I'm not that knowledgeable about UK regulations (other than the occasional horror story that pops up around here periodically), so I can't speak to that specifically. You did touch primarily on the choice aspects of it, though, highlighting the network portability. Is the entire gamut of mobile regulation in the UK without issue?
I think it would wrong to claim anything in this world is perfect. I believe the regulation is about as good as it can get.
There were issues where people were claiming the companies were making profits through other means like high roaming costs in other countries and extortionate data rates.
Within the EU those issues are being addressed and costs are coming down in those areas. I'm sure they'll look for some other loophole to increases costs on something but hopefully when that arises it won't be left to get out of hand.
Again, I don't think anything is completely perfect so the best way to address something is to try and do you best at first and then just keep a vigilant eye on and fine turn things to keep it as fair as possible. Too many people expect a single quick fix solution to things. I think that's why politicians get away with a lot.
But, to go back to your first sentence, what does that say about the nature of regulation? It seems that the inevitable conclusion is we can have things regulated or not regulated and big business is going to take advantage of it regardless. So, the real question is whether we're better off with the government being involved in market decisions or not. And, bearing in mind that the entire existence of corporations is due to government involvement in the market, it would appear that if the government gets completely out of the way, we no longer have the threat of big corporations taking advantage of people. We just have people that can be held liable if they violate someone's rights, rather than a non-person entity that just has to pay tribute to it's government creator.
Corporations will always take advantage of people. Just look at where a lot of companies put their factories. They're in countries where there are less regulations and the companies treat their employees like shit.
I believe we need something, like the government that is equally as large as the corporations to take them on. The way society is set up now we are dependant on large businesses. How can we push them around? I would point to mobile phones in the US. There isn't a monopoly. There is choice but they don't really compete and mobile phones are one of the few things that quite often appear to be more expensive in the US.
If there is no one regulating them who is to stop any sector from deciding it's better to stick together and keep prices high and if they do what can you do?
The only problem with using the government is that you need people who actually care about voting and understand it. Sure by lowering education standards we've made it easier for people to get into college but I think we've also ended up with people who don't care as much about education, intelligence and as a result politics and the government.
the government is free to do what they want and yes you can argue they are therefore useless but if people aren't willing to hold politicians accountable then why would they hold companies accountable especially when that society loves shopping so much?
There is nothing from 10 years ago I can't use now. In fact some of my CD-Rs are older than 10 years old. If I wanted to I could boot up my old win 3.11 machine and put data onto my newer machines over the network and that's over 15 years old.
There shouldn't be any reason to be concerned about 10 year old back-ups unless it's important data, you have one copy and it's backed up onto something that's not known for lasting or is stored poorly.
Microsoft has all these patents that are useful for mobile phones but they've never released a good mobile phone. Maybe it's time to give up those patents and save themselves the embarrassment that will come about from drawing attention to their awful phones.
Seriously, where is he living so I know where oil prices go down and secondly where are these states were electricity has become deregulated and prices have gone down? All I've ever read are complaints from people while their bills shoot through the roof.
They can have all the *sucks urls. I want to see *ate my balls come back. I think it would be much more fitting too since banks want to take everything of value from you.
The problem is no one wants to run a business operating their network as nothing more than a utility. But that is what needs to happen. If anyone was allowed to start up an ISP through the phone lines, cable, etc then there could be much more competition.
The owner of the networks shouldn't be able to filter or modify their traffic and they should be made to allow any business use their network to provide service. That's all that needs to be done to protect net neutrality in my opinion. If people have 20 choices for an ISP then who would be dumb enough to operate another AOL?
Do you have an example of anything that is regulated "correctly"?
Admittedly there aren't many successful cases to point you towards. However I would say that mobile phones in the UK are a good example.
They are regulated so they can't lock you into anything. Soon they won't be allowed to charge extortionate amounts for chargers either because they're being standardised.
