Re: [silk] A new buzzphrase: procedural content creation
On Mar 2, 2014 11:41 PM, Chandrachoodan Gopalakrishnan chandrachoo...@gmail.com wrote: A little baffled by the tone of voice here. For something that is a piece of self-promotion, on their own website, why write it like a newspaper article? Perhaps this content was also created procedurally. -gabin
[silk] Car rear view cams in India
I was shopping for car rear view cams and proximity sensors - but all the rear view cams + dashboard mounted screens on the market, at least in India, still seem to use RCA jacks for connectivity. Is there any more modern gear in the Indian market that I've missed out on? --srs (iPad)
Re: [silk] Life is a game. This is your strategy guide.
On Tue, 2014-03-04 at 11:00 +0530, Kiran K Karthikeyan wrote: Don't agree with this observation by the Kerala HC, but the article below[1] posted by Madhu yesterday on Facebook demonstrates how ingrained playing as a team is in India. From a Hindu (also Jain and Sikh) viewpoint, team play is the basis of Dharma which roughly corresponds to duties of man. Literally, Dharma is derived from the Sanskrit root dhru - which means to retain or preserve and Dharma is what preserves and binds society together. So it is teamwork by definition. When you look at it this way, you can see how rulings that go against what is called Dharma are considered as assaults on societies that accept Dharma as their way of life. In any case Dharma, seen as duty to family and society is essentially secular in concept and is practiced by Indian Muslims and Christians as well. In his book about Mumbai, (Maximum City) Suketu Mehta interviews and quotes a professional assassin - a Muslim working for the Chota Shakeel gang (I think) who performed his daily prayers without fail even as he bumped off people because that was his Dharm which he had to fulfil. The same man also verbalized the sound of a bullet tearing through human flesh - I can't recall the exact thing but it was described in the book as something like php. Charming stuff. This team play is why Indian American parents pay for their children's education, and get their parents over to the US to live out their last days under their care in a repeat of what was done by their parents, echoing what happens in millions of Indian families, including my own. shiv
Re: [silk] Life is a game. This is your strategy guide.
On Mon, Mar 3, 2014 at 5:08 AM, SS cybers...@gmail.com wrote: The article looks at life like a single player game. Life can be a single player game or a team game in which multiple players cooperate. In India life is defined as a multiple player game in which your life is played in family and society from the day you are born. Life is NOT - never ever a single player optimization game for any living being. This is the law of nature. However the temptation of a selfish life befalls every creature. The stronger they are the harder they fall for it. The team spirit of ants was fabulously documented by Dr. E.O Wilson, the noted naturalist. In one of his examples, the riskiest duty in an ant hill - guarding supply lines always falls on the oldest ants. They embrace certain death in order to be of maximum use to the family. To be selfish cannot easily enter the conception of an ant because to believe so offers no advantages, only downsides. They can't survive without each other, and even then it's a tough life. Their precarious position in the food chain never allows them to forget the dangers of life. Even if a few stupid truants wander off from duty, they never last long on the outside and the contagion doesn't spread. On the other hand, larger animals like male elephants will occasionally wander off alone, fed up with having to put up with the nonsense of the herd. The kids are annoying, there are constant fights between the members, food is scarce and so on. So they succumb to temptation because they can. Nevertheless, this is only initially fun - it soon becomes a miserable existence. They finally return to the herd when they grow calmer and more accepting of the interconnectedness of their life with the rest of the herd for good and bad. Humans are different in that they never seem to learn, they go through cycles of this madness. The modern world clings to an illusion of freedom afforded by temporary surplus riches. Yet this is mass disillusionment where the price for the pursuit of freedom is a lot of traps. Financial traps, loneliness traps, incompatibility traps. Divorce rates are highest in the developed world - http://www.nationmaster.com/country-info/stats/People/Divorce-rate If you possess a burning desire to be free, how can you stay married? Life becomes a debt trap of college loans, mortgage and pension funds. All of these were more or less provided for by the ancient family - where the parents taught the children their skills, and housing and old age care was almost always taken for granted. But that doesn't mean the old days were perfect, it never has been. You had no choice of profession, or housing or quality of care. Now, the modern nuclear household people too have no choice but to abandon some new found freedoms and band together, to create the socialist nanny state. A state created in the image of the spurned joint family and village. If you belong in the nanny state you obviously can't do as you