He's going to get killed. Probably only shorted 100 shares.
Amazon is good for America and the other countries they operate in. Amazon is forcing retail to become more efficient. And when things become more efficient everyone wins. The smart move here is to figure out how to compete or partner with Amazon, not to try and hobble it. In the long run I suspect Alibaba is going to be Amazon's top competitor but I'm not ruling Walmart out. The really big competition arena is just getting started -- the build out of planetary logistic networks. My prediction is that one of these three will acquire a large logistics company like FedEx, DHL or UPS.
Little stuff builds ok. It is the large projects that make use of 1000's of features that fail. For example AOSP hits undefined syscalls. And WebRTC fails because of shell incompatibility.
Ubuntu on WIndows is not ready for prime time. Every complicated build I try on it fails. For example AOSP won't build, WebRTC won't build, etc. All of those work fine in a VirtualBox. I keep hoping, but it isn't there yet.
These inventors have been hugely compensated for their efforts. There is a difference between reasonable or even unreasonable compensation and monopoly rents. We are well into the monopoly rents arena. And that's way Qualcomm is the target of anti-trust actions in China, Korea and the US.
You are confused. Qualcomm is mad that their monopoly at Apple is being broken up by Apple using Intel's cell modems. So to get back at Apple the are accusing Apple patent infringement in another part of the iPhone developed by Apple, not Intel.
Personally I am very tired of the damage patent monopolies are doing to the US cell phone market. There are 100+ makers of cell phones in China. Only six or seven manufacturers sell in the US. LTE modems for the Chinese LTE bands are $15, same modem of US bands are $60. Average US cellphone pays $35 in patent royalties. Major cell phone companies like Xiaomi won't even enter the US market. in 2012 one sixth of all US patents were on cell phones.
And the future is bleak. All of these patents serve to keep US cell prices very high compared to rest of the world. This is going to end up destroying the developing market for cell connected IOT devices. The patent mess and high prices as so bad that completely independent cell technology (LORA/SIGFOX) is being developed to bypass the existing cell network.
The goal should be to make things better for consumers. I am not convinced that class actions are doing that. For sure class actions cost companies hundreds of millions in aggregate and of course businesses don't want to pay that. I just don't see any correlation between sticking companies with these huge bills and improving things for the consumers. It is just another form of taxing a business.
I just believe that other mechanisms (like mass small claims filings) would result in more consumer benefits being put into place. Mass small claims filing forces the corporation to send a representative to every one of these actions and actually talk to them. Much more effective that some multi-millionaire class action attorney negotiating with the corporate legal department. Do you really think either one of those groups really cares about the consumer? If the class action attorney cared about consumers, why does he always end up with $10M while we get coupons?
It is not obvious to me that class actions achieve anything other than enriching lawyers. We may have some lofty goals that class actions are supposed to achieve, but in reality they don't seem to achieve those goals.
Much more impact could be created by publicizing packets of info instructing exactly how to file the small claim and what to say. Filing small claims is usually less than $100 and you almost always get more than $100 back. And filing small claims very clearly lets the corporation know that their customers are upset with them. That turns the customers in to real people, not just faceless names. Plus I've only had two companies argue with me, the rest have settled and tried to patch things up. Base on my tiny sample two responses occur - we're sorry, let's try to make things right - or please refer to the fine print on page 31, now read the clause on page 7, next the judge yells at them and tells them to write contracts consumers can comprehend.
These large class actions just get shuffled off to the legal department and ignored as a cost of doing business. I think they are completely ineffective and only serve to enrich the lawyers. Making the settlement bigger will get transferred directly into higher product prices.
Of course filing a small claim means you personally have to take some action which is much more effort that signing the bottom of some form that comes in the mail. In my opinion the cumulative effect of the small claims is much more impactful.
Has anyone here ever received anything of value from a class action lawsuit? My best win so far is a $10 check. Most of the time I never received anything, and a few times I have received useless coupons.
On the other hand the lawyers doing these suits get paychecks of $10M or more. And where do you think this $10M comes from? It is being added to the price of the product. I think it is probably more cost effective for consumers that these class actions are stopped. I don't really see them as helping consumers, instead they just enrich lawyers.
I think it is far more effective to bombard a company with a thousand individual small claims. That makes them have to show up which costs them a lot of money. And get this -- you can actually win in small claims. My best win in small claims is over $5,000. Several times the judge has just ripped up their thirty page contracts, asked their rep if I have been harmed, and when they say yes, he awards what I am asking for. These small claim judges work more on what is a reasonable outcome, not on what is contained in a lopsided thirty page contract which the consumer is powerless to alter.
