FCC Chairman Slams Trump Team's Proposal To Nationalize 5G (axios.com)

Killing Net Neutrality was fine.... by MikeDataLink · 2018-01-29 04:07 · Score: 5, Insightful

because it filled their wallets. This takes money off the table. Whoops.

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Mike @ The Geek Pub. Let's Make Stuff!

Re:Killing Net Neutrality was fine.... by Marxist+Hacker+42 · 2018-01-29 04:27 · Score: 1

You get the network you pay for.
In this day and age, if we really want to supercharge our economy, having the United States on one large 5G system served by solar powered lighter-than-air craft at 50,000 feet would make a lot of sense. And when it comes to monopolies, the government is better than private industry anyway.
I strongly doubt bandwidth will be enough for many operations, and that's where the private carriers can continue to exist, in providing additional for-pay bandwidth for specific uses.

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SJW: a person who perceives an injustice, and while correcting it, commits a greater injustice.
Re:Killing Net Neutrality was fine.... by jellomizer · 2018-01-29 04:35 · Score: 5, Insightful

A government monopoly means that you have some say in what goes on in a democracy. Vs. a Corporate monopoly where your only action is to not purchase it, and being a monopoly you will not have competing products to choose from.

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If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
Re:Killing Net Neutrality was fine.... by SScorpio · 2018-01-29 05:28 · Score: 1

Nah, subsidize loses, privatize profits. The US tax payer will fund the roll out of this network. It will then be chopped up and the different regions will be sold to small regional private companies for pennies on the dollar. And those small regional companies will be purchased by AT&T, Verizon, etc.
Re:Killing Net Neutrality was fine.... by OldMugwump · 2018-01-29 05:30 · Score: 1

Yes, a government monopoly is slightly less bad than a corporate monopoly. But a competitive market is vastly better than either one. Then customers have choice, and can walk away from bad deals. Vendors are forced to either offer good deals, or lose business.

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"Shoot, a fella could have a pretty good weekend in Vegas with all that stuff."
Re:Killing Net Neutrality was fine.... by Pyramid · 2018-01-29 05:43 · Score: 2

That's why the United States is a representative republic, not a pure democracy.
This is grammar school level basics of U.S. gov't....

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~Any apparent grammatical or typographic errors are caused by defects in your display device.
Re:Killing Net Neutrality was fine.... by ranton · 2018-01-29 06:05 · Score: 4, Insightful

And you failed to answer the question, you brain-dead fool. All you did was throw up a strawman.
Considering his post was nearly identical to you, every bit of criticism you gave him also applies to your argument. If your only argument is that government shouldn't be trusted because it has done bad things, then it is no better than saying private companies shouldn't be trusted because they have done bad things. His implied point is that both private and public entities do bad things, so your argument is moot.
Most people agree that a competitive environment is best, a government monopoly is worse but sometimes necessary, and a corporate monopoly is the worst possible option. What many disagree on is what it takes to maintain a competitive environment and whether or not one can realistically exist for all industries.
A disagreement on this topic can be had without the type of inflammatory language you are using.

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-- All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing. -- Edmund Burke
Re:Killing Net Neutrality was fine.... by dgatwood · 2018-01-29 06:09 · Score: 1

Close. It will be built at government expense and access will be licensed only on a nationwide basis, for an amount that barely covers the infrastructure costs over a period of time. This ensures that all four of the major cellular providers can afford to use it, but that the price for access remains out of reach for smaller companies, who will be forced to continue being MVNOs for one of the four major cellular providers. :-)

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Check out my sci-fi/humor trilogy at PatriotsBooks.
Re:Killing Net Neutrality was fine.... by rahvin112 · 2018-01-29 06:12 · Score: 5, Interesting

More importantly than anything it segregates the infrastructure from the service. A government run infrastructure would sell access to telecommunication companies to handle the calls. You'd have dozens of choices of telecom providers with different service offerings.
Government run infrastructure in natural monopolies is always the best solution. In fact government owned with yearly bidding on maintaining and running the system would be even better with all costs rolled into the access fee's charged to telecom providers. We'd have 100% national coverage and multiple providers in every area instead of the current system where rural people get the choice of verizon or verizon.
Re:Killing Net Neutrality was fine.... by HiThere · 2018-01-29 06:57 · Score: 5, Insightful

The thing is, the transmission layer of the network, even a wireless network, is a natural monopoly. In such a case it does make sense to have the government running it...you aren't going to get much competition anyway. *Somebody's* going to be controlling it.
Compare the current situation with the original situation, where the phone company supplied the wires and the connection, and any group that wanted to could start up an ISP. Then there was real competition between the ISPs. Now? But competition at the physical level is impractical. So the physical layer should be handled by a "public utility". The problem is, I'd really like it to be isolated from government control.

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I think we've pushed this "anyone can grow up to be president" thing too far.
Re:Killing Net Neutrality was fine.... by Paul+Pierce · 2018-01-29 07:40 · Score: 1, Interesting

The fear of a corporate monopoly is misplaced and overblown. Corporate monopoly with government backing is IMHO the worst possible option. The current US Healthcare system is doing more harm than any corporate monopoly in history. We're taught to be petrified of these corporate monopolies taking over our lives, but even the Hudson Bay Company at it's height still had competition; everyone was scared of oil prices under Rockefeller, yet doomsday never actually came. Breaking up Ma Bell saved us from... we don't know.

Has there been a time or place that a corporate monopoly somewhere brought the people to their knees? Hard to find in history; De Beers, Luxottica, and Caviar are probably some of the most successful. If you avoid Diamonds, sun glasses and smelly fish you aren't even effected. However it isn't hard to find in the present day governments that are much more fearful and destructive. It's logical to be more fearful of a government monopoly.
Re:Killing Net Neutrality was fine.... by Marxist+Hacker+42 · 2018-01-29 08:00 · Score: 1

You are aware that what eventually became the NSA and the TSA (along with the armed services, dealing with the research question of how do we keep communication lines open in case of nuclear war), built the damn thing to begin with, right?

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SJW: a person who perceives an injustice, and while correcting it, commits a greater injustice.
Re:Killing Net Neutrality was fine.... by Marxist+Hacker+42 · 2018-01-29 08:01 · Score: 1

Short answer: Because it was designed for them, not for you.

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SJW: a person who perceives an injustice, and while correcting it, commits a greater injustice.
Re:Killing Net Neutrality was fine.... by skids · 2018-01-29 08:12 · Score: 1

The most obvious solution to having the best of both worlds is multiple competing government programs who must offer good deals, or get reamed out and restructured by congress... with lots of firing in the least productive one after some predetermined review period expires. Sort of like a certain reality TV show... oh what was the name of it... just can't seem to remember. But that policy cannot sell, because unlike in the private sector, once the government gets involved, "redundancy" suddenly becomes a four letter word among voters.

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Someone had to do it.
Re:Killing Net Neutrality was fine.... by schnell · 2018-01-29 08:13 · Score: 1

A government run infrastructure would sell access to telecommunication companies to handle the calls. You'd have dozens of choices of telecom providers with different service offerings.
You have this already, no government required. Anybody can call up one of the four major US carriers (if they have the money) and become a Mobile Virtual Network Operator (MVNO) that buys wholesale airtime and resells it. You have dozens of those out there - Cricket, Tracfone, Straight Talk, MetroPCS, Project Fi, Ting, Virgin Mobile, etc. Maybe you don't like the existing options, but there's no reason that having the government in that business would necessarily increase the number of MVNOs out there.
The fact of the matter is that building a nationwide wireless network is about a $60 billion proposition. You already have four companies out there that have spent this money and will resell it to anyone who asks. Why would you want to spend another $60 billion on a solved problem when those tax dollars could go to almost anything else?

