The groups opposing net neutrality — like Hands Off The Internet Coalition — argue that heavy regulation of the internet runs against free market economics, and that such restrictions slow down the rate of innovation on the internet. They argue that different kinds of internet traffic have different requirements. For instance, live chat requires less bandwidth, but the traffic cannot be delayed, on the other hand streaming video requires high bandwidth, but can afford some delay because the video is buffered at the viewing computer, downloads can withstand occasional delays and low bandwidth. It makes sense treat each of these traffic streams differently in order to provide a better user experience, but net neutrality prohibits this.

Lets see how the arguments for and against net neutrality really stand up to criticism.

Now, if net neutrality was implemented as a strict regulation, this can give rise to a lot problems. For instance, how do network providers treat spam under net neutrality? Currently, network providers can block spam at the entry point into their network. If the networks are expected to treat all traffic equally, then they have to treat spam the same as other traffic. Which implies that they are having to bear the cost of routing spam on their networks with no income from it. Guess who they will pass that cost on to: the consumers. So is net neutrality really what the consumers want?

If customers subscribed to a pay-per-view service over the internet, then customers have every right to be guaranteed a satisfactory viewing experience. However, the network provider cannot do that under net neutrality because the provider is not allowed to allocate bandwidth for the pay-per-view service. So is net neutrality really helping?

On the other hand, if net neutrality wasn’t implemented then this would allow network providers to treat different kinds of traffic differently, thus providing a better user experience. But if that were truly an issue then how do different classes of network traffic work well today without so-called ‘tiered’ services for different classes of traffic. Answer: there is more bandwidth in the network core than the traffic consumes. As long as there is good admission control on the edge of the Internet, it doesn’t seem like you need such ‘tiered’ services. Wouldn’t that make the ‘tiered’ services argument too weak?

Consider the competition between VoIP services and traditional phone lines. Typically all your phone providers are also ISPs. And VoIP is very sensitive to delay in the traffic, more so than web browsing, streaming video, or downloads. So if the ISPs wanted to discourage their customer from using VoIP services, then they could do that by simply delaying packets for a few seconds randomly. For web browsing and other services, it would only show up as a few seconds delay in a page loading, or a delay in the video starting, which is easily tolerable. But with VoIP, this would show up as a jitter in a voice call. This would make VoIP unusable. Don’t we need regulations to protect the customers from such practices? Isn’t net neutrality a way out of this?

So net neutrality, while addressing some issues, opens up other problems which the Internet community will have to deal with. Worse, while it is easy to make a regulation like net neutrality, it is very difficult to enforce it. How do you detect a violation of net neutrality? If ‘bad’ ISPs are smart enough, then they can hoodwink any mechanism to detect such violations. It can range from delaying all traffic for a few seconds so that only VoIP services are affected, to dropping only certain kinds of traffic during periods of traffic congestion. The above two techniques is indistinguishable from situations where a `good’ ISP is having traffic management problems and so is forced to delay traffic, or is forced to drop traffic during congestion. So how do you distinguish ‘bad’ ISPs from ‘good’ one and penalize only the ‘bad’ ones? Its not always possible.

So, if net neutrality is more a regulation in theory, than something which can be enforced successfully, and people do realize it, then why do we have groups advocating for it so strongly? What could be gained from it, other than a rhetorical stand on the ideals that they strive for? The answer might surprise you.

Ironically, the arguments being made on both sides of net neutrality fails to address the real issue. In fact, it serves to hide the real issue of why net neutrality has become such a focal point of conflict on the internet today. To understand this better, lets see who are the corporate entities involved in the net neutrality debate. The supporters of net neutrality include the likes of Google, Yahoo, eBay and AeA. The opposers of net neutrality include the likes of 3M, Cisco Systems, Qualcomm, Verizon, AT&T, and Time Warner. Note that there is a clear division of the functional roles of each camp. The camp which supports net neutrality are all content providers where as the camp which opposes net neutrality are all network infrastructure providers.