In one case the judge even yelled at them for putting such ridiculous clauses in the contract. That was with ADT which has a clause stating that if you moved the contract automatically extended three years. I had moved three times so my original contract had extended to 12 years. Then I moved into a high rise which did not allow alarms and tried to terminate. ADT demanded over $10,000 to terminate my contract. They ended up with nothing.
Affiliate commissions are why these external sites are complaining. They want to be fed a giant free stream of easily monetizable traffic which they then collect affiliate commissions from anyone buying. AFAIK Google does not collect the affiliate commissions, they only charge standard click rates.
And a $2.7B fine is just ridiculous. I suspect prices will go up, not down if Google is forced to pass traffic off to these sites since they will only be displaying stores that offer affiliate commissions. Stores that offer affiliate commissions tend to have higher prices.
I'd like to see stats on how much Google Shopping is used. Personally I find it to be pretty useless.
Google should simply make this whole block a biddable AdWords item. Search image
Then if the external shopping engine's bid exceeds the total of the bids for the five items, the external engine gets control of the entire block. "Shop for adidas boost on Google" would be replaced with "Shop for adidas boost on Price Grabber". And the five ads would be sourced from the external engine.
This is a win-win solution. The external engines can achieve exactly the same ad placement Google does, and Google gets compensated for generating the traffic if someone clicks. External engines still make money because they are after affiliate commissions which are far high enough to cover the cost of the clicks.
Solutions where these external engines get fed valuable, easily monetizable traffic for free are a non-started with me. Google has invested a lot of effort in generating this traffic, Google deserves some compensation if they pass the consumer to the external site.
Buy a used CDC-6500. Program it via punch cards. Wipe the memory between each job. I'd love to see malware that can attack a punch card deck.And you' d also have to know how to program a CDC-6500.
I'm sticking with him not having a clue as to what is happening in the FTC. Seems like Trump is in that 30% that doesn't know what Net Neutrality is.
Trump is never going to stop Pai on technical grounds, Trump is going to fire Pai after he anger millions of voters. That's something that Trump will pay attention to.
Why do you call this a Republican plan? Trump is not paying one iota of attention to what is going on in the FCC. I doubt if he can even name the FCC commissioners. Pai took over automatically when the White House switched parties, Trump did not put him there. Also, when you poll voters on this 70% of people are for Net Neutrality and 30% don't know what it is. Republicans and Democrats poll almost identically on this. This is not a party line issue.
Pai is a member of party Verizon with constituents Comcast, Charter, AT&T, etc. Pai is not representing any block of voters.
What we should be hoping for is that he attracts the attention of Trump by throttling his Twitter, and then I'm sure Pai will get a "You're Fired!". And, by the way, he was appointed by Obama and approved by a Democratically controlled Senate.
You are confused about fabbing and who owns the products that the fab makes.
No I am not. I clearly said "manufacture". Qualcomm does not manufacture, but only licenses LTE modems.
That is like saying Foxconn makes the iPhone. Foxconn assembles it, but Apple definitely owns the output from that manufacturing line, not Foxconn.
I think the term you are not understanding is that Foxconn manufactures for Apple; however, Foxconn does not have to pay Apple a royalty for licenses. Anyone who makes Qualcomm chips has to pay Qualcomm a royalty for the design even if Qualcomm never had any input in any part of the manufacture of the chip. That's the difference.
You very confused. Foxconn does not pay Apple a royalty because they don't own the iPhones, Apple does.
AFAIK Qualcomm does not license chip IP (ie chip designs like ARM does). The article you quote is for a patent license, not a chip manufacturing license. AKAIK Qualcomm only contracts with Samsung and TMSC to make their chips and then take possession of those chips after they are made. Qualcomm then sells those chips. Qualcomm does not have any second source supplier agreements.
ARM is different. ARM licenses chip IP to a company like Qualcomm. Qualcomm then integrates that IP with their own and turns it into masks for chip production. Qualcomm then pays Samsung or TMSC to use those masks to make chips.
I think your confusion is that you are focusing ONLY on what Qualcomm does with ARM type processors. While Qualcomm might have that process for Snapdragons, in the context of the story, Qualcomm isn't going after Apple's vendors for Snapdragon chips. They are going after them for Qualcomm chips like 3G/4G/LTE modems. That process is entirely different in that Qualcomm sells the design and others make the mask, incorporate it into their SoCs, etc. Qualcomm has less involvement with those chips.
