Jim's comments (member since Dec 31, 2008)

Jim's comments from the History is Not Boring group.

Manuel wrote: "Supposedly the Republicans are working on a "Purity Test" a so-called list of 10 commandments that must be met to qualify as a "Conservative" and be eligible for campaign funds from the party...."

Thank you! I needed a good holiday belly laugh.

I agree completely, Mary JL.

I read a funny joke today about the new senior citizen health care plan. It's a gun with 4 bullets so you can shoot 2 senators, & 2 representatives, then retire to jail where they'll take care of all your health care needs!

Detroit's been a mess since the 70's or early 80's for the reason Manuel mentioned, hasn't it?

I read a blurb about an amendment in the Senate that would make the oligarchy use the same public health plan as everyone else. It's pretty sad they even have to make such an amendment.

Somehow I doubt a revolt in the US qualifies as WW III. As for confiscating guns, I doubt Obama would try to pull that. He's caused plenty of waves & that one would just give the far right too much ammo - if you'll pardon the pun.

I can see him making a lot more restrictive gun laws, though. He's already screwed up ammo by his 'green' initiative where they now grind up all spent brass instead of selling it to the civilian market. How that is supposed to be 'green' is beyond me.

Another 'N'. She's going to beat you, Manuel!
;-)

George wrote: "with pleasure. would have helped us a bit to brush up on that before venturing forth on our latest adventure there."

Learn from history? Surely you jest!

;-)

Republicans think they need to move further right? <sigh> I'm going to vote for Bugs Bunny next time. He probably has more sense & is certainly more fun.

Despite concerns of voter fraud, it looks like Christie won in NJ. The WSJ was saying the election would likely wind up in the courts just the day before citing absentee voter ballots as the likely culprit. They said the Obama Justice Department was slack upholding voters rights, citing how they dropped the New Black Panther intimidation case earlier this year.
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424...

The NY Daily News doesn't seem to think there will be a problem according to their article this morning.
http://www.nydailynews.com/news/election...

This is probably the worst thing that could happen for the GOP. Now they're going to think they still have it together, despite all their idiocy. The independents didn't seem to score any better, which is a real shame.

Microsoft now has a store! Yeah, a physical one & you'll never guess what it looks like.

http://blogs.zdnet.com/storage/?p=669&ta...

Will, I have not noticed ISP's & their search engines. What ISP's have search engines? I don't use Time-Warner, Verizon or AT&T to search. They're ISP's. I use Google, Yahoo & MSN to search, but not for connectivity. What you're saying doesn't make sense to me.

My ISP is a third tier ISP. They buy bandwidth & main loop connectivity from another company (call them T2) that then connects to the main loops through at least two of the tier one providers. When my signal hits T2, they shape my traffic out the fastest route to its destination, using either main loop. Generally, that is always just one, but some days there is congestion & I'll go out another. (You can tell this by running a trace route to various sites.)

I have not heard of any ISP's slowing up traffic for other traffic for any length of time. I have heard of some filtering at different times, but they've been singular cases & quickly stopped. For instance blocking torrent sites, Skype traffic or capping bandwidth. Can you give me some examples of slowing traffic abuses?

NN is a good way for the big ISP's to gain the ability to block torrents, Skype (as an example) or cap bandwidth - something they have NOT been able to do in a free market. They've tried, but since their competitors won't work with them, the business moves to the freer resource. Under NN, they'll all be able to get together to lobby for such actions to be 'legal'. So that's why NN is definitely about filtering.

The Internet is free, unfettered communications, a very precious resource. NN is a way of fettering it, turning control over to governments & lobbyists.

The 4th amendment gives us the right to be free from unreasonable search & seizure. While I have nothing to hide, I still don't want the government listening in or keeping copies of every damn fool thing I write or download. Taken out of context, some of the stuff could be harmful, but more than that, it's a philosophical point. It's a freedom promised by the Constitution & one I think we should keep. Look at what happened in Iran recently.