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Re:Killing Net Neutrality was fine.... by Anonymice · 2018-01-29 08:28 · Score: 4, Interesting

Government run infrastructure in natural monopolies is always the best solution.
As a card carrying lefty, I wish that were the case. Unfortunately, all monopolies have a tendency to stagnate, and public services are no exception to that. The definitive answer has rarely been simply nationalising/privatising the service, the subsequent monopoly eventually leads us back to where we started.
Big organisations have a habit of falling into bureaucratic ruts that are resistant to change. Some form of competition is needed to pressure them to continue to innovate & improve efficiency.
In our modern capitalist economies, there seems to be a universal cycle:
1. Government creates public infrastructure X that works well & supplies for the population's needs at a reasonable cost;
2. After a number of years, the public infrastructure lacks sufficient improvement and/or bureaucracy becomes a huge drag with no incentive to streamline. Service improvements stagnate & administration costs spiral out of control;
3. The public become disillusioned with the public service & cry for competition;
4. The public infrastructure is privatised to incentivise competition;
5. Competition drives innovation & improved efficiencies;
6. The "winner" eventually becomes a monopoly, kills off competition through sheer market dominance, surpassing the need pressures to innovate, and uses its position in the market to gauge its customers;
7. The public become disillusioned with the high costs & poor service, & demand government intervention with the renationalisation of the service.
Rail, post, utilities, you name it. It's the same story, again & again.
It's a constant battle between monopolies' economies of scale versus the competitive pressure to constantly innovate.
Re:Killing Net Neutrality was fine.... by Archangel+Michael · 2018-01-29 08:33 · Score: 1

Democratic Republic. We elect our representatives. But they don't represent us, but rather their rightful masters, the corporations, unions, PACs and so on.

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Agent K: A *person* is smart. People are dumb, stupid, panicky animals, and you know it.
Re:Killing Net Neutrality was fine.... by Anonymous Coward · 2018-01-29 09:53 · Score: 1

>Has there been a time or place that a corporate monopoly somewhere brought the people to their knees?
The British South Africa Company did a pretty good job of destroying a population.
The British East India Company practised an informal policy of genocide, that stood them in good stead for decades.
The Dutch East India Company fought more than one war, just because it could.
Those are just three examples that litter the history books.
Re:Killing Net Neutrality was fine.... by shaitand · 2018-01-29 10:40 · Score: 2

"So the physical layer should be handled by a "public utility". The problem is, I'd really like it to be isolated from government control."

I'm all for a private company, just so long as it is a non-profit and the board and executives are barred from any subsequent employment or engagement by any organization which has any affiliation or significant funding/profit from any sort of communications company. This includes after they leave and should be handled like trust law where the courts disregard any sort of structure or chain of paper if the bottom line is a result of benefiting financially from money originating with a communications company they have assets seized similarly to a drug dealer (along with anyone else who ended up with any of the tainted money) and go to federal prison for life. Additionally, said communications company gets liquidated with the board and executives receiving the same treatment.
Re:Killing Net Neutrality was fine.... by shaitand · 2018-01-29 10:41 · Score: 1

Just run it with an AI. Most of the jobs being replaced with AI and automation are dramatically more complicated than anything done by an executive now and organize as a non-profit.
Re:Killing Net Neutrality was fine.... by shaitand · 2018-01-29 10:43 · Score: 1

Great, sock puppets.
Re:Killing Net Neutrality was fine.... by shaitand · 2018-01-29 10:45 · Score: 1

"In fact government owned with yearly bidding on maintaining and running the system would be even better with all costs rolled into the access fee's charged to telecom providers."

Sounds an awful lot like the way wireless spectrum is handled by the FCC actually. We are at this proposal because of how terrible and monopolized that industry is.
Re:Killing Net Neutrality was fine.... by thomst · 2018-01-29 11:08 · Score: 2

Yep.
That Ajit Pai opposes this proposal is, prima facie, a strong argument in favor of having the government own the network and only rent its use to the cellular carriers.
Because, with that swine, it's always Opposite Day ...

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Re:Killing Net Neutrality was fine.... by rahvin112 · 2018-01-29 15:36 · Score: 1

This is why the network itself should be government owned but services offered via the network should be handled by private companies. Built on top of agnostic open protocol system it's perfectly possible to have a fully functional system and upgrades at the cheapest rate possible. Your state highway department likely does a fine job managing your road construction dollars and services even though it's so highly political that it can take years to do anything at all.
The quickest and cleanest solution sets up a board of trustees of either elected officials or an appointed (by the elected officials) commission that develops the infrastructure plan and upgrade paths yearly, often with a SIP type process where you designate a 5 or 10 year time frame for state wide infrastructure plans. Then you have a small bureaucracy to handle management bidding and payment etc on private contracts. Then you create contracts that public low bid the management, construction and maintenance on a periodic timeframe with contracts that have set timetables for response times and such.
Management is separate people from the strategic planning though it's possible to have small committees in the management that offer advice to the strategic commission, the broad strategic planning leaves the details to the management under some defined process. This is how 90% of the state DOTs manage roadways within the states.
As a claimed dyed in the wool lefty you exhibit a complete lack of understanding of how this is a solved problem. We've been doing this since the 50's in the transportation sector and it works. It would work just as well in the communication sector and you won't need anywhere near the kind of money you do to build a roadway. Don't buy into the propaganda that state run businesses are inefficient and bad, because that's just what it is, propaganda.
Re:Killing Net Neutrality was fine.... by dcw3 · 2018-01-30 00:38 · Score: 1

Why not treat them as public utilities...I'm thinking of them being like many electric power companies. They don't have to be non-profit, but they are heavily regulated to control their local monopolies.

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Just another day in Paradise
Re:Killing Net Neutrality was fine.... by dcw3 · 2018-01-30 00:48 · Score: 1

"The most obvious solution to having the best of both worlds is multiple competing government programs who must offer good deals, or get reamed out and restructured by congress.."
How many government people do you know who've been "reamed out", and what were the consequences? I've been working in and around numerous government agencies since the 70s, and it just doesn't happen. "Civil servants" hardly ever get fired. But maybe we could "drain the swamp", and see some improvement there.

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Just another day in Paradise
Re:Killing Net Neutrality was fine.... by ranton · 2018-01-30 01:36 · Score: 1

Has there been a time or place that a corporate monopoly somewhere brought the people to their knees? Hard to find in history; De Beers, Luxottica, and Caviar are probably some of the most successful. If you avoid Diamonds, sun glasses and smelly fish you aren't even effected. However it isn't hard to find in the present day governments that are much more fearful and destructive. It's logical to be more fearful of a government monopoly.
Comparing a government monopoly to a totalitarian government is not an honest comparison. In a totalitarian government, there is no meaningful difference between government and private companies when it comes to potential citizen abuse. No free market is going to survive a Stalin, Hitler, or Mao, so including them in this discussion is simply dishonest.

Corporate monopoly with government backing is IMHO the worst possible option.
All corporate monopolies in effect have government backing. Whether it be from regulations, property rights, enforcing IP law, or turning a blind eye to abuses of the law. So when I list corporate monopolies as the worst option, I am talking about corporate monopolies with government backing because they are the same thing.

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-- All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing. -- Edmund Burke
Re:Killing Net Neutrality was fine.... by dcw3 · 2018-01-30 02:00 · Score: 1

Dealing with yearly bidding on a huge government contract would be very inefficient...as is the government bidding process. Transition between companies is no small deal, and typically can take a couple months on a large contract. Do that every year, and you've lost any cost savings you might gain on a longer contract.

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Just another day in Paradise
Re:Killing Net Neutrality was fine.... by dcw3 · 2018-01-30 03:13 · Score: 1

Built what? The internet? Gimme some of what you're smokin'

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Just another day in Paradise
Re:Killing Net Neutrality was fine.... by Marxist+Hacker+42 · 2018-01-30 05:33 · Score: 1

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ARPANET
Learn some history, dude. The military and the government built the internet, LONG before it became open.

