goodbye internet?

[cowsmanaut]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t89WwcsOj9U

trying to find more about this, to confirm it's real. However, it seems very probable. Since in reality, this is the way the rest of our entertainment is going. Look at games that you buy and then have to keep paying or to keep playing.... look at the fact that you no longer own the game systems.. when I update my PS3, it tells me that the use of the system is subject to their user agreement.. meaning they get to tell me how I can and can not use it. More and more the basic things we took for granted are being stripped from us. Perhaps freedoms is to extreme a word, and perhaps it's not. I think somewhere along the line I lost perspective to tell for certain..

but imagine if this becomes real. That your internet is subject to a site limiting rule. Sorry you have visited 3 internet sites today.. please pay 29.95 more to access more sites.. or upgrade now for only 99.95 per year to visit 5 sites per day.. what an amazing savings!!

The companies see it as a potential comercial market, and guess who has the keys? The internet service providers.. where else will you get it from? and if they band together for their all mighty dollar.. what can we do?

I think I'd probably give up and reject the internet on a whole.. it'd be tough.. but seriously.. I'd rather read a book. Say goodbye to cheap internet phone calls unless that's one of your daily use choices.. rediculous.. absoute stupidity.. I seriouly hope this is a scam.. or that it simply will not go through.

I hate companies.. and I hate money..

[Gambit37]

what can we do?

I seriouly hope this is a scam.. or that it simply will not go through.

There was once a time when people stood up for what they believed in, and if the status quo needed to be overturned, the people would come together and do just that.

You speak as if you've forgotten this. Indeed, it seems our generation would rather just ignore what's going on around us than take any kind of direct action. We've forgotten that we have the power to change things and that governements DO NOT have ultimate power. The power is always ultimately with the people, regardless of what you've been made to think.

If this proposal ever did happen (and I highly doubt it could -- there are too many long term negative aspects) then it's down to us to get off our lazy asses and do something about it, instead of just wringing our hands in useless desparation and saying "oh well, it was fun while it lasted".

[Sophia]

Where exactly do you perceive any credibility from a video featuring a bunch of people making outlandish claims, citing no sources (other than "a guy who works for Time magazine") and feeling the need to use fake sex videos to lure people into watching?

[Black Eagle]

i highly doubt that this will happen - imagine the uproar as hundreds of millions of people (if not billions of people) are treated in such a way! it would lead to the collapse of e-commerce, and most businesses worldwide.

but i do agree on one of the comments left on the site - nice titties

[Gambit37]

Where exactly do you perceive any credibility from a video featuring a bunch of people making outlandish claims, citing no sources (other than "a guy who works for Time magazine") and feeling the need to use fake sex videos to lure people into watching?

Indeed, that was my first reaction too, though I deleted my reactionary comment here as it wasn't very useful...

For a better understanding of what this is all about, go here:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Network_neutrality

-- bear in mind this is Wikipedia --

[linflas]

i believe them : she's hot.

[Gambit37]

I watched one of their other clips; these guys are so freaking dumb it's hilarious. Oh, my sides! *falls over*

[cowsmanaut]

I thought perhaps there was a chance it was not real, as there were not concrete sources. Though, I mentioned that there is a plausablity to their claim.

One person says it at the end. They take one small thing and another and another until one day you wake up and don't remember how things got the way they are. It's like the grasshopper on the hotplate. They placed a grasshopper on a hotplate and turned up the temp and watched it leap off. They do it again but raise it in low increments over a long time, and the grasshopper cooks.

The point of me bothering to post it, was #1 to see if anyone here had found any facts to prove it's not real, or facts to prove it is real. Because until either can be done, it's still plausable. and #2, that if there is any possibility that it may happen, it's better to be aware and on the lookout rather than complacent in our assurance that it will be always as it is.

The reason why video games now support a pay as you go instead of a single purchase.. is because people bought it.. and as they increase to become more the norm, the less games you will have out there which are "yours" to play when you want instead of play when you pay. Some of these people pay $300 per year to play a game many of us would have played for 5 years for 1/10th that cost a few years back.

This is why I say it's plausable.. and why I suggest that they could very well pull it off. If they do it in small steps. Test the waters in small ways.

as for her breasts, it get's people to click on a link which otherwise would be ignored. They wanted to be heard. Stands to reason.. sure it's underhanded.. but if their message was 100% factual and as life altering as their claims are.. then I wouldn't care. However if this is just some kind of viral april fools.. then it's pretty seedy.

