Verizon Public Policy on Netflix

Barry Shein bzs at world.std.com
Sun Jul 13 19:54:52 UTC 2014


Just an observation:

I've been on the internet since dirt was rocks.

It seems to me that one theme which has come up over and over and over
is that some new-ish technology demands more bandwidth than whatever
it was people were doing previously and as it popularizes people begin
fighting.

In the early 80s it was downloading the host table, "could people
please try NOT to all download via a script at exactly midnight!!!"

Then it was free software in the eighties, did WSMR et al really have
a RIGHT to become a magnet for such popular program downloads?!

And graphic connection to remote super-computer centers. Could the
images please be generated locally and downloaded "off hours"
(whatever "off hours" meant on the internet) or even shipped via tape
etc rather than all these real-time graphical displays running???!!!

Hey, the BACKBONE was 56kb.

Then Usenet, and images, particularly, oh, explicit images because OMG
imagine if our administration found out our link was slow because
students (pick a powerless political class to pick on and declare
THEIR use wasteful) were downloading...um...you know.

And games OMG games.

I remember sitting in an asst provost's office in the 80s being
lectured about how email was a complete and total waste of the
university's resources! Computers were for COMPUTING (he had a phd in
physics which is where that was coming from.)

And the public getting on the internet (ahem.)

On and on.

Now it's video streaming.

And then the bandwidth catches up and it's no big deal anymore.

And then everyone stops arguing about it and goes on to the next thing
to argue about. Probably will be something in the realm of this
"Internet of Things" idea, too many people conversing with their
toaster-ovens.

My comment has always been the same:

   There are two kinds of people in this world: Those who try to
   figure out how bake more bread, and those who herd people into
   bread lines.

I've always tried to be the sort of person who tries to figure out how
to bake more bread. This too shall pass.

-- 
        -Barry Shein

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