Because there is only one type of network, your phone is yours to do with what you want and your phone number is yours to keep so they have to come with better incentives to get you to come to their network. That means most phones are free on a reasonable contact and you get more minutes, texts and data for your money because that's really all they have to compete with.
BT owns virtually all the phones lines if not all of them. They could have a monopoly on DSL and phone services but their lines are treated as a utility and they have to let anyone onto the lines if they want to offer phone services or broadband. That is the way it should be. You just can't expect every company to lay their own lines. It's not an issue of cost. It's physically impossible without the roads constantly being tore up or tons of wires hanging everywhere.
To be fair if the US regulated the internet so it was easy to switch companies you had plenty of choice you could argue that net neutrality wouldn't be needed because there could be dozens if not hundreds of companies to choose from so there would be no incentive to lock up the internet for an ISP. This is of course assuming it's regulated that the networks the ISPs use aren't allowed to modify / filter traffic.
Because selling chunks of the internet or at least the most popular internet sites would be much more profitable than a flat fee of $20 to $50.
Arguably that is what the likes of AOL and Compuserve tried to do and look at the xbox 360. Microsoft isn't giving people a web browser and expects you for gold to have access to facebook and twitter.
I think the only reason AOL failed is because there was the treat of an open internet and that's what people really want. But if businesses are allowed to do what they want and they all put up walls then what can you do?
Just look at mobile phones. They all act in the same way and no one is even thinking of attempting to offer the same sort of offers you find in Europe because there is no incentive to.
I don't think they're ruining the value of the games. I ended up only paying something like $10.00 for the humble indie bundle but considering I've bought quite a chunk of the games already for other formats (this time I'm buying for OSX) through Steam or directly from the developers I don't feel bad about being a bit of a tight wad.
That and I gave nothing to the charities so it all went to the developers aside form a tiny sliver to help pay for the bandwidth.
That's not really true. The $50 pays the wages and rents for the shop, publisher and developer. It pays to manufacture the game, to ship it and to advertise it.
This idea that the lowly developer gets virtually nothing and everything else goes to a guy that looks like the monopoly guy is past its due date.
That and a lot of developers certainly aren't starving. If it's so bad they can man up and do it on their own like others.
People have multiple choices in mobile phone services and yet the US still has an over priced awful market. No company actually tries to offer anything better. It's easier if they're all a bit shit and the people bounce back and forth between companies.
Secondly how could a free market ever be possible when not anyone can place their own phone lines to provide DSL? I'm not talking about cost but the lack of actual space to put up your own poles / lines or dig your own trenches to lay lines?
It's for the reason you can't realistically have free market water, electricity, phone services or broadband. Unless of course you make the people that lay the lines open the lines to anyone willing to provide DSL.
Companies don't want that because they don't want to just own lines that ISPs rent from them. They want to control everything and if they do you won't ever have a free market and in fact I'd say a free market is a myth. Unless there is some logical government regulation to ensure companies play nicely together then it won't happen. If that government regulation exists and it in fact increases competition then is it really a free market?
You're either implying that a free market can never exist or that Microsoft never had a monopoly or did the government somehow stop Apple and others from competing with Microsoft?
People have a free choice between mobile phone providers and the US still has an awful over priced mobile phone market.
Consumers buy business class service is just dumb. That is like suggesting if you're not happy with your flight options then buy your own plane.
The US government is refusing to regulate the internet correctly and big business is just waiting to turn it into cable tv. Unfortunately people seem to uninterested both sides will end up fucking it up completely.
It's more about lowering the value of a university diploma instead of the value of a high school diploma in my opinion. Lower standards mean more people can get one and the more people with a university diploma means you can offer a lower wage.
I've got a co-worker who constantly spells pretty as pritty, through as threw among other things. I make plenty of mistakes but that's just awful. He has a CS degree and I just think even if he knows his shit how can he expect to ever work his way up in a company when he can't even communicate without looking like an ass?
I'm sure it's not perfect absolutely nothing is but who's to say privatising them would be any better? The quality may stay the same. The cost may stay the same too but it might just become a rubbish road with an additional toll fees.