There are two other places to get cell modem IP - Intel and Mediatek. That cell modem design IP is not coming from Qualcomm. The fight here is over Qualcomm demanding a rumored $10 a chip royalty for patent licenses from OEM who use the Intel and Mediatek IP.
As far as I know Qualcomm does not license chip IP.
You are confused about fabbing and who owns the products that the fab makes. That is like saying Foxconn makes the iPhone. Foxconn assembles it, but Apple definitely owns the output from that manufacturing line, not Foxconn.
ARM is different. ARM licenses chip IP to a company like Qualcomm. Qualcomm then integrates that IP with their own and turns it into masks for chip production. Qualcomm then pays Samsung or TMSC to use those masks to make chips. Those chips are then given back to Qualcomm for sale, they are not the property of Samsung or TMSC.
As far as I know Qualcomm does not license chip IP.
US could lead the process and have it apply in all countries that cooperate. I don't like the fact that cell phones in the US are twice the price they are in other countries and wireless service is is also twice as expensive. It is patent monopolies that prevent competition and keep these prices high. Qualcomm pretty much has a stranglehold on the US cell phone market and is extracting a tax that, in my opinion, far exceed the value of the patents. Even rich Apple has finally said "enough" on the Qualcomm tax. Why does Xiaomi enter the US cell phone market using MediaTek chips? Ask Qualcomm and you'll get the answer. China has over a hundred companies making cell phones, but the most valuable phone market in the world, the US, has what? Maybe six or seven? Ever wonder why we don't have a hundred?
And why are embedded cell modems $70 when the silicon is almost identical to a $3 wifi chip?
Qualcomm probably has sold billions of chips. So it is not true that they don't make anything. This dispute is about Qualcomm using their patents to prevent anyone else in the world from making chips for cell phones without paying huge royalties (rumored at $10 a chip) to Qualcomm for patent licenses. Qualcomm has made about $6B/yr profit from these licenses over the last two decades. I view $120B in royalties as excessive compensation for a some patents.
My personal solution to this is for the FCC to use some of the proceeds from 5G spectrum sales to buy the necessary patents to enable royalty free 5G phones to be built. This could be done through an auction process and patent holders would not be forced to participate. But... those licenses to 5G spectrum will come with a restriction that only technology covered by the government owned patent pool can be deployed in that spectrum. Of course the government will have to buy decent patents or no one is going to buy the 5G spectrum. This scheme fairly compensates the patent holders at the lowest cost to the public and participation is voluntary. If Qualcomm wants to hold out for $120B they can find spectrum elsewhere.
Qualcomm certainly makes the Snapdragon line of SOCs which are used by the millions in many phones. But in this case Apple is not using the Snapdragon instead they have their own in-house SOC.
This is the correct solution. The last mile should be a public utility and brought back to interconnection points. Charges for use of these interconnection points would based on the cost of running them. Anybody can run a fiber into these centers, pay for use of router ports, and interconnect without further charge.
I'd like to see towns stop renewing franchises for existing cable systems, nothing says they have to renew them. Give them five year warnings that the franchise won't be renewed and then conduct arbitration for purchasing the last mile infrastructure. It is not like you are throwing them out, they can hook up at the interconnect centers just like everyone else.
Trump is not paying one bit of attention to the FCC. Pai is an out control representative of Verizon, not voters. The question is, will Pai's utter corruption have consequences at the polls causing Trump/Congress to start paying attention?
The other part of this -- rate relief is generally provided when the vendors are unable to make a profit. Most of the B2B lines already carry profit margins exceeding 90%. This is just simple corruption - remove the price caps so that monopoly vendors can gouge until the customer can no longer pay. Removing net neutrality is also just another way to gouge companies like Google, Netflix, Facebook. The ISPs are hugely profitable, they just want even more.
What's driving this? Verizon paid $130B for Vodaphone. The have to make the money to pay off that $130B somewhere, and US customers are the target. Of course we are getting nothing in exchange for being gouged to pay off their Vodaphone purchase.
I agree, from what I've observed the drive to invent is an innate ability not something you learn in school. Training certainly hones this ability but I've never seen training create it where it did not previously exist. Go hire some people that show talent for inventing things in your field and then surround them with people that can take that invention to market. Also - inventing by committee is probably the worst possible way to do it.
Slashdot Mirror
He's going to get killed. Probably only shorted 100 shares.
