The end is nigh?
 

I do very little deliberate reading about politics, governmental policy, etc. because such things tend to jackhammer my panic triggers...and one thing above all else is scaring the hell outta me right now.

Apparently, the Republican members of the FCC--an agency that once tried to censor mature content from SATELLITE providers, meaning they tried to expand their single-nation authority into GODDAMN OUTER SPACE--cannot wait for Inauguration Day. They appear to believe they have been promised the power to end net neutrality by handing all Internet-related services and infrastructure over to the ownership and management of telecommunications companies. This seems to me to be the precise reason the concept of 'net neutrality' was defined to begin with--to stop this exact thing from happening.

If what I've read is accurate, I give the current state of Internet access until Tax Day 2017 to collapse. Who will suffer most? It sure won't be streaming providers, though I would be totally unsurprised to find pay-per-view the new standard for EVERYTHING, including with commercials. Facebook? Sell your stock soon, because the end of net neutrality will give PHONE COMPANIES the right to charge you access to Facebook, regardless of what Facebook wants or how much money they throw at Washington, DC.

The ones who will suffer are the people looking for their first job fresh out of (or still in) high school. Almost no business exists any more without a website, and very few places handle paper job applications any more. What's going to happen to the under-educated masses when they have to find a way to cough up, say, $10 every time they want to access a job application or resume website? What about those who apply for welfare programs that require them to submit a certain number of applications per week to receive assistance? How many of them will not be able to afford to apply for jobs? And where will they go? Libraries and public schools won't be getting any price breaks in a nation without net neutrality; they can't even get funding for arts programs or vocational training any more.

Already-overloaded state agencies will probably also get no breaks. I will not be at all surprised if, by next summer, I have to come up with a cash-only usage fee every time I take my EBT card to the store to use my SNAP (formerly Food Stamps) to buy groceries (I survive on the luxurious amount of $172 a month for food). Since I'm on disability and have less than $400 a month cash to live on after the rent and utility portions I am required by Federal law to pay, I'm not going to be able to afford copays on every prescription, copays for every medical visit, and copays to buy food!

It's been a long time since I so hoped to be wrong.

Yes, no, this is a vile load of steaming horseshit. :D

Please tell us what you read so we can mock it with impunity and tell you the settings for your browser to block its website for the rest of time. :D

If you doubt what I am saying, A) you may be hallucinating, but B) you may read the previous sky-is-falling promises about how the Internet will fail due to insert your special article or opinion about the future here,

Like this one from 2006

Or this one from 2010

Or this one from 2014


...and then read the posts that follow (from me!:D), explaining why they will not happen and everything is fine and we are actually in charge on the Internet.

But upon reflection, you will realize that the fact that you can read the posts at all will be proof enough that the various predicted end of the Internets did not happen.

Seen as graffiti in the background in 28 Days Later:

As previously mentioned, I really do hope I'm wrong!

https://www.google.com/search?q=fcc+...rality&tbm=nws

The results of my search string "FCC Net Neutrality", filtered by the News option. I realize most of the sources are NOT inherently trustworthy, but that is a LOT of sources saying the same thing...Trump is opposed to Net Neutrality, Wheeler is resigning from the FCC because he believes he will be unable to save Net Neutrality from Trump cronies, the usual...

And there is that one lovely headline about AT&T and Verizon both telling the FCC that the federal government will not be allowed to tell them what they can and cannot do (which is precisely why the FCC was created, to limit the predatory business practices in broadcast entertainment and prevent monopolies).

At least, if any or all of this proves to be what we're in store for, I won't have to update my browser or OS again any time soon--if Net Neutrality fails and the telecom companies are allowed to charge for ALL data transmission the way they want, I won't be able to afford the Net even if I'm still on disability (I've got serious concerns about social welfare programs getting gutted).

OH MY GOD THE INTERNET IS GOING TO BE NOTHING BUT ADS -- AND IT WILL BE TOO EXPENSIVE TO BUY THEM!!!