We'll see soon enough if Time Magazine publishes anything. They claime the next issue.. if it's there I'll trust it.. if not. then I'll mark it as bull.

[Gambit37]

Firstly, if they want to be taken seriously, then get rid of the tits. End of, no discussion.

Secondly, these videos cite no sources and so can't be taken seriously. Do you believe everything you see and hear? T

Thirdly, while it's an alarming idea when you first hear about it, it's completely unworkable when you really think about it.

I'm a web designer. Among other things, I help get small businesses onto the web. That's good for them, good for their customers and good for the economy. If web developers have to pay extra to have access to their own sites-in-development because they aren't in some "default access package", all web development will stop. Innovation ceases and the control that Corp thought they were getting will cease to mean anything because the Web will be stagnant. They will have killed it.

Absolutely Nobody benefits from that, even big business can see that. Somewhere along the line the money making brain simply forgot about what made the web what it is today: the ability to freely innovate in a level playing field. The proposal would basically eradicate that; that is the real concern.

Read the net-neutrality article on Wikipedia, (it's actually pretty good) and then google for same. Lots of stuff out there.

[Parallax]

One person says it at the end. They take one small thing and another and another until one day you wake up and don't remember how things got the way they are.

Slippery slope argument. A logical fallacy.

The point of me bothering to post it, was #1 to see if anyone here had found any facts to prove it's not real,

The burden of proof lies on him who makes the claim...

or facts to prove it is real.

...and the bigger the claim, the bigger the proof required to support it.

it's better to be aware and on the lookout rather than complacent in our assurance that it will be always as it is.

Vigilence is good. Be wary of false rumors and alarmist claims. Stay vigilent in that respect.

The reason why video games now support a pay as you go instead of a single purchase.. is because people bought it.. and as they increase to become more the norm, the less games you will have out there which are "yours" to play when you want instead of play when you pay.

This is somewhat tangent to the thread topic, but let me just say: good. I remember buying a game, playing it until the end and then shelving it because I had done everything there was to do and it wasn't just that interesting anymore. If you pay as you go, you only pay for games you play. This encourages complex, engrossing games, and it also encourages patches and extensions, i.e. developers staying involved with their game after it's published. The "pay as you go" model is not bad in and of itself. Of course, had DM been "pay as you go", most of us couldn't afford internet access (or even food!) right now...

Some of these people pay $300 per year to play a game many of us would have played for 5 years for 1/10th that cost a few years back.

But would that game have existed under that model? Take two multiplayer Blizzard products: Diablo II and World of Warcraft (WoW). The first was "buy once, play for free" and the second "pay to play". Diablo II received one extension and fell into obscurity a few years back. Some people still play it, much like some still play Starcraft, based on the same distribution model, but no new content comes out for these games. WoW, on the other hand, gets new content periodically, so that the players remain interested, and keep the money flowing.

[Ameena]

Umm...could I just point out that I would say Diablo II is far from being "obscure". A load of people still play it and Blizzard haven't totally abandoned it - it still gets patches every now and then and they still reset the ladder every few months, which basically means everyone starts form scratch - there are no uber items available for trade because no-one owns any - the player trading market is basically reset to zero, with people trading crappy items for crappy items. Over the course of a few months, of course, lots of people reattain level 99 with all the uber gear and stuff. I think that's what keeps people in Diablo - that you can replay it over and over again with a different class build, until they reset the ladder and then you can start again without being able to twink yourself. Something like that, anyway.
A problem with MMORPGs (such as WoW and EQ) seems to be that once people get to the highest level and obtain all the best kit, there's nothing else for them to do because they've seen it all and done it all (evne if they do this with several different characters), so they reach "burnout mode" and give up on the game. I suppose this can happen with Diablo too, just in a different way. But the thing they do with MMORPGs to combat this seems to be to release a new expansion every few months, adding new features such as new mobs, quests, a higher level cap, and so on. More stuff to do, further to go till you become the most powerful you can be, etc. In my experience, this seems to just end up completely messing around with the older stuff and clonking up the balance until the game's unrecognisable from the one you started playing a couple of years previously. At least, this was my experience during my EQ years.
Erm, what am I trying to say here? Ugh I can't remember...I think I started off just trying to defend Diablo II from its accusatiosn of having no-one play it any more and descended from there into randomness, lol. Oh well, haven't done that for a while...


*edges slowly out of conversation*

[Parallax]

I'm not sure I understand you. Are you arguing that resetting everyone to zero periodically is akin to offering a new challenge but creating new content for the endgame so that players who have capped get something new to do is not? That cannot be it, because it makes no sense, so I must be reading you wrong.

