# Stupid Republican idea of the day **URL:** \ **Category:** The BBQ Pit\ **Created:** [March 26, 2009, 6:48pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/stupid-republican-idea-of-the-day/490897 "2009-03-26T18:48:35Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 1789
**Author:** ![running\_coach](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/running_coach/32/15836_2.png) [@running\_coach](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/running_coach)\ **Post date:** [November 21, 2017, 4:34am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/stupid-republican-idea-of-the-day/490897/35762 "2017-11-21T04:34:16Z")
> [@eschereal](#): > > I suggest you take a good look at what Alabama womyn look like before you do anything to hasty. On the other hand, no teeth. ---
**Author:** ![Chisquirrel](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/6bbea6/32.png) [@Chisquirrel](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Chisquirrel)\ **Post date:** [November 21, 2017, 5:49am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/stupid-republican-idea-of-the-day/490897/35763 "2017-11-21T05:49:50Z")
> [@eschereal](#): > > I suggest you take a good look at what Alabama womyn look like before you do anything to hasty. I don’t want to do anything to Hasty, I want to do it to Mary Jean. ---
**Author:** ![Typo\_Negative](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/typo_negative/32/484_2.png) [@Typo\_Negative](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Typo_Negative)\ **Post date:** [November 21, 2017, 6:06am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/stupid-republican-idea-of-the-day/490897/35764 "2017-11-21T06:06:56Z")
Fuck. [Report: FCC chair to push for complete repeal of net neutrality](https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/technology/report-fcc-chair-to-push-for-complete-repeal-of-net-neutrality/ar-BBFpatg) > [@](#): > > The agency received millions of comments during the period thanks in large part to the efforts of comedian John Oliver, who urged viewers of his HBO show “Last Week Tonight” to show their support for keeping the net neutrality rules. Yes, and they made it so insanely complicated. They really, really, really did not give a fuck about hearing from us. > [@](#): > > “We applaud FCC Chairman Pai’s initiative to remove this stifling regulatory cloud over the internet,” AT&T said in a blog post. “Businesses large and small will have a clearer path to invest more in our nation’s broadband infrastructure under Chairman Pai’s leadership.” > > Republicans in Congress also praised the proposal and the White House said in July that it supported the FCC’s plan to end the Obama-era rules. We are going to pay dearly for this. And on a side note, if there is one asshole in the world I wanna punch, it’s Pai. ---
**Author:** ![eschereal](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/eschereal/32/18939_2.png) [@eschereal](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/eschereal)\ **Post date:** [November 21, 2017, 6:59am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/stupid-republican-idea-of-the-day/490897/35765 "2017-11-21T06:59:36Z")
Great. I look forward to paying for 256Mbit DSL so that each page of the SDMB takes only two minutes to load. On a good day. ---
**Author:** ![foolsguinea](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/foolsguinea/32/14751_2.png) [@foolsguinea](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/foolsguinea)\ **Post date:** [November 21, 2017, 7:24am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/stupid-republican-idea-of-the-day/490897/35766 "2017-11-21T07:24:16Z")
If AT&T’s top loons are praising a decision, that implies that it’s _monstrously_ bad. ---
**Author:** ![Leaper](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/4bbf92/32.png) [@Leaper](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Leaper)\ **Post date:** [November 21, 2017, 7:30am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/stupid-republican-idea-of-the-day/490897/35767 "2017-11-21T07:30:12Z")
How exactly would such an act affect big non-ISP businesses? They can’t ALL get sweetheart deals or make their own ISP. ---
**Author:** ![eschereal](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/eschereal/32/18939_2.png) [@eschereal](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/eschereal)\ **Post date:** [November 21, 2017, 7:47am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/stupid-republican-idea-of-the-day/490897/35768 "2017-11-21T07:47:05Z")
> [@Leaper](#): > > How exactly would such an act affect big non-ISP businesses? They can’t ALL get sweetheart deals or make their own ISP. Your ISP will decide what gets to you quickly and what gets lower priority. An ISP that has a cable/satellite arm will want to throttle hulu and netflix to “encourage” their subscribers to use their service. But, as the situation progresses, you might want to browse frys and best buy for a new TV, but if one is paying your ISP for priority, you will lose patience with the other because it loads too slowly. Hence, non-ISP businesses will end up being shaken down by the ISPs in order to stay competitively accessible. Of course, when it gets to NBC vs. Fox, neither one better publish anything negative about your ISP or they might get blocked altogether. Or BigVend might pay your ISP to throttle [bigvendsucks.org](http://bigvendsucks.org). The possibilities are disturbing. And probable. ---
