UK to make 10 Mbps internet a legal right like water and electricity
62 replies, posted
I guess this will go hand in hand with them wanting to monitor our activity 24 hours a day, seems like they've got a love/hate relationship with people being online.
[QUOTE=Lium;49066552]Though I suppose it's a bit like a kidnapper giving you a cup of hot chocolate inbetween the daily beatings.[/QUOTE]
Only you have to pay out your ass for the chocolate
can someone also make it a law to not use Mb/Gb ever and only use MB/GB instead? fuck
[QUOTE=Penguiin;49069311]can someone also make it a law to not use Mb/Gb ever and only use MB/GB instead? fuck[/QUOTE]
That wouldn't make sense for a lot of things.
Mb is megabit, which should be used for all network related measurements. Measuring it in megabytes would be a bad idea just because it streams 8 megabits at a time. Some computers don't even use bytes as we know them today (8 bits).. and won't always use it that way in the future.
However, I would also argue that measuring storage in *bytes is a bad idea too, since they all store 1s and 0s, not 11001100s, 01010101s, etc. However there may be a good reason to measure in bytes for some programs, such as downloading a game or program. This would be because our operating systems run on bytes, not bits (well technically they do run on bits, but modern cpus can't really read a bit by itself; just bytes).
It's nice that this government suddenly cares about our legal human rights when it involves giving us all internet access... in which they've just ensured they can legally snoop on us through.
"Here, have this lovely Trojan horse"
meanwhile the fastest internet speed available where i live is 1.5mbps and ive actually been told that the only reason i want a better connection is so i can pirate things more quickly :downs:
[editline]7th November 2015[/editline]
oh and the city i live in basically cemented our current ISP situation, and made sure google aint coming. there were talks about google fiber showing up, but they got kicked the hell out
[QUOTE=Monkah;49066582]food
water
shelter
internet connection
one of these is not like the other[/QUOTE]
I once tried to apply at a McDonald's.
They do not give out paper applications.
You have to go on line.
Edit:
THe point I am making is without internet these days, you cannot get a job. So it makes it a necessity.
Then at least shelter and water should be provided too.
It's impractical to provide food for all citizens (cost, production, transportation and it's a continuous cycle) but housing and water are doable in comparison.
[QUOTE=Monkah;49066582]food
water
shelter
internet connection
one of these is not like the other[/QUOTE]
Two of those are utilities, two are not. Shelter and food are not even mentioned as this isnt about them, or this list.
The Tories are saying that internet is a legal right, America's Prince of Libertarians just passed a 300+ billion dollar infrastructure bill
Are conservative politicians being replaced by alien duplicates or something
[QUOTE=Helix Snake;49071600]The Tories are saying that internet is a legal right, America's Prince of Libertarians just passed a 300+ billion dollar infrastructure bill
Are conservative politicians being replaced by alien duplicates or something[/QUOTE]
Duplicates? Are you suggesting they weren't aliens in the first place?
People say that internet is a basic human right (which, it is), but putting it next to food and water, could you imagine if that was true?
Because that got me thinking. I mean, pretend your internet was actually water, given your current ISP how fucked are you? How fucked is your family? I think my parents have comcast so I'm pretty sure they'd die in a week. :excited:
IMO all of the basic human rights are a joke if you need to pay for it. What does it even mean ? Why do we have hungry homeless people in rich countries then ? Why is healtcare a profitable businesses, and solicitor fees so high ? What difference does it even make if something is a basic human right ? It's all behind a paywall, it is all for sale. At least they could make water and stuff tax free or something, or limit the profit margins, as a compromise.
[QUOTE=AntonioR;49076160]IMO all of the basic human rights are a joke if you need to pay for it. What does it even mean ? Why do we have hungry homeless people in rich countries then ? Why is healtcare a profitable businesses, and solicitor fees so high ? What difference does it even make if something is a basic human right ? It's all behind a paywall, it is all for sale. At least they could make water and stuff tax free or something, or limit the profit margins, as a compromise.[/QUOTE]
Don't know about other countries but in the UK your water can't legally be cut off, even if you don't pay
We'll see, I'm sure they'll find a reason to conveniently forget about it.
[QUOTE=markg06;49077057]We'll see, I'm sure they'll find a reason to conveniently forget about it.[/QUOTE]
It'll be an election time thing to grab extra votes. They always do stuff like this around election time, along with tax cuts n shit
I guess that would have been good 10 years ago.
Well this is going to put TalkTalk and AOL out of the running here then. I was getting less than 4Mbps until about June last year when I switched to Virgin
[QUOTE=JohhnyCarson;49070409]I once tried to apply at a McDonald's.
They do not give out paper applications.
You have to go on line.
Edit:
THe point I am making is without internet these days, you cannot get a job. So it makes it a necessity.[/QUOTE]
You can get a job without internet, you can also start your own business and do many other things and if all else fails you can go on welfare.