please. The violent debate in America since the civil war is merely this. The desire to enjoy the fruits of the nanny state and none of its costs. Yet, lawlessness, slaves, no taxation, and soon guns - one by one the freedoms fall because the alternative is unbearable. The land of the not-so-free then. The nanny state where it has evolved without as much trouble in places like Singapore, Scandinavia, Japan and S. Korea soon offers not only free education, healthcare, housing and retirement care but also child care services, emotional support through social workers, and even plays matchmaker by offering financial rewards to tie the knot. Yet loneliness plagues their citizens because the nanny state lacks the human contact of a family. So they nanny state still has a few evolutions left to complete its cloning of the joint family. Even though nanny state citizens have mostly become obedient servants of the carrot and stick it rankles in their heart that they have gone no further in net freedom. So this too will only last a while before another evolutionary cycle is prompted by frustration. Humans are experts at deluding themselves. At each stage in our evolution from stone age to the plastic age social order has changed to accommodate the insatiable need for freedom. However the desire for selfish freedom is a bottomless pit that can never be filled. Every new stage of freedom has spawned dissatisfaction and a new complaint. To desire selfish freedom is to deny the interconnectedness of life, and no one alive wins by betting against life. So freedom is not found on the outside, but on the inside. It is found in total acceptance of the reality that freedom as popularly sought is a lie. When liberation occurs from within, all need to innovate on one's social condition with a view to escape ends. This is what every serious inquiry into life since the dawn of man has revealed. We are lucky to live in age of plenty, where many of us spend years specializing in a profession. We
Re: [silk] Life is a game. This is your strategy guide.
A selfish organism is the very definition of cancer. I'm not sure if I agree with all that you said, Cheeni. But that last line...breathtaking in its simplicity.
[silk] Fwd: [IP] Re The internet is fucked
Via Dave Farber's IP list. Ignoring many of the talking points in the rant below, the claim I am most interested in is The internet is a utility, just like water and electricity. I am really interested in the thoughts of silklisters on this, especially folks like Sunil Abraham and Pranesh Prakash, who work in the policy area; Cory Doctorow, who ceaselessly educates anyone who will listen on these issues; and divers others. Udhay -- Forwarded message -- From: *Dewayne Hendricks* dewa...@warpspeed.com Date: Tuesday, March 4, 2014 Subject: [Dewayne-Net] The internet is fucked To: Multiple recipients of Dewayne-Net dewayne-...@warpspeed.com [Note: This item comes from friend Tim Pozar. DLH] From: Tim Pozar po...@lns.com Subject: The internet is fucked Date: March 4, 2014 at 8:13:00 PST To: Dewayne Hendricks dewa...@warpspeed.com POLICY LAW The internet is fucked By Nilay Patel Feb 25 2014 http://www.theverge.com/2014/2/25/5431382/the-internet-is-fucked Here's a simple truth: the internet has radically changed the world. Over the course of the past 20 years, the idea of networking all the world's computers has gone from a research science pipe dream to a necessary condition of economic and social development, from government and university labs to kitchen tables and city streets. We are all travelers now, desperate souls searching for a signal to connect us all. It is awesome. And we're fucking everything up. Massive companies like ATT and Comcast have spent the first two months of 2014 boldly announcing plans to close and control the internet through additional fees, pay-to-play schemes, and sheer brutal size -- all while the legal rules designed to protect against these kinds of abuses were struck down in court for basically making too much sense. Broadband providers represent a threat to internet openness, concluded Judge David Tatel in Verizon's case against the FCC's Open Internet order, adding that the FCC had provided ample evidence of internet companies abusing their market power and had made a rational connection between the facts found and the choices made. Verizon argued strenuously, but had offered the court no persuasive reason to question that judgement. Then Tatel cut the FCC off at the knees for making a rather half-hearted argument in support of its authority to properly police these threats and vacated the rules protecting the open internet, surprising observers on both sides of the industry and sending new FCC Chairman Tom Wheeler into a tailspin of empty promises seemingly designed to disappoint everyone. I expected the anti-blocking rule to be upheld, National Cable and Telecommunications Association president and CEO Michael Powell told me after the ruling was issued. Powell was chairman of the FCC under George W. Bush; he issued the first no-blocking rules. Judge Tatel basically said the Commission didn't argue it properly. In the meantime, the companies that control the internet have continued down a dark path, free of any oversight or meaningful competition to check their behavior. In January, ATT announced a new sponsored data plan