Posts by PeteCress

UK government's war on e-cigs is over

One has to wonder who is paying those guys off

OK, one side is smoking reduction (or, more accurately, replacement by another delivery vehicle) - but the obvious other side is innocent bystanders who have to breathe that shit.

I remember when smoking was allowed in my workplace and it was *nasty*.

Net neutrality: How to spot an arts graduate in a tech debate

To me, it is all about who pays and who knows who is paying.

If the end-user has to pay extra for, for instance, video downloads that's all well and good....'You pays your money and you takes your choice."

But if the end user, when browsing web sites gets terrible response for site A and great response for site B - and has no idea that site B is paying somebody off under the table for that preferential response time, that is a huge problem to me - and everybody else.

Free economies are founded in part on a knowledgeable consumers - and hiding things like who is paying for faster speeds defeats a free economy.

Imagine Mom-and-Pop's site offering productr"XYZ" for $25.00 while Big-Corp's site offers the same product for $30.00...... but Mom-and-Pop can't sell anything because the response time of their site has been throttled - while Big-Corp's site has not.

Consumer loses, economy loses, Big-Corp wins.... one more step on the path to oligarchy.