> Much of what looks like rudeness in hacker circles is not intended to give offence. Rather, it's the product of the direct, cut-through-the-bullshit communications style that is natural to people who are more concerned about solving problems than making others feel warm and fuzzy
It's not quite the same, but it comes from the same cut-through-the-bullshit attitude.
With all due respect to ESR, and speaking as an autistic person who has struggled with socialization, I get tired of people trying to paint their failure to grasp basic social principles as a virtue. Behaving like an efficient robot is useful when dealing with machines, but other people are not machines and treating them as such does not improve productivity even if you think it ought to.
A couple of jobs back, I met with a supervisor to proudly tell him that a gigantic, exhausting project I'd been working on for the last nine months was finally ready to deploy. His response, almost verbatim, was "Cool. Here's what I need you to do next..." I found it nearly impossible to care about what he wanted for the rest of my time there. 60 seconds' worth of interest and congratulations would have gotten dozens of hours of extra productivity out of me.
Sorry, that got awfully off-topic. It's just a hot button with me.
60 seconds' worth of interest and congratulations would have gotten dozens of hours of extra productivity out of me.
Hundreds, probably, thousands maybe. It's hard to overestimate the value in these things.
Except, of course, on HN.
So, to reiterate, other people are not machines.
Or we're all cynical assholes. Just possibly.
1) Yay! 2) Here's where they could have done more...
Unlikely. HNers are wide-eyed Utopians in the Platonic fashion of believing in virtue through central planning. There is no cynicism here to be found, but in the downvoted comments.
Possibly, but there are a couple more factors.
1) In the general population, criticism is still the norm. The default reaction to any change is neutral to negative. If any response is made, chances are it will be negative.
2) On HN, vacuous responses are discouraged. And since substantive positive responses are hard to make (most of the positive spin usually ends up in the article, not in responses), positive responses in general are uncommon. Comparatively, substantive negative responses are easier to make, not least because it's almost always easier to see a problem than to see a solution.
Either one of those would push the responses towards negative criticism. Combined with yours, you now have three not-insignificant forces. There are probably more. There probably aren't many forces pushing towards positive response, and demonstrably not enough to balance the scales.
If you never know what success looks like, you're always failing.
The widely covered ruling (Title II) stops the major ISPs from getting worse. The less noticed ruling is what will put the screws to their executives, and make them actually perform.
For their customers, I mean. More on the muni. ruling here: http://www.motherjones.com/kevin-drum/2015/02/fcc-did-lot-mo...
Market forces didn't handle seat belts, air bags, fuel efficiency, racial discrimination, taxation without representation, etc. We cannot rely on the market to solve all problems.
Cars and highways were novel. People wanted them more than they wanted to be sufficiently safe, or fuel-efficient. Volvo is not touting their ultra safe cars because of regulation. The market wants it now. There is a market for that now. It's impossible to prove there would be no market if not for the government regulation. Just look at what we elect to spend on health care. Just look at Tesla and the success of the Prius.
With enough information, people will pay for well-being regardless of government mandates.
On the other hand I think this is a great win on its own :)
But they were in the unhappy position (for the ISPs, not users) that if they started negatively affecting iPlayer, their customers would have plenty of choice.
The comical part of that whole affair was that they should have cheered the BBC on:
Bandwidth used for iPlayer was bandwidth they could get incredibly cheaply simply by peering with the BBC [1] at a range of public peering points or even directly, and bandwidth end-users used to get at iPlayer content would be bandwidth they wouldn't use to stream over far more expensive routes.
Of course, the reason they were whining was that many of them had severely underdimensioned their backhaul networks to their core networks compared to the speeds they were actually selling to their customers, so in the short run it drove up costs, but in the long run the larger market share the BBC and other domestic streaming providers have, the better, for the above reason.
My point is that problem 1 is only a "problem" because of problem 2. If it's easy for new competitors to enter the market (which I think addresses the main complaint about charging for traffic), then "problem 1" is not a problem. It may well be the case that you can't solve the competition problem without solving the pay-for-traffic "problem", but the competition problem is the only one that matters on its own.
If Comcast wants to charge Netflix for their traffic, let them go ahead. This country used to have antitrust laws that should be perfectly sufficient to take Comcast to court and break them up if the case can be made that they're doing it to punish competition and promote their own services.
I can see the case that sometimes it makes sense and is fair to charge big users, and that sometimes this behavior can be abused to harm competition. My worry is that Net Neutrality is a sledgehammer we don't really need.
>Seat Belts: If individuals wanted them, the car companies would have followed suit. You forget that not only were seat belts mandated to be installed, but people were FINED if they didn't put them on.
>Air Bags: If there wasn't a state, I'm sure you'd have safety organizations putting out reports/studies about effectiveness of air bags. Rich people would buy them in their cars, poor people wouldn't, and they don't do that now anyways. Not sure how you see this is as something "government" fixed as it's different to seat belts, which are mandated?
