As a Virginia resident I welcome the opportunity to ask President Obama about his ability to make and keep campaign promises.

Starting with his promise as a Senator to filibuster the FISA bill providing telecommunications companies with retro-active immunity for their warrant-less wiretapping.

Then I’d ask him what type of personal collateral against present and future assets he’s going to provide against him failing to keep his campaign promises.

Oh, that’s right, we’re not buying a product we’re buying a brand. Brand Obama, the best name in the business – lol

Seriously – third party candidates are unlikely to do the trick. Get Warren Buffet, George Soros, Larry Page… to effectively fund a campaign financing trust and require candidates to assign their interest in all of their assets to the trust (to be released if they are not elected and conditionally released based on their performance in office) and perhaps we can begin to get the rot out.

Examination by polygraphs, fMRIs and MEGs to weed out sociopaths, psychopaths and liars to the degree it is technically feasible would also be very desirable. At the very least it would force some self selection of people out for fear that they wouldn’t pass the tests.

So what are the opportunities for a street vendor to be able to sell firearms to convention attendees in the immediate area of the convention center?

The thing to be concerned about w/the Israelis so eager to start a war with Iran is not the Iranians but a false flag operation by the Israelis.

If one of our carriers gets sunk we better make damn sure that we actually know who did it.

Remember the USS Liberty. The Israelis have no compunctions about shooting on an American ship if they think it is in their interest.

Here’s another story with a different slant on Prokhorov’s challenge:

News Daily article on Prokhorov

So with respect to this story is the article an attempt by the existing opposition to dump on Prokhorov? And is Prokhorov sufficiently pissed off/authentic about being kicked out of the Potemkin Right Cause party to go all in to gain the Russian presidency? $18bn could certainly do a lot to build an opposition if he has the time and ability to put it in to play. Also given the Russian public’s opinion the Kremlin may not be able to give him the same treatment they did to Mikhail Khodorkovsky.

Would it be advantageous to Prokhorov to draw explicit attention to Putin’s past actions at excluding rivals by including Khodorkovsky in his campaign in some fashion, even granted that he is still in prison?

Nix the flame altogether. Given the nature of political rhetoric having a flame as a symbol would seem to imply that you are lighting the fire. Not coming to the rescue as a fire dog would.

Some symbolism that comes to mind would be Dalmatians (perhap with big pecs and bulging biceps to emphasize strength), fire trucks, fire men. Dalmatians postured as fire men putting out a fire. Calling them fire hounds rather than fire dogs. Showing packs of fire hounds. The possibilities presented by using a fire hound are much greater than what you have available by using a flame.

Consider the success Geico has had with their Gecko.

A simple analogy for the peering agreement is – I’ll carry a gallon of water for you if you carry a gallon of water for me. Now Level3 wants Comcast to carry, say, 3 gallons of water for it while they only continue to carry a gallon of water for Comcast.

As to whether this arrangement is in Comcast’s interest or not depends on whether, as you point out, the traffic is of interest to Comcast’s customers. Whether that additional traffic help Comcast attracts or retain customers and whether Comcast has alternative sources for the same content.

At this point while Netflix does to some degree compete with Comcast’s cable subscription business and their Xfinity business, they are more an irritant than a threat. Netflix is far from being able to deliver the breadth of content that the cable companies in general can deliver. The cable companies already have access to the widest selection of content and more importantly have the physical connection to the customer to be able to deliver it. Netflix’s only advantage is that they have an established streaming video platform in place. But that has only been in place for a short period of time and is something that can be bought by the cable companies rather than having to be extensively developed.

So, If I’m a cable company executive (which I’m not) do I worry about trying to specifically impede Netflix when I have the immediate advantages of more content, a larger customer base and a direct connection with the customers (translating to better performance – even without any discriminatory traffic prioritization) and only have the short term issue of establishing my own streaming video platform to worry about? Probably not. I would have enough issues to worry about rather than getting entangled in a legal and regulatory mess that’s already been a rather public issue attracting the attention of both the FCC and Congress.

In fact, Netflix is doing the cable companies a favor. They’re busy establishing Internet streaming video as a viable market both from a technical perspective and a customer perspective while not being in a position to hold on to the market. Additionally Netflix is helping to lower the cable companies long term operating costs as they will be able to dispense with their cable tuner boxes and head-end and other cable specific physical plant and go entirely to just an Internet transport mechanism for offering their services.

So, back to the original issue. Is this a net-neutrality issue or just a contract issue. I’ll continue to argue that it is just a contract issue and one where Comcast would act the same way if the same situation (excess traffic) arose with any other of their peering partners regardless of what the traffic was.

Your point about Comcast sucking it up to deliver content that their customers are consuming may have a more relevant case and that is with Google search. A few years back the telcos and cable companies were trying to argue that they should be able to charge Google extra for delivering Google’s search content to their customers. A completely bogus argument because Google was already paying these companies for Internet connectivity as a normal customer. Google’s traffic since then has grown by orders of magnitude with the addition of Youtube. The noise about charging Google extra for delivering their content has gone nowhere.

In essence, Comcast is only asking Level3 to do the same thing that Google is doing – pay for the Internet access as a normal customer (actually I think they are getting preferred rates) for the excess traffic they are sending.

Peering agreements of the type that existed between Comcast and Level3 are extremely common between both traditional telephone companies and between Internet service providers.

The general basis for a peering agreement is that two companies have roughly equal amounts of traffic that they wish to send each other. For telephone service this would typically be “voice minutes” and for ISPs this would be megabytes of data. The peering agreement will probably allow for some variability in the amount of traffic that one party sends the other as long as there is not any gross imbalance.

When the situation is such that one party (Level3) is sending disproportionately more traffic to the other party (Comcast) than the other party is sending back, then the basis for the peering agreement is broken. At that point either the agreement itself needs to be renegotiated or the party sending the excess traffic needs to pay the receiving party to handle that excess traffic.

Level3 has massively increased the amount of traffic they are sending Comcast due to Level3′s having taken on Netflix’s business. Their traffic sharing arrangement, which forms the basis for the peering agreement is no longer equitable. And Level3 knows this. This is and has been standard operating practice in these industries for decades. It doesn’t matter whether the excess traffic is a result of Level3′s Netflix business, whether it was outside traffic that Level3 was just passing through or whether it was organically originated from Level3′s pre-existing customer base. The excess traffic that Level3 is sending is a fundamental abrogation of their obligations under their peering agreement with Comcast.

For those commenters that posit that Comcast’s customers have already paid for Level3′s/Netflix’s traffic, well, they haven’t. They’ve paid for their connections to Comcast’s network and for access to the broader Internet (beyond Comcast) to the degree that Comcast has negotiated the necessary agreements and put the physical network in place to access the broader Internet.

Furthermore I don’t believe there are any Net Neutrality arguments to be made regarding the situation between Level3 and Comcast. Comcast is not attempting to charge Level3 additional fees for prioritizing their traffic. Nor are they attempting to charge additional fees based on making a technical inspection of the type of data being sent. They are merely trying to make up for the huge disparity in “traffic” that Level3 is asking Comcast to handle versus the much smaller amount that Comcast is asking Level3 to handle.

Full Disclosure:
1) I’m no fan of Comcast. We switched from Comcast to Verizon FIOS in this house due to the really crappy performance of the Comcast network.

2) I have a long history of employment working for a variety of telephone, cable and Internet service companies in both technical and executive management capacities. I’ve not worked for either Comcast or Level3 nor do I have any monetary interest in either of those companies.

3) For those that care, the relevant companies I have worked for are; Cable and Wireless, Erol’s Internet, RCN and Arbinet-TheXchange.