Why do content providers like net neutrality? Because it allows the content providers to innovate and come up with new applications and solutions without having to worry about how these application will be treated by the network. Why do network infrastructure providers oppose net neutrality? Because this will aloow for innovation and diversity in network infrastructure to accommodate new applications and solution which can evolve from the Internet. What does this mean? This means that net neutrality is no longer about free speech, or democracy, or free market, or any ideals. Its all about who gets to control the internet and the innovation in it. Net neutrality, under the hood, is an ongoing battle between content providers and infrastructure providers over who controls the web and the innovation in it.

Morality vs. Legality

The corner stone of Narayanan’s argument is the following: “The point is that drug consumption is NOT right”, and hence has to be illegal. My understanding of the argument is that recreational drugs are immoral, and hence have to be illegal, regardless of unfavorable economics. While that line of reasoning sound, its application for this case, in my opinion, is not. I question the premise that recreational drugs is immoral. I do not base this on the victimless crime argument, nor on the personal freedom argument. It is based on something entirely different.

During world war II, American farmers were encouraged to grow hemp for the war, and after world-war hemp was banned because it has the same psychoactive ingredient as marijuana (a fact which was known for a long time). So growing hemp was legal (and moral) before the end of world war II, and after it was made illegal, it has suddenly become immoral. This is just one example of how (im)morality of drugs actually follows its (il)legality, and is not the other way ’round.

Going back Narayanan’s post, it can be argued that drugs are considered ‘NOT right’ simply because they have been made illegal. That also explains why Hindu have been sadhus using marijuana for hundreds of years now, and that hasn’t been considered immoral (until now). In fact, the same argument holds for practices like sati. Up until the time sati was banned, only a minority considered it immoral. After it was banned, the immorality of sati was a universal opinion. So this opens up the possibility that legalizing drugs might make its use moral after all.

All drugs are not the same

Another argument Narayanan makes is that drugs are more injurious (than cigarette and alcohol), and hence should be illegal. The critical failure in this argument is that all recreation drugs are assumes to be equally harmful, and hence should be made illegal. Unfortunately, its far from the truth. Recreational drugs can be loosely categorized as hard drugs, and soft drugs. In general terms (at the risk of oversimplification), hard drugs are more harmful than soft drugs. In fact, soft drugs like Marijuana, Hashish, and opiates were found to be less harmful than cigarettes and alcohol. Even surprising that coffee was found to be more addictive than marijuana, hashish, and psychoactive mushrooms! So the argument that drugs all bad just doesn’t hold water. If we talking about hard drugs, then its a different debate altogether (so lets not go there, not in this post).

Economic Viability

Narayanan makes an argument that the economic viability of drug laws cannot be a reason for legalizing it. A legitimate statement, but a misapplied argument. This argument was supposed to be a rebuttal of Jug Suraiya’s argument that drugs are not a moral issue, but an economic issue. But Jug Suraiya’s point was that recreational drugs are illegal (despite its widespread use) is that the large demand for drugs has driven the trade into the hands of underworld mafia. The nexus among law enforcement personnel, politicians, and mafia makes it profitable for law enforcement and law making officials to maintain the status quo of criminalizing drugs. Note the subtlety in the argument. The argument does NOT say that drugs should be legalized because it is too expensive to enforce existing laws and that there is money to be paid. The argument is that the reason why drugs are still illegal is that law enforcement agencies and law makers have a lot to gain (economically) by keeping drugs illegal. An entirely different argument which hasn’t been rebutted at all!

So from what I can make of it, Narayanan’s arguments are more an attempt at justifying one’s prejudice against drugs, and not than an exercise in interrogating Jug Suraiya’s arguments.

When stripped down to essentials, the Jury is a collection of ‘average’, ‘everyday’ people who decide on a court case based on the evidence presented to them. The basic idea being, if 9 (or whatever number of) common folk think you are guilty, then you probably are. And if they think you deserve to spend x number of years in jail for it, then you probably do.

The Jury is supposed to deliver Justice. But what is justice? According to Plato “Justice is the interest of the stronger”, but Criminal Justice, on the other hand, can be stated as “a system of legislation, practices, and organizations, used by the state to maintain social control, deter and control crime” (paraphrased from wikipedia). The jury, in the present context is expected to deliver Criminal Justice. Now the question is, does it?