Also, since I brought up DII the "accusatiosn of having no-one play it" must be referring to me but I never made that accusation. What I wrote was: "Diablo II received one extension and fell into obscurity a few years back. Some people still play it, [...] but no new content comes out for [it]."
The game and expansion were released in 2000, and 2001, respectively. If I recall, the patch version was around 0.10 in 2001, back when I still played. According to Wikipedia (which one shouldn't trust on political topics but is surprisingly accurate and verbose when it comes to geeky ones), they are at v0.12 now. Like it or not, Blizzard have pretty much abandoned DII. Pressing the reset button once in a while is not commitment.

(This thread is now officially about MMORPGs )

[Gambit37]

Yeah, let's get back on-topic please.

For what it's worth, I don't think the model about pay-as-you go gaming is directly comparable to the "two tier internet" we're discussing anyway.

[beowuuf]

My understanding of what Ameena said was that the character reset prompted people to keep exploring the depth of the existing game with fresh eyes, playing the game they paid for once whether it is supported or not

The constant expansion of WoW seems to lead people to keep what they have and sit waiting for new, higher stuff all the time. If Blizzard stop supporting the game it might just die since the drive in that model is to keep making money and not keep supply sopmething that will feed endlessly on itself

That is the trap of tabletop RPGs pf course - if you bring out a good set of rules, that could be all the players ever need. More rules for monsters, classes etc is nice, but not necessary and not really economically viable. New core rules where the gameplay has been tweaked seems to be what WotC has needed to do to keep D&D alive as a viable product.

[Gambit37]

What part of "Yeah, let's get back on-topic please." don't you understand?

[beowuuf]

The bit that makes this topic different from all the others we ever have :p

I think the original topic is kinda dead now, isn't it?

[Gambit37]

Nooooooooooo! It's alive! Alive, I tells ye! IT'S ALIVE!

Bwaaa-ha-ha-ha-haaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaah!

*cackles and rubs his hands while waiting for bad weather to do it's magical work*

[cowsmanaut]

Luckily, I'm not the one making the claim, only providing a forum for it to be heard.. thus the burden is not mine. However my curiosity and hopes lay in exposing their claims to see if I could get some kind of validation of them or not. Seems reasonable.. after all.. if someone said there was the possibility of a terrorist attack at a locak building, do you just dismiss it because you didn't hear it directly? Or do you ask others to seek more valid information... sure it's something that's more serious as it reflects on life and death rather than inconvenience and money.. but still, even through it may be a remote chance, it's to be taken and regarded all the same.

As for new content, what they offer for 30bucks a month, is limited upgrades that the communities have been doing for free as mods for years. All they have really done here is stopped the rest of us from being able to play a hand in adding to the games as we can not run our own servers "By law" nor can we create our own mods "Cheating". So tell me again how it's not a commercial decision rather than one that's best for the community of gamers?

The phone is an example of how again and again they kept raising cost and monopolizing the mehods of communication until the government stepped in and put pressure on them to allow competitors to have fair share of the market to make sure that it was compeitive.. but then again it was made certain that the mighty dollar kept increasing it until voice to IP came into play and people began making overseas calls for no money at all, and with video to boot! Then once again the phone companies had to back up and try to keep up or lose all of their customers.

Unfortunately, this service (the internet) is locked down by a few owners who hold the switches and competition is low. In point of fact agreements have been made here in Canada between several of the companies to order out their specific domains so they can properly share the domain. That shows agreement and cooperation. An alliance of sorts .. and with that alliance, and dominance over the switches, it makes it possible for them to control the resource in anyway they like.

Seriously, if they offered up a choice of either no internet access, or a system where you have unlimited downloads to specific sites rather than a monthly bandwidth cap. As long as you kept to the same sites. I think a lot of people would adopt it. They would say "Well, how many websites do I really visit per month" and think about how the deal worked out. Because really, who would be willing to give up their internet access completely? Some would, those who barely use it anyway, but those who have their bussiness online, or their life online, as many of us do.. we're kind of in a shitty position.

That said, I think that sales would drop drastically unless they could supply the demand to schools, and internet cafe's and office buildings where a large number of people surf on one access point. Though it's easily doted out to those with a T1 or greater connection.. any with cable or DSL modems could be capped.

I agree, it's not likley to happen.. but the potential is there.. which is what freaks me out..

[Tom Hatfield]

I watched the first twenty seconds to see what the fuss was about. It was worth it.

[Gambit37]

I think you mean only seconds 12-20 were worth it...