Where I lived in PA verzion wouldn't properly fix the phone line because they felt it worked good enough despite the fact it ruined the dial-up connection I had at the time. As well US mobile networks are hardly benefitting from competition.
The roads where I lived, despite the Amish, tractors and even tractor-trailers were flawless which I consider pretty good for rural back roads. The government always seemed to be looking to spend money on them in some way. In fact I'm sure they made sure to spend every penny so there was no justification to lower the budget and therefore taxes.
I suspect the frequency in which a road is used and how much of a disturbance would be caused by fixing it weighs in on their decision making process. I don't think that would change if the roads were privatised and closing down a road meant lower profits.
The gaming industry wants us to believe how adult and mature they are now but you'll never see an AO game because everything has to be based around the assumption that not too many parents will get upset over their kid playing it and unfortunately violence is much more acceptable for children than sex or plain old nudity.
They'll strongly defend their right produce violent games claiming adults eat that shit up but it's because it's easier to for get the story and entertain kids just by giving them ability to shoot up or chop up people / animals.
Going after individuals won't allow them to gain millions through a lawsuit and by allowing people to get hooked on their programs they'll want to use them at work which is where their real money most likely is and they have been happy to let countries like China pirate their software with hopes to convert them or at least stop the spread of open source software in high population up coming countries like China.
The internet is an exceptionally important part of the United States' infrastructure. The idea of it not being neutral and in the hands of private corporations is just ridiculous.
If the internet's fate should be in the hands of businesses then why not the same for landlines, roads or even the military? Seriously if the government fucks everything up then surely something as important as the military as well as roads should be in the hands of private companies and quit wasting tax payer money on them.
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Yes, just place it in his spring action arm, pull back and watch him throw it like a pro.
I'm not that knowledgeable about UK regulations (other than the occasional horror story that pops up around here periodically), so I can't speak to that specifically. You did touch primarily on the choice aspects of it, though, highlighting the network portability. Is the entire gamut of mobile regulation in the UK without issue?
I think it would wrong to claim anything in this world is perfect. I believe the regulation is about as good as it can get.
There were issues where people were claiming the companies were making profits through other means like high roaming costs in other countries and extortionate data rates.
Within the EU those issues are being addressed and costs are coming down in those areas. I'm sure they'll look for some other loophole to increases costs on something but hopefully when that arises it won't be left to get out of hand.
Again, I don't think anything is completely perfect so the best way to address something is to try and do you best at first and then just keep a vigilant eye on and fine turn things to keep it as fair as possible. Too many people expect a single quick fix solution to things. I think that's why politicians get away with a lot.
But, to go back to your first sentence, what does that say about the nature of regulation? It seems that the inevitable conclusion is we can have things regulated or not regulated and big business is going to take advantage of it regardless. So, the real question is whether we're better off with the government being involved in market decisions or not. And, bearing in mind that the entire existence of corporations is due to government involvement in the market, it would appear that if the government gets completely out of the way, we no longer have the threat of big corporations taking advantage of people. We just have people that can be held liable if they violate someone's rights, rather than a non-person entity that just has to pay tribute to it's government creator.
Corporations will always take advantage of people. Just look at where a lot of companies put their factories. They're in countries where there are less regulations and the companies treat their employees like shit.
I believe we need something, like the government that is equally as large as the corporations to take them on. The way society is set up now we are dependant on large businesses. How can we push them around? I would point to mobile phones in the US. There isn't a monopoly. There is choice but they don't really compete and mobile phones are one of the few things that quite often appear to be more expensive in the US.
If there is no one regulating them who is to stop any sector from deciding it's better to stick together and keep prices high and if they do what can you do?
The only problem with using the government is that you need people who actually care about voting and understand it. Sure by lowering education standards we've made it easier for people to get into college but I think we've also ended up with people who don't care as much about education, intelligence and as a result politics and the government.
the government is free to do what they want and yes you can argue they are therefore useless but if people aren't willing to hold politicians accountable then why would they hold companies accountable especially when that society loves shopping so much?