Objectivity (or lack thereof)

Criminal Justice operates upon a set of Laws. If any individual or organization violates the law, a crime is said to have been committed. One of the duties of the Jury is to determine if the law has indeed been broken. This process involves interpreting the law (often done by the lawyers for the jury) and determining whether or not the law was indeed broken. Such interpretation should, ideally, be an objective exercise. This is necessary to ensure ‘fairness’.

Let me digress for a few sentences. How does one determine the validity of an argument in a scientific effort. Typically through peer-review among subject matter experts. Why? Because they know the subject best, and are the best judge in determining if an argument is valid or not.

In other words, a person who is an expert in a particular area is a good judge of arguments in that area. Why should law be any different? Why is it assumed that an argument about the law is somehow best judged by a group of laypeople?

The consequence of this is loss of objectivity, and fairness in the system. People are too easily swayed by emotions, they are prejudiced by their own views, opinions, and value system. It takes an expert (like a judge trained in law) to divorce all this from the case at hand and be able to weigh the evidence and arguments. Jury of laypeople are no where near as qualified or skilled.

Awarding a Sentence

Often, the jury is also asked to determine the sentence (in terms of prison time, or financial payments) in many cases. This is an exercise that the jury is hopelessly ill-equipped for.

The prison system is often referred to as a ‘correctional system’. This is so because functionally, a prison is meant to serve as a place where the criminal does ‘penance’ for his/her crime and at the end of the term comes out as a ‘reformed’ person. So when a person is being sent to prison for x number of years, it has been determined that it will take the correctional facility x number of years to reform the person into a productive member of the society.

So my question is:By what (justifiable) qualification does the jury possess the authority to determine the time necessary for a criminal to be ‘corrected’ or ‘reformed’? The jury is regular people like you and I. If someone were to ask me how long does it take for (say) a street thug to be reformed, my honest answer would be “I dont know”. Then how can a jury, who have no knowledge or training in this matter, possibly know the time it takes for such a reform? Then how can they determine the right magnitude of sentence?

Restorative Justice vs. Retributive Justice

Most criminal justice systems in the world are based on restorative justice. Restorative justice focuses on establishing social harmony and mutual responsibility. So when determining whether or not a crime has been committed, and if so, then what the magnitude of sentence should be, it is important that social harmony be established by the justice system in that process. There have been many cases where the social harmony has been a major motivation for certain decisions by courts, eg:Brown vs. Board of Education, Gay Student Services vs. Texas A&M University, etc.

Such exercises in restorative justice, however, requires a excellent and thorough understanding of factors at the regional as well as global level. Even with local cases, because any case can become a precedent for future cases. The individual engaging in restorative justice must be aware of the implications that his/her decision will have on the landscape of law and justice in general.

Often, jury based justice system is only as smart as the jury (who are often average-joe-kind-of people), and hence not in any way enabled to engage in restorative justice. In the absence of specialized training, jury has no choice but to resort to a more primitive form of justice: retributive justice. Which essentially says that the punishment must fit the crime. An easy, but flawed yardstick to go by. Such retributive justice can result in denial of justice, and worse, become a precedent for future cases to follow, thus propagating this denial to future parties.

All of the above deficiencies can be remedied by moving away from a jury based trial to a trial by judge (under the assumption that the judge is a trained subject matter expert in law). Based on the above arguments, it hard not a conclude that the jury system is a model that is designed to fault undetectably. The undetectability of its faulting provides a false sense of confidence in the system. It is best done away with.

For starts, the case itself was resolved in a somewhat shady manner. The judge required that the jury merely conclude whether or not the music files were made available for sharing. There was no requirement to prove that the files were actually copied illegally. This is like having to pay a hefty sum for leaving your CD out in public for anyone to copy. How can I be held responsible for what someone else does with my CD? I have no control over that! I am not saying Jaimme Thomas is innocent, but I am arguing that she has not been proven guilty. That in my opinion makes all the difference.

Secondly, there is no way for the recording industry to put any figure on how much money they are losing due to illegal file sharing. So I cannot understand what the basis of the figure $220K which was arrived at. Typically such fines serve two purposes: (a) they serve as a deterrent for against the crime, and (b) compensate the aggrieved party adequately. This fine does neither.