that would dramatically alter the fierce one-click-away competition that's thus far characterized the internet. Earlier this month, Comcast announced plans to merge with Time Warner Cable, creating an internet service behemoth that will serve 40 percent of Americans in 19 of the 20 biggest markets with virtually no rivals. And after months of declining Netflix performance on Comcast's network, the two companies announced a new paid peering arrangement on Sunday, which will see Netflix pay Comcast for better access to its customers, a capitulation Netflix has been trying to avoid for years. Paid peering arrangements are common among the network companies that connect the backbones of the internet, but consumer companies like Netflix have traditionally remained out of the fray -- and since there's no oversight or transparency into the terms of the deal, it's impossible to know what kind of precedent it sets. Broadband industry insiders insist loudly that the deal is just business as usual, while outside observers are full of concerns about the loss of competition and the increasing power of consolidated network companies. Either way, it's clear that Netflix has decided to take matters -- and costs -- into its own hands, instead of relying on rational policy to create an effective and fair marketplace. In a perfect storm of corporate greed and broken government, the internet has gone from vibrant center of the new economy to burgeoning tool of economic control. Where America once had Rockefeller and Carnegie, it now has Comcast's Brian Roberts, ATT's Randall Stephenson, and Verizon's Lowell McAdam, robber barons for a new age of infrastructure monopoly built on fiber optics and kitty GIFs. And the power of the new network-industrial complex is immense and unchecked, even by other giants: ATT blocked Apple's FaceTime and
Re: [silk] Fwd: [IP] Re The internet is fucked
That is probably the most, to use the same language, bs point of them all. Mostly parroted by a school of net neutrality people (Susan Crawford, Tim Wu etc) that really should know better, but that doesn't quite stop them. Come to think of it, they too like to use overblown and soundbite laden (though rather less crude) language in multiple blogs and press quotes, as tweet bait likely, for all that they're professors of law and you would expect more precise language from them. Still much the same memes as this guy trots out .. Extortion, Internet tax etc etc when they talk about, say the recent netflix comcast paid peering deal. And it has more disturbing consequences too than you would care to think about. http://techliberation.com/2008/11/19/the-perils-of-thinking-of-broadband-as-a-public-utility/ --srs (iPad) On 05-Mar-2014, at 8:46, Udhay Shankar N ud...@pobox.com wrote: Via Dave Farber's IP list. Ignoring many of the talking points in the rant below, the claim I am most interested in is The internet is a utility, just like water and electricity. I am really interested in the thoughts of silklisters on this, especially folks like Sunil Abraham and Pranesh Prakash, who work in the policy area; Cory Doctorow, who ceaselessly educates anyone who will listen on these issues; and divers others. Udhay -- Forwarded message -- From: *Dewayne Hendricks* dewa...@warpspeed.com Date: Tuesday, March 4, 2014 Subject: [Dewayne-Net] The internet is fucked To: Multiple recipients of Dewayne-Net dewayne-...@warpspeed.com [Note: This item comes from friend Tim Pozar. DLH] From: Tim Pozar po...@lns.com Subject: The internet is fucked Date: March 4, 2014 at 8:13:00 PST To: Dewayne Hendricks dewa...@warpspeed.com POLICY LAW The internet is fucked By Nilay Patel Feb 25 2014 http://www.theverge.com/2014/2/25/5431382/the-internet-is-fucked Here's a simple truth: the internet has radically changed the world. Over the course of the past 20 years, the idea of networking all the world's computers has gone from a research science pipe dream to a necessary condition of economic and social development, from government and university labs to kitchen tables and city streets. We are all travelers now, desperate souls searching for a signal to connect us all. It is awesome. And we're fucking everything up. Massive companies like ATT and Comcast have spent the first two months of 2014 boldly announcing plans to close and control the internet through additional fees, pay-to-play schemes, and sheer brutal size -- all while the legal rules designed to protect against these kinds of abuses were struck down in court for basically making too much sense. Broadband providers represent a threat to internet openness, concluded Judge David Tatel in Verizon's case against the FCC's Open Internet order, adding that the FCC had provided ample evidence of internet companies abusing their market power and had made a rational connection between the facts found and the choices made. Verizon argued strenuously, but had offered the court no persuasive reason to question that judgement. Then Tatel cut the FCC off at the knees for making a rather half-hearted argument in support of its authority to properly police these threats and vacated the rules protecting the open internet, surprising observers on both sides of the industry and sending new FCC Chairman Tom Wheeler into a tailspin of empty promises seemingly designed to disappoint everyone. I expected the anti-blocking