[techweenie]

Sorry, anyone who dismisses the co-inventor of the Internet as (take your pick) Amos or Andy is making a moronic statement.

That is not name calling, by the way. If I were to call *you* a moron, that would be name calling.

I don't think you're a moron at all, or you'd be on my 'ignore' list.

Silicon Valley is a small, gossipy place, and things like "burn rate" and "overhead costs" do leak out. So when I hear insiders like Dvorak and La Porte say that youtube.com is spending a million a month on bandwidth, I give it some credibility.

I was consulting to the industry when I helped introduce the first VoIP devices, and I know there are a couple of generations of switches out there that are designed to support 'tiered' service. Originally, we were looking to create a "premium" delivery class for email.

This new tiered concept, however, puts too much power in the hands of the phone companies who might be tempted to artificially limit or degrade content delivery that is competing with their premium services.