Jaimme Thomas makes $36,000 a year. It will take her over 8 years to pay that sum if she subsists on food stamps, sells her kidney, puts her kids up for adoption and lives under the bridge. Practically speaking, if she is forced to pay the fine, she will have to declare bankruptcy. Hardly fitting punishment for the crime! If over-reaction works, then why not send everyone to the gallows?

Secondly, when the RIAA has no idea how much money it loses to illegal file sharing, and does not know if the the files in question in this case were shared or not, then on what basis can anyone state that the RIAA has been adequately compensated? Especially if the files were never illegally downloaded at all!

If RIAA continues this war path, it will only serve to make people more militant, and serve to detract artists from the recording labels. The internet is serving to be a great equalizer. Artists can now sell their music independently on the internet through sites like Myspace.

So where is RIAA going with this? I suspect to their own demise, or at the least to a self inflicted embarrassment.

(Having said that, I still recommend people seeing this movie. The attempt and effort is legitimate. So are a lot of fears expressed in it.)

Virgin Birth

My opinion of the movie received its first dent when, in Part I, it says that Krishna (a Hindu god) was born of a virgin. I may not know about Greek, Roman, or Egyptian mythology, but I do know Hindu mythology and I know for a fact that Krishna is not believed to be of virgin birth. This gives me good reason to suspect the claims about the stories of Horus, or Dionysus, or any other mythical character that the movie talks about.

Authority of Sources

Going back to the source of this ‘information’ in the sources page, I found that the Krishan’s Virgin Birth assertion was obtained from books by M.D. Murdock (a.k.a Acharya S.). Acharya is a major proponent of the Jesus myth hypothesis, but her works cite other works that are of suspect authority, and provides extremely once sides citations. In fact, most of the sources and books cited in the movie website are all in the style of conspiracy theories, and have suspect authority at best. By the principle of inheritance of authority, Zeitgeist is of questionable authority as well.

What is plausible may not be true

Zeitgeist shows what could be a plausible explanation for Christianity, 9/11, and the federal reserve system, but they need not be true. To assert the truth of any statement, one needs to (a) show that the statement cannot be falsified, and (b) all other statements that oppose this statement can be falsified. Zeitgeist fails on both counts, and hence cannot assume credibility to the statements it makes.

Obfuscation Through Over-Simplification

Specifically in Part III, the description of money generation by the Federal Reserve Bank is over-simplified to a point where its practically untrue. The pathological sequence of events that could lead to a financial catastrophe is true, but the described mechanism of the Federal Reserve Bank fueling massive debts on America is not. A good place to get an idea of how money is generated is the Money Creation article on wikipedia.

Also, as far as massive debts due to interests on loans that serve to feed more loans and so on, go.. well… that’s pretty much how any economy runs. The money has to come from somewhere, and this ‘generation’ of money has to be controlled (to avoid ‘over heating’ the economy and spiraling the inflation), the best means of doing so is to attach a penalty to generating money, and that’s what the Federal Reserve accomplishes by charging interest on the money thats generated.

So that’s my 2 cents worth second thoughts on Zeitgeist. However, I still encourage people to see this movie. At the very least, to see what alternate explanations can be provided for a same facts presented to you. All too often you have access only to the media’s interpretation events and facts. This is great way to see the counterculture argument and interpretations.

The statement on the website says:

Zeitgeist was created as a non-profit filmiac expression to inspire people to start looking at the world from a more critical perspective and to understand that very often things are not what the population at large think they are. The information in Zeitgeist was established over a year long period of research and the current Source page on this site lists the basic sources used / referenced. Soon, an Interactive Transcript will be online with detailed footnotes and links so exact sources and further research can be relayed.

…

Here’s the movie for your viewing. Note that the movie is 2 hours long, so make sure you have enough time to watch it. But I guarantee that you will have strong opinions about it one way or the other.
Don’t forget to check out the Clarifications (which dented my confidence in the authenticity of the ‘facts’ in the movie), and the Sources sections.