Before we go any further, can you define the term "net neutrality"?

My definition includes priority packet routing but I will understand if you use different terms.

I thought it meant no favoritism for traffic passing through, whether from another source, or generated by the last mile provider. If that's correct, it should include pricing to both the source of the traffic and the end user.

That's kinda what I thought it to be. Paying for priority.

I admit to being confused on the whole issue. Please elaborate in detail.

Where when one type of network traffic is prioritized, how slow is the remaining traffic?

I don't want to be annoying about this, asking leading technical questions, but here we are 20ms to most of the Internet and that is pretty amazing. In order to make any prioritizing service something I would pay for, you would have to slow down my Internet. I don't think you can actually do that, unless you are bad at running a network, or intent on providing poor service.

Intent on providing poor service was tw's original bogus argument in 2006. We see how that has worked out: VoIP is now the predominant way phone calls are made and nobody has blocked or slowed *anything*.

And why would they? Around here, salespeople get $300 bonuses for signing people up for Comcast or Verizon so there is ZERO incentive to provide shitty service for traffic in bits. And it costs them money to engage engineering services to slow or block traffic.

The first thing I remember the net broadly calling a "Net Neutrality violation" was when T-Mobile announced they wouldn't count music services against your bandwidth limits. People were quick to call foul, although it is a carrier telling you that you can have free services (I thought you always had to pay MORE? WTF) and it has nothing to do with prioritizing (which was the original technical definition).

That's impossible to answer, we have no idea what they will do or how.

Fundamental to net neutrality (as even discussed in a 2006 threads) is "content providers" and "data transporters" (carriers). First defined in the early 20th Century when Bell Companies dominated telephone systems. Using monopoly powers to subvert and dominate the entire telephone business - because profits were more important than the product. In a major concession to government, Bell companies became utilities. They cooperated with all other telephone companies. Separated service from manufacturing. And did dedicated research into advancing the technology of the industry. They became interested in advancing the product and not maximizing profits.

Bell companies became data transporters. Each company has exclusive service areas that answer to state PUCs. They transported data. Did not care what that data was. Offered same services to everyone. And only restricted what could be safely connected to their systems using an approval system.

So phone systems expanded into a nationwide cooperative system that made the North American phone system an envy of the world.

But this system began to break down in the 1970s when new technologies demanded that communciation systems do more. For example, anyone could have modems and dedicated phone lines. Those costs more than even leasing video terminals from phone companies. Bell companies were not innovating fast enough for content providers.

Bell System was broken up into Operating companies (the baby Bells) and AT&T. So that AT&T could innovate more and also be content providers. Data transporters (baby Bells) only transported data.

Trouble is the internet required the entire phone system to be scrapped and rebuilt. A concept clearly defined by Clayton Christensen's "Innovator's Dilemma". A fundamental replacement of circuit switched technology with packet switched technology was necessary. $Multi-million switching computers had to be replaced. Unfortunately companies such as AT&T wanted to control content and did not want to innovate. Data transporters refused to innovate - refused to install packet switched technologies.

DSL was available and demonstrated in 1981. It took Clinton's 1996 Federal Communication act to force the baby Bells to innovate. It took more than 15 years to make that innovation available.

Meanwhile, some companies wanted to be both content providers and data transporters. Since controlling both could massively increase profit margins due to no competition.

AT&T first tried to cut back into the data transporter business by buying the nation's two largest cable companies. But when the baby Bells separated from AT&T, the baby Bells got product people; AT&T took MBAs. AT&T business school trained management was so dumb as to spend about $140billion on cable companies. Then discover those cables could not support communication without another $80billion to replace all cable wires.