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SJW: a person who perceives an injustice, and while correcting it, commits a greater injustice.
Re: Killing Net Neutrality was fine.... by Brockmire · 2018-01-30 12:15 · Score: 1

Wuh? I'm Canadian and know your first railroad was paid by the government. You might have missed the show, Hell on Wheels. Quick google confirms $16,000 per mile was paid to private companies to build it. I don't think the government even owned it still, since they gave the land to the railroad builders.
Re:Killing Net Neutrality was fine.... by shaitand · 2018-01-31 07:21 · Score: 1

And the big myth is government vs non-government inefficiency. The inefficiency grows with the age and size of the entity. To some extent this offset by sheer financial power and the perception of stability but dealing with IBM, AT&T, or HP (especially as someone working at one of these organizations trying to get something done) really isn't any better than government. The only reason these organizations aren't dead already is they have massive clients who are just as slow and inefficient as they are making it very difficult to overcome the inertia preventing going somewhere new. I guarantee you that any of these organizations there are a couple mergers a decade or more old that still aren't integrated and multiple ticket systems and like... just aging and growing kruft. The same thing you see in government.
Re:Killing Net Neutrality was fine.... by shaitand · 2018-01-31 09:06 · Score: 1

They are heavily regulated to grant and protect their local monopolies. See what has happened with the FCC and state attempts to protect net neutrality, municipal wifi, etc.

Also, there was a point I forgot, they also must incorporate net neutrality and be subject the FOIA as a condition of the non-profits government granted monopoly and funding.
Re:Killing Net Neutrality was fine.... by dcw3 · 2018-01-31 09:25 · Score: 1

Check yourself. You said NSA and TSA, not ARPA. I know full about it, my uncle was a scientist at BBN back then, and I've been working on computers (in and around the military) since the 70s, so don't try to lecture me about the history of the internet.

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Just another day in Paradise
Re:Killing Net Neutrality was fine.... by dcw3 · 2018-01-31 09:42 · Score: 1

Um, have you ever dealt in government contracting? I have for many years. It's inefficient for many reasons, especially DoD.
Contracting officers change frequently, so they don't often understand the history or previous methodology on long term projects. This causes churn and additional bid work. Frequently military contracting officers are just out of college with little to no experience, and controlling huge budgets. Requirements documents are always lacking. And the number one reason...politics. On any large contract, there is political pressure to go with certain vendors because they happen to be in the districts of representatives, or states of senators who have clout over that agency.

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Just another day in Paradise
Re:Killing Net Neutrality was fine.... by shaitand · 2018-01-31 09:56 · Score: 1

"Um, have you ever dealt in government contracting? I have for many years. It's inefficient for many reasons, especially DoD.

Contracting officers change frequently, so they don't often understand the history or previous methodology on long term projects."

A little bit but I wasn't arguing with the overhead of government contracting. I've also dealt with large corporate contracting. Both are fairly ridiculous relative to reaching an arrangement with a startup. Largely though, the entire contracting process you are referring to is part of the inefficiency and overhead, the government is just an old and much larger entity than even the bigger corporations. Nothing about what I said indicates the government is efficient, large companies are also inefficient. If you want healthy, lean, and efficient you don't look to corporate giants you look to millions of >$10mil/gross profit organizations that burn bright and mostly die out replaced by new crops of the same without ever accumulating layer on layer of middlemen, lawyers, siloed entities, and management.
Re:Killing Net Neutrality was fine.... by Marxist+Hacker+42 · 2018-01-31 09:59 · Score: 1

Do you know the history of the NSA and the TSA? From their beginnings in WWII? Or do you think they just sprung into being after the start of WWIII?

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SJW: a person who perceives an injustice, and while correcting it, commits a greater injustice.
Re:Killing Net Neutrality was fine.... by dcw3 · 2018-01-31 10:27 · Score: 1

So, now that you clearly know you're wrong, you just want to move the goalpost. Would you believe the answers of some random person (me) which couldn't be proven here? I'm likely much more familiar than you.

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Just another day in Paradise
Re:Killing Net Neutrality was fine.... by Marxist+Hacker+42 · 2018-01-31 11:26 · Score: 1

Intelligence agencies, including the NSA and the TSA, are a part of the nation's defense. Arpanet was created specifically to enable communications between military units. The network *should* be managed to maintain that original purpose, including spying on the users. What part of this is confusing to you?

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SJW: a person who perceives an injustice, and while correcting it, commits a greater injustice.

Can't fault a man for sticking to his guns. by RedK · 2018-01-29 04:12 · Score: 4, Funny

At least it's consistent with his usual positions of "Less governement".

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Anonymous Coward on Monday August 04, @06:49PM

Re:Can't fault a man for sticking to his guns. by gtall · 2018-01-29 04:26 · Score: 4, Insightful

Maybe. It is also consistent with his positions of being a tool of the telecoms. Or maybe he's holding out for a higher bid for his "services".
Re:Can't fault a man for sticking to his guns. by jellomizer · 2018-01-29 04:39 · Score: 5, Insightful

I am not sure why it is funny. But Trumps only policy is what seems to Trump up Trump. He isn't a conservative or liberal, he is Trump who just wants himself to look good. He will stick with the people who likes him and complements him, and will betray anyone who makes him seem less then he thinks he is.
This makes him easily manipulative. I have worked with personalities like this in the past, just as long as you weather the temper-tantrums, you can get the person to do whatever you want.

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If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
Re:Can't fault a man for sticking to his guns. by twistedcubic · 2018-01-29 04:46 · Score: 1

Or perhaps he was instructed to do this.
Re:Can't fault a man for sticking to his guns. by lactose99 · 2018-01-29 04:48 · Score: 1

I think the "his" in the original post was referring to Pai, not Trump, though now I can see the irony in the latter

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Fully licensed blockchain psychiatrist
Re:Can't fault a man for sticking to his guns. by Marillion · 2018-01-29 05:25 · Score: 5, Insightful

Exactly. Pai has a deep ideological belief in free markets. I'd go so far as to say he has too much faith in free markets. I feel free markets are good when there's enough elasticity in the market for good old-fashioned supply and demand to function correctly. But the telecom industry has a natural tendency to be a monopoly due to the enormous physical plant required to prevent the supply side from reacting to the demand side. In the absence of strong regulatory action, the monopoly will ... what's the euphemism? ... maximize shareholder value.

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This is a boring sig
Re:Can't fault a man for sticking to his guns. by Solandri · 2018-01-29 05:42 · Score: 5, Interesting

Less government, more free market is only helpful when there's competition in the free market. Back in the 3G days and before, there was competition (GSM/TDMA, CDMA, DAMPS). 4G saw all the carriers adopting LTE. That's a pretty good sign the technology has matured and competition has found the best solution. At that point, the best course of action is usually to turn it into a public utility. Build a single set of wires (or towers in this case), but don't run any service over them. Let multiple companies provide that service, paying for use of those wires/towers. That competition keeps prices low, as well as keeps a finger in the free market pie in case someone comes up with some new breakthrough.

Electricity is a good example. When it was first developed, nobody knew if AC or DC was better for long-distance transmission. Edison (DC) and Westinghouse/Tesla (AC) built competing electrical systems - entire cities were wired up with AC or DC electricity. Since the government didn't know which was better either, the smart thing for it to do was to stay out of it and not try to regulate it.* Both systems competed, and it soon became clear that AC was superior. Pretty soon all electrical systems were AC, and that's when the government stepped in and converted it into a utility. Your local power company built, owns, and maintains the wires. But in most jurisdictions you can purchase your power from any number of electricity providers. Those providers pay the owner of the wires a fixed rate, set by the local or state's public utilities commission.