rule to be upheld, National Cable and Telecommunications Association president and CEO Michael Powell told me after the ruling was issued. Powell was chairman of the FCC under George W. Bush; he issued the first no-blocking rules. Judge Tatel basically said the Commission didn't argue it properly. In the meantime, the companies that control the internet have continued down a dark path, free of any oversight or meaningful competition to check their behavior. In January, ATT announced a new sponsored data plan that would dramatically alter the fierce one-click-away competition that's thus far characterized the internet. Earlier this month, Comcast announced plans to merge with Time Warner Cable, creating an internet service behemoth that will serve 40 percent of Americans in 19 of the 20 biggest markets with virtually no rivals. And after months of declining Netflix performance on Comcast's network, the two companies announced a new paid peering arrangement on Sunday, which will see Netflix pay Comcast for better access to its customers, a capitulation Netflix has been trying to avoid for years. Paid peering arrangements are common among the network companies that connect the backbones of the internet, but consumer companies like Netflix have traditionally remained out of the fray -- and since there's no oversight or transparency into the terms of the deal,
Re: [silk] Fwd: [IP] Re The internet is fucked
This one too http://bennett.com/blog/2008/11/just-another-utility/ --srs (iPad) On 05-Mar-2014, at 8:55, Suresh Ramasubramanian sur...@hserus.net wrote: That is probably the most, to use the same language, bs point of them all. Mostly parroted by a school of net neutrality people (Susan Crawford, Tim Wu etc) that really should know better, but that doesn't quite stop them. Come to think of it, they too like to use overblown and soundbite laden (though rather less crude) language in multiple blogs and press quotes, as tweet bait likely, for all that they're professors of law and you would expect more precise language from them. Still much the same memes as this guy trots out .. Extortion, Internet tax etc etc when they talk about, say the recent netflix comcast paid peering deal. And it has more disturbing consequences too than you would care to think about. http://techliberation.com/2008/11/19/the-perils-of-thinking-of-broadband-as-a-public-utility/ --srs (iPad) On 05-Mar-2014, at 8:46, Udhay Shankar N ud...@pobox.com wrote: Via Dave Farber's IP list. Ignoring many of the talking points in the rant below, the claim I am most interested in is The internet is a utility, just like water and electricity. I am really interested in the thoughts of silklisters on this, especially folks like Sunil Abraham and Pranesh Prakash, who work in the policy area; Cory Doctorow, who ceaselessly educates anyone who will listen on these issues; and divers others. Udhay -- Forwarded message -- From: *Dewayne Hendricks* dewa...@warpspeed.com Date: Tuesday, March 4, 2014 Subject: [Dewayne-Net] The internet is fucked To: Multiple recipients of Dewayne-Net dewayne-...@warpspeed.com [Note: This item comes from friend Tim Pozar. DLH] From: Tim Pozar po...@lns.com Subject: The internet is fucked Date: March 4, 2014 at 8:13:00 PST To: Dewayne Hendricks dewa...@warpspeed.com POLICY LAW The internet is fucked By Nilay Patel Feb 25 2014 http://www.theverge.com/2014/2/25/5431382/the-internet-is-fucked Here's a simple truth: the internet has radically changed the world. Over the course of the past 20 years, the idea of networking all the world's computers has gone from a research science pipe dream to a necessary condition of economic and social development, from government and university labs to kitchen tables and city streets. We are all travelers now, desperate souls searching for a signal to connect us all. It is awesome. And we're fucking everything up. Massive companies like ATT and Comcast have spent the first two months of 2014 boldly announcing plans to close and control the internet through additional fees, pay-to-play schemes, and sheer brutal size -- all while the legal rules designed to protect against these kinds of abuses were struck down in court for basically making too much sense. Broadband providers represent a threat to internet openness, concluded Judge David Tatel in Verizon's case against the FCC's Open Internet order, adding that the FCC had provided ample evidence of internet companies abusing their market power and had made a rational connection between the facts found and the choices made. Verizon argued strenuously, but had offered the court no persuasive reason to question that judgement. Then Tatel cut the FCC off at the knees for making a rather half-hearted argument in support of its authority to properly police these threats and vacated the rules protecting the open internet, surprising observers on both sides of the industry and sending new FCC Chairman Tom Wheeler into a tailspin of empty promises seemingly designed to disappoint everyone. I expected the anti-blocking rule to be upheld, National Cable and Telecommunications Association president and CEO Michael Powell told me after the ruling was issued. Powell was chairman of the FCC under George W. Bush; he issued the first no-blocking rules. Judge Tatel basically said the Commission didn't argue it properly. In the