>Fuel efficiency: Ah yes, another environmental tax meant to incentivize good behavior. Let me know how that's working out. All this does is drive up the cost of cars unnecessarily under the pretense of environmental benefits. Again, if people wanted it, you wouldn't have to force them to do it. This is the basic basic difference that most pro-market, and anti-market sentiments boil down to.
>Racial discrimination: This was enforced and perpetuated by state laws. Some would argue it still happens today with certain mandatory sentencing laws, minimum wage, etc.
>Taxation without representation. What? You want the market to solve a problem that solely exists because of the state, revolves around the state, and is absolutely not subject to any market forces at all? Perhaps if I could "choose" where my tax money was spent, then there would be some sort of market force driven by individuals. But that's nowhere near the case.
Now, a little more on-topic. You are absolutely right that we can't rely on the market to solve all problems, but in the presence of a state. The temptation is always there to "correct" or "slightly nudge" the market in directions we want it to go, rather than what the collective unconscious has decided. The free-market is more democracy than democracy is right now, and people fundamentally can not accept that.
“People of the same trade seldom meet together... but the conversation ends in a conspiracy against the public,...”
Corporations have vast resources and capabilities far beyond those of the individual and frequently use them against us for their own benefit. Tobacco companies faked and suppressed research and knowingly lied in their advertising. Car companies fought seat belts and air bags tooth and nail. Few companies campaign for minimum quality standards in their categories of products, yet information about quality are essential to informed participation by purchasers in any market.
Ideally each of us indivudualy should be fully informed about every decision we make, but the fact is it's simply not possible. So instead we delegate responsibility for many of these decisions to our leaders. They regulate markets on our behalf and increase the efficiency of markets by performing necessary research, standardisation and negotiations on quality once so we can all benefit from it every time we make a purchase.
Appropriate regulation of markets is essential to their function, and delegation of responsibility based on democratic choice is itself a market mechanism. Of course there are arguments to be made about the appropriate level and type of regulation.
That would be awesome if it were true, but it's not. It's very naive to believe politicians and bureaucrats work for anything other than their own self-interest.
Now that the FCC runs the Internet who do you think is going to influence them more- Comcast's lobbyists or you?
Not sure i see an issue here, we know that individuals did not particularly want them, just as i would prefer not to wear a seatbelt on an airplane because i'm not capable of understanding at any given time what the likelihood of danger is on a plane. Do you get mad at the government went the fasten seatbelt sign goes on during turbulence?
> If there wasn't a state, I'm sure you'd have safety organizations putting out reports/studies about effectiveness of air bags
You are "sure" are you? congratulations, no one else is. You can't use hand waving to dismiss this problem.
>Rich people would buy them in their cars, poor people wouldn't
In a country that absolutely necessitates the use of a car, do you think its morally acceptable to keep airbags out of reach of the poor?
>and they don't do that now anyways
Are you under the impression that poor people in the US drive around in cars without airbags and seat belts?
>Fuel efficiency: ... Let me know how that's working out.
Its working quite well, I lease cars and each of my last three cars (3 years each, current car is due next month) were cheaper than the previous and more fuel efficient. For the record i was not switching types of cars - previous cars where pontiac G6, Chevy Malibu, Mazda 3, all similarly sized/priced cars.
>Again, if people wanted it, you wouldn't have to force them to do it.
OK so i want a 99 MPG car. If i dont have to force an automaker to produce one, why arent they? Youre looking at the market as a abstraction of reality. In reality an automakers motivation is profit, not sales. There are other ways of increasing profit than determining and matching consumer demand. To ignore this is far from trivial.
>Racial discrimination: This was enforced and perpetuated by state laws. Some would argue it still happens today with certain mandatory sentencing laws, minimum wage, etc.
Whats your argument here? That we would be better off with no state laws at all? That we would be better off with no regulation on discrimination in any direction?
>The free-market is more democracy than democracy is right now, and people fundamentally can not accept that.
Its not that people can't accept it, it is that a direct democracy is universally accepted as a terrible organizational structure. Theres a reason the US is NOT a democracy. There is no disagreement, the free market would be a direct democracy, and that is not a positive thing to say.
Another example: advertising-subsidized media. Used to be (100 years ago) newspapers didn't necessarily runs ads. There was a rich working-class press. Then the ad-subsidized model came out and it slashed the price of newspapers, but on the condition that the content was generally business friendly. (Otherwise they wouldn't get many advertisers.) So nobody bought the working-class newspapers anymore because they were too expensive. This had a massive impact on the tone and perspective of published media that persists to this day.
And there's been lots of no compete agreements among these ISPs and I'm sure there's other examples out there where the "competition" makes it better for all of them at the expense of consumers.
http://www.pbs.org/cringely/pulpit/2007/pulpit_20070810_0026...
I believe the Obama admin tried it again. I don't know the full result, but I wouldn't be surprised if the same thing happened.