* GSM is a good example of how to screw this up. The EU government regulated too quickly when it developed GSM and mandated it as the standard all EU phone companies had to adopt. GSM was based on TDMA - each phone took turns talking to the tower. That worked fine in low-bandwidth applications like voice, but once cellular data became the hot commodity, it was terrible. GSM wasted data bandwidth by allocating it to phones which didn't some or all of it. Fortunately the US didn't adopt GSM and let cell phone companies come up with their own systems. A few tried CDMA - each phone transmits simultaneously, and the tower tells them apart via orthogonal coding (kinda like writing on a sheet of paper, then turning it 90 degrees and writing on it some more - the letters are orthogonal enough that you can distinguish the vertical ones from the horizontal ones). With CDMA, each phone sees the transmissions of the other phones as noise, which raises the noise floor and reduces the signal to noise ratio, automatically dividing the available data bandwidth between all transmitting phones. It completely blew GSM out of the water. Enough so that within a year GSM threw in the towel and was amended to include wideband CDMA for data. That's why CDMA networks got 3G data about a year before GSM networks. That's why GSM phones could talk and use data at the same time - they had a TDMA radio for voice, and a second CDMA radio for data. CDMA phones only had a single radio for both voice and data.

So 5G is a good candidate for converting the cellular network into the utility model.
Re:Can't fault a man for sticking to his guns. by Anonymous Coward · 2018-01-29 06:18 · Score: 2, Interesting

Your psychoanalysis of a man you've never met and don't actually know beyond a newspaper byline is interesting and all, but I don't see what it has to do with my comment about Ajit Pai.
Trump's behavior is a well-documented matter of public record that's been effusive throughout the public sphere, making your challenging the ability to do so dubious, but the fact that Trump himself adamantly insisted upon us doing so, makes your objection even more of a fraudulent pretense. Combined with your inability to see the reflection upon Trump, well, it's quite obvious you're a Stalwart, and a True believer, so you'll reject anything that challenges you devotional paradigm.
Do keep pretending you're not obvious though.
Re:Can't fault a man for sticking to his guns. by dgatwood · 2018-01-29 06:21 · Score: 2

Less government, more free market is only helpful when there's competition in the free market. Back in the 3G days and before, there was competition (GSM/TDMA, CDMA, DAMPS). 4G saw all the carriers adopting LTE.
You're confusing market fragmentation with competition. The two are actually mutually exclusive. Using the same standard means you can buy one phone and change carriers freely at any time, which is a prerequisite to any meaningful competition.
There was a small amount of competition at the chipset manufacturing level, but that doesn't translate to competition at the service provider level. That might in theory make phones cheaper (but not in practice, given that very little of a phone's cost is the cellular chipset), but it certainly didn't make cellular providers any less horrible.
Meaningful competition between cellular carriers only really started when Apple's phones (and, to a lesser extent, Samsung and others) stopped being subsidized (eliminating one cause of carrier lock-in) and started working well enough across the various carriers (eliminating the other cause). That's when we started seeing the return of unlimited data plans, for example.

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Re:Can't fault a man for sticking to his guns. by DickBreath · 2018-01-29 06:42 · Score: 1

Too late. That secret is already out. Can't put the covfee back in the bottle.

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I'll see your senator, and I'll raise you two judges.
Re:Can't fault a man for sticking to his guns. by micahraleigh · 2018-01-29 07:08 · Score: 1

You're talking about the FCC guy, right? This looks like a gov power grab Trump is proposing.
Re:Can't fault a man for sticking to his guns. by Macdude · 2018-01-29 08:37 · Score: 1

I feel free markets are good when there's enough elasticity in the market for good old-fashioned supply and demand to function correctly.
A brilliant explanation of free-enterprise in comix form:
http://economixcomix.com/Econo...

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"Grab them by the pussy" -- President of the United States of America
Re:Can't fault a man for sticking to his guns. by ClickOnThis · 2018-01-29 08:45 · Score: 1

as you weather the temper-tantrums, you can get the person to do whatever you want.
Putin knew that going in.
And he got what he wanted.
Or perhaps Putin has leverage over Trump.
We're all still waiting to see Trump's tax returns.

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If it weren't for deadlines, nothing would be late.
Re:Can't fault a man for sticking to his guns. by Marillion · 2018-01-29 08:52 · Score: 1

Nice. If one were to look to Adam Smith as a spiritual guide (which isn't too far fetched), many people like to quote favorite bits from their spiritual guides which often corrupts the original intent of the guide in the first place.

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This is a boring sig
Re:Can't fault a man for sticking to his guns. by jellomizer · 2018-01-29 08:54 · Score: 1

Lets be fair here. My post shouldn't had been Modded +5 Insightful.
It was somewhat offtopic.

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If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
Re:Can't fault a man for sticking to his guns. by surd1618 · 2018-01-29 10:05 · Score: 1

I think this is just a ploy to pretend that the administration is being balanced about the issue of deregulation, plus what gtall says here about Trump's hand being out.
Re:Can't fault a man for sticking to his guns. by sims+2 · 2018-01-29 10:17 · Score: 1

DC is actually much better for long distance transmission at high voltage but they didn't have the tech at the time to do the voltage conversion but AC was easily converted with transformers so it won out.

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Building a 5G network by Anonymous Coward · 2018-01-29 04:13 · Score: 1, Insightful

for the government use is different from refusing to auction the spectrum and managing the use of it. Which plans are we talking about here, really? Confusion is starting to trump summaries that we can believe in again.

Good news, bad news by Anonymous Coward · 2018-01-29 04:15 · Score: 1

First, the good news: Pai is in the pocket of the telecom industry. So he fervently opposes nationalization of our mobile infrastructure.

Now, the bad news: Pai is in the pocket of the telecom industry. So he fervently opposes net neutrality.

“He” is Ajit Pai by 93+Escort+Wagon · 2018-01-29 04:17 · Score: 5, Informative

Just thought I’d mention it since the editors didn’t...

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Re:“He” is Ajit Pai by CaptainDork · 2018-01-29 04:41 · Score: 1

And, that's really the most interesting part.

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Re:“He” is Ajit Pai by 93+Escort+Wagon · 2018-01-29 06:39 · Score: 1

Honestly, my comment was 100% about the badly-written summary. I don't currently hold a strong opinion on whether a nationalized 5G network makes sense... I haven't put much thought into it.

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Re:“He” is Ajit Pai by mapkinase · 2018-01-29 09:31 · Score: 1

Well, thanks for mentioning Herostratus' name

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Re:“He” is Ajit Pai by jwhyche · 2018-01-29 09:53 · Score: 2

This goes against my rule of judging each situation based on the merits of that situation and not because I simply don't like some one. But I'm of the strong option if Ajit Pai is against something then I'm all for it. I really can't tell if this man is a idiot, just a tool of the telecom industry, or both. Safe bet is probably both.

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The FCC shouldn't have a position on this by mysidia · 2018-01-29 04:21 · Score: 5, Insightful

This just comes to show.... the FCC is in the Pockets of the corporate monopolies who are scared of potential competition.

The FCC's job is to be a neutral technical regulator for spectrum and consumer protection --- having a national 5G network would not adversly affect the FCC's ability to do their job, so why are they even commenting?

I can think of only one reason.... the commission is attempting to leverage the fallacy that they are experts in matters of commerce and infrastructure investment to push the administration in the direction of the political goals of their past and future employers: The largest cable companies and Telcos.

Re:The FCC shouldn't have a position on this by the_skywise · 2018-01-29 04:38 · Score: 1

Aside from the fact that the FCC regulates the wireless spectrum that the FCC would be on.
I don't think Ajit Pai was making an official "FCC" statement here but a personal/professional statement on the issue (given that he IS head of the FCC)
Re:The FCC shouldn't have a position on this by danbert8 · 2018-01-29 06:08 · Score: 5, Funny

Yep, I was against a national 5G network when it was suggested, but if Ajit says it's a bad idea, I'm all for it. Fuck that guy.

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Re:The FCC shouldn't have a position on this by dgatwood · 2018-01-29 06:26 · Score: 1

It's all f**ked. Thanks for noticing.

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Re:The FCC shouldn't have a position on this by micahraleigh · 2018-01-29 07:12 · Score: 1

COMPETITION .. ??!!

