Despite the amount of criticism on here (and while I agree the article is a bit over the top), I do think I am strongly partial to this sentiment nevertheless.
I think part of the problem is that amongst coders (a much greater population than that of people doing real research in computer science) fluency in a number of arcane syntaxes is perceived as something 'cool', finally it's a standard that's been ingrained for years and years.
But the amount of say 'command-line-tool' or 'library' specific syntax, that must be re-learned for a new tool (which you might use once in a month, or a library you might use for one function, is very often a giant time sink). It's not cool. It's not intellectually interesting to memorize syntax.
The technology has been there for a while, it's just finally gotten the point where people's mistrust for the government is something tech companies can market to. -
The Neutral model isn't so much about the terms the ISP is offering you as to how they fulfill those terms.
Let's say a consumer pays for a 20MB/S connection with unlimited bandwidth, now the ISP is going to throttle all streaming content on there to say 2MB/S - except (for example for Netflix which has an agreement with the ISP) - so as a consumer you might want to use Amazon Prime or Hulu - but nope -- all of those services are throttled, only Netflix is going to get the full 20MB/S.
Now of course the big companies will pay not to be throttled, but where does this leave, small companies?
What if next time your ISP throttle wikileaks, or some indie internet comic, or any other websites which it finds politically disagreeable?
The point is that your ISP already sells you data allowance and bandwidth, that is they are looking to charge Netflix and other companies for something the consumer has already effectively paid for -
I think part of the problem is that amongst coders (a much greater population than that of people doing real research in computer science) fluency in a number of arcane syntaxes is perceived as something 'cool', finally it's a standard that's been ingrained for years and years.
But the amount of say 'command-line-tool' or 'library' specific syntax, that must be re-learned for a new tool (which you might use once in a month, or a library you might use for one function, is very often a giant time sink). It's not cool. It's not intellectually interesting to memorize syntax.