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Why do you keep conflating net neutrality with censorship? Net neutrality is the opposite of censorship. Merged post follows: Consecutive posts merged This has nothing to do with QoS, although that's the typical industry red herring they throw out in response. Net neutrality does not affect an ISP's ability to set their own QoS policy. Comcast argued that their forgery of TCP reset packets was QoS, which is just stupid. QoS works as you describe, Mr Skeptic. Traffic is prioritized. It's not deliberately altered, and packets aren't forged.

Suspected about the Democratic party... from a sample size of one? The actions of one person do not reflect upon the party as a whole. Does this mean you're unconcerned about Constitutional violations by the Republican party? Or are you arguing that Democrats like to violate the Constitution and Republicans don't?

Which represents an insignificant fraction of their workforce... Wal-Mart has built its empire on part-time employees. Their fundamental motive is employing two part time employees instead of a single full-time employee as a method to defeat legislation surrounding full-time employees and things like wage restrictions, benefits, etc. I generally don't shop at Wal-Mart because Wal-Mart sucks. I'm more of a Target person. But there's really no defending Wal-Mart as an employer. They pretty much singlehandedly pioneered the "two part-time employees instead of one full-time employee, because it's cheaper!" policy. If you support the rights of corporations over individuals, then I'm sure you have no qualms with this policy. If you support simple human dignity, I hope you don't shop at Wal-Mart. Free market people eat this sh*t up with a spoon, however... all I can say is you value misplaced idealism above simple human dignity.

This is the point at which I tell you all to STFU. There is no such thing as "human nature". Every human is different. Your motivations are not my own. If you purport they are, FOAD. KTKS.

I think you're giving ICP faaaaaaaaaaaaaaar too much credit. The point you're making is certainly a valid one. It was expressed much better by historian James Burke and his Connections TV series. He summed it up in the following quote: "Never before have so many people understood so little about so much of the world around them" However, that doesn't make the world magical or miraculous. Much of what is difficult to explain is the result of science and technology. It doesn't make magnets inexplicable. It doesn't make rainbows inexplicable, which is particularly ironic considering the video features CG rainbows which were rendered using knowledge of physics/optics. The very fact we can make a semi-realistic looking rainbow inside of a computer means we have an EXCELLENT understanding of how rainbows work.

Telecommunication services form an integral part of people's daily lives and businesses. Beyond that, they form an integral part of government services. Because of this, these companies accept money from the government, to help develop their services because they are so integral to so many citizens of this country. An excellent op-ed on the issue here: http://www.nytimes.com/2010/04/11/opinion/11crawford.html?partner=rss&emc=rss And another point to consider: why should Internet as provided by cable companies be regulated differently than Internet as provided by telephone companies, especially in an age when cable companies are also providing phone service? (answer: because that's how Bush wanted it to be)

Originally jryan was talking about human behavior, but slowly shifted his language to human nature. Case in point: the Internet

I typically prefer to take one shower today. I suffer from dry skin and overshowering can actually make the problem worse. However, I often find myself showering twice a day specifically to resolve this problem. That's not to mention that I usually have to go right after I arrive at work, which means I'm dirty the whole day.

So all that said ParanoiA, why isn't applying common carrier laws to ISPs the solution? No new legislation is required. We simply treat ISPs like telcoms and leverage the existing legislation. Your phone company can't forge, interfere with, or manipulate phone calls. Why should ISPs be able to do that to your Internet traffic?

No, but I see the laying of the transcontinental railroad, transcontinental telegraph lines, and transatlantic telegraph lines as progress. There was certainly plenty of progress happening at the same time which fundamentally altered human behavior. We no longer needed a pony express to get messages across the country quickly. We could use electricity instead. The "not all is progress" attitude is pretty common among postmodernists. This culminated in the atomic bomb, which so far has remained mankind's ultimate achievement which is considered counterprogressive by postmodernists. I certainly recognize that along with technological progress comes ways to use it counterproductively and destructively. With great power comes great responsibility.

We've gone from a species of hunter gatherers to farmers to network-connected city dwellers. I'm not sure what else there is to discuss if you can't recognize this simple fact. Science has revolutionized our lives.