There is nothing from 10 years ago I can't use now. In fact some of my CD-Rs are older than 10 years old. If I wanted to I could boot up my old win 3.11 machine and put data onto my newer machines over the network and that's over 15 years old.
There shouldn't be any reason to be concerned about 10 year old back-ups unless it's important data, you have one copy and it's backed up onto something that's not known for lasting or is stored poorly.
Microsoft has all these patents that are useful for mobile phones but they've never released a good mobile phone. Maybe it's time to give up those patents and save themselves the embarrassment that will come about from drawing attention to their awful phones.
You could say that about any language. Seriously, who would use Java if it didn't have a huge wealth of useful libraries like apache commons?
Seriously, where is he living so I know where oil prices go down and secondly where are these states were electricity has become deregulated and prices have gone down? All I've ever read are complaints from people while their bills shoot through the roof.
They can have all the *sucks urls. I want to see *ate my balls come back. I think it would be much more fitting too since banks want to take everything of value from you.
The problem is no one wants to run a business operating their network as nothing more than a utility. But that is what needs to happen. If anyone was allowed to start up an ISP through the phone lines, cable, etc then there could be much more competition.
The owner of the networks shouldn't be able to filter or modify their traffic and they should be made to allow any business use their network to provide service. That's all that needs to be done to protect net neutrality in my opinion. If people have 20 choices for an ISP then who would be dumb enough to operate another AOL?
Do you have an example of anything that is regulated "correctly"?
Admittedly there aren't many successful cases to point you towards. However I would say that mobile phones in the UK are a good example.
They are regulated so they can't lock you into anything. Soon they won't be allowed to charge extortionate amounts for chargers either because they're being standardised.
Because there is only one type of network, your phone is yours to do with what you want and your phone number is yours to keep so they have to come with better incentives to get you to come to their network. That means most phones are free on a reasonable contact and you get more minutes, texts and data for your money because that's really all they have to compete with.
BT owns virtually all the phones lines if not all of them. They could have a monopoly on DSL and phone services but their lines are treated as a utility and they have to let anyone onto the lines if they want to offer phone services or broadband. That is the way it should be. You just can't expect every company to lay their own lines. It's not an issue of cost. It's physically impossible without the roads constantly being tore up or tons of wires hanging everywhere.
To be fair if the US regulated the internet so it was easy to switch companies you had plenty of choice you could argue that net neutrality wouldn't be needed because there could be dozens if not hundreds of companies to choose from so there would be no incentive to lock up the internet for an ISP. This is of course assuming it's regulated that the networks the ISPs use aren't allowed to modify / filter traffic.
Because selling chunks of the internet or at least the most popular internet sites would be much more profitable than a flat fee of $20 to $50.
Arguably that is what the likes of AOL and Compuserve tried to do and look at the xbox 360. Microsoft isn't giving people a web browser and expects you for gold to have access to facebook and twitter.
I think the only reason AOL failed is because there was the treat of an open internet and that's what people really want. But if businesses are allowed to do what they want and they all put up walls then what can you do?
Just look at mobile phones. They all act in the same way and no one is even thinking of attempting to offer the same sort of offers you find in Europe because there is no incentive to.
I don't think they're ruining the value of the games. I ended up only paying something like $10.00 for the humble indie bundle but considering I've bought quite a chunk of the games already for other formats (this time I'm buying for OSX) through Steam or directly from the developers I don't feel bad about being a bit of a tight wad.
That and I gave nothing to the charities so it all went to the developers aside form a tiny sliver to help pay for the bandwidth.
Well clearly that's not just a game. It's half game, half comic and half movie. Buying it means you're only paying $20 for the game.
You haven't bought game in awhile then have you?
That's not really true. The $50 pays the wages and rents for the shop, publisher and developer. It pays to manufacture the game, to ship it and to advertise it.