Amazon is good for America and the other countries they operate in. Amazon is forcing retail to become more efficient. And when things become more efficient everyone wins. The smart move here is to figure out how to compete or partner with Amazon, not to try and hobble it. In the long run I suspect Alibaba is going to be Amazon's top competitor but I'm not ruling Walmart out. The really big competition arena is just getting started -- the build out of planetary logistic networks. My prediction is that one of these three will acquire a large logistics company like FedEx, DHL or UPS.
Little stuff builds ok. It is the large projects that make use of 1000's of features that fail. For example AOSP hits undefined syscalls. And WebRTC fails because of shell incompatibility.
I last tried about a month ago after that last big Windows update.
Ubuntu on WIndows is not ready for prime time. Every complicated build I try on it fails. For example AOSP won't build, WebRTC won't build, etc. All of those work fine in a VirtualBox. I keep hoping, but it isn't there yet.
These inventors have been hugely compensated for their efforts. There is a difference between reasonable or even unreasonable compensation and monopoly rents. We are well into the monopoly rents arena. And that's way Qualcomm is the target of anti-trust actions in China, Korea and the US.
You are confused. Qualcomm is mad that their monopoly at Apple is being broken up by Apple using Intel's cell modems. So to get back at Apple the are accusing Apple patent infringement in another part of the iPhone developed by Apple, not Intel.
Personally I am very tired of the damage patent monopolies are doing to the US cell phone market. There are 100+ makers of cell phones in China. Only six or seven manufacturers sell in the US. LTE modems for the Chinese LTE bands are $15, same modem of US bands are $60. Average US cellphone pays $35 in patent royalties. Major cell phone companies like Xiaomi won't even enter the US market. in 2012 one sixth of all US patents were on cell phones.
And the future is bleak. All of these patents serve to keep US cell prices very high compared to rest of the world. This is going to end up destroying the developing market for cell connected IOT devices. The patent mess and high prices as so bad that completely independent cell technology (LORA/SIGFOX) is being developed to bypass the existing cell network.
The goal should be to make things better for consumers. I am not convinced that class actions are doing that. For sure class actions cost companies hundreds of millions in aggregate and of course businesses don't want to pay that. I just don't see any correlation between sticking companies with these huge bills and improving things for the consumers. It is just another form of taxing a business.
I just believe that other mechanisms (like mass small claims filings) would result in more consumer benefits being put into place. Mass small claims filing forces the corporation to send a representative to every one of these actions and actually talk to them. Much more effective that some multi-millionaire class action attorney negotiating with the corporate legal department. Do you really think either one of those groups really cares about the consumer? If the class action attorney cared about consumers, why does he always end up with $10M while we get coupons?
About a year later ADT was hit with a class action over this. I'm not sure how it turned out.
It is not obvious to me that class actions achieve anything other than enriching lawyers. We may have some lofty goals that class actions are supposed to achieve, but in reality they don't seem to achieve those goals.
Much more impact could be created by publicizing packets of info instructing exactly how to file the small claim and what to say. Filing small claims is usually less than $100 and you almost always get more than $100 back. And filing small claims very clearly lets the corporation know that their customers are upset with them. That turns the customers in to real people, not just faceless names. Plus I've only had two companies argue with me, the rest have settled and tried to patch things up. Base on my tiny sample two responses occur - we're sorry, let's try to make things right - or please refer to the fine print on page 31, now read the clause on page 7, next the judge yells at them and tells them to write contracts consumers can comprehend.
These large class actions just get shuffled off to the legal department and ignored as a cost of doing business. I think they are completely ineffective and only serve to enrich the lawyers. Making the settlement bigger will get transferred directly into higher product prices.
Of course filing a small claim means you personally have to take some action which is much more effort that signing the bottom of some form that comes in the mail. In my opinion the cumulative effect of the small claims is much more impactful.
Has anyone here ever received anything of value from a class action lawsuit? My best win so far is a $10 check. Most of the time I never received anything, and a few times I have received useless coupons.
On the other hand the lawyers doing these suits get paychecks of $10M or more. And where do you think this $10M comes from? It is being added to the price of the product. I think it is probably more cost effective for consumers that these class actions are stopped. I don't really see them as helping consumers, instead they just enrich lawyers.
I think it is far more effective to bombard a company with a thousand individual small claims. That makes them have to show up which costs them a lot of money. And get this -- you can actually win in small claims. My best win in small claims is over $5,000. Several times the judge has just ripped up their thirty page contracts, asked their rep if I have been harmed, and when they say yes, he awards what I am asking for. These small claim judges work more on what is a reasonable outcome, not on what is contained in a lopsided thirty page contract which the consumer is powerless to alter.
