abhaga

That programmers don't change their opinion about types. He did.

> They are rather straightforward to reimplement

Not really. Very often you will find the crucial details that make it work missing. Not sure if things have vastly improved over past 5-6 years.

>> can not already joining it in hordes. > Sorry, I can't figure out what you meant here.

Yes, typos are hard to process, especially when you have context. I meant "are not already joining."

Are you defining privileged as those people who do not agree with you? Because in economic, social and other terms, I fail to see how those supporting FreeBasics are any less privileged. In fact, they are the top of the privilege pyramid.

And here's the thing. All these bleeding heart pro-poor telcos in fact want differential pricing so that they can charge more for VoIP services. How does that tie-in with this narrative of poor people?

Replace FreeBasics by a targeted scheme with measurable outcomes and provisions for how it will auto dismantle as it achieves its goals, and then let's talk. Otherwise it is all baloney.

You speak as if those not on the internet can not already joining it in hordes. And those opposed to FreeBasics are somehow holding the keys.

When looking at the two camps here, you seriously believe the motives of Facebook and Telecom companies that have clear business interest in having users locked up in their walled gardens but doubt the intentions of a motley group of activists including startup founders, university professors, policy experts among others who do not have any direct incentive to oppose people coming on to internet and also do not control that access in anyway?

Because it is not a static scenario. Internet users in India grew by ~30% over last one year itself and that growth is not slowing down. And FreeBasics is not limited to people coming on the internet for the first time.

If those opposing the FreeBasics are trying to decide on behalf of poor, isn't FreeBasics itself not doing the same thing?

In fact the word play now is just ridiculous. When questioned about the above, they point out that this is an open platform now where any service can come in. When questioned on why not simply give free capped bandwidth then, the answer is that "basic internet services" like education, health are more important for poor. And if left to themselves, they will spend all bandwidth on things like porn. (The last statement is not from Facebook but from certain supporters of FreeBasics)

In the FB vs Orkut example, not only is the Orkut Free, FB is inaccessible to Orkut users. What do you think will be the outcome then?

You are also assuming that if not for Free Basics, there will be nothing done to increase the internet spread in India. As those opposed to Free Basics have repeatedly pointed out, there are other better options available.

You are assuming that the other services can just wait it out while people break out of FB ecosystem and discover them. Development of these kind of walled gardens significantly harm the development of independent services. That is one of the main problem. If everyone had free Orkut and no access to FB, how long would it have taken Facebook to catch on?

Yep. We don't want you to see our elephants and tigers. And the snake charmers.

I understand that there are a lot of people who care about chocolate and who don't care about banana. I know plenty in the other direction (majority around me).

But there are two points. First is that you are underestimating the kind of role a crop can play in a culture. It is not just a matter of replacing Banana with another crop. It is a matter of changing significant cultural traditions going back hundreds of years. If you think about it, the importance of chocolate is also largely cultural.

Second, it is a philosophical debate that what is more important - something that is basic nutrition for one group or something that is cultural/emotional/luxury/(I can't find the right word for the role chocolate plays) for another. Where the resources will be allocated will depend on who controls those resources and which camp they fall in.

Actually bananas are a huge deal since they provide the basic nutrition for large populations in many parts of the world. Also Cavendish is the dominant set of varieties world over and there are not many real substitutes for it, yet.

With diseases, world might actually run out of chocolate or at least some varieties of it. Like Panama disease wiped out Gros Michel banana and is now also threatening Cavendish banana. Similarly Frosty Pod Rot seems to be spreading and threatening cocoa plantations.

Yeah but the DELETE blocking affects any customers on this ISP as well. I am now working on moving to SSL asap.

Problem is often the competence of people handling these proxies. Yesterday I discovered that my ISP is blocking all DELETE http calls (ACT fibernet in India)!

And before that they decided to enforce a reverse DNS lookup so all the name based virtual servers with local DNS entries stopped working - I had my staging instances setup that way.

And not only all this happens without any prior information, it is next to impossible to climb through the support layers to finally find someone who even understands what are you talking about. They just want you to restart your modem to "resolve the problem".

And it is all or none. If you fall on bad times and can't pay the subscription, you cannot have any books. Unlike your owned collection which you can reduce down to books you love. If you are low on cash, you cannot save and buy a book - you have to be subscribed all the time.

If subscription becomes the dominant mode of book consumption, it would be disastrous. As an add on service, it is nice. Especially in the areas without strong library systems.