987 I was working for a Congressman named George E. Brown, Jr. He was a physicist by training and a long-time member of the House, and eventually became chair of the House Science and Technology Committee. Anyway, he was not your average politician. While working for him, I took part in three initiatives of his that in retrospect were quite amazing. The first was an effort to get the Defense Advanced Research Projects Administration to open up the nascent technology of HDTV. We knew the Japanese were making some strides and Brown didn't want American capacity to further diminish in the electronics sector. It took some doing (and I didn't even know what HDTV really meant at the time) but DARPA eventually let go of some technology info and started letting contracts to American businesses to develop HDTV. The second was a long, long battle with DOD over satellite imagery. At the time, the only thing available to the public was Landsat imagery, which was between 15 and 30 meters per pixel. Brown wanted much greater resolution available to scientists, urban planners, farmers, etc. He saved the Landsat program several times while eventually cajoling DOD into allowing greater resolutions for civilian consumption. It's in no small part to the work he did that today we have stuff like Google Earth. The third was the Internet. When I was there Brown was working on a specific application to get all libraries connected so they could share info quickly, particularly government info. However, he recognized the broader applications and was also pushing for greater general use. Gore served on the Science Committee when he was in the House and got to know Brown quite well. When I was there, he would occasionally come over from the Senate (a bit of a scandal) and spend some time jawing with Brown on topics, primarily climate issues. Once I overheard (from the closet between the Chief of Staff's desk and the Congressman's office) part of a Brown/Gore conversation about stuff I didn't quite understand, but upon reflection, they were talking about NSFNet, the Internet, and the possibilities and policies needed. In the conversation, Brown was definitely the mentor, explaining concepts to Gore. So, I always think that George E. Brown, Jr. deserves a little credit for stuff we enjoy today and I wonder how many current members of Congress are thinking about 25 years from now. I know I was lucky to have worked there for a year and we're fortunate he was a Congressman who wanted to get things done. (And he was involved in many more things than those I just listed.) Incidentally, the latest thing named after Brown is the National Science Foundation's The George E. Brown, Jr. Network for Earthquake Engineering Simulation, which will... I think he would have enjoyed that. (And he would have been a fierce advocate of net neutrality.)
Great, great news. Net Neutrality was a sham. Keep the FCC and the government as far away from the internet as possible.