Calling high speed internet access a human right is a slap in the face to those who starve to death every day in parts of the world, it's a public utility at most.
[QUOTE=smurfy;49068995]This is on top of the government's existing target to get superfast broadband (24Mbps+) to 95% of properties by 2017. The [url=http://www.ispreview.co.uk/index.php/2015/08/on-target-bduk-bring-superfast-broadband-to-3-million-extra-uk-premises.html]current number is somewhere in the 80s and rising fast[/url].[/QUOTE]
They are doing a good job to be honest, my shit hometown with a population of 8000+ and is basically classed as an island got fibre internet, internet faster than my flat in manchester.
I was raging.
[QUOTE=ultra_bright;49079156]You can get a job without internet, you can also start your own business and do many other things and if all else fails you can go on welfare.
Calling high speed internet access a human right is a slap in the face to those who starve to death every day in parts of the world, it's a public utility at most.[/QUOTE]
Nobody ever claimed it was or should be a human right, this law doesn't even give you the right to internet.
Just like water, sewage, electricity, gas, phone landlines, healthcare, education and transport, infrastructure develops in densely populated areas and people living in "rural" areas get left behind because there is no economical incentive to deliver them these services.
Nobody lives in pure capitalistic society, so the government intervenes to provide access to these services in rural areas at a reasonable price.
As a person who gets less than 1 Mbps, I approve
Wowowow
Can the rest of the world do this pls?
[QUOTE=Monkah;49066582]food
water
shelter
internet connection
one of these is not like the other[/QUOTE]
Moving up the hierarchy of needs represents progress in a society. In 1910 you'd be saying the same thing about shelter, and water and food were no guarantee either. Further, the idea of heat being universally available in any home or shelter was also alien.
[QUOTE=Monkah;49066582]food
water
shelter
internet connection
one of these is not like the other[/QUOTE]
I know you've been quoted like 10 times but I don't think any of them do the internet justice.
-The internet is a resource for all of human knowledge. Nothing like it has ever existed, and the amount of content it can teach a willing person is unlike any educational system seen before. Much like education is considered a right, the internet is too.
-Unblocked internet access means communication with any person, anywhere, and you can communicate any problems(such as censorship or other rights abuses by your government) in your country to foreigners. Thus, the internet, and unrestricted access to it, is a measurement of, and tool to protect, your freedom.
-As previously said by others, you can't get a job, nor fit in with modern society, if you do not have internet access. Knowing this, anyone who isn't able to get access to the internet is excluded from the rest of the world, and has no way to progress forward economically or socially, and is deprived of many things that are ingrained into our way of life.
[QUOTE=MeepDarknessM;49069347]That wouldn't make sense for a lot of things.
Mb is megabit, which should be used for all network related measurements. Measuring it in megabytes would be a bad idea just because it streams 8 megabits at a time. Some computers don't even use bytes as we know them today (8 bits).. and won't always use it that way in the future.
However, I would also argue that measuring storage in *bytes is a bad idea too, since they all store 1s and 0s, not 11001100s, 01010101s, etc. However there may be a good reason to measure in bytes for some programs, such as downloading a game or program. This would be because our operating systems run on bytes, not bits (well technically they do run on bits, but modern cpus can't really read a bit by itself; just bytes).[/QUOTE]
I don't know of any operating systems that can write less than one byte to a hard drive. Imagine if a hex editor just had "00 00 00 FF D1 6".... I have never seen that.
I also don't know of any protocols that can send any number of bits that cannot be factored as bytes (Neither TCP nor UDP do, and everything else is based off of them). Everything has pretty much always been measured in bytes. Heck, a boolean(0 or 1) still takes up a whole byte in modern programming.
And I know with absolute certainty that you can't allocate or access memory on modern architecture in "bits". To even find out if a bit is set, you need to do bitwise operations with a 1 in the position of the bit you want to check, but the bitwise operation still covers the entire byte.
The [B]ONLY[/B] reason ISPs market in bits is to mislead consumers. Make no mistake of that.
It should be illegal. But, much like alcohol and cigarettes, everyone is already doing it, so it makes it difficult.
[QUOTE=AntonioR;49076160]IMO all of the basic human rights are a joke if you need to pay for it. What does it even mean ? Why do we have hungry homeless people in rich countries then ? Why is healtcare a profitable businesses, and solicitor fees so high ? What difference does it even make if something is a basic human right ? It's all behind a paywall, it is all for sale. At least they could make water and stuff tax free or something, or limit the profit margins, as a compromise.[/QUOTE]
I think the idea of a human right is that nothing can stop you from acquiring it yourself, whether it be military force in the way, or social or economic factors. I can buy food, but I can also grow it. I can buy a house, but I can also build one(so long as it isnt someone else's land). I can pay for hydro for water, but I can also go to the lake or ocean and get it myself. Education is delivered for free, in public schools and there are resources in libraries. Internet is now in that realm; You can go to a public library to get access to it. If there is no publicly available source of internet, you're in an underdeveloped part of the world.