In one case the judge even yelled at them for putting such ridiculous clauses in the contract. That was with ADT which has a clause stating that if you moved the contract automatically extended three years. I had moved three times so my original contract had extended to 12 years. Then I moved into a high rise which did not allow alarms and tried to terminate. ADT demanded over $10,000 to terminate my contract. They ended up with nothing.
Affiliate commissions are why these external sites are complaining. They want to be fed a giant free stream of easily monetizable traffic which they then collect affiliate commissions from anyone buying. AFAIK Google does not collect the affiliate commissions, they only charge standard click rates.
And a $2.7B fine is just ridiculous. I suspect prices will go up, not down if Google is forced to pass traffic off to these sites since they will only be displaying stores that offer affiliate commissions. Stores that offer affiliate commissions tend to have higher prices.
I'd like to see stats on how much Google Shopping is used. Personally I find it to be pretty useless.
Google should simply make this whole block a biddable AdWords item.
Search image
Then if the external shopping engine's bid exceeds the total of the bids for the five items, the external engine gets control of the entire block.
"Shop for adidas boost on Google" would be replaced with "Shop for adidas boost on Price Grabber". And the five ads would be sourced from the external engine.
This is a win-win solution. The external engines can achieve exactly the same ad placement Google does, and Google gets compensated for generating the traffic if someone clicks. External engines still make money because they are after affiliate commissions which are far high enough to cover the cost of the clicks.
Solutions where these external engines get fed valuable, easily monetizable traffic for free are a non-started with me. Google has invested a lot of effort in generating this traffic, Google deserves some compensation if they pass the consumer to the external site.
Buy a used CDC-6500. Program it via punch cards. Wipe the memory between each job. I'd love to see malware that can attack a punch card deck.And you' d also have to know how to program a CDC-6500.
https://www.geekwire.com/2013/...
I'm sticking with him not having a clue as to what is happening in the FTC. Seems like Trump is in that 30% that doesn't know what Net Neutrality is.
Trump is never going to stop Pai on technical grounds, Trump is going to fire Pai after he anger millions of voters. That's something that Trump will pay attention to.
Why do you call this a Republican plan? Trump is not paying one iota of attention to what is going on in the FCC. I doubt if he can even name the FCC commissioners. Pai took over automatically when the White House switched parties, Trump did not put him there. Also, when you poll voters on this 70% of people are for Net Neutrality and 30% don't know what it is. Republicans and Democrats poll almost identically on this. This is not a party line issue.
Pai is a member of party Verizon with constituents Comcast, Charter, AT&T, etc. Pai is not representing any block of voters.
What we should be hoping for is that he attracts the attention of Trump by throttling his Twitter, and then I'm sure Pai will get a "You're Fired!". And, by the way, he was appointed by Obama and approved by a Democratically controlled Senate.
You are confused about fabbing and who owns the products that the fab makes.
No I am not. I clearly said "manufacture". Qualcomm does not manufacture, but only licenses LTE modems.
That is like saying Foxconn makes the iPhone. Foxconn assembles it, but Apple definitely owns the output from that manufacturing line, not Foxconn.
I think the term you are not understanding is that Foxconn manufactures for Apple; however, Foxconn does not have to pay Apple a royalty for licenses. Anyone who makes Qualcomm chips has to pay Qualcomm a royalty for the design even if Qualcomm never had any input in any part of the manufacture of the chip. That's the difference.
You very confused. Foxconn does not pay Apple a royalty because they don't own the iPhones, Apple does.
AFAIK Qualcomm does not license chip IP (ie chip designs like ARM does). The article you quote is for a patent license, not a chip manufacturing license. AKAIK Qualcomm only contracts with Samsung and TMSC to make their chips and then take possession of those chips after they are made. Qualcomm then sells those chips. Qualcomm does not have any second source supplier agreements.
ARM is different. ARM licenses chip IP to a company like Qualcomm. Qualcomm then integrates that IP with their own and turns it into masks for chip production. Qualcomm then pays Samsung or TMSC to use those masks to make chips.
I think your confusion is that you are focusing ONLY on what Qualcomm does with ARM type processors. While Qualcomm might have that process for Snapdragons, in the context of the story, Qualcomm isn't going after Apple's vendors for Snapdragon chips. They are going after them for Qualcomm chips like 3G/4G/LTE modems. That process is entirely different in that Qualcomm sells the design and others make the mask, incorporate it into their SoCs, etc. Qualcomm has less involvement with those chips.
