You write like lawyer, leaving me convinced that you stand nacently on both sides of every junction of opinions regarding this issue, except this one:
If the Internet existed to serve some obvious goal, it would be trivial to determine whether prioritizing packets would help or hinder its achievement, but as far as I can tell, It does not exist to accomplish any obvious goal. The net neutrality debate is essentially the Internet's own existential conflict.
Part of the supporting argument in favor of net neutrality says that prioritizing packets would not be wise because we cannot predict what the Internet will be used for in the future, and that those packet prioritization rules will inevitably end up in conflict with the goals of future internet users. (eg. The I. doesn't know what it want's to be when it grows up. boo hoo)
Ironically (is it?) the very act of prioritizing communications in any way, would set the I. on a one way path towards serving a particular purpose, settling the issue of whether it should have done so in the first place. (eg. The I. wants to be a good targeted advertising delivery system, nothing else.)
So what is at stake for the Internet is that same thing that is at stake when a conscious person has a mental breakdown over the purpose of their life.
I know that nuclear fuel must be a precious resource, and to see that we wasted so much of it during those years is unsettling. We could have set that fuel aside to power civilization for centuries. Might we be able to recover any valuable radioactive material from the test sites? Since most of the warheads were detonated at just a few sites, there might be high concentrations.
My policy for this is to simply lock the doors and hide for an hour if my network traffic averages over 2 Mbps for 5 minutes. I would also send myself an email. So far this has never happened.
Great article, but the "imaginary reader" at the end is very condescending and stubborn. A purely curious imaginary reader would have served the purpose better.
It has mutated quite a lot since I started... I'm taking the positions of everyone's mouse and feeding them to Fortune's sweep line algorithm to make Voronoi diagrams. I've made it look like you are a cell squeezing through layers of tissue.
http://uncc.ath.cx/applets/Voronoi_Standalone/
I know this is not self promotion, and it's not shameless, but even if it was, I would up-vote you if I liked the link and it looked like hard work. How did self promotion ever come to be something to be ashamed of anyways?
It a strange mix of disappointment and excitement to find out someone has just released a better finished version of what you were working on. Oh well, I guess I'll finish it anyways.
If the Internet existed to serve some obvious goal, it would be trivial to determine whether prioritizing packets would help or hinder its achievement, but as far as I can tell, It does not exist to accomplish any obvious goal. The net neutrality debate is essentially the Internet's own existential conflict.
Part of the supporting argument in favor of net neutrality says that prioritizing packets would not be wise because we cannot predict what the Internet will be used for in the future, and that those packet prioritization rules will inevitably end up in conflict with the goals of future internet users. (eg. The I. doesn't know what it want's to be when it grows up. boo hoo)
Ironically (is it?) the very act of prioritizing communications in any way, would set the I. on a one way path towards serving a particular purpose, settling the issue of whether it should have done so in the first place. (eg. The I. wants to be a good targeted advertising delivery system, nothing else.)
So what is at stake for the Internet is that same thing that is at stake when a conscious person has a mental breakdown over the purpose of their life.