Along comes Comcast. Comcast bought AT&T's fiasco for $80billion two years later. (Yes, AT&T routinely made deals that were that financially bogus - but necessary due to MBA trained management.) Then spent another $80billion to replace all obsolete technology cable wires. Then Comcast began a program of increasing costs to everyone (using a strategy that Putin loves). A $8 cable provider now charges $50 for same service. PUCs condoned it since more advanced electronics now did same functions.

Comcast bought content providers (ie Universal Studios, Spectacore, NBC, etc) so as to dominate in both data transporting and content provider industries. A monopoly once averted in a phone industry in the early 20th Century now exists in the internet. Critical to free market competition is separation between content providers and data transporters. This is a key ingredient to a concept called net neutrality.

Content providers include Google, Skype, Netflix, Amazon, CBS, Paramount, ABC/Disney, etc. Data transporters who have no business regulating what data is transported are Verizon, Comcast, Time Warner, etc. That separation of powers should even exist in mobile phones. Any phone manufacturer (Apple, various Androids, etc) who meet industry specs must operate on any phone system (Verizon, T-mobile, AT&T). And those data transporters do not care what data is being transported. You pay them only to transport data - when net neutrality exists.

Free markets need and net neutrality is based upon this separation of powers and markets - between data transporters and content providers. Clinton's 1996 Federal Communication Act - that finally made the internet possible - has been under attack by right wing Republicans whose interests are quite clear: enrich the few companies who in turn are generous with campaign contributions. This sudden shift in power and increased monopolies even force the Silicon Valley to hire and spend massively on Washington lobbyists.

After 1996, your had tens or 100 choices of data transporters including Covad, PSInet, etc. Thanks to extremists in the George Jr administration (ie Michael Powell who then became chief lobbyist for the cable industry - he knows who can best butter his bread), you only have two data transporters. In NYC that is Time Warner and Verizon. In Philadelphia, that is Comcast and Verizon.

Republicans got the monopoly (a duopoly) they wanted by dismantling a 1996 Federal Communication Act. By limiting your choices so that these large companies can increase prices with extraordinary profits. So that the data transporters can own or manipulate the innovators (ie content providers) for ever increasing profits. Comcast is doing today what the Bell Company tried to do in the early 20th Century.

Net Neutrality is based, in part, the the fundamental concepts of data transporters and content providers. Making innovation possible by demanding that data providers provide service to all. So that content providers can concentrate on innovation - not on maximizing profits in a monopolistic manner. Net Neutrality is fundamental and essential to have an economy that innovates.

But that's unusual, most of the country is stuck with one and many places it's DSL or less.

tw said: So that AT&T could innovate more and also be content providers. Data transporters (baby Bells) only transported data.

I believe AT&T managed to push through their buy of Time-Warner, which means a telephone service provider now owns (pasted from a search result):
HBO
Turner Broadcasting System
The CW Television Network
Warner Bros.
CNN
DC Comics
and as of August 2016, Hulu, owning 10%.
In the past, other major divisions of Time Warner included Time Inc., AOL, Time Warner Cable, Warner Books and Warner Music Group.

A big concern among tv fans on a budget is that with AT&T owning HBO, The CW, and DC, content like say Game of Thrones, Supernatural, and anything Batman or Superman would be completely under the control of AT&T, from scripting to casting to denying availability to non-AT&T customers. Not sayin' I'm sure about that happening, but I've talked to many people lately who would be absolutely crushed to have so much popular content in a position to be withheld...especially in areas that don't get AT&T service!

A bigger concern I have heard about for many is that the data transporters are DESPERATE to find a way to charge extra for ALL net access. Prioritizing data speeds is only the beginning of what the lower-class and low-middle-class people I've spoken to are worried about.

There is the fear that if Net Neutrality (treating internet access as a public utility like water, gas, or electricity) is ended, your ISP subscription money will only be enough to allow accessing the internet. Few doubt that if allowed, the big telecommunications companies will charge either per minute or per data amount the very minute doing so becomes legal. That would cripple schools and libraries, and in my case it would mean only 1 computer in my household would be able to be used for internet activities due to both of us being on fixed (and very low) incomes. My sweetie's social life is online, whereas this forum is pretty much the only place I socialize online, so my computer would be offlined permanently (or until regulations dropped the costs by A LOT).

