In case you missed it, Trump's appointment to head the FCC, Ajit Pai, was confirmed yesterday. He's a notorious opponent to net neutrality, a policy enshrined by the Obama administration which he's promised to quickly overturn:
Shortly after Trump’s election, Pai indicated that a top priority under the new administration would be dismantling net neutrality... Pai has long been critical of net neutrality, saying that the problem it’s trying to solve — big internet providers acting as gatekeepers to what we see and do online — doesn’t exist. He recently reiterated a prediction that the commission’s Open Internet Order, which established net neutrality, would be reversed or overturned in one way or another. He’ll now have the chance to play a role in that.
This is a direct threat to online gaming as an industry and a community, since the medium depends on heavy broadband use. If Pai gets his way, gamers should expect their Internet bills to go up precipitously. (Or have their access blocked altogether, or even experience artificial lag.) This is particularly true of an online world like Second Life, which utterly depends on heavy and constant streaming of 3D content.
(Kotaku has a good briefer on all the problems ending net neutrality could bring.) Add to this Trump's promise to crack down on Internet porn, and we should expect some fairly hard hammers to drop on the metaverse very soon.
OK, pardon me for generalizing... There are many enlightened good Brahmin folks. BUT.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pai_(surname)
This is another case of the Desis who are the "entering the restaurant without the shirt" type bigots similar to Vic Gundotra at Google Plus during the #nymwars.
Brahmin tend to be far worse than Kshatriya, who were never *entitled* to support from the people (although there was corruption and so on, there always is in war and politics).
But the Brahmin were chosen by the gods, right? And were supported by money extracted from rich and poor, not for defense, but for just BEING, and for judging them pure or impure, and so on. So the tendency to arrogance is sometimes...ungodly.
I think people just do not realize how much high caste Desis can be like white supremacists. It's the same damn problem, just people in the US (particularly who are not POC) who are not familiar with South Asian social dynamics tend to miss this because, you know, these people are brown.
This was a huge deal when Gandhi abolished the caste system (legally). The scheduled tribes (formerly dalit, harijan, known in the west as "untouchables") still suffer hugely in the modern social system, and KKK like village councils impose sometimes fatal local consequences on mixed romances and such.
The purity cult around caste is still there, and it just took a few decades for India to effectively abolish their equivalent of slavery than it did in the US, but they had it longer. (To be fair, Europe enslaved the Roma as chattel longer than we did blacks and still hasn't really owned that, but the scheduled tribes were effectively communal chattel for millenia.) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dalit
So yes, it's a natural affinity between the worst of these asshat Desis and the white supremacist strain in the US. It lets them look "diverse."
/facepalm
Shava (Suntzu) Nerad
proud Central/South Asian mutt (and 1/4 Polish Jew, hey...)
Posted by: Shava (Suntzu) Nerad | Thursday, January 26, 2017 at 05:56 AM
Who said the Internet needs to be free? these companies have the right to make money.
If people have to pay, it will cut down on the ignorant and stupid being able to accesses the internet' win/win for everyone!
We need to segregate the internet ASAP!
Posted by: JohnC | Thursday, January 26, 2017 at 12:09 PM
OMG, you have things so turned around.
Obama did not get a Net Neutrality law. He signed an executive order placing the Internet within the frame of 1940 Transportation rules. They don’t fit our modern-day needs. They choke the industry placing it under bureaucratic control.
The story on the Obama side is this poorly defined concept of Net Neutrality would assure all got the same network speed and access at the same cost. That is a regressive idea. In a progressive free market those that use more pay more, thus allowing the low-income users to pay less or at least control their cost. Those that want more speed and data can pay for it. In general, the competition in the free market drives prices down while increasing performance. Obama’s idea of Net Neutrality does the opposite.
The worst part of Obama’s FCC was their repeated efforts to limit and define acceptable speech on the Internet. Obama’s FCC simply forgot the 1st Amendment right to free speech and the basic ideas of human freedom. They were catering to lobbyist and corporations far more than protecting the individual.
https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2015/12/eff-asks-washington-state-court-protect-internet-free-speech
https://www.eff.org/press/mentions/2011/5/11
Obama consistently removed individual freedoms. Trump is turning that process around and removing restrictions. Companies will now not have to ask Congress’ permission to do a large number of things. They will once again be able to innovate and experiment. We can once again vote with our dollars and get the services we want. We will see the economy start to boom and personal freedom grow.
Posted by: Nalates Urriah | Thursday, January 26, 2017 at 04:06 PM
Those are old links and one of them has nothing to do with net neutrality. This from last year. Werbach, by the way, is a Second Life user and virtual world fan from back in the day:
http://www.politico.com/story/2016/06/obama-net-neutrality-internet-224348
With a federal court upholding his administration’s sweeping net neutrality rules on Tuesday, President Barack Obama is poised to fulfill a promise he made when he first ran for the White House — to use the power of the office to keep the internet a “level playing field” for everyone. The decision, if it holds up to an expected appeal by the telecom industry, means Obama has put his stamp on the internet in a way few political figures have. On his watch, the FCC has declared it will ensure equal footing for everyone from high-school coders to the giants of Silicon Valley. The aim: to guarantee every internet user has the chance to speak freely online and shake up the digital economy just as Netflix and Amazon once did...
While the FCC wrote the regulations, “had President Obama not been elected or not been reelected, we almost certainly would not have net neutrality rules today," said Kevin Werbach, a former FCC official who served as a telecom adviser during Obama's transition to the White House in 2008.
"The fact that he publicly took a strong stand" in favor of treating high-speed internet as an essential part of the nation's shared infrastructure for years to come "means this will be seen, really, as part of his legacy," Werbach said.
Posted by: Wagner J Au | Thursday, January 26, 2017 at 06:29 PM
In fact, Obama's position on net neutrality was advocated by TWO Second Life users who guided his telecom policy early on:
http://nwn.blogs.com/nwn/2008/11/barack-obama-ap.html
Posted by: Wagner J Au | Thursday, January 26, 2017 at 06:33 PM
You people have no effing idea what this means - its not about free market at this point - and no one has had free internet yet - its about 3 companies - who control your total freaking online content and whether or not you have access to it - and its about bannon and trump and those ashats from having direct control about whether large communities can even communicate - look at the big picture you wanks - oh and if you think they will lower the cost you are all mentally doomed to be stupid the rest of your life
Posted by: Whereare the Brains | Friday, January 27, 2017 at 06:02 AM