meantime, the companies that control the internet have continued down a dark path, free of any oversight or meaningful competition to check their behavior. In January, ATT announced a new sponsored data plan that would dramatically alter the fierce one-click-away competition that's thus far characterized the internet. Earlier this month, Comcast announced plans to merge with Time Warner Cable, creating an internet service behemoth that will serve 40 percent of Americans in 19 of the 20 biggest markets with virtually no rivals. And after months of declining Netflix performance on Comcast's network, the two companies announced a new paid peering arrangement on Sunday, which will see Netflix pay Comcast for better access to its customers, a capitulation Netflix has been trying to avoid for years. Paid peering arrangements are common among the network companies that connect the backbones of
Re: [silk] Fwd: [IP] Re The internet is fucked
-BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE- Hash: SHA256 I pretty much totally agree. The triumverate of Internet rules we need are: * Net Neutrality (either by forcing line-sharing like in the UK, or through direct regulation of carriers on the basis that they receive a massive public subsidy in the form of rights-of-way) * Vuln neutrality: an end to rules like the DMCA (and its global cousins) that prohibit reporting bugs * Rule of law: an end to censorship without court orders (DMCA takedown notices) and without penalty for abuse. Filing a bad-faith takedown should be criminally punishable as perjury, should be grounds for dismissal from the bar (if applicable), and should also be grounds for a civil action with exemplary damages Additionally, national security agencies' primary role should be the strengthening of cyber-security: reporting and patching defects in common OSes and applications, improving cryptographic standards, etc. Cory On 05/03/14 03:16, Udhay Shankar N wrote: Via Dave Farber's IP list. Ignoring many of the talking points in the rant below, the claim I am most interested in is The internet is a utility, just like water and electricity. I am really interested in the thoughts of silklisters on this, especially folks like Sunil Abraham and Pranesh Prakash, who work in the policy area; Cory Doctorow, who ceaselessly educates anyone who will listen on these issues; and divers others. Udhay -- Forwarded message -- From: *Dewayne Hendricks* dewa...@warpspeed.com Date: Tuesday, March 4, 2014 Subject: [Dewayne-Net] The internet is fucked To: Multiple recipients of Dewayne-Net dewayne-...@warpspeed.com [Note: This item comes from friend Tim Pozar. DLH] From: Tim Pozar po...@lns.com Subject: The internet is fucked Date: March 4, 2014 at 8:13:00 PST To: Dewayne Hendricks dewa...@warpspeed.com POLICY LAW The internet is fucked By Nilay Patel Feb 25 2014 http://www.theverge.com/2014/2/25/5431382/the-internet-is-fucked Here's a simple truth: the internet has radically changed the world. Over the course of the past 20 years, the idea of networking all the world's computers has gone from a research science pipe dream to a necessary condition of economic and social development, from government and university labs to kitchen tables and city streets. We are all travelers now, desperate souls searching for a signal to connect us all. It is awesome. And we're fucking everything up. Massive companies like ATT and Comcast have spent the first two months of 2014 boldly announcing plans to close and control the internet through additional fees, pay-to-play schemes, and sheer brutal size -- all while the legal rules designed to protect against these kinds of abuses were struck down in court for basically making too much sense. Broadband providers represent a threat to internet openness, concluded Judge David Tatel in Verizon's case against the FCC's Open Internet order, adding that the FCC had provided ample evidence of internet companies abusing their market power and had made a rational connection between the facts found and the choices made. Verizon argued strenuously, but had offered the court no persuasive reason to question that judgement. Then Tatel cut the FCC off at the knees for making a rather half-hearted argument in support of its authority to properly police these threats and vacated the rules protecting the open internet, surprising observers on both sides of the industry and sending new FCC Chairman Tom Wheeler into a tailspin of empty promises seemingly designed to disappoint everyone. I expected the anti-blocking rule to be upheld, National Cable and Telecommunications Association president and CEO Michael Powell told me after the ruling was issued. Powell was chairman of the FCC under George W. Bush; he issued the first no-blocking rules. Judge Tatel basically said the Commission didn't argue it properly. In the meantime, the companies that control the internet have continued down a dark path, free of any oversight or meaningful competition to check their behavior. In January, ATT announced a new sponsored data plan that would dramatically alter the fierce one-click-away competition that's thus far characterized the internet. Earlier this month, Comcast announced plans to merge with Time Warner Cable, creating an internet service behemoth that will serve 40 percent of Americans in 19 of the 20 biggest markets with virtually no rivals. And after months of declining Netflix performance on Comcast's network, the two companies announced a new paid peering arrangement on Sunday, which will see Netflix pay Comcast for better access to its customers, a capitulation Netflix has been trying to avoid for years. Paid peering arrangements are common among the network companies that connect the backbones of the internet, but consumer companies like Netflix have traditionally remained out