Will, when have you not been able to get to Altvista or any site? How exactly does Google block Jeeves? You've listed 3 search providers, not ISP's. How does Net Neutrality actually help in this case? I am not familiar with anything that it would do to help nor any need.

There are 3 main fiber loops in the US & every ISP ties into them. The primary tiers tie together at a bunch of major hubs. These are so highly regulated for traffic flow that any additional laws are redundant. Now, if AT&T tried to block packets from Verizon on their loop, then Net Neutrality would help. I'm not familiar with any cases where this has happened, though. Are some ISP's blocking another ISP from accessing this? If so, how? When?

It's bad when you make a law that carries with it such a heavy payload of government intervention. Especially when that intervention is ill defined with vague ideas of what is legal. I've seen arguments that all torrent traffic should be illegal since most torrent traffic is illegal file sharing. It's also the way the Open Source community shares software, though. That's some of the biggest competition to the corporate giants & they'd love to see it strangled.

Net Neutrality doesn't support making AT&T or my cable company put service in, but it does strangle the small ISP that serves me by making them pony up to the same standards that a large ISP in a metropolitan area can easily meet. Your friend better be careful because pretty soon Qwest is going to be able to buy out his infrastructure for pennies on the dollar once he's required to make sure content is 'legal'.

NN supports filtering email traffic which is a huge breach of our freedom. You never answered my question about the government opening all your mail & recording all phone conversations. You don't mind? That's what content filtering is - every packet is opened & inspected or else they can't be sure it's legal.

You never answered my question about encryption, either. Should the government be able to open EVERYTHING, including encrypted traffic? If so, what's to stop competitors or bad guys from cracking it?

The small company I work for is a good employer. They're struggling with health care costs & the economy, same as the rest, but the doors are open & they are providing it. I don't work for a company that wants to screw me - I don't know anyone who does. I didn't like the last company I worked for & left for one I did like. I don't think your argument for government intervention makes sense.

You say that I can have 'my porn'. I didn't know I wanted it. I used it as an example of how poorly physical world law fits the Internet. Porn has always been a leader on the Internet. Porn sites set the standards for online billing, search engines, streaming media & a lot more. As an industry, it's informative to watch. They're usually several years ahead of the rest in innovation, services & problems.

Have you seen any case where the invasive border search of any electronic device has actually stopped child porn, though? What good has it done? Do you really think that being able to take someone's laptop or other electronic equipment for an undetermined amount of time & read every file on it is fair? That is the worst abortion of the 4th amendment I've ever heard of.

Will, do you think the government should monitor your regular mail & phone conversations, too? Do you want them opening every piece of mail & recording every conversation? That's exactly what Net Neutrality is about when they talk about providing access to legal content.

Any yet 'legal' isn't defined in far too many cases.

Does anyone know why we need Net Neutrality? What exactly are the big reasons for it? Why are the big ISP's for it, the smaller ones against it & some, like Verizon, changing their stance depending on their current business?

Think about the small ISP's. Can they meet the requirements that Net Neutrality will require? According to mine, probably not, but they're the only ones that will service my area. Last I heard, NN only means IF a provider is in your area, they have to meet a standard. It means people in marginal areas like mine may lose the service they have.

AT&T techs have already told us there are no plans to give us high speed access & the local cable company has turned down even a signed petition to do so. That leaves the big satellite providers & all my neighbors have tried it for a year, then given it up & gone back to dialup, it's so bad. They're using the small, local wireless provider I use.

No, again you're supporting the big picture & not paying attention to the details. That's where the devil is though. You like big unions & big government - to hell with individuality & the individual, even though that's what built this nation. Small business is still the largest employer, I believe, yet everything you seem to support hurts them.

Verizon's opinion on Net Neutrality changed has done a complete about face. It would seem that they would be forced to make concessions they've been unwilling to make, so their stance against it was understandable. Now that they're part of Google voice, suddenly their position changed & they're all for it.

I got in OK.

