The author is incorrectly using "productive" (i.e. getting work done) and "busy" (i.e. doing stuff) interchangeably, when the two actually have distinct meanings. Which is somewhat ironic, since he's basically trying to argue that there's an important distinction being lost...which is exactly the distinction he seems to be unaware of.
Once you swap out "productivity" for "busyness", you quickly realize what he's really getting at: the pursuit of busyness without productivity is a waste of time. Which is an obvious fact that most of us figured out early in our careers, but I guess kudos to him for coming to that realization?
No, it doesn't, because you've ignored numerous other factors that likely play a bigger role.
Our first tendency as humans is to reject anything that runs contrary to what we believe. As engineers and scientists, many of us (like to think that we) are less susceptible to that tendency than most, but if a normal person has bought into a carefully crafted public persona that a person has maintained for years, whether it's a celebrity, a politician, a journalist, or even just the church-going high school quarterback from their hometown, most people's first reactions to scandalous information will be to reject that information and dismiss the people bringing it as fame-seekers, money-grabbers, or other forms of disreputable leeches, out to gain something at the expense of the "great" person.
That's simply human nature, and it would explain much of what you're describing, despite not having anything to do with gender biases. Moreover, we've seen psychology studies reported here on Slashdot that indicate that once someone has made up their mind, presenting additional evidence to the contrary will in many cases cause them to become more entrenched in their incorrect view. So, as more and more women gain the courage to speak up about wrongs, many people will double-down on rejecting the claims of those women, not because they are women, but simply because it runs contrary to what they had previously decided to believe. Though they'd never acknowledge that, of course.
As such, is it that we don't believe women or that we don't believe people who are challenging are our beliefs and whose motivations can be framed in a suspect light?
Mind you, I'm not denying that there likely is a bias against believing women in these sorts of situations. My point here is merely to highlight the fact that it's one factor among several, and likely isn't even the most significant one at play.
Agreed. If something is elegant and you don’t have a good way to describe it, don’t. Your goal isn’t to describe why something was hard or get them to the point where they can recognize elegance in a field other than their own. It’s to convey an accomplishment, its results, and the sensations it elicited.
Is the person listening to you a craftsman? They already know what it feels like to make something that’s well-crafted. Are they an engineer or artist? They know what it’s like to struggle through a problem and then find the perfect solution. Even though they can’t recognize elegance in your field, they already know what it is. Put it in familiar terms and focus on what made it personal to you, rather than getting bogged down in technical minutiae. They don’t need to understand how you managed to wrangle spaghetti code or have an understanding of hash tables before they can appreciate that you made everything go a few orders of magnitude faster.
About the only non-techie person I actually try (with limited success) to explain this stuff to is my wife, but that’s because we each make an effort to try understanding what’s going on in the other’s life so that we can share in those victories.
That would make sense if this were an asset they owned. But it isn't. It's still his property, merely in their possession. The government is merely holding his seized assets in escrow until the trial is concluded. If he's found guilty, they are free to do with them as they please, but not until then. Imagine you were arrested and the government seized your childhood home because you were allegedly conducting illegal activities out of it. Imagine if after you were later found innocent, the government handed you a wad of cash instead of the keys to your home. Apparently they sold it because they thought that the price they could get for it was really good. Maybe they were right about the price, maybe they were wrong, but either way it wouldn't be okay.
It's one thing if they did it with his mutual consent, but if they did this without consulting him it's rather unconscionable.
Though I suspect ultimately we're not going to see eye to eye on everything, I appreciate you taking the time to discuss.
Likewise! I always appreciate thoughtful responses, even if I may disagree with them. Also, I'll apologize in advance for my lack of brevity.
Congress has had seven years, under two different administrations and under control of both parties (four of those years prior to Wheeler's NN rules), to legislatively change that. They didn't. IMO that facially makes "never intended" a bit thin. Do you have more specifics on why they took no action on this if it was so blazingly contrary to what they wanted?
It's a few different things, the first of which is that people simply didn't see the need to legislate it. As I mentioned, everyone (including the FCC) seemed to think that the FCC already had the authority back when Bush deregulated ISPs, so there wasn't any perceived reason whatsoever to legislate the issue prior to the 2010 ruling. And even after that ruling, the FCC moved very quickly to update their policies to something they thought wouldn't run afoul of the law.