There are two other places to get cell modem IP - Intel and Mediatek. That cell modem design IP is not coming from Qualcomm. The fight here is over Qualcomm demanding a rumored $10 a chip royalty for patent licenses from OEM who use the Intel and Mediatek IP.
As far as I know Qualcomm does not license chip IP.
Yes they do for IP other than Snapdragon.
That is a patent license which is very different than the IP license to produce a piece of silicon.
You are confused about fabbing and who owns the products that the fab makes. That is like saying Foxconn makes the iPhone. Foxconn assembles it, but Apple definitely owns the output from that manufacturing line, not Foxconn.
ARM is different. ARM licenses chip IP to a company like Qualcomm. Qualcomm then integrates that IP with their own and turns it into masks for chip production. Qualcomm then pays Samsung or TMSC to use those masks to make chips. Those chips are then given back to Qualcomm for sale, they are not the property of Samsung or TMSC.
As far as I know Qualcomm does not license chip IP.
US could lead the process and have it apply in all countries that cooperate. I don't like the fact that cell phones in the US are twice the price they are in other countries and wireless service is is also twice as expensive. It is patent monopolies that prevent competition and keep these prices high. Qualcomm pretty much has a stranglehold on the US cell phone market and is extracting a tax that, in my opinion, far exceed the value of the patents. Even rich Apple has finally said "enough" on the Qualcomm tax. Why does Xiaomi enter the US cell phone market using MediaTek chips? Ask Qualcomm and you'll get the answer. China has over a hundred companies making cell phones, but the most valuable phone market in the world, the US, has what? Maybe six or seven? Ever wonder why we don't have a hundred?
And why are embedded cell modems $70 when the silicon is almost identical to a $3 wifi chip?
Qualcomm probably has sold billions of chips. So it is not true that they don't make anything. This dispute is about Qualcomm using their patents to prevent anyone else in the world from making chips for cell phones without paying huge royalties (rumored at $10 a chip) to Qualcomm for patent licenses. Qualcomm has made about $6B/yr profit from these licenses over the last two decades. I view $120B in royalties as excessive compensation for a some patents.
My personal solution to this is for the FCC to use some of the proceeds from 5G spectrum sales to buy the necessary patents to enable royalty free 5G phones to be built. This could be done through an auction process and patent holders would not be forced to participate. But... those licenses to 5G spectrum will come with a restriction that only technology covered by the government owned patent pool can be deployed in that spectrum. Of course the government will have to buy decent patents or no one is going to buy the 5G spectrum. This scheme fairly compensates the patent holders at the lowest cost to the public and participation is voluntary. If Qualcomm wants to hold out for $120B they can find spectrum elsewhere.
Qualcomm certainly makes the Snapdragon line of SOCs which are used by the millions in many phones. But in this case Apple is not using the Snapdragon instead they have their own in-house SOC.
Facebook isn't doing so bad growing in the shade.
This is the correct solution. The last mile should be a public utility and brought back to interconnection points. Charges for use of these interconnection points would based on the cost of running them. Anybody can run a fiber into these centers, pay for use of router ports, and interconnect without further charge.
I'd like to see towns stop renewing franchises for existing cable systems, nothing says they have to renew them. Give them five year warnings that the franchise won't be renewed and then conduct arbitration for purchasing the last mile infrastructure. It is not like you are throwing them out, they can hook up at the interconnect centers just like everyone else.
Trump is not paying one bit of attention to the FCC. Pai is an out control representative of Verizon, not voters. The question is, will Pai's utter corruption have consequences at the polls causing Trump/Congress to start paying attention?
The other part of this -- rate relief is generally provided when the vendors are unable to make a profit. Most of the B2B lines already carry profit margins exceeding 90%. This is just simple corruption - remove the price caps so that monopoly vendors can gouge until the customer can no longer pay. Removing net neutrality is also just another way to gouge companies like Google, Netflix, Facebook. The ISPs are hugely profitable, they just want even more.
What's driving this? Verizon paid $130B for Vodaphone. The have to make the money to pay off that $130B somewhere, and US customers are the target. Of course we are getting nothing in exchange for being gouged to pay off their Vodaphone purchase.
I agree, from what I've observed the drive to invent is an innate ability not something you learn in school. Training certainly hones this ability but I've never seen training create it where it did not previously exist. Go hire some people that show talent for inventing things in your field and then surround them with people that can take that invention to market. Also - inventing by committee is probably the worst possible way to do it.