Yes, we won the Internet on February 26, 2015. But, first things first.
What is Net Neutrality? For douchebags,
“Net Neutrality” is Obamacare for the Internet; the Internet should not operate at the speed of government.— Senator Ted Cruz on Twitter
For educated folks, The Oatmeal has explained net neutrality beautifully with an example. Simply put, net neutrality is all about information on the Internet being treated equally. Which means, a movie on Netflix or a video on YouTube has the same priority as any other video from a small startup. The cable companies like Comcast or Time Warner cannot charge money from any company to speed up their videos streaming and slow down feed from companies that do not pay.
In the beginning … Everything was hunky-dory and information on the Internet was free. Free as in air, not free as in beer. And all information was considered equal. This was the default so we never paid – or had to pay – attention to concepts like “net neutrality”. Everyone received the same content on the Internet and all content from all companies was treated equally.
Then this happened … Netflix started slowing down for Verizon and Comcast customers. Netflix, being the most popular online TV and movies provider, consumed about 25% of the total bandwidth of the Internet connection in 2012, which rose to 35% in 2014 during peak TV viewing hours. So, some service providers started asking Netflix to pay more for more bandwidth usage. Netflix declined and these service providers started throttling Netflix.
Courtesy Netflix
Paid prioritization Because money is king; to hell with customers
In February 2014, Netflix agreed to pay Comcast, and later to Verizon, to stream its videos at higher bandwidth. Then the streaming speed went up again.
Courtesy Netflix
Verizon vs. FCC Federal Communications Commission is a US government agency that oversees and regulates all communications, including TV and radio airwaves and wire and cable transmissions. In 2005, the FCC had issued guidelines to promote net neutrality. These were not formal rules, so the ISPs were not legally bound to obey them. In 2011, Verizon sued FCC and asked the court to overturn the open Internet rules. The court ruled in favor of Verizon on the grounds that the Internet providers are not classified as common carriers and as such, FCC does not have authority to regulate them.
The Telecommunications Act of 1996 In 1934, congress enacted the Communications Act to regulate the wire and radio communications. The Act was amended in 1996 into the Telecommunications Act and the Internet was included under its purview. The Act made a distinction between “telecommunications service” and “information service” wherein the telecommunications service are more stringently regulated than information service, which included the Internet service providers. The Act was intended to foster competition among the providers but due to consolidation in the industry, only a handful of providers remained operational in each region. Verizon won the lawsuit on the grounds that it was an information service provider and hence, cannot be regulated by FCC, which was the right decision.
What is Title II of the Telecommunications Act? One of the seven titles of the Telecommunications Act, Title II outlines the provisions of “broadcast services”, which includes “Common Carriers”. Title II stipulates that common carriers can’t “make any unjust or unreasonable discrimination in charges, practices, classifications, regulations, facilities, or services.” In February, FCC voted in favor of reclassifying the ISPs as Common Carriers, which means the broadband Internet service will be treated as telecommunications service and not information service.
The fight ahead President Obama has openly and strongly supported net neutrality. The final rules have not been announced; however, there has already been an outcry from the industry, which was expected. However, many leaders of the Republican party have strongly spoken against the rule change. Lawsuits would undoubtedly follow once the rules are announced, and it might take years before things are stable again.
Until then, we, the people, have won the Internet. People: 1 – Douchebags: 0.
I don’t post political matters on my blog but I can’t resist the awesome zinger followed by a wink from the president at the State of the Union 2015 address. A man with nothing to lose and it shows.
Practice makes perfect. It’s a very famous quote that I’ve heard and read since I was a child.
But is it true? The answer is both yes and no.
Yes When we perform an activity – any activity – for the first time, we don’t do it correctly. Reading and writing for kids, calculus for high-school students, driving, piano, soccer, everything is learned. The more we do it repetitively, the better we get at doing it. Practicing piano for a few hours every day makes us better than practicing for a few hours every week. Though inherent talent, intrinsic motivation, feedback, and support or coaching does play a role.
So the answer is yes, practice does make us better- not perfect – but better, which is okay since perfection has a different meaning for everyone.
No Practice makes us better only to a certain extent. After that, practicing more doesn’t necessarily lead to an improvement in skills. Why? This is where “deliberate” comes into the picture. You need to figure out what parts of a skill you have mastered and what parts you still need to get a grip on, so you can make a “deliberate” decision to practice only those parts that you are not yet proficient in. While playing the piano, it might be certain types of notes. In tennis, it might be the backhand. In physics or math, it might be a certain topic or problem. Practicing everything, all the time, only wastes time. More time should be devoted to learning new skills.
Metacognition In cognitive psychology, researchers call it metacognition, the knowledge about one’s own knowledge. If you are aware of how much you know and how much you need to learn, you’ll be able to use different strategies to learn the content or skills.
Adaptive learning A common buzzword these days is adaptive learning, which has different meaning for different people, but it generally means the content or assessment adapting to the learner’s knowledge or skill level. If you answer a few questions correctly, you are presented with a higher-order content or questions. If you don’t do it well, you get lower-order content. This way, you spend your time learning new or higher-order things, and not spending a lot of time on content that you already know well. This is the premise of my adaptive learning model for K12.
In the Arena 