Second, legislating it was viewed as both an extreme approach and one that was unlikely to succeed. It wasn't until the 2014 ruling that attitudes began to shift and that legislation finally entered the discussion, but Congress had started its ongoing, bipartisan deadlock by then and legislation was seen as an inflexible approach that was poorly-suited to keep up with a rapidly changing field. While Title II was by no means an ideal choice, it was certainly better than legislation.
(Third, I'll point out is that I referred to administrations. Congress hasn't meaningfully legislated this topic in at least two decades, so it's a bit hard to say what Congress would have intended. Instead, they generally leave these sorts of issues to commissions and agencies under the control of the President, hence why I relegated my comments regarding intent to Presidential administrations.)
Unfortunately, that's when the worst thing that has probably ever happened to Net Neutrality took place: Obama publicly endorsed it.
Practically overnight it became a partisan issue. What had previously been a quiet, bipartisan issue that boiled down to consumer interests vs. ISP interests suddenly turned into a partisan issue dividing Democrats and Republicans. As a registered Republican from a family of Republicans who's been following this topic for years, it was a shock to me when my dad was suddenly both aware of "Net Neutrality" and was referring to it as "Obamacare for the Internet".
Help me out with that. As I understand it, Pai is replacing Wheeler's set of regulations with another set of regulations. How is that not at a minimum equally restrictive as what existed pre-Wheeler? What holes is today's FCC actively trying to open?
Yes and no. From a legal perspective, yes, the FCC is roughly back to where it was before (i.e. incapable of legally enforcing neutrality). Practically, however, the situations couldn't be more different.
To draw an analogy, imagine you (FCC chairman from 2005-2016) are coaching basketball and your team (the FCC) is using a zone defense (Title II) to great effect in protecting your basket (net neutrality). Seemingly everyone agrees that zone defense is boring to watch and stifles gameplay (i.e. it's heavy regulation), so you voluntarily switch to man-on-man coverage (Title I) while using new techniques you've invented (policy statements). Some people doubt they will work, but sure enough these new techniques prove to be just as effective at protecting your team's basket, while also being more fun to watch. Later, some teams (ISPs) complain that your new techniques skirt the rules. After a few rounds of a back-and-forth, the ruling body tells you that half your techniques (the half that were useful) are actually against the rules, so you go back to boring, old zone defense to p
Actually, Fox does have the Fantastic Four film rights. They were explicitly stated to be included in this deal, so it's likely that one of the renegotiations over the rights throughout the years (e.g. in 1994 when Marvel bought out the low-budget Fantastic Four film to spike its release, or around 2000 when Fox and Constantin negotiated an extension to the rights) resulted in Fox buying out Constantin's rights, perhaps in exchange for some other obligation, such as being required to attach Constantin to each subsequent entry in the series.
I'm guessing you're responding broadly to points like mine, rather than to mine specifically, since you're responding to things that I didn't actually say. Even so, those are good points, even if they aren't exactly in response to the things I said.
For instance, I cited the court ruling, not the behavior itself. The problem isn't the particular instance of bad behavior Comcast was engaging in, since as you pointed out, it was resolved years earlier. The problem is the precedent it created. When the Bush-era FCC reclassified cable and then DSL and dial-up ISPs under Title I (in 2002 and 2005, respectively), effectively deregulating them, they issued policy statements making it clear they had ancillary jurisdiction to continue enforcing the open Internet, which served as a discouragement against disreputable companies engaging in bad behavior. Following Comcast's bad behavior in 2008, the 2010 ruling stated that the FCC was incorrect in its legal analysis and that they lacked the authority to enforce neutrality with the current rules they had in place, essentially opening a massive hole in policy that was never intended by any administration.
Obama's FCC moved to quickly close the loopholes exposed in that case, and you can trace a straight line from that case to the 2011 policy changes to the 2014 Verizon v. FCC case that partially struck them down to the 2015 Title II reclassification that re-established the FCC's authority to enforce neutrality (at the cost of heavier regulation), each of which was in response to the previous event. Because of the ongoing legal wrangling, none of the companies involved made major moves to take advantage of the loopholes, given that it was shaky ground that they knew could disappear at any moment. The FCC's continued action was a check against the misdeeds of the ISPs.