ParanoiA, as a more general question... why do you think the rights of corporations are more important than the rights of people? Consumers aren't omniscient and corporations selling products have a much better idea of what's involved than uneducated consumers. You seem to be arguing that consumers should have zero rights and that corporations should be completely free to screw consumers as they see fit. When a consumer gets screwed (there really isn't an if in that scenario) they should simply ignore it and move on to the next vendor, huh? As a libertarian fiendishly interested in myself, I strongly support consumer rights and the government regulating corporations to ensure I am given the product I am promised. I want pure unfettered Internet access when a corporation claims to be offering Internet access. You would seem to relegate the act of determining whether or not I'm actually receiving Internet access back to me. Is that something I can really know? I'm not sure if you're aware, but as part of their BitTorrent blocking Comcast was actually forging traffic coming from a remote third party. They sent TCP reset packets which appeared to come from a remote peer, but were in fact generated by Comcast and given IP addresses that Comcast doesn't control. Imagine if a telephone service provider sent you forged calls with fake caller ID. Would you consider that fraud? I certainly would. Would you tolerate the USPS sending you forged letters with a fake sender? Would you tolerate FedEx or UPS delivering you forged packages? I certainly wouldn't. That's fraud. Comcast was perpetrating fraud with their forged TCP reset packets. Perhaps if instead of "net neutrality" the label were instead "Internet fraud" people would pay a lot more attention.

For what it's worth, ecoli seems to be one of the few people I've encountered who may have sympathized with the Tea Party when it began as a libertarian movement but now recognizes it has been co-opted by forces who desire practically the polar opposite in terms of policy. I hope I'm not mischaracterizing you there, ecoli.

Hint: it's the topic of these forums

All that said I too am a bit disappointed by the substance-free response I'm receiving in this thread. I would contend that anyone who is serious about the governance of this country would distance themselves from the Tea Party. If you place partisanship above substance, by all means, embrace them.

Personally I'd love to see Ron Paul as a mainstream GOP presidential candidate. Unfortunately, my gut tells me it just isn't going to happen.

Now if only I could take a DNFT approach to the substance-free arguments of the Tea Party itself. Unfortunately, it's looking like it will have a major effect on the governance of this country.

Microsoft Windows provides relatively low-level C APIs to the programmer. The result is inconsistent behavior across applications. There have been various attempts to remedy this, such as Microsoft Foundation Classes and .NET's Windows Forms and Windows Presentation Foundation. The hacks required to create cross-platform applications have already been implemented by projects like wxWidgets and Qt

It's certainly an argument against cryonics in practice. Who can you trust to keep your remains preserved in perpetuity?

What are you talking about specifically? And surely you're not insinuating that Bush never signed any budgets containing pork... TARP was signed into law by Bush, not Obama. Net loss of millions of jobs? What? Used as "campaign funds"? By who? Please cite some sources on this stuff. And how many times was the debt ceiling raised under Bush, to finance an unnecessary war? The NewLeftMedia videos in the OP are a good illustration of what happens when a liberal asks them simple, informed, common sense questions about their positions. You're comparing the Republicans to Republican Hank Paulson's TARP plans that were signed into law by Republican President George W. Bush? You seem to be awfully confused about TARP. Do you think Paulson is a Democrat or something, or that it was signed by Obama? That statement doesn't make sense. TARP went into effect months before Obama even took office. That's the kind of flat out misrepresentation of reality I'm used to seeing from Fox News. TARP did not take place under the Obama administration, although they inherited it. Both administrations are spending a lot of money. I grant Obama more leeway because of the financial crisis. I think deficit spending to help the economy recover, such as what we saw with the Stimulus, is justified. For that matter I think TARP was a good idea conceptually although the execution was rather flawed. For that I also blame Paulson.

This read more like an essay on postmodernism than an essay on conservatism, and for what it's worth I'm a modernist so I strongly disagree with most of the content. I really don't buy the likening of neoconservatives to modernists either. I don't really see much overlap between the two.

The identity problem you describe here is similar to the Ship of Theseus. My response would be depending on how true the replacements were to the original, that yes, it would be the same person. If you slowly replaced pieces of someone's body with things that did not fulfill the same function, however (imagine replacing their neurons with stone) then no, it would not be the same person. Note that large portions of our body are completely replaced over time as a natural part of the living process.

Indeed, I'm not in politics for a reason

This is not reflected in the Gallup polling data. What spending is the current administration doing which the previous one didn't which you feel is unjustified? As a counterpoint, I feel the Iraq War was unjustified spending. The current administration has a timetable set to get us out of Iraq. To me that's a positive step forward. The Tea Party seems to expect that if they elect the Republicans back into power, they'll suddenly become economic conservatives, an idea which is not backed up by their track record. They are, in effect, protesting problems which are common to both parties, but suggesting if their party of choice is elected this will somehow resolve those problems.

I definitely feel the DoD is an extremely inefficient multi-tiered bureaucracy with tons of overlap between the various branches of the military. I'd like to see them work towards eliminating a lot of this overlap and cleaning up their accounting, at least to the point the DoD can be audited. I'm entirely for phasing out Social Security. I'm even happy to continue to pay into it even though I'll never get that money back. I also wouldn't mind paying more in taxes.