GREATREDSPIRIT'S PROFILE

Go to your mailbox and scroll down. In Actions there's an "Update Unread Count" button that'll correct the unread messages issue.

The basic idea is packet shaping and throttling, ISPs and other Internet backbone providers can analyze packets in transit and decide how to handle it. A packet bound for facebook from a customer that's isn't paying for the Facebook Package or w/e will find that packet throttled and slowed down while another customer who is paying for it gets it at full speed. Or dropped entirely if the transport provider doesn't like it as kentona described Telus earlier. Anything that won't be put into the fast lane would be thrown into the slow lane at best. RMN and a million other sites fall into this category. This includes programs too, you can analyze packets and if they're stuff like bittorrent packets ISPs can drop those altogether as well, or online games if the game provider doesn't pay up.


Now this can extend to new services too. There's been times where telecoms who are both ISPs and selling streaming TV/movies try to sweeten the deal of using their services over competitors like Netflix, usually by offering that using the ISP's stream service doesn't count against a customer's bandwidth limit while Netflix would. This was rejected in Canada but without net neutrality would be fine to do, or even just disallow communication with the new service entirely. Netflix has enough money and influence to avoid the heel of Telecoms but what about the next Netflix? It's a goal to strangle these things before they can grow.


This extends to something offered as a service too. An ISP might not have a bone between a customer and a service provider but a non-ISP might and now the ISP has something to gain by offering a competitor of the service to pay to throttle customer speed's to the service.


This is just shooting from the hip, I'm sure Ajit and his bosses got much better ideas and if/how to implement them.


e:

author=Blind
Can this decision be legally challenged or delayed via the court system?

That's the current plan. As I posted earlier New York plans to sue the FCC (and I'm sure many others are too) and if they can successfully get an injunction from the courts on the ruling to put the FCC ruling that ends net neutrality on hold until the court case concludes. And the endless appeals process that might end up in SCOTUS with another Trump appointee sitting on it, and really with its makeup I don't see a SCOTUS ruling ending well for NN advocates. It'd have to stay mired in until 2021, even with a wave there's no change of getting enough non-Republicans in the senate to override a Trump veto of any legislation (getting 51 Dems is already going to be tough in 2018 and you need 67 to override a presidential veto. That's a lot of Republican wolf criers to turn at best) so you'd have to hold out for a new president to change the makeup of the FCC board.

Current congress will do nothing about this, and certainly not the FCC. During the last feedback period millions of comments were posted in opposition to net neutrality, except that saying those comments had a dubious origin is pretty generous. Here's a Slate article I dug up:

Excerpt
The Pew Research Center released a study Wednesday that raised questions about the legitimacy of many of the 21.7 million comments from the public on the FCC’s website regarding net neutrality.

The FCC had a public commenting period from April 27–August 30 on regulatory revisions that would effectively end net neutrality, the principle behind Obama-era provisions that prevent internet service providers from controlling the speeds at which websites load for users.

Jessica Rosenworcel, an FCC commissioner, told Slate earlier this month about her concerns that a majority of the public comments were fake—and that most of these fake comments expressed opposition to net neutrality. She told Slate’s technology writer April Glaser, “I think it’s important for the agency to get out from behind its computers and actually meet with the public on these matters face to face.”

Pew says its study found that 94 percent of the submissions were posted multiple times, 57 percent came from temporary or duplicate email addresses, and only six percent were original. There were nine instances in which over 75,000 comments were posted at the exact same second, and often the content was very similar if not identical. The seven most repeated comments made up 38 percent of all the posts, and a mere three percent were shown to have gone through the FCC’s email-verification procedure.

(emphasis mine)

So I'd bet the FCC spiked their own feedback system and used the failure to excuse any need for further feedback while Ajit and whoever's giving him his golden parachute when his tenure's up jerking it off to ending net neutrality.


Arstechnica has an article why Ajit is saying public opinion doesn't matter that also suggests something similar:

Excerpt
A senior FCC official spoke with reporters about Pai's anti-net neutrality plan in a phone briefing yesterday and explained why the FCC is not swayed by public opinion on net neutrality.

The vast majority of comments consisted of form letters from both pro- and anti-net neutrality groups and generally did not introduce new facts into the record or make serious legal arguments, the official from Pai's office said. In general, the comments stated opinions or made assertions and did not have much bearing on Pai's decision, the official said. The official spoke with reporters on the condition that he not be named and that his comments can be paraphrased but not quoted directly.

The official noted that many of the comments are fraudulent. He said that there were 7.5 million identical comments that came from 45,000 unique names and addresses, apparently due to a scammer who repeatedly submitted the same comment under a series of different names.

The message from this FCC official seemed to be that a huge percentage of the comments can be safely ignored. But the docket is filled with these comments because the FCC took no significant steps to prevent fraud and did not delete even the most obviously fraudulent comments from the record.

Allowing the docket to be filled with junk made it easier for Pai's office to argue that the comments should not be seen as a legitimate expression of public opinion.

Pai's office has also refused to provide evidence for an investigation into fraudulent comments, New York State Attorney General Eric Schneiderman said yesterday. Schneiderman said that there was "a massive scheme that fraudulently used real Americans' identities" in order to "drown out the views of real people and businesses."

The best case scenario is for the repeal to get mired in lawsuits that gets the repeal put on hold for as long as possible. Add net neutrality to the Dems platform for 2018 and 2020 and protect it with legislation instead of executive categorization that can be undone just as easily as we've had with the current congress.


e: also fuck all nazis

sorry I'm still trying to come up with a cool one

Paper or realized gains? Some people can make paper gains but then LATEST_BITCOIN_SERVICE_HERE gets hacked (or "hacked") every month and people lose their buttcoins and have nothing to show for it except their electricity bills and maybe some dehydrated strawberries. I'm not sure what's the baseline for converting paper to realized gains are since there's ~$20 transaction fees because lol bitcoin can only process about 7 transactions per second... theoretically. Practically isn't it something like 3?


Also there is no long term with bitcoin. It's entirely a speculative bubble at best with a healthy mix of money laundering mixed in. Something that gains 50% one day and loses 30% another is not something you invest in long term, you try and make money short term and get out before you're left holding the bag when the speculative bubble bursts. Only put in what you're comfortable losing and convert gains into real money regularly.


Nicehash got hacked something like two or three days ago and all the wallets associated with it were lost for example. Or one of the knockoffs, Ethereum I think?, had huge piles of wallets and coins in them rendered completely inert because of an idiotic implementation of their wallet system when something deleted(?, idr) their wallet.

Cryptocurrencies are a waste in every sense of the word. If you can make money (real money / realized gains) then nice but don't get suckered into them.