Without further ado, here’s the movie :)

Lately, the issue of gun laws has cleaved American politics along partisan lines, with the conservative republicans being liberal about guns and liberal democrats being conservative about it.

I am not a US citizen, so technically my opinion on this issue doesn’t matter. But, I do live in the US, that too in Texas, and I am not exactly enthralled by the prospect of anyone being at full liberty to own a gun that they may point at me for any reason at all. So yes, from a self-preservation point of view, my opinion matters. If you haven’t guessed already, I am all for gun control.

All advocates for liberal gun policies spout rhetoric about the second amendment, and the right to bear arms. In reality, the second amendment is about the right to bear arms to form a militia (This amendment was made to allow Americans to defend themselves if their government turned against them). In other words, everyone who owns a gun in America is now a one-man militia.

Another argument for liberal gun policies is best elucidated by Levitt in his book Freakonomics. To paraphrase, gun disrupts the natural pecking order. In the natural pecking order the physically strong can overpower the physically weak. When you throw a gun into the equation, now the weaker person with a gun can win the outcome of a fight with a stronger person. However, if both have guns, then the natural order is restored. Gun advocates argue that the bad guy will procure a gun from the black market if its not legally available. However, the good guys are law abiding, and hence, won’t. Therefore, with strict gun laws we will have bad guys with guns and good guys without. In order to restore the natural order it is necessary that the good guys also carry guns.

There is, admittedly, merit to the above argument. It is true that America has a thriving gun black market. So even if gun laws were tightened significantly, the criminals would be able to procure guns, and would emboldened by the fact that law abiding citizens are now less likely to carry a gun on them.

Given that the argument is logical, lets go ahead and apply it globally. Lets talk about global gun control, a.k.a. Nuclear (non-)Proliferation. The argument that applied to liberalizing gun laws in US applies to the world as well. You have law abiding countries (countries that honor their international agreements, and uphold international law), and you have rogue countries. You have countries that already have nuclear weapons. Pakistan is an impoverished nation that has nuclear weapons. Kazakhstan is a fast developing country in central Asia, and has mineral, cultural, and economic wealth. In the natural pecking order (i.e., sans nuclear weapons) Kazakhstan is above Pakistan. However, due to the nukes, now Pakistan enjoys certain favors that Kazakhstan doesn’t. So to restore the natural order shouldn’t Kazakhstan be allowed to develop nuclear weapons?

If law abiding citizens of U.S. have to carry guns to protect themselves from armed criminals and killers, then shouldn’t law abiding countries be allowed to carry nuclear weapons to deter rouge countries (with nukes) from attacking them? If terrorist nations can acquire nukes from the former Soviet stockpile for cheap, then shouldn’t other nations living under the shadow of terrorism arm themselves with nukes for their own safety and security? In other words, by lobbying for liberal gun laws, aren’t gun advocates giving credence to the frenzied nuclear proliferation in the world?

One would think so. But the same government that is gung-ho about liberalizing gun laws is also extremely concern about nuclear proliferation and will go to great lengths to keep the pecking order as it is, with the elite ‘have’s and the remainder ‘have-not’s.

Isn’t there a word to describe this? Oh yes of course! Its called ‘Hypocrisy’.

Microsoft and FSF represent the ends of the spectrum. Each of them have their problems. If the whole world were to be dominated by Microsoft, they wouldnt hesitate in forcing us to eat the products they endorse, and trying to take control of what we watch on TV, or listen on our radio. Of course, not to mention the number of times we will have to restart all of the machines and systems that ran on Mircosoft software.

Having said that, FSF isnt exactly our saviour either. If the world were to go FSF way, then programmars wont be able to make living, atleast not the way we do now. It is a really good idea to disseminate the source code along with the software for reasons obvious. But then, how does the person who is developing software make a living. You cannot afford to be a part time developer, it simply wont scale in the economics of today and the sheer demand for such services will render this model of software development ill-equipped to service the needs. The arguement often quoted if favour of FSF is that research is often shared with the world, the it is the this shared knowledge that other build upon for advancement of science and mankind. But in case of research, it is often funded by the government or corporates that cannot afford their engineers/scientists’ time on a project whose result may or may not be ecnomically viable. For obvious reasons, it is not easy for software development to work on this model. So FSF at its radical extreme may be the solution after all.