Taking tax payer money and funneling it into an eternal government 5G program is NOT COMPETITION!

Competition means get quality-blind, unlimited government resources out of that thing.
Re:The FCC shouldn't have a position on this by HiThere · 2018-01-29 07:15 · Score: 1

I'm not at all sure I'm for it anyway. Is it really practical? But the physical layer of the network *is* a natural monopoly, and should therefore be run by *some* part of the government. I'd prefer a utility commission...and I'd prefer that all members of the commission and executives be forbidden from accepting any remuneration from anyone even remotely connected with the industry they are regulating not only while they are serving on the commission, but for the rest of their lives. This might mean the need for a substantial retirement package, but that would be cheap to prevent regulatory capture.

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I think we've pushed this "anyone can grow up to be president" thing too far.
Re:The FCC shouldn't have a position on this by danbert8 · 2018-01-29 08:36 · Score: 1

I'm pretty far libertarian, but there are things that should be public goods. Transportation and communication methods are some of those. They need to be legislated to remain freely accessible so that corporations can't intrude upon the natural freedom to communicate and travel freely. "It's not censorship if it's a company doing it" is a poor excuse if a company is the only way to communicate using the current communication technology.
Also, GPS was done by the government and look at the explosion of innovation and technology since it was made available to all. One of the few things government has done that has been well managed and worth it.

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What could possibly go wrong? by pablo_max · 2018-01-29 04:23 · Score: 4, Interesting

I am sure that the government would never turn over all personal information without a warrant to the ... government.

Sounds like Lenin's wet dream. A conduct for for all information which the government has total control over. What could possibly go wrong?

Re:What could possibly go wrong? by swb · 2018-01-29 04:31 · Score: 5, Insightful

What fantasy world do you live in where cellular carriers aren't regularly and enthusiastically turning over data to the government?
Re:What could possibly go wrong? by bobbied · 2018-01-29 04:37 · Score: 1

You need to re-read the part that says "without a warrant"... Of course carriers hand over data when they receive a warrant for it, I would.

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Re:What could possibly go wrong? by swb · 2018-01-29 05:00 · Score: 4, Insightful

Which is unbelievably easy to get plus we have no idea how much permanent ingress is allowed to the government or what data is just sent over regularly.
I don't think a common wireless utility (simply running the spectrum + backhaul) would be any less subject to the thin barrier of warrants or any less compromised than the major carriers already are.
The consumer benefit so greatly outweighs the "muh gubmint" risk.
Re:What could possibly go wrong? by Anonymous Coward · 2018-01-29 05:22 · Score: 1

Snowden's leaks revealed that this information is already being shared without warrant to the NSA. The use of this "PRISM" is justified by the government on the extremely weak basis that "only the metadata is analyzed without a warrant", and "the conversations are only stored without a warrant, so that they can be analyzed later once a warrant can be established".
Regardless of whether a nationalized wireless infrastructure would be a good idea, we can assume based on the PRISM program that the government will maintain the same level of data access regardless.
Re:What could possibly go wrong? by Anonymous Coward · 2018-01-29 05:32 · Score: 1

Where the ever-loving fuck have you been for the past 16+ years.
Re:What could possibly go wrong? by Prien715 · 2018-01-29 05:44 · Score: 1

We already have a federal postal system which seems perfectly capable of honoring warrants while not opening every package to spy on people. And unlike like the postal system, individual can choose to use encryption to circumvent any content monitoring.
Besides, it's naive to think AT&T would not turn your secrets over to the government if asked

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Re:What could possibly go wrong? by bobbied · 2018-01-29 06:39 · Score: 1

As I under stood PRISM, it was only connected in ways that allowed the collection of call data as it traversed to/from foreign soil. Only calls that originated or terminated on foreign soil where subject to monitoring. Domestic to domestic call could not be collected.. Also, I thought the program was officially ended.
As I understand the law here, data collection on foreign targets who are on foreign soil is NOT subject to search warrants. However, callers located on US soil ARE afforded the protections and disclosing them needs a warrant. So what happened was that the PRISM system would collect data on foreign targets, and incidentally would end up collecting on US citizens. This was legal because the domestic party wasn't the target of the collection effort. Disclosing information about the domestic party required a warrant. At least, that's how it worked in theory.
It does seem that this capacity WAS used inappropriately for political reasons, but I don't know of any suspected cases where this information was used in a criminal investigation. Which, in my view, is really the issue. Criminal prosecutions of cases built out of information collected in this way should not be allowed, unless a warrant pre-dates the collection. I think this is why PRISM was publicly killed, though I doubt the capability was totally dismantled, but changed to require warrants and specific targets to drive collection.

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Re:What could possibly go wrong? by Sloppy · 2018-01-29 11:41 · Score: 1

If fears of Trumpnet 5G is what gets you to finally start moving everything to darknets and looking harder at key exchange for things that can't go to darknets, that can only be a good thing.
By the time you think you're ready to tunnel through Trumpnet in 2022, you'll finally be ready to deal with the realities of 2002 Internet.

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Re:Funny how Ajit's name suddenly gets buried by Anonymous Coward · 2018-01-29 04:24 · Score: 2, Informative

FCC CHAIRMAN HATES TRUMP! The headline blares

More loaded words like "nationalizing" 5G (never used when Obamcare nationalized the health insurance industry or student loans)

I'm assuming you're joking. The news was full of "socialized medicine" and "nationalized medicine" during the whole "Obamacare" situation. Even "Obamacare" is a term to make fun of the Affordable Care Act.

There was a poll done during Obama's term that showed 66% of Americans approved of the "Affordable Care Act" and 66% of Americans were against "Obamacare". Most informed people will notice that this is rather amusing considering Affordable Care Act and Obamacare are the same thing; just one has a deliberately negative spin to it. "Obamacare" sounds like a term to make fun of a plan no one but Obama would like.

my brain exploded by Danathar · 2018-01-29 04:26 · Score: 5, Funny

I hate Trump and the FCC chairman. How do I know which to oppose on this? ;)

Re:my brain exploded by Anonymous Coward · 2018-01-29 05:05 · Score: 1

Pai just wants another opportunity to line the pockets of big telecom.
Which will sell all that information, without a warrant, to the Feds.
Pai's far more insidious here; it's easy to convince people that the government running a service means the government is tracking your usage of that service.
Meanwhile, billions of idiots still think Facebook, Google, etc. aren't making bank via three letter agencies.
Re:my brain exploded by cascadingstylesheet · 2018-01-29 06:01 · Score: 1

I hate Trump and the FCC chairman. How do I know which to oppose on this? ;)
I hate neither, but you beat me to archly pointing out that heads like yours would explode, lol
Re:my brain exploded by Danathar · 2018-01-29 06:30 · Score: 1

You could look at the emote at the end of the post and realize it was a joke...
Re:my brain exploded by jbengt · 2018-01-29 07:38 · Score: 1

You could look at the facts and make a decision based on those.
What? I thought this was a Slashdot post involving Trump.
Re:my brain exploded by Ryanrule · 2018-01-29 09:13 · Score: 1

The pie shall be cut in two! And each man shall receive death.

Go figure by elohssa · 2018-01-29 04:27 · Score: 5, Insightful

A lawyer for Verizon would oppose nationalizing part of Verizon's business.

Re:"He" is Ajit Pai by Baron_Yam · 2018-01-29 04:27 · Score: 4, Interesting

It's worth mentioning to drive home the point that he works for the telecom cartel and not DJT.

While the WH was definitely on-side with the Net Neutrality debate, it'll be interesting to see Trump's Twitter reaction to this news (assuming Fox tells him what to think about it first). I mean, this will have to look like disloyalty to him, right? I wonder how he'll blame Obama or Hillary for this betrayal?

Trump and Ajit dog and pony show! by Serpent6877 · 2018-01-29 04:29 · Score: 1, Funny

This is Trump and Ajit Pai's dog and pony show to avert attention from the Net Neutrality decisions going on that I can guarantee you is making both of them money on the back side.

