I see the idea of “absolute” net neutrality going away at some point. Eric Schmidt made an important point at Web 2.0 Summit: There are two concepts of net neutrality. One is you can’t discriminate against any particular company or any particular application. But on the other hand you can discriminate against classes of applications. You could prioritize video lower than voice, or a bulk download of data lower than something that requires real-time communication. Prioritization will be contentious, but capacity limitations will make it clear why it’s necessary.
Suppose there were groups of secularists at hospitals who went round the terminally ill and urged them to adopt atheism: ‘Don’t be a mug all your life. Make your last days the best ones.’ People might suppose this was in poor taste.
Opposition to Health Law Is Steeped in Tradition:
In truth, the law is quite moderate. It is more conservative than President Bill Clinton’s 1993 plan or President Richard Nixon’s 1974 plan (in which the federal government would have covered anyone who wasn’t insured through an employer). It’s much more conservative than expanding Medicare to cover everyone. It is clearly one of the least radical ways for the United States to end its status as the only rich country with millions and millions of uninsured.
But the law depends to a significant degree on the mandate. Without it, some healthy people will wait to buy coverage until they get sick — which, of course, is not an insurance system at all. It’s free-riding.
Without the mandate, the cost of insurance in the individual market would rise, perhaps sharply, because some healthy people would not be paying their share. Just look at Massachusetts. In 1996, it barred insurers from setting rates based on a person’s health but did not mandate that individuals sign up for insurance. Premiums then spiked. Since the state added a mandate in 2006, more people have signed up, and premiums have dropped an average of 40 percent.
From The New York Times:
But the law depends to a significant degree on the mandate. Without it, some healthy people will wait to buy coverage until they get sick — which, of course, is not an insurance system at all. It’s free-riding.
Without the mandate, the cost of insurance in the individual market would rise, perhaps sharply, because some healthy people would not be paying their share. Just look at Massachusetts. In 1996, it barred insurers from setting rates based on a person’s health but did not mandate that individuals sign up for insurance. Premiums then spiked. Since the state added a mandate in 2006, more people have signed up, and premiums have dropped an average of 40 percent.
Senate Fails to Force Action on ‘Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell’
Senate Republicans blocked the attempt to move ahead with the bill that would have repealed the ban on gay troops serving openly in the military. The vote was 57-40, almost entirely along party lines, and three short of the 60 needed.
Regardless of what you may think of repealing “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell,” it’s just crazy that a vote in favor of something can be 57-40 and not pass. The Senate is broken.
We did find (quite by accident) that Apple may have more reasons behind not installing Flash by default other than the stated reason of ensuring that users always have the most up-to-date version. Having Flash installed can cut battery runtime considerably—as much as 33 percent in our testing. With a handful of websites loaded in Safari, Flash-based ads kept the CPU running far more than seemed necessary, and the best time I recorded with Flash installed was just 4 hours. After deleting Flash, however, the MacBook Air ran for 6:02—with the exact same set of websites reloaded in Safari, and with static ads replacing the CPU-sucking Flash versions.