Looked up some maps and stats...lucky for me, Charter (our cable tv, phone AND internet provider) is now an AT&T subsidiary via the Time-Warner acquisition. So at least if the worst happens, we'll still have access to a lot of favorite televised content...the question is how much we'll be charged to access it.

Electronic Design magazine discusses this threat to innovation. Everything in this article should be obvious to anyone educated in how things work. A benchmark that separates the politically brainwashed from others who come from where the work gets done:
Will the Internet of Things Survive Without Net Neutrality?

Question: how much innovation will be stifled by destroying net neutrality? Laws to free the market - to create net neutrality - liberated DSL - unfortunately 15 years later. Free market competition finally made DSL available after 1996.

The original IBM PC in 1981 operated on a 300 baud and later 1200 baud modem. Meanwhile, DSL at 1,000,000+ baud could have been available had monopolies (AT&T, baby Bells, etc) not stifled that innovation for so long.

Microsoft had to sue Qwest to finally get DSL service. Innovation (and the resulting increased living standards) is stifled when laws do not restrict and discourage monopolies.

Wackos want less government intervention. That is a secret code for more monopolies, resulting less innovation, and enriched top (entrenched) management.

Same political party also maintained drug prices 40% higher in the US. A deceptive expression spun monopoly protection as health care reform. Ten plus years ago, a law was passed to make criminal anyone who paid 40% less for prescriptions in Canada. According to party extremists, monopolies (and enriching top management MBAs) are good. Those same extremists protect laws that stifle innovation and protect people who hate innovation - MBAs.

Why did AT&T so hate net neutrality? David Isenberg wrote "Rise of the Stupid Network" in 1997. It demonstrated that circuit switch technology is massively inferior to packet switching. So much so that companies entrenched in circuit switch technology should face bankruptcy. We know why AT&T self destructed (had to be sold off in pieces). AT&T hated innovation - since MBA management (including people like Carly Fiorina) wanted profits - not better products and free market competition.

AT&T forced Isenberg to remove his paper from isen.com.
"Isenberg wanted to make AT&T happy so he took it off. (It didn't work; AT&T is still not happy.)".
AT&T wanted monopolies - not innovation. AT&T had long hated net neutrality (as they also did with System Signal 7 - a successful innovation and international standard for telephone communication).

Isenberg left Bell Labs (as did most innovators in that decade resulting in no more innovation in the Bell Labs) because AT&T wanted concepts taught in business schools - more profits, less innovation. less competition.

Philosophy of protecting legacy (anti-innovation) companies at the expense of consumers is demonstrated in this 2002 open letter to Michael Powell - who openly wanted to destroy net neutrality:
The Paradox of the Best Network
Those party extremists hate change and innovation - ie hate net neutrality.

Thank you, tw, for doing the research and providing information that would've made my brain shut down if I tried to assemble all that!

I still have my doubts about how much longer I'll be able to afford to be online...but we'll see what happens. There are a lot of possibilities for the next year or so that scare the hell outta me as a (deliberately) childless unmarried woman with an invisible disability. My mild OCD and hoarding tendencies are currently kept well in hand, but only by access to pretty much ALL the data from countries that don't disallow Internet contact with the USA. I figure it's better for me to worry about this than about the fate of my health insurance and slightly more than $700 a month to survive on...fewer major panic attacks associated with a luxury like net access than the fear of ending up unable to pay rent or see a doctor.