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As much as I think ... by PPH · 2018-01-29 04:29 · Score: 4, Insightful

... Trump's nationalization plan is way over the top, he (Trump) does have a point in that our telecom infrastructure is a critical utility. And to the extent that it probably should remain in private hands, it needs oversight and regulation. And if the private owners can't see fit to run it as anything more than their own marketing channel to consumers, then the government needs to step in. And this includes building systems in poorly covered areas where private capital doesn't see the ROI to justify the service.

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Re:As much as I think ... by SlaveToTheGrind · 2018-01-29 05:21 · Score: 1
And this includes building systems in poorly covered areas where private capital doesn't see the ROI to justify the service.
If I make a conscious choice to live out in the sticks, that choice has pluses and minuses attached to it just like any other lifestyle choice.
- I may have to use a well and a septic system rather than public water/sewer.
- I may have to use satellite for TV/internet rather than cable/DSL/fiber.
- I may have to rely on a landline or a satellite phone rather than a cell phone.
I have no right to demand that you subsidize my choice by building out cell infrastructure to reach my preferred location than I do the other two.
Re:As much as I think ... by DavidMZ · 2018-01-29 05:29 · Score: 1

And this includes building systems in poorly covered areas where private capital doesn't see the ROI to justify the service.
Why a half-assed solution? Either you are okay with government intervention and you nationalize everything, or you let the "invisible hand of the free market" coming up with a solution.
Having the government taking care only of poorly covered areas ends up costing more to the tax-payer, since it cannot use profits from high-ROI areas to subsidize other places. And it also means that users in dense areas pay twice: once for themselves through their contract with telecom companies, and once for people in less-dense areas through taxes.
Re:As much as I think ... by stabiesoft · 2018-01-29 05:57 · Score: 1

I'll add 2 more.
I may need to put in propane if I want "natural gas" for cooking.
I may need a backup gen as power is less reliable.
Re:As much as I think ... by Anonymous Coward · 2018-01-29 06:09 · Score: 1

You seem to be one of the fools who believe that we can survive by everyone living in a city or, for that matter, that everyone living in rural environs have chosen to go there rather than having been born and raised there. You want food? Plant a window box and breed guinea pigs. What? You expect people to live in the 'sticks' and grow your food?
Fucking ingrate.
Re:As much as I think ... by dryeo · 2018-01-29 06:13 · Score: 2

What you do have a right to do is initiate a conversation about whether it would be a net benefit for the country to have everyone connected through cell service or whatever.
This is what happened when the country decided to connect most everyone to the electrical grid and the telephone network, not to mention the postal network way back.

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Re:As much as I think ... by SlaveToTheGrind · 2018-01-29 07:28 · Score: 1

What you do have a right to do is initiate a conversation about whether it would be a net benefit for the country to have everyone connected through cell service or whatever.
Of course. But that's not what OP was doing, as you know.
Re:As much as I think ... by SlaveToTheGrind · 2018-01-29 07:46 · Score: 1

Yeah, I considered going down the electricity route -- on top of reliability, power companies generally will only run a line/meter so far into a property and beyond that you're on your own for installation/maintenance. But apart from that, I think electrical coverage is a lot more comprehensive these days than water/sewer/cable so I feared that would end up turning into a sideshow. Given the general tone of the rest of the responses so far, it probably didn't matter one way or the other....

Of course he'll slam it... by QuietLagoon · 2018-01-29 04:34 · Score: 3, Insightful

... he is owned by Verizon and other ISPs.

Re:"He" is Ajit Pai by whoever57 · 2018-01-29 04:34 · Score: 3, Insightful

I wonder how he'll blame Obama or Hillary for this betrayal?

Simple, he will blame Obama for appointing Pai.

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FUN-DA-MEN-TAL by gDLL · 2018-01-29 04:40 · Score: 1

This right here is the wrong way to think about politics. Politics is not i-hate-that-guy-thus-everything-he-says. In grownup-world a not-so-decent person can do good politics (jfk?) and a likable person can do bad policy (ob?). This is not sports where your team is your team unconditionally. Those who would try to make you *feel* it's your team vs others team are using you as cattle.

Re:FUN-DA-MEN-TAL by Danathar · 2018-01-29 04:46 · Score: 1

you DID see the wink smile emote at the end right?

The gubmint needs ... by CaptainDork · 2018-01-29 04:43 · Score: 1

... a whole new internet that is air-gapped from the current one that's connected to the whole fucking planet.

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Re:According to Slashdot by Kohath · 2018-01-29 04:46 · Score: 1

You can actually read the document. It doesn't say they'll "Nationalize 5G" (which they couldn't do even if they wanted to).

It's a lot of talk about how 5G is good and they want to speedup deployments of it and take away Huawei's marketshare, maybe by building their own network. It's low on practicality. Most of the actions it talks about are unrealistic. They won't be nationalizing any 5G networks.

Is this really a SLAM? by greythax · 2018-01-29 04:48 · Score: 1

I just read axios' mission statement, about not injecting hyperbole. But if this is a "SLAM" then it is the weakest one I have ever seen in my life. Just imagine Pai in a rap battle spitting fire like this:

"I deeply disagree with your ability to construct rhymes and I question the moral fortitude of your mother."

There was not a proposal by thrillseeker · 2018-01-29 04:48 · Score: 1

It was one of several alternative approaches under consideration. There has been no proposal to date.

Ruse by campuscodi · 2018-01-29 05:00 · Score: 1

This is a ruse to keep discussions off net neutrality. Pretty obvious.

Tribalism by sjbe · 2018-01-29 05:08 · Score: 1

Politics is not i-hate-that-guy-thus-everything-he-says.

Sorry but for a lot of people it is exactly that sort of tribal us-vs-them mentality. How else do you explain so much of they idiocy that goes on today? Religious disputes are almost always tribalism run amok. We see political parties oppose legislation that was their own idea simply because the other team tried to pass it. We see people acting against their own objective self interest just because the other party says it's a good idea. I agree that this is a monumentally stupid way to view the world but it's the world we live in at the moment.

This is not sports where your team is your team unconditionally. Those who would try to make you *feel* it's your team vs others team are using you as cattle.

Well, when I see or hear Trump do a single thing I think is good policy or even respectable behavior I'll give him the appropriate kudos for it. Not seeing any real danger of that happening any time soon. I'm not being used when I really and genuinely dislike his actions and policies. There are plenty of republicans I can support but he's proven beyond any doubt that he is to be opposed and removed from office as soon as possible. It's not a my team thing with Trump. He's just that bad.

Re:According to Slashdot by Anonymous Coward · 2018-01-29 05:12 · Score: 1, Funny

Trump just pulls everything out of his ass anyway, so when he stutters all he does is fart...

Re:"He" is Ajit Pai by 93+Escort+Wagon · 2018-01-29 05:32 · Score: 3, Informative

Obama: "Mitch (McConnell), I am required to select a Republican to the FCC. Who do you want me to appoint?"

McConnell: "My choice is Ajit Pai."

Obama: "Okay, I appoint Ajit Pai to the FCC."

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LOL by GameboyRMH · 2018-01-29 05:34 · Score: 1

Ajit Pai probably never saw this coming! That's the problem with having a madman for an ally, you can never be sure when he'll suddenly decide to do some batshit crazy thing that goes against your interests.

Not that a nationalized 5G network is an inherently crazy idea, but it's certainly batshit by Republican standards.

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"When information is power, privacy is freedom" - Jah-Wren Ryel

Meanwhile by DaMattster · 2018-01-29 05:45 · Score: 1

Trump is making plans to fire Ajit Pai. Everyone say goodbye to Pai.

Re:According to Slashdot by Anonymous Coward · 2018-01-29 05:46 · Score: 1

Ah, fart joke. Yep... about the intelligence level I thought the response would be.

Re:According to Slashdot by Kohath · 2018-01-29 05:49 · Score: 1

The federal government effectively could nationalize the 5G network by removing the spectrum once the current leases are up.