But the situation is very different today. That check is gone. The FCC of today is actively working to open holes that were never intended to exist, despite bipartisan attempts by the three previous administrations to keep them closed (some through regulation, others through policy, but all in an attempt to protect neutrality). And in contrast with the previous deregulation that didn't immediately lead to problems, today's FCC is sending strong signals that are encouraging companies to leverage the holes the FCC is creating. As such, I expect the companies to take full advantage of the holes as they resume the worst of the behaviors we were seeing tested prior to 2015. They'll give it a few months before doing so, of course, that way we don't all cry foul, but I'm calling it now: we'll be seeing shenanigans again within a year.
As for the false dichotomy that you point out, I quite agree with you that there are more options available. In fact, I'm convinced that deregulation is the ideal way to go when it comes to this stuff, but not at this moment. Were the market in a healthy condition, I'd agree that there are sufficient checks and balances in place to (generally) ensure good behavior, but with the state of the market as it is (i.e. regional monopolies have stripped the ability for Americans to vote with their wallet) and with companies already demonstrating an ability to circumvent the checks you mentioned (e.g. rather than going after customers who complain loudly and might file costly class action suits, target Netflix and other content providers who do business with your customers), I feel that there is simply no choice but to maintain the existing regulations until the market is once again healthy.
The big tech companies all voiced support for Net Neutrality because it was good PR or aligned with their interests. At this point, however, the cause is lost, and, frankly, they’re accepting that while it’s not an ideal situation, it will actually work out okay for them.
For instance, if ISPs decide to “tax” companies like Netflix, they’ll have to do so in a consistent manner lest they run into other regulatory issues, but those sorts of fees would basically establish a higher bar for entry that would prevent new competitors from entering the field against Netflix. Sure, Netflix will have to raise its prices, but so would anyone else who’s just trying to get started, so in the end it works out okay for them.
If there was something to be gained by voicing opposition to these changes, they’d be doing it, but there’s nothing to be done now and nothing to be gained for them by remaining in opposition, so they’ve tapped out.
Yes, I do. We had court rulings that permitted ISPs to block BitTorrent (see the results of Comcast v. FCC), ISPs extorting the companies I do business with to deliver the packets their customers had already paid their ISP to deliver to them (which then affects me, since the companies I do business with have to raise their rates to makes up the difference, which ends up impacting me), and ISPs interfering with SSL handshakes to prevent secure connections while simultaneously injecting advertising identifiers (i.e. supercookies) into all of their customer’s traffic.
Ah, the good old times, right? How quickly you forget.
The only good thing back then for me was that the local cable ISP hadn’t yet managed to consolidate their complete control of my region, so their prices were about 40% lower, but that’s a separate issue, sadly, and one that won’t be affected by these changes. Even so, if they decide to misbehave like other ISPs were in 2015, the only choice I’ll have for broadband this time around is “take it or leave it” with the local cable monopoly.
At least in the case of AI, I think you're confusing overhype for a bubble. Yes, AI is being overhyped, and sure, everyone is trying to slap "AI" and "machine learning" on their products, but there's nothing I've seen to suggest it's being overvalued. I'm not really seeing the sort of run-up that you'd expect in a bubble, and the places I'm seeing ML being applied are providing real value (e.g. better artificial voices, better image recognition, better speech recognit....okay, scratch that last one), as opposed to things like the dot-com startups of the early 2000s that slapped "...on the Internet!" onto bad ideas and hoped for the best.
In contrast, I quite agree with most of the rest of the items in your list, and fully expect that we'll see a fresh recession in the not-too-distant future.
I like the idea of raising their taxation based on their market share.
Wouldn’t that just favor their current approach of carving out regional monopolies that don’t compete with one another? None has more than X%, yet all have complete dominion over their little fiefdom.
Don’t get me wrong, I like the idea of creative yet simple approaches to taxation, but I’m not convinced this one would work in practice.
A simple solution would be for Patreon to allow pre-funding your account which would allow for a single fee.
Exactly. There’s no reason Patreon can’t batch the payments together to reduce processing fees for everyone involved. Moreover, the incentives are misaligned in this new system.
When I buy stuff from Apple, I generally don’t see the charge show up on my card for 2-3 days. If I end up buying multiple apps in that time, they batch them together in the same transaction, saving them those processing fees. And that works out well for them, since those transaction fees come from their slice of the pie.