[QUOTE=Saturn V;49068917]Having an upload speed above 1mbps should also be a basic human right[/QUOTE]
pretty sure you're joking, but on this subject...
If you can load webpages and access any site(so long as the site isn't bloated with objects, then the fault is that site's), and be able to query a list of pages within a minute(as in, google), and then load any individual page in its entirety within 3 minutes, then your right to the internet, for the purposes for which it is a human right, is secure.
In contrast to internet access, fast upload/download speeds shouldn't be a right at all. It's not something anyone actually needs. It just feels good. Even things like net neutrality apply only to justice, competition, and public interest, and not to human rights.
[QUOTE=willtheoct;49081492]
The [B]ONLY[/B] reason ISPs market in bits is to mislead consumers. Make no mistake of that.
It should be illegal. But, much like alcohol and cigarettes, everyone is already doing it, so it makes it difficult.
[/QUOTE]
I think it certainly helps with marketing, but within the networking community I've always used Mbit, it has to do with the OSI model and the physical layer. In the end all copper communications are done in bits, either a pulse is sent through the line, or not, 1 or 0; This is why ethernet 'speed' is described as XBASE-T.
In all networking hardware you're going to see bits instead of bytes, [URL="https://statsnew.xmission.com/public/bandwidth/pages/pubgraph.py?name=sixtotal&frame=1"]even in network backbones[/URL] transit is measured in bits.
[QUOTE=glitchvid;49082092]I think it certainly helps with marketing, but within the networking community I've always used Mbit, it has to do with the OSI model and the physical layer. In the end all copper communications are done in bits, either a pulse is sent through the line, or not, 1 or 0; This is why ethernet 'speed' is described as XBASE-T.
In all networking hardware you're going to see bits instead of bytes, [URL="https://statsnew.xmission.com/public/bandwidth/pages/pubgraph.py?name=sixtotal&frame=1"]even in network backbones[/URL] transit is measured in bits.[/QUOTE]
Right, and this has its roots in the days where everything was reasonable to be measured in bits. It could still be fine to measure in bits, if everything was.
But every other system of measurement of data in a computer has gone down the path of bytes, and there is no longer any component that can use a "bit" instead of a "byte". Everything just looks at bytes and then checks bitmasks to see what bits are set to.
Yes, technically in the end, everything sent over networks is broken into bits, but the same case applies to CPUs and mobos, to hard drives and anything that sends or receives data. Networks are the same; You can't send in bits. You can only send bytes. At least, in the context of TCP and UDP. If there's another modern, in-use protocol that sends a number of bits that isnt a multiple of 8, then consider my point invalid.
[QUOTE=willtheoct;49082172]Yes, technically in the end, everything sent over networks is broken into bits, but the same case applies to CPUs and mobos, to hard drives and anything that sends or receives data. Networks are the same; You can't send in bits. You can only send bytes. At least, in the context of TCP and UDP. If there's another modern, in-use protocol that sends a number of bits that isnt a multiple of 8, then consider my point invalid.[/QUOTE]
The OSI model and its stack is a good reason why we continue using it in so often in practice, the physical layer is very apparent and has direct implications for higher levels.
I'm fairly sure using bits being the measurement is also either IEEE and/or IEC and/or IEC and/or ISO standard, so if you want to really push the change you could consider bringing it up with them.
I mean I certainly understand why a lot of people could be upset and want the change, if you aren't in the networking world and don't know what the difference is, you can feel outright fucked; but I'm not an expert in networking (That's a [I]lot[/I] more years of schooling away) so I'm not one to challenge standards set up years ago by large organizations.
[QUOTE=glitchvid;49083124]The OSI model and its stack is a good reason why we continue using it in so often in practice, the physical layer is very apparent and has direct implications for higher levels.
I'm fairly sure using bits being the measurement is also either IEEE and/or IEC and/or IEC and/or ISO standard, so if you want to really push the change you could consider bringing it up with them.
I mean I certainly understand why a lot of people could be upset and want the change, if you aren't in the networking world and don't know what the difference is, you can feel outright fucked; but I'm not an expert in networking (That's a [I]lot[/I] more years of schooling away) so I'm not one to challenge standards set up years ago by large organizations.[/QUOTE]
I think there's a point you're missing here.
The standards are measured in bits.
They could also be measured in bytes.
Given that there is no way to send a single bit without sending an entire byte, what is the point of even specifying a bitrate?
Yes, the physical layer does some magic with bits themselves, but that doesn't mean measuring in bytes would be inaccurate compared to bits.
The only time it might matter is if you had some reason to send less than a byte. At that point, your bitrate(or nibblerate if you were sending nibbles) would actually be more accurate than your byterate.
But you can't send any number of bits that don't make up a byte.
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