That would be turning it off, not nationalizing it. It doesn't operate itself.

The spectrum is owned by the American people - period. The carriers bid on spectrum and may use it at our discretion. If we (read Congress) do not believe that the spectrum is being used in our best interest, we can re-purpose it however we see fit.

Stop believing in fantasy scenarios.

No warrant needed. look at recent history by Anonymous Coward · 2018-01-29 05:52 · Score: 1

ATnT was not only sending the NSA their trunk line, they gave them their own room to run stuff connected to it. No warrant. The law hasn't mattered for some time. Hell, they can just do some blanket nothing and have the army of politician lawyers excuse it away under anything they want.

It's not like the public can do anything about it. The few politicians who sound like they will do something suddenly change their tune as soon as they have some power to do something (my guess is that they have secrets to hide if they are not convinced by other means before that.)

And AT&T has done such a good job by rsilvergun · 2018-01-29 05:53 · Score: 1

protecting your privacy? At least with the Government I can have public oversight committees & freedom of information requests.

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Beginnings of corporatism? by Torodung · 2018-01-29 06:06 · Score: 3, Interesting

Some people like to call Trump a fascist, and this, potentially nationalizing what now belongs to private industry to serve the body state, is a feature of Mussolini's corporatism (not the usual government by and for the corporations, as it is commonly used, but private industry serving the corporate (body) state).

Now, I know they're talking about Federal ownership like the way the roads are maintained, but do you think a compromise deal between privatization and government ownership might include the beginnings of corporatism? It just might.

Oh... and Ajit Pai is a tool. This actually isn't a bad idea, if the government wants to roll out 5G securely and quickly, but it is a bad idea if private industry winds up being mixed up in co-ownership with the government. That's not a good thing at all.

Re:Beginnings of corporatism? by mjwx · 2018-01-30 01:10 · Score: 1

Some people like to call Trump a fascist, and this, potentially nationalizing what now belongs to private industry to serve the body state, is a feature of Mussolini's corporatism (not the usual government by and for the corporations, as it is commonly used, but private industry serving the corporate (body) state).
OK, you're not familiar with Fascism.

This is actually one of the least Fascist ideas Trump has expunged.

Fascism is a far-right ideology that is centred around authoritarian nationalism, often enforcing this nationalism by violent means. Although economic systems are not built into Fascist ideals, they generally maintain a free market internally but are opposed to international free markets so they're protectionist, not socialist. In Nazi Germany, seized businesses were either shuttered or if valuable enough, distributed to wealthy party members (like Krupp or Porsche). That is Corporatism, which is quite closely related to Fascism, where one or a small group of industrial elite run the government . National level Fascist governments ran few services themselves, relying on local governments or citizen run organisations to provide most social services. Fascist governments concerned themselves with increasing the military and police forces (mostly secret police/political police).

Now you're somewhat familiar with Fascism, Trump gets called a fascist because he's campaigned on an ultra-nationalist and anti-foreign platform.

For the record, I don't think Trump is a fascist, but he pretended to be one to get elected.

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Re:Only Consistent Trump Policy is TREASON by Anonymous Coward · 2018-01-29 06:19 · Score: 1

You mean other than his son releasing his own e-mails showing him gleefully accepting a meeting he where he was told he would be receiving dirt on HRC as part of the Russian government's efforts to help his father get elected?

Silly me, I forgot that investigations are supposed to release all their findings in real time.

Re:According to Slashdot by DickBreath · 2018-01-29 06:40 · Score: 2

> Trump team=someone in a government department showing someone else a PowerPoint.

Better make that have only one slide. With pictures.

Like the daily intelligence brief.

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Re:Yeah, he made a mistake by DickBreath · 2018-01-29 06:44 · Score: 1

The tweets directly contradict his stated policies and often surprise his staff who scramble to do damage control.

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Re:Only Consistent Trump Policy is TREASON by MachineShedFred · 2018-01-29 06:49 · Score: 4, Insightful

Actually this is very consistent for Chairman Pai - he's a telecom shill and (officially) former Verizon lobbyist, so both rejecting the Federal government from becoming a supplier for Verizon, as well as killing Net Neutrality is entirely consistent with serving his corporate overlord.

He can't serve two masters, and only one of those masters is paying him 30 coins of silver to sell the rest of us out.

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Re:"He" is Ajit Pai by whoever57 · 2018-01-29 07:02 · Score: 4, Insightful

I know that's what happened.

But do you think that the fact that Pai was McConnell's choice will stop Trump from blaming Obama for Pai's appointment?

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Re:Yeah, he made a mistake by HiThere · 2018-01-29 07:06 · Score: 1

The prior assertion was a bit stronger than that. It was an assertion that he contradicts not his staff, but himself. I've seen several second hand (third hand) reports of such, but I've never been interested enough to verify them.

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I think we've pushed this "anyone can grow up to be president" thing too far.

Re:"He" is Ajit Pai by jbengt · 2018-01-29 07:31 · Score: 2

I'm pretty sure Trump would like to blame a McConnell-Obama conspiracy, and hope no-one notices that he was the one to promote Pai to chairman.

Re:According to Slashdot by dszd0g · 2018-01-29 07:46 · Score: 5, Informative

Are you trying to claim Trump is more coherent than Obama? Trump loses his train of thought mid-sentence all the time when giving speeches.

https://www.bostonglobe.com/op...

https://www.theguardian.com/tv...

I love this example of a Trump speech:

“Look, having nuclear — my uncle was a great professor and scientist and engineer, Dr. John Trump at MIT; good genes, very good genes, OK, very smart, the Wharton School of Finance, very good, very smart — you know, if you’re a conservative Republican, if I were a liberal, if, like, OK, if I ran as a liberal Democrat, they would say I’m one of the smartest people anywhere in the world — it’s true! — but when you’re a conservative Republican they try — oh, do they do a number — that’s why I always start off: Went to Wharton, was a good student, went there, went there, did this, built a fortune — you know I have to give my like credentials all the time, because we’re a little disadvantaged — but you look at the nuclear deal, the thing that really bothers me — it would have been so easy, and it’s not as important as these lives are — nuclear is powerful; my uncle explained that to me many, many years ago, the power and that was 35 years ago; he would explain the power of what’s going to happen and he was right, who would have thought? — but when you look at what’s going on with the four prisoners — now it used to be three, now it’s four — but when it was three and even now, I would have said it’s all in the messenger; fellas, and it is fellas because, you know, they don’t, they haven’t figured that the women are smarter right now than the men, so, you know, it’s gonna take them about another 150 years — but the Persians are great negotiators, the Iranians are great negotiators, so, and they, they just killed, they just killed us.”

https://www.snopes.com/donald-...
https://www.theguardian.com/tv...

Here are some more examples:

https://www.vox.com/policy-and...

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I wish Pai had a consistent ideological belief... by alispguru · 2018-01-29 07:51 · Score: 1

... in free markets.

If he was against Title II net neutrality, and also against competition-limiting state and local regulations, that would be globally consistent.

The FCC has the power to strike down anti-competitive local/state regulations.

The only reason I can see for them not doing that would be regulatory capture by the telecom industry.

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Re: According to Slashdot by javaman235 · 2018-01-29 07:55 · Score: 1

Most insightful post here, modded to zero!

https://news.google.com/news/a...

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underlying reasons: espionage by mbkennel · 2018-01-29 08:03 · Score: 1

> Do you really think running the internet the same way the US runs airport security is a good idea?

No, because the internet will be run per the NSA's, not TSA's, direction, and they are substantially more skilled and capable.

All along in this discussion, people are ignoring the reality underneath this move. There is now substantial evidence that deep and sophisticated hardware backdoors have been inserted by Chinese intelligence into the chips at the fabrication and design level and these are in operation, and the government wants to be sure it is excluded. There's likely a big wad of secret intelligence that is not provided to us at the moment.