Patreon should be doing something similar, either by allowing people to prepay, allowing people to be charged once per month for whatever has happened that month, or allowing people to be charged as things occur, but then batching them like Apple. Even if Patreon did the same but then passed those fees onto content creators instead of taking it from their own slice, it’d still be an improvement over what they had (since creators would effectively be splitting the fees, rather than paying them by themselves) and what they’re doing now (which seems designed to give credit card companies as much money as possible).
I could see them possibly having a valid trademark on the term taken together as a whole, but on just “comic con”? That’s like when Apple was slapped down for trying to sue Amazon for referring to their mobile apps marketplace as an “App Store”. The terms are generic and unenforceable.
It’d be one thing if they had branded it as “Comicon”, but “con” being short for “convention” pre-dates SDCC. The university I attended has held AggieCon annually since 1969, a year before SDCC was a thing. And “comic” is simply a descriptor of the topic, nothing more. Without the “San Diego” in front, there’s nothing specific about the name. Swap the city out for something else, and I’d assume it’s a different organization.
The fact that choosing nothing more than a city name for their trademark was poor planning on their part (e.g. PAX East, RTX Sydney, and even the aforementioned AggieCon all demonstrate better ways to uniquely brand a conference while indicating a location) shouldn’t mean that others have to pay for their mistakes.
This is a common misconception. The commercial or non-commercial nature of one's copying is not relevant to copyright per se, and is only one of several tests used when a Fair Use defense is invoked.
Actually, you're talking about different things and you're both right about your respective topics.
The stuff he was talking about has little to do with copyright. He was talking about stripping copy protections, and he's quite correct that the DMCA says it's illegal (i.e. a criminal activity) to bypass copy protection mechanisms. In fact, according to the DMCA, it's illegal regardless of whether you engage in copyright infringement after bypassing the protection. He was arguing that it shouldn't be considered a criminal activity to do so for non-commercial use (e.g. format shifting), and I quite agree with him.
In contrast, you're talking about whether the distinction between commercial and non-commercial has an impact on determining whether a copyright violation has occurred in the first place, and you're quite correct in saying that it doesn't matter much. That said, it may matter if it's clear that you engaged in copyright infringement and it's time to determine whether you'll be going to civil or criminal court, since large-scale commercial infringement can easily be treated as a criminal activity.
I don’t think many of us on this side of the pond would object if you arrested our bankers. I also don’t see why you’re taking this moment to give us a hard time. Can’t we take a minute to be astonished together at justice actually being served? That we’re finally seeing executives receive prison time for their wrongdoings, which is exactly what we’re always clamoring for here on Slashdot?
Is the world perfect? No. Has America gotten everything it’s done right? Certainly not. Did we get this one right? Hell, yes, so let’s celebrate this rare victory together.
I quite agree, which is why I've stayed out of it. Perhaps a later incarnation of it or a different cryptocurrency will fare better, but I'm not getting in on Bitcoin, as it exists today.
Life is full of missed opportunities. Bitcoin—as it exists today—isn't scalable, since the cost per transaction increases as the system grows, rather than decreasing as you'd expect in a well-functioning system. While it will most likely survive this upcoming crash, it may not. And if not this one, then it could be the next or the one after that and so on.
If you know a crash will occur and have reason to believe that the system won't survive one of the upcoming crashes, holding your currency through a crash is an extraordinarily risky venture. Sure, there's money to be made if the system recovers, and I'm not saying that people should avoid risk, but some sucker will eventually be left holding the bag when the system crashes for the last time, so weigh the risks and decide whether the possibility of being that sucker is worth it to you.
Or, put differently, treat it no differently than any other high-risk commodity or stock. Diversify and be smart.
The portion of the costs that the fees don't cover is borne by miners via their electric bills, since validating transactions is a large part of what they do when mining. They'recompensated for their efforts by receiving BTC. In practice, this is more or less a form of arbitrage as they exchange cheap electricity for valuable BTC, and it works fine when the value of BTC remains high against whatever currency they use to pay their electric bill. When the price of BTC slides against traditional currencies, however, those electric bills become outsized compared to the value gained, leaving them holding the bag with mining rigs that are significant sunk costs incapable of delivering a return on their value and that can only be sold at a fraction of what they cost.
In contrast, whether the dollar is strong or the dollar is weak, the cost to validate a cash transaction remains the same: within a rounding error of zero.