But then you have companies like Google who can come in an put in Fiber because they're a tech conglomerate who can subsidize these costs in other ways.
I'm still not getting it. Isn't this like saying restaurants are charging to provide more flavorful, healthier food? The cost burden may appear to fall on the suppliers in the ISP case, but they just pass that onto the consumer, just like the price you see next to the menu item.
Problem 1 only appears to be a problem because of problem 2. It's a competition issue. Are we really closer to solving problem 2 now? How so?
ISP's can however charge a higher price for faster speeds, same as a restaurant can charge a higher price for more flavorful and healthier food.
competition solve problems when every actor acts rational, and everyone competes fairly with the same moral and ethical values. As soon one of those two assumptions are wrong, competition stops to solve problems in the market.
I'm talking about the menu a restaurant puts together based on the deals and choice they get from suppliers. One supplier may undercut the other. The restaurant may sign a long term deal with a supplier that isn't beneficial to the patrons. Competition is a check on that scenario, just as it is with any market where there is at least a handful of non-colluding sellers.
It's not rational to charge suppliers for priority? It's totally rational. They want more of your pipe. Ignoring the popular notions of fairness and "packet equality", why shouldn't they get charged more?
Competes fairly? How about just legally? A rule violation is a rule violation and should be settled in the justice system. The beauty of competition is that companies would rather undercut/offer a superior product over the competitors rather than waste time in court (or jail). You just need several competitors to keep them honest. It's a sufficient quantity of options, not the heavy-hand of the state, that ensures consumers are protected.
If anti-discrimination laws were repealed, do you honestly believe minorities and women would have their dining and golfing options cut by 50%? I bet it wouldn't even be 5%. And I bet white males would have their options cut by the same number. Popular opinion and competition help solve that particular market problem. Law definitely helps, but the assumption that competition only works when "everyone competes fairly with the same moral and ethical values" is flat out false. On the whole, the profit motive is much stronger than any superficial biases. Finding talented workers who share the exact same superficial biases, and not having someone like Jesse Jackson leading picket lines outside your business would both be damn near impossible.
We're already seeing progress (albeit very minor progress) in solving problem 2. The entry of Google Fiber in the market is more significant than most people realize, because it shows that companies that rely on efficient internet service for their revenue are willing to expand into ISP roles in order to ensure reach to customers. Who's to say that Apple, a massive corporation with deep pockets that lives and breathes user experience, won't invest in ensuring that their customers have the best experience with the internet possible?
Call me optimistic, but I don't think the ISP duopoly in is going to last forever. The stakes are just too high for other large companies to not enter into the field. Eventually, I believe we'll see a bunch of walled gardens ISPs instead of the current duopoly, with Apple, Google and maybe even someone like Facebook acting as ISPs for their own subset of customers. When that does happen, we need to make sure that the playing field for all websites stays level and independent of economic or political interests. Strict net neutrality laws are exactly what we need in a situation like that.
While its not a complete solution, the FCC decision -- on the same day as the open internet vote -- preempting state laws prohibiting municipal broadband efforts (which laws prevent one potential alternative to the incumbent providers) at least addresses Problem 2.
Were now increasingly dependent on the goverment for internet progross.
That's not what we want. We want progress to be a freebie. A natural by product of real competition. We've effectively gave up on the pure solution, and elected for the long politically complicated "government mandated progress" solution.
History shows it's unlikely to end up in our favor in the long run.
Damnit.
Because even assuming it's true that there are 700 new distinct regulations, programmers should know better than to use regulations as a pejorative or high numbers of them as a proxy bugaboo. We're people whose job includes filling text editors with regulations specifying the inputs, tranformations, and actions of a program. Defining entities and creating specifications and rules for how they behave is how we make systems.
700 lines of code is generally a pretty low number for doing anything complex. 700 pages of code wouldn't write you a bot to regulate network communications businesses. If the current FCC produces that much writing about how they plan to do things, it says nothing about the quality of their plans.
And the FCC is an agent deriving its authority to regulate from legislation and working under elected executive authority.
So I'm not sure what the connection with totalitarian dictatorship is.
Totalitarian governments don't exist of just one person, either.
"the Order refrains - or forbears - from enforcing 27 provisions of Title II and over 700 associated regulations that are not relevant to modern broadband service."
That's your over 700 right there. This is the only place that I can find that number anywhere. The people who are talking abuot "over 700 new regulations" are party to a misunderstanding of hilarious proportion, making it clear that they have not RTF(news release).
So you're exactly right: there is no support for the "700 regulations." It's total nonsense.
Problem 1: ISPs trying to charge to (de)prioritize packets.
Problem 2: The two biggest ISPs suck, and should be broken up, and/or it should be mandated that competition is much easier.
Would you be happy if they solved problem 2 without solving problem 1?
Leave problem 2 for another day, and celebrate that problem 1 has been dealt with.