**Author:** ![elucidator](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/8edcca/32.png) [@elucidator](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/elucidator)\ **Post date:** [November 21, 2017, 8:48am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/stupid-republican-idea-of-the-day/490897/35769 "2017-11-21T08:48:15Z")
You misspelled “dead fucking certain”. ---
**Author:** ![Slash1972](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/slash1972/32/6461_2.png) [@Slash1972](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Slash1972)\ **Post date:** [November 21, 2017, 1:51pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/stupid-republican-idea-of-the-day/490897/35770 "2017-11-21T13:51:10Z")
> [@eschereal](#): > > Your ISP will decide what gets to you quickly and what gets lower priority. An ISP that has a cable/satellite arm will want to throttle hulu and netflix to “encourage” their subscribers to use their service. But, as the situation progresses, you might want to browse frys and best buy for a new TV, but if one is paying your ISP for priority, you will lose patience with the other because it loads too slowly. Hence, non-ISP businesses will end up being shaken down by the ISPs in order to stay competitively accessible. > > Of course, when it gets to NBC vs. Fox, neither one better publish anything negative about your ISP or they might get blocked altogether. Or BigVend might pay your ISP to throttle [bigvendsucks.org](http://bigvendsucks.org). The possibilities are disturbing. And probable. Yeah, but there is a poster on here who mistakenly believes this will improve his video conferencing latency. So there’s that. ---
**Author:** ![digs](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/digs/32/14889_2.png) [@digs](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/digs)\ **Post date:** [November 21, 2017, 2:11pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/stupid-republican-idea-of-the-day/490897/35771 "2017-11-21T14:11:05Z")
> [@Slash1972](#): > > Yeah, but there is a poster on here who mistakenly believes this will improve his video conferencing latency. So there’s that. I’ve noticed that there’s no _minimum cerebral capacity_ rule for messageboard membership… ---
**Author:** ![Gyrate](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/gyrate/32/3588_2.png) [@Gyrate](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Gyrate)\ **Post date:** [November 21, 2017, 2:52pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/stupid-republican-idea-of-the-day/490897/35772 "2017-11-21T14:52:41Z")
> [@Typo\_Negative](#): > > And on a side note, if there is one asshole in the world I wanna punch, it’s Pai. When come back, punch Pai. ---
**Author:** ![Leaper](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/4bbf92/32.png) [@Leaper](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Leaper)\ **Post date:** [November 21, 2017, 5:36pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/stupid-republican-idea-of-the-day/490897/35773 "2017-11-21T17:36:02Z")
> [@eschereal](#): > > Your ISP will decide what gets to you quickly and what gets lower priority. An ISP that has a cable/satellite arm will want to throttle hulu and netflix to “encourage” their subscribers to use their service. But, as the situation progresses, you might want to browse frys and best buy for a new TV, but if one is paying your ISP for priority, you will lose patience with the other because it loads too slowly. Hence, non-ISP businesses will end up being shaken down by the ISPs in order to stay competitively accessible. > > Of course, when it gets to NBC vs. Fox, neither one better publish anything negative about your ISP or they might get blocked altogether. Or BigVend might pay your ISP to throttle [bigvendsucks.org](http://bigvendsucks.org). The possibilities are disturbing. And probable. Not quite what I asking; that stuff I’m already aware of. What I was wondering was, do major companies all have their own ISP? It made sense, at least for tech companies, but I really didn’t know whether, say, the New York Times and McDonalds had their own. It also made me wonder if the ISPs could and would use their powers over transmission regardless to extort money from industries for their use of the internet in business. “Sorry, use of VPN to connect to home will result in a bill.” Additional questions: what “progress” were ISPs making towards internet dystopia before these rules came about? And if ISPs throttle based on content, will they be considered content providers, or de facto responsible for the content they let through unthrottled? ---
**Author:** ![Sherrerd](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/sherrerd/32/8_2.png) [@Sherrerd](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sherrerd)\ **Post date:** [November 21, 2017, 9:34pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/stupid-republican-idea-of-the-day/490897/35774 "2017-11-21T21:34:45Z")
> [@Leaper](#): > > … And if ISPs throttle based on content, will they be considered content providers, or de facto responsible for the content they let through unthrottled? Who’s going to be able to prove the throttling or lack thereof? Sure, it would be nice to think they’d refrain from throttling for fear of being subject to lawsuits (based on being held responsible for unthrottled content). But practically speaking, I can’t see how that would work. > [@eschereal](#): > > Great. I look forward to paying for 256Mbit DSL so that each page of the SDMB takes only two minutes to load. On a good day. At least we’ll all be able to head over to /r/The\_Donald for super-fast-loading pages. We’ll be able to express all the opinions we express here, as long as they are sufficiently worshipful of the Dear Leader. Won’t that be fun! ---