I can also hand someone 1 bitcoin without electricity. Put a wallet with exactly 1 bc on a cheap USB stick, presto.
By "presto", you're referring to the way that you just managed to double the cost of that transaction, right? Because now there are two transactions: one to move the BTC to your USB wallet, and a second to move the BTC to the seller's wallet after you hand the USB drive to them. Rather than saving electricity, you just made things worse.
...which is true regardless of which payment system you use, hence why no one bothers accounting for those transportation costs when discussing the differences between payment systems.
If you actually do the comparison, you see that bitcoin transaction costs (per $1,000 equivalent) is CHEAPER than dollar. It wouldn't work any other way.
Come again? I don't even understand what the unit of measure you're proposing means, but I can already tell you that if you want to understand the cost of transactions, we don't measure them "per $1,000 equivalent". We measure them per transaction.
According to these researchers, each Bitcoin transaction currently costs the equivalent of 9 days worth of energy for an average US household, with that number growing over time as more resources are added to the system. The average US household consumed 10,766 kWh annually in 2016, which we'll assume hasn't shifted much in the last year. The average residential price was 13.30 cents/kWh in September, which we'll assume is comparable to today. Taken together, they suggest that the average US household pays about $1431.878 annually for electricity, or about $3.92/day. As such, a single Bitcoin transaction currently costs the world $35.28 in electricity to process. Other places put the current cost closer to $72-77 per transaction.
In contrast, the cost to process a cash transaction is the amount of time it takes someone to recognize that the dollar bill is now in the seller's hand instead of mine. Or, put differently, effectively zero. That's why we can use cash to purchase everything from a stick of gum to an entire estate.
From those numbers, we can say a few things: 1) Bitcoin is (currently) unviable for small transactions. In fact, if you look at the average transaction value, you'll see that it correlates to the average transaction fee, suggesting that as fees go up, the system becomes unusable for day-to-day purchases, making it unsuitable as a cash replacement. A system only works as a cash replacement when it is capable of scaling from our smallest purchases to our largest purchases while maintaining a cost per transaction that is FAR less than the value of the transaction.
2) Transaction fees don't cover transaction costs. Note that the fees listed in that last chart are far lower than the costs listed in the earlier chart. This is an example of an externalized cost (and explains how the system can work contrary to your claim that it can't work any other way), where someone else is paying for something you're doing. In the case of Bitcoin, it's the miners who are paying the remainder of the costs for each transaction (i.e. their electric bills), but they're paying those electric bills in USD, EUR, GBP, and similar currencies, rather than BTC, which means that their electric bills don't track with fluctuations in the value of BTC. This isn't a problem when BTC valuations are high, since additional miners join in to take advantage of the imbalance (this is more or less a form of arbitrage, exchanging cheap electricity for more valuable BTC). Unfortunately, when BTC valuations slide against the other currencies this becomes a major problem for those miners. Their rigs become sunk costs that are incapable of producing a return on their value and can only be sold for a fraction of what they cost.
3) Transaction costs can exceed their benefits. If you want to buy $15 in groceries and are told every transaction has a $75 fee to confirm your purchase, you won't buy those groceries. You'll wait until you need a lot more before you make the purchase. That's both a good thing (the system discourages wasteful activity) and a bad thing (why are small transactions wasteful in the first place?). If, however, you're told that the cost to confirm the transaction is merely $7.50, you
It's time for Hollywood's free cash cow to dry up. There's absolutely no reason cable TV should cost $100+.
I remember a time when cable cost $30 a month for about 60-70ish channels. Maybe their overpaid actors and production staff will take a pay cut if they want to survive/sarcasm
Swap “channels” for “mbps” and you’ll suddenly realize it’s actually just more of the same. You’re paying the same people. You just swapped the product. Give it a few years and you’ll be thinking fondly of what you paid back, well, now.
Meanwhile, Hollywood is laughing all the way to the bank. Though the indie scene has been exploding in popularity, Hollywood itself has still been producing roughly the same number of feature length films each year for the last three decades, with no signs of slowing down. With cable TV on the way out and streaming on demand on the way in, companies like Disney are able to directly monetize their catalogs without the middle men. Which is exactly what Disney is doing, what with their announcement that they’re pulling their content from Netflix and moving it to their own streaming service in the next year or two.
