Philosophically, the act of voting is the assertion that one's value system should be forcibly imposed on others.
Pragmatically, the act of voting is the assertion that some other person's value system should be forcibly imposed on others.
Monday, September 29, 2008
Thursday, September 04, 2008
The Reality Behind the Comcast Cap
I was browsing a friend's shared items on Google Reader earlier today, and I came across this Gizmodo article.
Of course, the comments section of the article is a veritable exercise in whaling and gnashing of teeth. One poster was even angry at the 'damn communists'. In reality, however, teh Internetz is partially propped up by public funding, was created by the government, and hence the real costs of distributed computer networking are largely hidden from the users. I doubt the kids were whining and complaining when tax dollars were being taken from everyone, including people who get much less of a benefit from it than they do.
How great would the outcry be if Comcast were charging people that it didn't provide Internet service to when someone went over their cap? Oh wait, Comcast can't do that! Only a government can. Instead of bitching about not being able to stream video all day long (because private property owners might actually want to conserve resources), kiddies should be thanking their lucky stars that the Internet is not a fully privatized institution which might require them to pay for all of their resource consumption.
Today, we're announcing that beginning on October 1, 2008, we will amend our Acceptable Use Policy (AUP) available at http://www.comcast.net/terms/use/ and establish a specific monthly data usage threshold of 250 GB/month per account for all residential customers. [quoted in article]
Of course, the comments section of the article is a veritable exercise in whaling and gnashing of teeth. One poster was even angry at the 'damn communists'. In reality, however, teh Internetz is partially propped up by public funding, was created by the government, and hence the real costs of distributed computer networking are largely hidden from the users. I doubt the kids were whining and complaining when tax dollars were being taken from everyone, including people who get much less of a benefit from it than they do.
How great would the outcry be if Comcast were charging people that it didn't provide Internet service to when someone went over their cap? Oh wait, Comcast can't do that! Only a government can. Instead of bitching about not being able to stream video all day long (because private property owners might actually want to conserve resources), kiddies should be thanking their lucky stars that the Internet is not a fully privatized institution which might require them to pay for all of their resource consumption.
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