From the business section of the Sunday Post, a two-part rant about whiny techies.

Part 1, about complaints over the price drop on the iPhone, I fully agree with. Especially this part.

I’ve got some news for you: Steve Jobs is not your friend. The reason he’s a billionaire and you’re not is that he’s brilliant at selling you gadgets that make you feel so cool you’re willing to pay way more than it costs to make them. His only mistake last week was letting you in on his little secret.

I’m a big Mac fan but at the end of the day, Apple’s a business and I’m a customer. Steve’s only obligation is to produce a good product I want to buy at a price I’m willing to pay right now.

As far as part 2 is concerned, however, the writer is way off base.

The latest rallying cry is “network neutrality.” This campaign started out with the legitimate goal of making sure that consumers could continue to access whichever services or content they want, rather than having to take those offered by the cable and phone company duopolists. But lately the campaign seems to have morphed into a broader demand that all consumers should be able to pay the same monthly fee for using the Internet, no matter how much bandwidth they use or how much their movie downloads and video chats are slowing service to everyone else in the neighborhood.

There’s nothing wrong with charging different rates for different speeds.

What most supporters of net neutrality object to is service providers deciding what services their customers can easily access and which ones they’ll shuffle over to the slow lane.

Net neutrality means that I get to decide how much I’ll pay to access the web and then the service provider supplies that bandwidth with no discrimination as to content.

To put it in even more basic terms:

iphone, net neutrality