**Author:** ![eschereal](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/eschereal/32/18939_2.png) [@eschereal](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/eschereal)\ **Post date:** [November 21, 2017, 9:59pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/stupid-republican-idea-of-the-day/490897/35775 "2017-11-21T21:59:41Z")
> [@Leaper](#): > > What I was wondering was, do major companies all have their own ISP? It made sense, at least for tech companies, but I really didn’t know whether, say, the New York Times and McDonalds had their own. The ISP that matters is yours, because that is the one that determines what you can reach. And not all ISPs are quite what they seem. My best friend was suddenly not able to send me e-mail because her ISP was using a large service that my ISP had blacklisted because it was a major spam relay. The obfuscated structure of the internet is apparently quite a bit more complicated than most of us even begin to realize. ---
**Author:** ![AI\_Proofreader](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/8dc957/32.png) [@AI\_Proofreader](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/AI_Proofreader)\ **Post date:** [November 22, 2017, 3:13am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/stupid-republican-idea-of-the-day/490897/35776 "2017-11-22T03:13:06Z")
> [@](#): > > Who’s going to be able to prove the throttling or lack thereof? > > Sure, it would be nice to think they’d refrain from throttling for fear of being subject to lawsuits (based on being held responsible for unthrottled content). But practically speaking, I can’t see how that would work. It’s worth noting that most of the major ISPs have already been accused by large numbers of people of throttling certain content, in particular torrent traffic and Netflix. They usually just take the official position that they aren’t doing it, and only knock it off when they get large amounts of bad publicity. Once net neutrality is axed it’s guaranteed they’ll all do it, admit they do it if pressed, and shrug their shoulders and say “Everyone else is doing it, and it’s legal. If you don’t like it, you don’t have to subscribe to our service. Monopoly you say? Not at all… you could always switch to dialup.” ---
**Author:** ![Punoqllads](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/d2c977/32.png) [@Punoqllads](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Punoqllads)\ **Post date:** [November 22, 2017, 4:40am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/stupid-republican-idea-of-the-day/490897/35777 "2017-11-22T04:40:38Z")
> [@eschereal](#): > > The obfuscated structure of the internet is apparently quite a bit more complicated than most of us even begin to realize. Who knew that an internetwork of billions of computers could be so complicated? ---
**Author:** ![Punoqllads](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/d2c977/32.png) [@Punoqllads](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Punoqllads)\ **Post date:** [November 22, 2017, 4:58am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/stupid-republican-idea-of-the-day/490897/35778 "2017-11-22T04:58:45Z")
> [@Sherrerd](#): > > Who’s going to be able to prove the throttling or lack thereof? Anyone with the right tools. I assume you’ve never used traceroute (Linux/Mac/other Unix) or tracert (Windows)? There are other tools that let you see other connectivity details. Used from hosts distributed across the net you can get a pretty full connectivity picture. ---
**Author:** ![eschereal](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/eschereal/32/18939_2.png) [@eschereal](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/eschereal)\ **Post date:** [November 22, 2017, 5:43pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/stupid-republican-idea-of-the-day/490897/35779 "2017-11-22T17:43:28Z")
Perhaps this belongs elsewhere, but, Nebraska. They were working on routing Keystone XL, and this was observed > [@"\[Siting Application pdf (pg 3)](#): > > ([http://www.psc.nebraska.gov/natgas/pdf/FAQ%20-%20Major%20Oil%20Pipeline%20Siting%20Act%2003%202014.pdf](http://www.psc.nebraska.gov/natgas/pdf/FAQ%20-%20Major%20Oil%20Pipeline%20Siting%20Act%2003%202014.pdf))"]… Commission shall **not** evaluate safety considerations, including the risk or impact of spills or leaks from the major oil pipeline … which is kind of troubling in light of the recent large spill in SD. (emphasis in the original document, not added) ---
**Author:** ![Really\_Not\_All\_That\_Bright](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/e8c25b/32.png) [@Really\_Not\_All\_That\_Bright](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Really_Not_All_That_Bright)\ **Post date:** [November 22, 2017, 6:14pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/stupid-republican-idea-of-the-day/490897/35780 "2017-11-22T18:14:24Z")
> [@Punoqllads](#): > > Who knew that an internetwork of billions of computers could be so complicated? It’s just a series of tubes! ---
**Author:** ![elucidator](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/8edcca/32.png) [@elucidator](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/elucidator)\ **Post date:** [November 22, 2017, 6:40pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/stupid-republican-idea-of-the-day/490897/35781 "2017-11-22T18:40:44Z")
Tubes or not tubes, that is the question… [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/stupid-republican-idea-of-the-day/490897.md?page=1788) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/stupid-republican-idea-of-the-day/490897.md?page=1790)