The main argument in favour of FSF is the monopolistic practices of corporates like Mircosoft. It is not a very good idea to let corporates decide our life style, what we read or what we listen to. But that’s exactly what they are trying to do. RIAA has been trying hard to control piracy by inserting protection mechanisms on the CD and mp3 players to ensure that “illegal” copies of the song cannot be played by them. This is just one of the ways in which the industry is trying to control our experience. They attempting to deny us our freedom. Our freedom to choose what we want, and how we like it. Just like we can buy the ingredients and cook what we want, we should be able to do the same with software, take the software that we need, and be able to customize it to suit our requirements and add features to it if we need to. This is what Free Software Foundation stands for.

So what we really need are ethical practises from the corportates, and laws to ensure that these ethics are respected and adhered to by the industry. What we need are softwares that are more reasonably priced, and not audio CDs that cost Rs.10 to make but are sold at Rs.200. What we need is a flexibility by the industry to allow expansion of any software’s feature set and customizability for one’s need. If this is done, then we might see an end to the war we witness over the net almost everyday

P.S: Click Here for Windows source-code ;)

Let us take Nehru, for instance, he is proclaimed as a “visionary” (I have my own reservations on that, but is not the place for that), the first prime minister of india, great freedom fighter and a charismatic leader. Yet, his family life was anything but loving and peaceful. His tryst with Lord Mountbatten’s wife, Edwina, is all too well known for me to spend time writing about it. This. however, is not an isolated case. Even some one as great of Mahatma hislef had his family life in shambles. His stubbornness cost his wife’s life in the jail. He simply refused to ask for medical treatment for his ailing wife, and thus bringing about her demise. He was a really bad father, who forced his believes on his children and attempted to keep them “on a leash”. His last son died an alcoholic. The famous tragedy queens of Indian cinema had tragic lives themselves. When Meena Kumari died, she didnt have enough money for her own funeral let alone bequeth something to her family. Nelson Mandela’s chequered family life is for everyone to see. All of Emily Dickenson poems were discovered at her home when they were clearing it after her death. She lead a hopelessly solitary life with no one to turn to and died a lonely, sad woman. Her poems are a mere reflection of her life. This articles in The Hindu talks about the Private Life of Indira Gandhi.

I can go on giving examples. My point is, is it not possible for a person to have a successful public life and be a good family man/woman? Is the pressures of living up to people’s expectations so high that you begin to disregards the people who love you the most? Can glamour and fame be so seductive that you lose all that you need to keep you happy and still not realize it?

A collection of 8 articles by Aditi Chaturvedi talks claims that the land of arab was a hotbed of a thriving vedic culture before prophet mohammad invaded them and attempted to obliterate all signs of the culture, replacing it with his “new” religion.

The ideas put forth collection of articles is far fetched, but not without a basis. It goes on to describe the similarities in the sanskrit and arabic words, the allegded “shiv ling” at mecca near the kaaba and has its own theory on how islam came about, and why Muhammad had to flee from mecca to medina, why his life was in danger and so on and so forth. I can quote excerpts from the articles, but that might hurt the sentiments of muslims here, so I refrain from it. Here are the links to the articles and ppl interested can go through them. I must, however, add that if you easily offended by ideas questioning the snacitity of Quoran and the birth of islam, then dont follow the links. For people who are looking for a fresh perspective and are open to ideas, it would make a really good reading. You can’t take everything that’s said in the articles at the face value, but you cant deny everything either…. so here goes.

Sword of truth archives:Vedic Past of Pre-Islamic Arabia

• Part 1
• Part 2
• Part 3
• Part 4
• Part 5
• Part 6
• Part 7
• Part 8

Also, here is a thread of discussion on a related articles (not sure which one) that suggests that the rock at mecca was a siva temple, etc. etc.

Islam Renaissance Research Ranch

Disclaimer: I dont subscribe to any of the ideas put forth in the articles or the discussion thread mention above. I am merely provding it for reference. The conclusions drawn are authors’ own and not mine.