Obviously under this scheme US residents will still be subject to NSA surveillance---not through backdoor but the front door---but believe it or not, there will be more restrictions on NSA than of course what Chinese intelligence has on surveilling US residents.

logical fear of government monopoly? by mbkennel · 2018-01-29 08:06 · Score: 2

"It's logical to be more fearful of a government monopoly."

which once brought us the Bell System and, in compensation, the Bell System funded Bell Labs. It was run by people who believed in the mission and the service to the country. Those used to be called "captains of industry" and they took their multiple responsibilities seriously.

Re:Only Consistent Trump Policy is TREASON by Archangel+Michael · 2018-01-29 08:29 · Score: 1

If that is wrong, then how do you feel about the Fusion GPS Dossier built on Russian FSB intel?
If that is wrong, then how do you feel about the Attorney that met with Jr being linked to Fusion GPS?

And JUST an FYI, since the Russian Attorney was linked to Fusion GPS and the Dossier appears to be what was used for the FISA court warrant, you must REALLY be pissed off.

Either that, or you're just another AC hack that has a big fat nothing burger. One meeting that didn't go well isn't collusion. But nice try.

You're sticking with the "Russian Collusion" based on a short meeting with a lawyer tied to Anti-Trump Russian based Propaganda. Perhaps that is the Russian Collusion you actually seek?

For the record, I didn't vote for the guy. I still wouldn't vote for him (for a variety of reasons).

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Re:According to Slashdot by ClickOnThis · 2018-01-29 08:42 · Score: 1

Covfefe covfefe covfefe covfefe, covfefe covfefe covfefe.

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Re:Funny how Ajit's name suddenly gets buried by shmlco · 2018-01-29 08:50 · Score: 1

Because it wasn't nationalized. The ACA is basically subsidized insurance provided by the existing for-profit insurance industry, and with some reduced eligibility requirements for Medicaid.

If the government abolishes insurance companies, goes single-payer, and completely takes over and runs all of the existing hospitals, THEN we can discuss "nationalized" health care.

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Any sect, cult, or religion will legislate its creed into law if it acquires the political power to do so.

The real question is: by atrex · 2018-01-29 09:26 · Score: 1

Do you trust the government?

The NSA/CIA leaks have clearly shown that the US government knew about many hardware and software vulnerabilities and yet kept them under wraps so that they could exploit them for their own benefit. With that kind of history in play, how can you trust the US government to build, maintain, and oversee a national communications network through which all mobile communication will end up going through without spying on whoever they choose with no warrants or justification whatsoever?

Fuck Ajit Pai by gander666 · 2018-01-29 09:33 · Score: 1

Fuck that turd in his ear.

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It's about access and control. by fahrbot-bot · 2018-01-29 09:37 · Score: 1

Wireless #G networks are used extensively to access Internet and this would be a way for the Government to easily shut that down and/or restrict access to it. Several times Trump has called for an Internet "kill switch" or other measures. From Snopes (and other places):

On 7 December 2015, Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump addressed a crowd of supporters at the U.S.S. Yorktown in South Carolina. During that appearance, Trump invoked a vague approach to campaign issues as he proposed restricting access for some individuals to the internet:

"We have to go see Bill Gates and a lot of different people that really understand what’s happening. We have to talk to them about, maybe in certain areas, closing that Internet up in some way Somebody will say, ‘Oh, freedom of speech, freedom of speech.’ These are foolish people." -- Trump

Trump calls for internet to be cut off for terrorists
The Law That Could Allow Trump To Shut Down The US Internet

etc...

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Re:According to Slashdot by dszd0g · 2018-01-29 09:58 · Score: 2

That's totally misleading. This is the actual speech:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?...
Obama starts at 6:30.

It definitely was one of Obama's worst speeches as he is reading from his notes, rather than a teleprompter. If you take one word clips of Trump you could make it sound like all sorts of things too.

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5G Net Neutrality by TheSync · 2018-01-29 11:01 · Score: 1

Don't worry folks, with the government running the 5G network, your precious "Net Neutrality" will be protected. You don't want those horrible profit-loving companies running the 5G network and doing "non-net neutral" things, right? Only the government can protect us from capitalist evil!

You'll love TrumpNet, it will be so Net Neutral, it will be Neutraller than Neutral!

Australia by dohzer · 2018-01-29 11:18 · Score: 1

Follow Australia's lead.
Allow him to put through his plan, then wait until he's out of office, change the implementation so that it's twice as expensive for half the network, and make it look like Trump's plan was rubbish from the start.

Can you provide some evidence for your claims? by Optic7 · 2018-01-29 12:32 · Score: 1

Those are some sweeping claims you've made there with regard to "rail, post, utilities, you name it." It would be nice if you could provide some evidence to back it up. You don't need to even provide details, just names or other basic information of examples so we can research for ourselves.

From where I stand I can't think of any obvious examples of government-run infrastructure that has failed in the way you have described. At least not unless they were intentionally sabotaged by people and forces who oppose the idea of government-run infrastructure.

The US postal service is a prime example, where even with extreme requirements (geographic coverage) and unreasonable burdens (pension funding requirements not required of any other organization, private or public) placed on their operations they still provide a very good service for a very reasonable price.

Re:Can you provide some evidence for your claims? by michael_wojcik · 2018-01-30 10:38 · Score: 1

The US postal service is a prime example, where even with extreme requirements (geographic coverage) and unreasonable burdens (pension funding requirements not required of any other organization, private or public) placed on their operations they still provide a very good service for a very reasonable price.
Agreed, but it should be noted that they don't have the freedom to set those reasonable prices. Really US postal rates should be significantly higher, unless and until Congress stops stealing from the USPS (via those "pension funding" payments).

Trump's a populist by rsilvergun · 2018-01-29 14:33 · Score: 1

but also a push over. There's stories of him pushing Single Payer Healthcare in his Admin until he was (almost effortlessly) talked out of it. Trump just want two things: first to be rich and second to be liked. He doesn't really care how he gets it.

This also means that a national 5G network will get shut down for the same reason Single Payer did. Pity we couldn't have got Trump to run as a left wing Democrat.

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Considering who made this declaration.... by Wizardess · 2018-01-29 18:52 · Score: 1

If you consider who made this declaration that Trump's all wrong, perhaps on this issue we must admit, as much sa this will distress many of us, that Trump is correct - - - again.
{O.O}

Re:According to Slashdot by mjwx · 2018-01-30 00:55 · Score: 1

That's totally misleading. This is the actual speech:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?...
Obama starts at 6:30.

It definitely was one of Obama's worst speeches as he is reading from his notes, rather than a teleprompter. If you take one word clips of Trump you could make it sound like all sorts of things too.

The difference is, one does not need to make a clip episode of Trumps speeches to make him sound bad. He does that all on his own.

Trump, in his defence uses a few very simple psychological tricks that are quite effective on the less intelligent. He repeats his message in order to make people believe it, within one paragraph he'll reinforce the same point 3 or 4 times. He uses emotive language to prevent people thinking logically about his point. Whilst this works well on people who cant think critically, it offends people who can as we easily see through it.

This is the problem the UK conservatives have. Teresa May and Philip Hammond are quite erudite, this is usually good as it appeals to moderate voters, however they're losing moderates because of Brexit and hard-line right wingers because Brexit isn't "hard" enough.

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Re:According to Slashdot by DigiShaman · 2018-01-30 01:56 · Score: 1

Obama is the "I" president, using "I" in more speeches than any other president. Trump is inclusive, using the word "we".

They're both narcissists to the core. The differences primary being the current POTUS is an alpha male - he commands and demands attention by his very nature.

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Re: According to Slashdot by Brockmire · 2018-01-30 12:27 · Score: 1

Fuck, that's weak. Let's circle back when Trump does his farewell speech, 'mmkay? https://www.snopes.com/is-bara...

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FCC Chairman Slams Trump Team's Proposal To Nationalize 5G (axios.com)

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