Will, it doesn't bother you that they can't even define what it is that they're making legal or illegal? Or that many of the things they can define are vary depending on the physical location?

For example, the age of an 'adult' female varies from state to state. The same person could be carrying legal pictures at home & illegal ones at work or depending on where they checked their email or where the email server(s) involved were located.

Do you think with all the pressure the FBI & Homeland Security have been putting on the ISP's to invade our privacy that they won't immediately require that content be filtered & blocked? Surely you're not that naive.

Do you have any idea how much it costs the ISP's to comply with the current reporting requirements? Even a relatively small ISP has to spend a LOT of money. Content filtering is NOT as simple as traffic shaping or logging. It's more like the difference between Pong & a top level game today. Even minimal reporting requirements could easily drive smaller ISP's out of business.

And you think this is a good idea because of what? A possibility of maybe catching a few porn files? Have you ever heard of encryption? Or are they going to be allowed to break that too? Encryption is required on any document containing a person's name & sensitive info, like their SS # by HIPPA for a good reason. If the government requires that all encryption be broken on the fly - during a live transmission - do you have any idea what that will do to VOIP transmissions or VPN sessions?

If they don't require prying into encrypted traffic, they won't stop anything because everyone will start using them. So we wind up with innocent people being inconvenienced while the bad guys continue doing their thing. Reminds me of the gun laws you're so fond of that don't work either.

Don't you care that everyone's privacy is going to get flushed? Why do you think the government dabbling with bad laws for the sake of laws are a good idea?

Will, do you really understand what it means? It's supposed to provide 'rights' for consumers, but it won't. Everything is prefaced by 'legal' - legal content, legal access, etc... We haven't defined those terms & the few that have been defined vary according to physical location, which has very little to do with the Internet.

It means the ISP is going to have to look at content in order to say whether it is legal or not. I thought you were into saving energy. Apparently not. Do you have any clue how much processing power that's going to take?

Child porn & predatory acts are a very small amount of Internet traffic. I'm not ready to give up my freedoms for such a small fraction. Look at how NC fared with that stupid law that IT pros were responsible for reporting child pornography. A grandmother wound up in court for pictures of her grandkid.

The Internet does not need stupid legislation holding it up. It will be stupid legislation, too. As dumb as the the Digital Millennium Act which said that any PC behind a router was illegal since it 'misrepresented its IP address'. Oh, that's not what they really meant? We all ignored it anyway. That's the kind of laws you're looking at.

Take a look at who is pushing for Net Neutrality before you start supporting more legal idiocy.

The FCC has decided to bring some law to the Internet.

http://www.networkworld.com/newsletters/...

This is going to get ugly - very ugly. The idea of 'lawful' content is a scary term for both consumers & ISP's. Lawmakers probably think it's a no-brainer, but that's because they don't have a clue as to what is involved.

You can certainly puke on Clinton if you'd like, Will. Can't hurt anything. I blame him as much as GW for not reining in the banks & all. Of course, GW walked into a crashing economy. He then masked the problem somewhat & it just got worse.

Penalize the rich too much, they'll leave or find ways to hide their money. They can afford to. Unfortunately, a lot of the people that qualify as rich as small business owners. Hurting them doesn't help the economy.

Will, I did like FDR's idea of work for the money. I would love to see that put into practice again. What I don't like is that he opened the door for the Feds to dabble too much in the free markets. Another case of rough times & a good tough man making hard decisions. Those who came after him took advantage & ruined it.

I don't like penalizing the rich for being rich. It's not right & they won't pay.

I agree with you on the flu, Will. Like the chicken pox or mumps, avoiding the disease is almost impossible & won't do most people any favors.

On Reagan, somehow I think your cynicism & dislike is showing through.

----------------------------------

25 years ago today, Baby Fae got a baboon heart. Anyone remember that? She only lived a few weeks, but it was ground breaking medicine on a lot of levels. The animal rights activists had collective heart failure.

http://specials.msn.com/A-List/Baby-Fae....