This idea that the lowly developer gets virtually nothing and everything else goes to a guy that looks like the monopoly guy is past its due date.
That and a lot of developers certainly aren't starving. If it's so bad they can man up and do it on their own like others.
Most if not all the game in the bundle have a demo.
People have multiple choices in mobile phone services and yet the US still has an over priced awful market. No company actually tries to offer anything better. It's easier if they're all a bit shit and the people bounce back and forth between companies.
Secondly how could a free market ever be possible when not anyone can place their own phone lines to provide DSL? I'm not talking about cost but the lack of actual space to put up your own poles / lines or dig your own trenches to lay lines?
It's for the reason you can't realistically have free market water, electricity, phone services or broadband. Unless of course you make the people that lay the lines open the lines to anyone willing to provide DSL.
Companies don't want that because they don't want to just own lines that ISPs rent from them. They want to control everything and if they do you won't ever have a free market and in fact I'd say a free market is a myth. Unless there is some logical government regulation to ensure companies play nicely together then it won't happen. If that government regulation exists and it in fact increases competition then is it really a free market?
You're either implying that a free market can never exist or that Microsoft never had a monopoly or did the government somehow stop Apple and others from competing with Microsoft?
People have a free choice between mobile phone providers and the US still has an awful over priced mobile phone market.
Isn't a T1 only something like 1.5 megs? Even if it's a higher quality 1.5 megs it's still 1.5 megs.
Consumers buy business class service is just dumb. That is like suggesting if you're not happy with your flight options then buy your own plane.
The US government is refusing to regulate the internet correctly and big business is just waiting to turn it into cable tv. Unfortunately people seem to uninterested both sides will end up fucking it up completely.
It's more about lowering the value of a university diploma instead of the value of a high school diploma in my opinion. Lower standards mean more people can get one and the more people with a university diploma means you can offer a lower wage.
I've got a co-worker who constantly spells pretty as pritty, through as threw among other things. I make plenty of mistakes but that's just awful. He has a CS degree and I just think even if he knows his shit how can he expect to ever work his way up in a company when he can't even communicate without looking like an ass?
I'm sure it's not perfect absolutely nothing is but who's to say privatising them would be any better? The quality may stay the same. The cost may stay the same too but it might just become a rubbish road with an additional toll fees.
Where I lived in PA verzion wouldn't properly fix the phone line because they felt it worked good enough despite the fact it ruined the dial-up connection I had at the time. As well US mobile networks are hardly benefitting from competition.
The roads where I lived, despite the Amish, tractors and even tractor-trailers were flawless which I consider pretty good for rural back roads. The government always seemed to be looking to spend money on them in some way. In fact I'm sure they made sure to spend every penny so there was no justification to lower the budget and therefore taxes.
I suspect the frequency in which a road is used and how much of a disturbance would be caused by fixing it weighs in on their decision making process. I don't think that would change if the roads were privatised and closing down a road meant lower profits.
The gaming industry wants us to believe how adult and mature they are now but you'll never see an AO game because everything has to be based around the assumption that not too many parents will get upset over their kid playing it and unfortunately violence is much more acceptable for children than sex or plain old nudity.
They'll strongly defend their right produce violent games claiming adults eat that shit up but it's because it's easier to for get the story and entertain kids just by giving them ability to shoot up or chop up people / animals.
Going after individuals won't allow them to gain millions through a lawsuit and by allowing people to get hooked on their programs they'll want to use them at work which is where their real money most likely is and they have been happy to let countries like China pirate their software with hopes to convert them or at least stop the spread of open source software in high population up coming countries like China.
The internet is an exceptionally important part of the United States' infrastructure. The idea of it not being neutral and in the hands of private corporations is just ridiculous.
If the internet's fate should be in the hands of businesses then why not the same for landlines, roads or even the military? Seriously if the government fucks everything up then surely something as important as the military as well as roads should be in the hands of private companies and quit wasting tax payer money on them.
I know numerous people that use downloaded copies of office and most of which were barely computer literate.