Hell, I can't even move back in with my parents--they're both in pretty bad shape, the kind of bad shape that having an extra person on their 1-acre farm would make a lot worse. And they have a huge dog with a biting fetish--this dog would not be alive if he had not landed with people willing to work with him, and I'd bet most of his siblings and half-siblings aren't still around! He decided right about the time his 'boy bits' dropped that some dogs bite out of anger, some out of fear, and some out of general stupidity, but he was gonna bite because what the hell ELSE are teeth for? He was 8 months old at the time and had been in my parents' care since he was 5 weeks; my mom especially is not only good with animals but with being super consistent about rules when training her animals. This past summer was the first time he was allowed to be in a room with me without a muzzle during my farm visit, and he's like 3 or 4 years old now. He bit me in the butt in 2015...makes me laugh to think I'd rather go back to that than face 2017 possibly stripping away everything that makes my life livable.

Who can solve all your problems?

A) the federal government with an enlightened approach to net neutrality

B) therapists

Hint: not A.

/thread

neither B.

At least Zombies could distract us. :3eye:

Snake, here's the thing:

Your politics is entirely based on your emotional reaction, which is incorrect.

In all history, folks like you and me have invented political boogiemen so that we could live in a state of fear, which is comfortable to us as anxiety people.

Yes, we like it. We choose it. Do not deny.

In your case, however, you have chosen illogically. It is way too easy to prove that the FCC will not steal your string.

I could be extra snarky and say, yes, net neutrality will make you poor and you will be reduced to eating at McDonald's with all the other poor people. But ironically, McDonald's offers free Internet all day long, and has done for over a decade now.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Power_of_Nightmares

But footer, now the neoconservative movement has become your boogieman. And so the circle is complete.

You could say politics is mine and so my circle is also complete.

That's an excerpt from the synopsis of part one of three. I admit to not having watched all 6 or 8 hours of the series. My take away (ugh) is that fearful people are easy to control. The boogeyman is the boogeyman, doesn't matter who is pulling the strings if I am watching the show.

So, the winning moves are to not watch the show or choose not to be afraid.

The kind of anxiety I have lives in a couple of areas of the brain that are not under the control of the frontal cortex or any other higher-functions part of the brain. I'll always be scared about something--having so much information that contradicts my fears about losing Net access is actually a very good thing! A hell of a lot of my time is spent on solitary online research; losing that would be extremely tough to weather.

Meanwhile:

http://arstechnica.com/information-t...d-under-trump/
Quote, the first line of the article:
Federal Communications Commission member Ajit Pai yesterday vowed to take a "weed whacker" to FCC regulations after President-elect Donald Trump takes office, with net neutrality rules being among the first to be cut down.

http://www.recode.net/2016/12/12/139...l-trump-senate
Quote, second line of article:
That means when (or if) Chairman Tom Wheeler, the current head of the FCC, steps down, Republicans will hold a majority. And their first order of business will likely be to reverse the historic network neutrality rules that were finalized in 2015.

http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2...telecom-panel/
Quote, first line of article:
Rep. Marsha Blackburn (R-Tenn.), who has tried to overturn net neutrality rules and help states impose limits on municipal broadband, will be the new chairperson of a Congressional telecommunications subcommittee.

It sure looks like someone out there wants us to think net neutrality is about to end.

Are you sure, because at least some of that time seems to be spent looking up articles to scare yourself! :)

Still, it doesn't matter what the FCC does. They are nearly irrelevant. There are forces more powerful than government in this world.

You may look at the music industry for an example. They tried everything they could to control how bits and bytes were shipped around so that they could maintain their business model. They even got the feds to agree to several approaches such as the DMCA.

But the Internet laughed and laughed, and stepped all over everything they came up with, until finally now the music industry has learned that it can't control shit, and is trying to do what it can to work with the tides.

WE are in charge here. Not the big government, not the powerful moneyed industries.

~

The argument over whether you will be able to get small amounts of bandwidth to research things, is OVER. We are now arguing over whether you will be able to get the amount needed to stream a Hollywood movie on demand.