Re: [silk] Fwd: [IP] Re The internet is fucked
Issues with reporting bugs is something that is a kind of side effect of the DMCA - but the vuln report community has already split into trusted / vetted groups where a lot more takes place than in public groups like full disclosure. For that part I have no dispute with you at all. Neither do I disagree with 'rule of law'. The network neutrality debate is one that has been vitiated with more ideology than anything else, a penchant for regulating - one that makes absolutely no distinction (among its leading commenters, as I have seen before) about filtering for legitimate security (spam and malware) versus discrimination based on content. And its leading proponents see no problem with calling paid peering - which IS content neutral, and which is based on traffic ratios rather than content - extortion. There are legitimate policy arguments to be made on that side of things. A penchant for actual public policy rather than playing politics might help them make their case a lot better. --srs (iPad) On 05-Mar-2014, at 11:49, Cory Doctorow docto...@craphound.com wrote: -BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE- Hash: SHA256 I pretty much totally agree. The triumverate of Internet rules we need are: * Net Neutrality (either by forcing line-sharing like in the UK, or through direct regulation of carriers on the basis that they receive a massive public subsidy in the form of rights-of-way) * Vuln neutrality: an end to rules like the DMCA (and its global cousins) that prohibit reporting bugs * Rule of law: an end to censorship without court orders (DMCA takedown notices) and without penalty for abuse. Filing a bad-faith takedown should be criminally punishable as perjury, should be grounds for dismissal from the bar (if applicable), and should also be grounds for a civil action with exemplary damages Additionally, national security agencies' primary role should be the strengthening of cyber-security: reporting and patching defects in common OSes and applications, improving cryptographic standards, etc. Cory On 05/03/14 03:16, Udhay Shankar N wrote: Via Dave Farber's IP list. Ignoring many of the talking points in the rant below, the claim I am most interested in is The internet is a utility, just like water and electricity. I am really interested in the thoughts of silklisters on this, especially folks like Sunil Abraham and Pranesh Prakash, who work in the policy area; Cory Doctorow, who ceaselessly educates anyone who will listen on these issues; and divers others. Udhay -- Forwarded message -- From: *Dewayne Hendricks* dewa...@warpspeed.com Date: Tuesday, March 4, 2014 Subject: [Dewayne-Net] The internet is fucked To: Multiple recipients of Dewayne-Net dewayne-...@warpspeed.com [Note: This item comes from friend Tim Pozar. DLH] From: Tim Pozar po...@lns.com Subject: The internet is fucked Date: March 4, 2014 at 8:13:00 PST To: Dewayne Hendricks dewa...@warpspeed.com POLICY LAW The internet is fucked By Nilay Patel Feb 25 2014 http://www.theverge.com/2014/2/25/5431382/the-internet-is-fucked Here's a simple truth: the internet has radically changed the world. Over the course of the past 20 years, the idea of networking all the world's computers has gone from a research science pipe dream to a necessary condition of economic and social development, from government and university labs to kitchen tables and city streets. We are all travelers now, desperate souls searching for a signal to connect us all. It is awesome. And we're fucking everything up. Massive companies like ATT and Comcast have spent the first two months of 2014 boldly announcing plans to close and control the internet through additional fees, pay-to-play schemes, and sheer brutal size -- all while the legal rules designed to protect against these kinds of abuses were struck down in court for basically making too much sense. Broadband providers represent a threat to internet openness, concluded Judge David Tatel in Verizon's case against the FCC's Open Internet order, adding that the FCC had provided ample evidence of internet companies abusing their market power and had made a rational connection between the facts found and the choices made. Verizon argued strenuously, but had offered the court no persuasive reason to question that judgement. Then Tatel cut the FCC off at the knees for making a rather half-hearted argument in support of its authority to properly police these threats and vacated the rules protecting the open internet, surprising observers on both sides of the industry and sending new FCC Chairman Tom Wheeler into a tailspin of empty promises seemingly designed to disappoint everyone. I expected the anti-blocking rule to be upheld, National Cable and Telecommunications Association president and CEO Michael Powell told me after the ruling was issued. Powell was chairman of the FCC under
