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> and so the system fails him. At least in the USA, this is a solved problem. The federal, state, and/or local government step in and provide disaster relief,

> and so the system fails him. At least in the USA, this is a solved problem. The federal, state, and/or local government step in and provide disaster relief, including access to ice and/or medications. And the diabetic gets to live without parting with his life savings for a cup of ice. > through an emergent distributed calculation. Diabetics are not electrons in a calculator. There's a general pattern to both the argument you're making here and the argument you made about remote surgery. You're dreaming up a completely non-existent and totally hypothetical possible harm that the status quo already has exception handling mechanisms for, and providing it as a reason for ignoring much more systemic and plausible harms.

CWuestefeld 9y ago
You're dreaming up a completely non-existent and totally hypothetical Yes, my examples were only intended as illustrations. But isn't that also the case with the topic under discussion, net neutrality? I mean, it is not the case that any carrier has unfairly shaped traffic to the extent that they're determining winners and losers, and innovation with new products becomes impossible. This fear is totally hypothetical as well. the status quo already has exception handling mechanisms for, and providing it as a reason for ignoring much more systemic and plausible harms I think you're falling victim to fundamental attribution error. It seems like you're damning your opponent for a particular problem, while excusing the same problems for your own team: The federal, state, and/or local government step in and provide disaster relief, including access to ice and/or medications. Yes, but the official channels have been frequently shown not to work. Consider Hurricane Katrina. The FEMA help was ... not so helpful, and much of the initial response was actually courtesy of WalMart. I recall one store manager, trying to help people in critical need of medication actually taking a bulldozer and knocking down a wall of the store to get at it. The government contingencies didn't work. The private sector doesn't always work out either, but much of the time it does a better job. It's silly to pretend that the private sector cannot do it, and the government can be depended on with complete confidence. But my example of ice in a disaster was all just one example to show the thought process. There are of course examples in plenty other places. Regarding my example of remote surgery data transmission, the responses from other folks here regarding QoS protocols was pretty constructive. However, I'm left with the view that none of us fully understands how Net Neutrality affects (or doesn't affect) its usage.
- throwawayjava 9y ago
  > But isn't that also the case with the topic under discussion, net neutrality? I mean, it is not the case that any carrier has unfairly shaped traffic TFA: "Censorship by ISPs is a serious problem. Comcast has throttled Netflix, AT&T blocked FaceTime, Time Warner Cable throttled the popular game League of Legends, and Verizon admitted it will introduce fast lanes for sites that pay-and slow lanes for everyone else-if the FCC lifts the rules. This hurts consumers and businesses large and small." > to the extent that they're determining winners and losers The saga goes something like this: NN has been the assumed default since at least the late 90's. ISPs recently started to seriously test that presumption. FCC stepped in, and here we are. The NN rule started in 2015, but has been the default behavior of ISPs for decades. ISPs have been chomping at the bit to take advantage of their monopoly for decades. Comcast and Verizon are blatantly gearing up for this play, including via huge acquisitions. The "wait until they really screw you" argument is an uncompelling call to non-action. > This fear is totally hypothetical as well. Again, no, it's not. ISPs are coming out and saying publicly "yes, we will do this". > ...Hurricane Katrina... The government contingencies didn't work. Counter-point: the literally thousands of well-handled hurricanes, floods, and tornadoes. > The private sector doesn't always work out either, but much of the time it does a better job. The private for-profit sector doesn't provide systematic disaster relief, anecdotes of charity whipped into a frenzy by mega-corp's PR firms aside. For-profit FEMA just Does. Not. Exist. Here's a catalog of various forms of actual disaster relief provided after Katrina: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hurricane_Katrina_disaster_relief#Other_organizations https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hurricane_Katrina_disaster_rel... Read -- actually read -- the overview of that article. Even when the government abjectly fails at disaster relief it still does several orders of magnitude more than private for-profit enterprises. Katrina was a failure of early warning and evacuation protocols, not a failure of disaster response mechanisms. Which makes sense -- aside from price gouging, there's no profit to be made on emergency response.

CWuestefeld 9y ago

You're dreaming up a completely non-existent and totally hypothetical Yes, my examples were only intended as illustrations. But isn't that also the case with the topic under discussion, net neutrality? I mean, it is not the case that any carrier has unfairly shaped traffic to the extent that they're determining winners and losers, and innovation with new products becomes impossible. This fear is totally hypothetical as well. the status quo already has exception handling mechanisms for, and providing it as a reason for ignoring much more systemic and plausible harms I think you're falling victim to fundamental attribution error. It seems like you're damning your opponent for a particular problem, while excusing the same problems for your own team: The federal, state, and/or local government step in and provide disaster relief, including access to ice and/or medications. Yes, but the official channels have been frequently shown not to work. Consider Hurricane Katrina. The FEMA help was ... not so helpful, and much of the initial response was actually courtesy of WalMart. I recall one store manager, trying to help people in critical need of medication actually taking a bulldozer and knocking down a wall of the store to get at it. The government contingencies didn't work. The private sector doesn't always work out either, but much of the time it does a better job. It's silly to pretend that the private sector cannot do it, and the government can be depended on with complete confidence. But my example of ice in a disaster was all just one example to show the thought process. There are of course examples in plenty other places. Regarding my example of remote surgery data transmission, the responses from other folks here regarding QoS protocols was pretty constructive. However, I'm left with the view that none of us fully understands how Net Neutrality affects (or doesn't affect) its usage.

throwawayjava 9y ago
> But isn't that also the case with the topic under discussion, net neutrality? I mean, it is not the case that any carrier has unfairly shaped traffic TFA: "Censorship by ISPs is a serious problem. Comcast has throttled Netflix, AT&T blocked FaceTime, Time Warner Cable throttled the popular game League of Legends, and Verizon admitted it will introduce fast lanes for sites that pay-and slow lanes for everyone else-if the FCC lifts the rules. This hurts consumers and businesses large and small." > to the extent that they're determining winners and losers The saga goes something like this: NN has been the assumed default since at least the late 90's. ISPs recently started to seriously test that presumption. FCC stepped in, and here we are. The NN rule started in 2015, but has been the default behavior of ISPs for decades. ISPs have been chomping at the bit to take advantage of their monopoly for decades. Comcast and Verizon are blatantly gearing up for this play, including via huge acquisitions. The "wait until they really screw you" argument is an uncompelling call to non-action. > This fear is totally hypothetical as well. Again, no, it's not. ISPs are coming out and saying publicly "yes, we will do this". > ...Hurricane Katrina... The government contingencies didn't work. Counter-point: the literally thousands of well-handled hurricanes, floods, and tornadoes. > The private sector doesn't always work out either, but much of the time it does a better job. The private for-profit sector doesn't provide systematic disaster relief, anecdotes of charity whipped into a frenzy by mega-corp's PR firms aside. For-profit FEMA just Does. Not. Exist. Here's a catalog of various forms of actual disaster relief provided after Katrina: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hurricane_Katrina_disaster_relief#Other_organizations https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hurricane_Katrina_disaster_rel... Read -- actually read -- the overview of that article. Even when the government abjectly fails at disaster relief it still does several orders of magnitude more than private for-profit enterprises. Katrina was a failure of early warning and evacuation protocols, not a failure of disaster response mechanisms. Which makes sense -- aside from price gouging, there's no profit to be made on emergency response.