Size of a Standard Def movie = 2000000000 bytes
Size of a High Def movie = 5000000000 bytes
Size of a book = 1000000 bytes

The bandwidth for a single HD movie can fit 5,000 books.

The size of a single standard HD movie is larger than the size of the entire Cellar: 15 years of words, content and code. That's right, one single movie is enough bandwidth to keep you reading an hour a day for 15 years.

The bandwidth for a single, rather poor cable connection is enough to transfer 7000 books per hour.

And that, my friends, is why tw's arguments about this include things from 1997. Partly because his brain stopped adding new things that year, but mostly because that was the last year we argued about whether the scarce bandwidth available could cheaply transfer the books you wanted.

The bandwidth for that post ^ is 2000 bytes. 2.5 MILLION of those posts can fit in one HD movie.

AAAAAAaaaaaaaaaannnnnnnddddd yesterday the big announcement: Sprint has bought a 33% stake in the music service Tidal (which I believe owns just about everything Prince ever recorded). Guess who can't even access Tidal any more? People who aren't Sprint customers!

This is EXACTLY what I think AT&T is going to do with content it now owns due to the Time-Warner acquisition being allowed to go through. THIS is why my stomach hit the floor when I read about said acquisition.

Undertoad, on the advice of friends, loved ones, family members, AND my therapist, I only look up skeeeeery stuff if I think it is likely to directly impact me. I use neutral search strings to limit the hyperbole in the responses and avoid most major news outlets for information. As an example, when I typed in the search string "changes to Medicaid in 2017", the third result on the list and the one I read first was a medical journal. They're not perfect but they're sure's hell not MSNBC either!

Also, THANK YOU for the data-usage information. As long as they don't start timing me, I should indeed be just fine, since my favorite kinds of websites are pet/livestock breeders, photo aggregators, and other such low-size destinations. No HD movies for us--our TV is probably too cheap to see the difference. Still, I've been known to spend more than 8 hours a day online, so that's where my "charging by time increment" worries were coming from.

That doesn't make sense, Sprint didn't pay a shitload of money for a third of Tidal because they're Prince fans. They bought it to make money. If people can't access it, they lose money. :eyebrow:

Tidal is a flaming piece of shit that has been failing since before its announcement. Sprint bought into it because they are incompetent. There are no actual Tidal customers. Not literally, there are probably about 300,000 actual Tidal users worldwide. (Spotify = over 40,000,000)

Tidal doesn't own Prince songs. Prince's estate and Warner Music owns Prince songs.

Prince, in a terrible mistake of understanding how the new media world will work, decided to limit his streaming to Tidal. Prince intentionally decided that his music should only be limited to a certain number of fans. A very very small number of them. You should ONLY be angry with Prince for making that decision. He thought it would make him more money but exclusivity deals are failing to do that...!

HOWEVER, that exclusivity ended when Prince ended, and Spotify will start streaming Prince in February. (That was also announced yesterday)

ALL music streaming services that will survive have a free ad-supported model, accessible by everyone.

NOTHING to worry about. N O T H I N G

Another Question
 

One of the forums I frequent was hacked on election day. It styles itself as "the most active liberal discussion board on the Internet," a grassroots group with no ties the official Democratic Party (although it sure has a lot of ads asking for money to support various official dem causes and candidates :eyebrow:). That board descended into chaos and it took them a couple of days to get up and running once more. Members had to register all over again and lot's of concern about individual's privacy being breached. Needless to say, they're a paranoid bunch at the moment, and one question that came up was how hard would it be for Доналд Трамп hacker's to purge sites that don't wholeheartedly support the new administration. Sounds like an awful lot of work to me. Plus, would it really work? Couldn't sites that got "purged" just keep on setting shop all over again the way that one did? No one on the other site ever really answered that question and I'm just curious.

As long as there are backups, any site can be easily re-created.

But somebody has to put in the time to do it. In the mean time, the public clamors at the gate. Goddamnit, it's been Nine and a half minutes, where is he? :lol2: