Azalin

ISPs absolutely do provide content. Have you ever heard of AT&T's Uverse? It's digital television piped over the internet. You're also forgetting that voice calls are now mostly done across the internet. With ISPs like Verizon, AT&T, Time Warner (with their own digital television and digital voice service), and any of the other big companies, you have a perfect example of an ISP using their own network to deliver their own product.

Nothing that I've seen is actually attempting to address or reform immigration. This is all simply a way of legalizing the status of people who have entered the country illegally, or are here illegally by overstaying their visas. This is a problem that obviously needs to be addressed one way or another, but real immigration reform should extend to people from Europe, Asia, Australia, etc, and not only to Latin Americans.

The more I see the phrase posted here, 'farts in a jar' sounds more & more like the name of a band.

More specifically the cost required to increase the network's capability to both carry and reliably deliver ever increasing amounts of data requires an investment in expanding ISPs' capabilities to handle the load. That's pretty much expected - the more people use the net, the more the net has to be able to carry. But there is a significant difference in the load induced on the network from one content provider to the next. Sites with static content (like TBD) don't generate much downstream traffic, as opposed to a subscription movie site, which deals in vast amounts of both audio and video, which is a massive amount of data, and can slow the network down. The ISPs are constantly upgrading their networks (I work for one of the major telecom companies, and you should see the equipment we've installed in my facility since 2001 - it's incredible) in order to meet customers' demands. When the ISP has to go above & beyond anticipated growth in their ability to meet customer demands due to the extra burden created by certain content providers, then I believe it's fair to charge those content providers a higher rate for their usage. Using Netflix as an example, the ISP would charge Netflix a higher rate than they would TwoBillsDrive. Any cost that would be passed on to the customer would, as you say, come from Netflix, not from the ISP. But that's only if Netflix doesn't do anything to move the same content in the form of less data, which is a possible option that doesn't seem to come up in the conversation. One of the things that I'm worried about with the FCC insinuating itself into the industry is that they will likely be imposing a similar regulatory structure to the way they regulated telephone service. Both the FCC and the PUC (Public Utilities Commission - there's 54 of them, one in each state, DC, Puerto Rico, Guam, and one other I can't remember) set pricing for telephone service, the phone companies didn't. Back in those days (and even today whenever dealing with land lines) the telephone company had to apply to both entities to get permission to lower their rates for basic services as well as for the old-fashioned bells & whistles (caller ID, star69, etc). Will our monthly internet access bills start listing the same kind of surcharges that we had on our phone bills (line access fee, etc)? This is the most likely source of any increase to the consumer on the ISP side as far as I can see. Given a few short years and continued non-interference by government entities, any existing problems in data delivery capabilities will have sorted themselves out. I don't see any advantage to federal involvement in this at all.

Now that's something I agree with. At least now I know where you're coming from on this. I know that I'm probably being unrealistic in clinging to the notion of a free, unregulated internet being best for all parties, but it burns me that the feds - or any government entity, state, local, or whatever - will be insinuating themselves into assuming regulatory authority. It just seems to me to be an issue that everyone - right, left, centrist, or libertarian - would feel the same about, and I'm disappointed at the lack of national outrage - or even discussion - on the issue.

Net Neutrality as it currently exists is largely based on complaints from Netflix that they were being charged an increased rate from ISPs to stream their product. When they refused to pay the increased rates, the ISPs restricted the amount of bandwidth to them, resulting in movies/shows/etc being interrupted while the data buffered. The Netflix customer would be watching a show and would get a black screen with the little 'buffering' circle for a few moments until the picture resumed. Something that isn't being pointed out to people anywhere that I can see, is that ISPs and carriers have every right to charge companies like Netflix more, because the massive amount of bandwidth that they use puts tremendous strain on the network. The route that the data takes from Netflix to the customer obviously depends on where the customer lives. In some cases, the data passes through a multitude of different networks, some more capable of moving that data than others, each one belonging to a different ISP. Internet access is sold to people by bandwidth, and some of the lesser ISPs are hard pressed to deliver the same amount of bandwidth to customers that was originally promised, because overall use of the net has been growing exponentially. If one of these ISPs wants to charge more for the downstream access to companies like Netflix, they are (or should be) well within their right to do so. The effort to prevent companies from charging more in these circumstances is Net Neutrality. Despite the fact that the 300+ page plan to implement regulatory control is being kept from lawmakers, certain aspects of it are certain: The internet will become regulated by the feds. They propose to classify all ISPs as public utilities, just like they did with the telephone companies, except control of the internet is not a monopoly like Ma Bell was. This will include regulation of just about everything involving telecom, whether wireless, ethernet, or whatever. Remember too that a huge percentage of voice is no longer on copper, but is instead on various versions of VOIP. Net Neutrality won't make the internet go away or anything like that, but does anyone really think that there will be no impact? Does anyone think that any of this will actually help guarantee our privacy, or that regulatory control won't have an effect on quality of service, innovation, or cost? A lot of people rightfully screamed at the feds' takeover of the medical industry, and this is just as outrageous of a government takeover as the ACA was. The whole thing is a hoax, I suppose, if by 'hoax' you refer to the stated purpose for implementing it.

Good articles, but unfortunately I don't think folks care too much. It's kinda reminiscent of the ACA in that it's a government takeover of a private system.

There's a lot of good progressive stuff out there, but a lot of it's a bit 'mathy' for my tastes - I'm not a big fan of odd time signatures. I find that what I listen to tends to influence my writing a lot, so more than anything lately I tend to listen to classical music. It's very dynamic, melodic, and incorporates themes, which I like a lot.

A lot of people feel like you do. I don't mind if a vocalist uses a voice like that occasionally, but like with rap, if there's no melody in the vocal part, then it's just rhythm. Metal used to have some of the best vocalists outside of opera - singers like Ian Gillan, Dio, Rob Halford, (and if you consider them to be from metal bands) Robert Plant, David Byron, David Coverdale, etc. Since the old days of metal, the level of musicianship among the instrumentalists has begun to approach virtuosity, but instead of exploiting an entire range of melodic potential by actually singing, most metal vocalists today are falling over each other to sound exactly the same as each other; ie like they're some kind of dark lord that just walked straight out of a Diablo game. It is a matter of taste though. That's why I've all but stopped listening to metal.

Reminds me of this (NSFW language)

You do if the gun control crowd gets their way.

It's a show, with both sides working to specific ends. Congress sends him the bill with approval for the pipeline, the president takes a stand against big oil and fossil fuels to play to his base. Congress is playing to the center and the right by sending up the approval for Keystone for the president to sign. Both sides score points by their actions. If I had to predict, I think it's going to play a lot like when the 104th congress kept sending welfare reform to Clinton. Clinton vetoed it twice to placate the left, but he didn't dare veto it a third time, due to the popularity of reforming welfare among the general public. If the republicans keep sending Obama bills to sign with approval of the pipeline and he continues to veto them, he'll shift public opinion against him, and possibly the party as well, as being obstructionist.

That was great - I'd never seen that video before.

That's true. It's Al Gore's baby anyway. Move along. Nothing to see here.

I'd be interested in hearing how it's a hoax. I work in telecom, and I'd love to know that my industry won't be negatively affected by any of this.

Yeah, I like Baronness as well. It's nice to hear something heavy where the vocals are actual singing and not unintelligible ogre croaks for a change.

Sure, that way you're not getting information from a biased source.

Did they teach acoustic guitar?

Obama had called for a 90 day review period back then, and Chaffetz is getting pushback from a request for a 30 day review period now? People don't seem to realize what's at stake here. This will have a tremendous impact on IT, web content, speed, cost, and accessibility down the road.

The best show on television.

That's encouraging to see. Cheers to them for doing that. Normal, peace-loving Muslims will make a big impact if this sort of thing catches on.

The FCC plans to vote on it's proposal for Net Neutrality today, a 300+ page document which hasn't been shared outside the agency. Two of the FCC commissioners, as well as rep Chaffetz (R Utah who chairs the House Oversight Committee) are calling on the FCC to wait 30 days before the vote, and to make the document available for public scrutiny in the meantime, since it will effectively give the federal government regulatory control over the web, There's a lot of material available online about this, both pro & con. I'm linking one that doesn't appear to be taking sides one way or the other. http://www.usatoday.com/story/tech/2015/02/23/house-chairman-urges-fcc-transparency/23882079/

I was talking about National Geographic, or as they refer to themselves now, NatGeo. You're the one that brought them up as an example, not me. I won't criticize the integrity of magazines I've never even looked at, and it's BS of you to try to deflect by bringing them up as part of your argument. By calling those that disagree with you 'delusional' you display a mind that is already made up, which is detrimental to the scientific process. Science learns one step at a time, not by jumping to conclusions and sticking by them.

Maybe not 'only', but certainly 'largely'. They're in the business of selling subscriptions and collecting ad revenue, which are both based in how many views they get. They're another media outlet, and they sensationalize like anyone else does.

Ewe've got to be kidding.