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by chub_mackerel (#46159503) Attached to: US Democrats Introduce Bill To Restore Net Neutrality

...My fix would require local municipalities to operate the Fiber to the home, and bring it all into a COLO facility that provides Service Providers access to the FIOS lines...We don't need legislation to protect the current formula, we need legislation that gives new players opportunity to create new markets, that users are demanding.

I'm not sure if this was your point, but aren't you just describing legislation that requires, not to put too fine a point on it, "network neutrality"? Operated by municipalities instead of companies perhaps, but otherwise the (physical) FIOS lines are paid for by service providers, who (presumably) get access to that infrastructure on an equal (nonpreferential/neutral) basis? Meaning, the municipality can't cut special deals for particular content providers, slowing down others' content... right?

Comment: Re:VLC should takedown HBO (Score 1) 364

by chub_mackerel (#44303811) Attached to: HBO Asks Google To Take Down "Infringing" VLC Media Player
Actually, maybe VLC should sue HBO for trademark infringement.

After all, shouldn't it be the owner of the VLC software and trademark that does things like enforce IP rights? If someone else tries to enforce my rights without my permission, that seems awfully *confusing* to me... almost by definition, a trademark infringement.

I dunno, worth a shot.

Comment: Your Local Community College (Score 2) 263

by chub_mackerel (#41384125) Attached to: Ask Slashdot: Where Should a Geek's Charitable Donations Go?



Comment: Teaching about what you don't know (Score 2) 259

by chub_mackerel (#41136225) Attached to: The Sweet Mystery of Science

about what you don't know?

It's all "what we don't know" which is why it's so neat. I remember the following quote, I just don't remember the source:

"The difference between an old scientific theory and a new one is that the old theory is wrong in more subtle ways."

Science is the process by which we work together to collectively improve our explanations and predictions about the world over time. It's how we develop, test, and explain/record our best guesses. Our current best guesses are likely to be improved in the future (i.e. they are "wrong"), we just don't yet know how.

Teaching science in this spirit means teaching humility as part of the lesson. I suspect the author (and many others involved in learning science, and too many on the teaching side) miss this entirely. They experience "Science" as a body of techniques, terminology, and content-specific knowledge that they struggled to master, when science is more correctly described as the process that got us there.

Comment: Monopoly through monopsony? (Score 0) 350

by chub_mackerel (#36671778) Attached to: How Apple Came To Control the Component Market

If you have "innovative" agreements with your upstream suppliers that make it impossible for your competitors to bring products like yours to market, then aren't you still a "monopolist" as far as downstream consumers are concerned? Whether you are abusing your monopoly power may be another question, but it still sounds like monopoly to me.

Comment: "Do Not Track" (Score 1) 159

by chub_mackerel (#36375288) Attached to: Facebook Facial Recognition Raises New Privacy Concerns

Yes, this is the thing that bugs me as well, about the whole concept of social media offered by companies that think information about friends/associations should be a commodity... There's no way to opt out as others provide information about you even if you don't participate.

Maybe we can get "Do Not Track" barcodes tattooed on our foreheads.

I'm half serious about this (OK, maybe not the tattoo part) -- some creative RMS or legal type needs to come up with some shrink-wrap-like default privacy opt-out agreement that subverts all this crap, in the same way that open source licenses turns copyright around.

Example: a single bar code that anyone can place on their shirt, clothes, whatever. The assumption being that any system capable of facial recognition is also capable of reading a barcode... And that the meaning of the barcode - reflected in an online "trackwrap" license - is essentially "this person can not be tracked," or more exactly, "any person/organization voluntarily tracking this person in also agreeing to the terms of the agreement posted online at www.don'ttrackmeblablabla.org"

Anyone want to take a crack at this? I'm willing to pitch in.

Comment: Re:Spectral evidence is irrefutable! (Score 2, Informative) 663

by chub_mackerel (#33258942) Attached to: 'Wi-Fi Illness' Spreads To Ontario Public Schools

Yeah, I meant it as more of a witch than a troll, really. Perhaps "see if the school's routers will float in water" might have been a bit more obvious... I went for the more subtle approach, but apparently some moderators take everything at face value! ;)

Comment: seven? nine? three? (Score 5, Funny) 199

by chub_mackerel (#33093102) Attached to: The Canadian Who Holds the Key To the Internet

Ritchie was recently chosen to hold one of seven smartcards that can rebuild the root key that underpins this system' called DNSSEC (Domain Name System Security Extensions).

I thought the dwarves got seven cards. And, the humans got nine... and the elves three. Or, am I mixing something up?
