mintCast 224 – Net Neutrality with Steve Titch

12 Replies to “mintCast 224 – Net Neutrality with Steve Titch”

1. 

   Charlie Moss

   May 22, 2015 at 2:48 AM

   Reply

   The Ubuntu release schedule for Wily Werewolf –
   Alpha 1 – June 25
   Alpha 2 – July 30
   Beta 1 – August 27
   Final Beta Freeze – September 24
   Final Release – October 22
   Jo got away quite lightly in the feedback. Rants are fine, but blanket statements are foolish (especially in podcasting).
   When will Linux Mint do a Gnome version? I think Unity is excellent (Yes, Jo Grrrrrhhhhhh) though the dash is a little cluttered. My preferred distro is Ubuntu Gnome upgraded to Gnome 3.16. Gnome 3 has come a long way and is an excellent choice for someone looking for a modern desktop. It’s a desktop for people that focus on using the software rather than customizing the desktop itself.
   Thanks for another great podcast.

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     mikef90000

     May 26, 2015 at 7:22 PM

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     “It’s a desktop for people that focus on using the software rather than customizing the desktop itself.” Sorry, the tricks that Gnome3 and Unity use aren’t a replacement for easy panel customization. Using a search function to find and open a document is insane, which is why a Higher Power inspired the Xfce Directory Menu. Adding a launcher to a panel is too time consuming? Bah!

2. 

   icarter1391

   May 22, 2015 at 9:36 AM

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   Thank you for having Steve, the Comcast PR man, on the show. I agree that either way you go with Net Neutrality, it’s basically the lesser of two evils. In the areas around DC that I have lived, you don’t get a choice of service. You have one choice and that’s it. Now that choice is driven by area, but you don’t get the “well I’m going to go with this company or them”. You get “well it’s either them or no internet/cable service”. The big ISPs claim that the FCC will hamper innovation. Well, it’s the ISPs that are slowing down innovation. America has the worst internet service compared with other developed nations. I gladly welcome the government to try and do something to make things better cause the current business model isn’t working. Steve had some decent points, but for the most part “he is living in a parallel universe where ISP monopolies do not exist”.

3. 

   Mister Sterling

   May 22, 2015 at 1:23 PM

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   Well, I appreciate Mr. Titch’s opinion and his time appearing on this quality podcast. When he claimed not to have seen any “abuses” that would justify laws to establish Net Neutrality, that’s when I lost him. Capitalists are a known quantity. I know what I’m gonna get. But when a tech analyst says he hasn’t seen abuses, when he knows that the push for Net Neutrality intensified after Comcast’s “deal” with Netflix, my patience and tolerance collapse. The Cable providers cannot be trusted to fix this problem themselves. Their solution is to charge the universe more. They are worse than Washington. They don’t want to give anyone a break. Television channels, websites, and customers, are all sources of revenue.

4. 

   Rich Brown

   May 22, 2015 at 9:50 PM

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   ISPs are kind of unique in pricing their product in “up to” form. I don’t go to a gas station and pay $2.49-point-nine for up to a gallon of regular. I don’t go to the liquor store and buy a bottle of Whiskey that’s up to 80 proof. Let’s let Comcast throttle Netflix all it wants, but it must change the name of its 25MB/s service to 10KB/s or whatever it is willing to guarantee.

   In the wonderful world of company-with-the-biggest-club-takes-all capitalism, what will Comcast do when Google demands $1/(customer x month) or all YouTube streams will max out at 240 lines and 3 frames/second? What will they do when YouTube adds a super to all videos saying “Higher picture quality available through [name of local phone company]”? Yes, Netflix takes up a giant share of the network bandwidth. Yes, Google and all its googly spin offs take up another giant share. They’re adding value to what your ISP offers… shouldn’t they get paid to do that?

5. 

   Morten Juhl-Johansen Zölde-Fejér

   May 23, 2015 at 3:06 AM

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   Have to say I see a couple of Coursera certificates here:
   https://dk.linkedin.com/in/mjjzf

6. 

   M.Z.

   May 23, 2015 at 4:03 PM

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   Sorry but I can’t think of a more terrible or untrustworthy organization than the heartland institute. It is a well known corporate front group that has gone so far as to repeatedly question the link between smoking & cancer despite volumes of scientific evidence, to say nothing of their deep bias on climate change. If you’re going to talk to someone with such a deep bias about net neutrality the least you could do is talk to someone from the ACLU or Electronic Frontier Foundation as a counter balance. I really can’t think of a more deeply ideological front group for the nutty end of Libertarian ideals & would fully expect the average representative of the heartland institute to shout ‘evil socialist plot!’ at the top of their lungs as soon as any government regulation was proposed anywhere. From what I’ve heard of the organization & seen on a quick check of wikipedia I doubt any situation could possibly get someone from the heartland institute to admit that any regulation was a good idea. This is the sort of group that blames the 2008 financial crises on government regulation when in fact nearly all financial regulations had been continually loosened since the 1980s. I’m all for debate & discussion, but talking to someone from such a blindly ideological front group without some sort of informed counterbalance does a disservice to mintCast listeners.

7. 

   Christopher Patrick

   May 26, 2015 at 3:54 AM

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   was it just me or did anybody here a noise in the background during the main topic

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     icarter1391

     May 26, 2015 at 7:05 AM

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     I heard it as well.

8. 

   Kapten Kattskägg

   May 27, 2015 at 12:30 PM

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   Good show. I just want to say that I’m taking Steve’s side. Believing that giving even more control to the government (FCC) is very naive in my opinion. The government created this very problem by giving out local monopolies to ISPs, and now they want to solve it by even more power?

   This post about net neutrality is quite good: http://tucker.liberty.me/net-neutrality-triumph-of-the-ruling-class/

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     M.Z.

     May 29, 2015 at 2:49 AM

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     You really couldn’t be more wrong. From what little I’ve read about the cable situation governments allowed the cable monopolies to exist because the upfront cost of creating cable systems created a natural monopoly & no one in the US was willing to regulate. In other countries governments created measures that forced these monopolies to lease their infrastructure to competitors at cost & as a result most other countries have cable bills that are a fraction of what they are in the US with faster internet speeds to boot. The situation with cable is fairly similar to the one with net neutrality, but the difference is that someone is actually doing something to fix the situation with the internet. It amazes me how blind some people are to the possibility of market failures & how the so called ‘free market’ can so often be used as an excuse to allowed rigged & broken markets to persist. I like market based capitalism too, but I also recognize that markets can be as flawed as every other system invented by humans & we need to interfere on behalf of the public good at times. For the real deal on cable companies see here:

     http://www.newyorker.com/news/daily-comment/we-need-real-competition-not-a-cable-internet-monopoly

     http://www.informationweek.com/strategic-cio/executive-insights-and-innovation/cable-tv-the-monopoly-that-keeps-on-taking/d/d-id/1114115

9. 

   Will

   June 2, 2015 at 6:06 AM

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   Scott suggested that Wily Werewolf is the first Ubuntu release not named after a real animal. Scott, could you tell me where I can go to see “real” unicorns?