So sure, I agree that there’s no reason it should cost what it does. There’s also no reason my cable ISP charges me 2x what it charged two years ago, even though my plan hasn’t changed. Well, other than the fact that the sole DSL competitor in the area got bought out and then scaled back its operations around that time, leaving us with 0 broadband alternatives.
I quite agree that if someone owned enough of the real estate market they'd have the same problem, but that actually gets at the point I was making.
The sort of thing we're talking about here—where a person owns so much of something that the sale of some devalues the price of the rest—is essentially never a problem in real estate due to the size, diversity, and maturity of the market, yet it IS a problem in cryptocurrencies and stocks, where a single person can own or control a large amount. Were the situations the same, you're right, they'd have the same problem, but the situations aren't the same, hence the problem.
Slashdot Mirror
The author is incorrectly using "productive" (i.e. getting work done) and "busy" (i.e. doing stuff) interchangeably, when the two actually have distinct meanings. Which is somewhat ironic, since he's basically trying to argue that there's an important distinction being lost...which is exactly the distinction he seems to be unaware of.
Once you swap out "productivity" for "busyness", you quickly realize what he's really getting at: the pursuit of busyness without productivity is a waste of time. Which is an obvious fact that most of us figured out early in our careers, but I guess kudos to him for coming to that realization?
This sadly explains a lot about us as a culture.
No, it doesn't, because you've ignored numerous other factors that likely play a bigger role.
Our first tendency as humans is to reject anything that runs contrary to what we believe. As engineers and scientists, many of us (like to think that we) are less susceptible to that tendency than most, but if a normal person has bought into a carefully crafted public persona that a person has maintained for years, whether it's a celebrity, a politician, a journalist, or even just the church-going high school quarterback from their hometown, most people's first reactions to scandalous information will be to reject that information and dismiss the people bringing it as fame-seekers, money-grabbers, or other forms of disreputable leeches, out to gain something at the expense of the "great" person.
That's simply human nature, and it would explain much of what you're describing, despite not having anything to do with gender biases. Moreover, we've seen psychology studies reported here on Slashdot that indicate that once someone has made up their mind, presenting additional evidence to the contrary will in many cases cause them to become more entrenched in their incorrect view. So, as more and more women gain the courage to speak up about wrongs, many people will double-down on rejecting the claims of those women, not because they are women, but simply because it runs contrary to what they had previously decided to believe. Though they'd never acknowledge that, of course.
As such, is it that we don't believe women or that we don't believe people who are challenging are our beliefs and whose motivations can be framed in a suspect light?
Mind you, I'm not denying that there likely is a bias against believing women in these sorts of situations. My point here is merely to highlight the fact that it's one factor among several, and likely isn't even the most significant one at play.
This one literally made me laugh out loud. Though, surely he would eventually break (his bank account) and have to return (home)?
Agreed. If something is elegant and you don’t have a good way to describe it, don’t. Your goal isn’t to describe why something was hard or get them to the point where they can recognize elegance in a field other than their own. It’s to convey an accomplishment, its results, and the sensations it elicited.
Is the person listening to you a craftsman? They already know what it feels like to make something that’s well-crafted. Are they an engineer or artist? They know what it’s like to struggle through a problem and then find the perfect solution. Even though they can’t recognize elegance in your field, they already know what it is. Put it in familiar terms and focus on what made it personal to you, rather than getting bogged down in technical minutiae. They don’t need to understand how you managed to wrangle spaghetti code or have an understanding of hash tables before they can appreciate that you made everything go a few orders of magnitude faster.
About the only non-techie person I actually try (with limited success) to explain this stuff to is my wife, but that’s because we each make an effort to try understanding what’s going on in the other’s life so that we can share in those victories.
That would make sense if this were an asset they owned. But it isn't. It's still his property, merely in their possession. The government is merely holding his seized assets in escrow until the trial is concluded. If he's found guilty, they are free to do with them as they please, but not until then. Imagine you were arrested and the government seized your childhood home because you were allegedly conducting illegal activities out of it. Imagine if after you were later found innocent, the government handed you a wad of cash instead of the keys to your home. Apparently they sold it because they thought that the price they could get for it was really good. Maybe they were right about the price, maybe they were wrong, but either way it wouldn't be okay.
It's one thing if they did it with his mutual consent, but if they did this without consulting him it's rather unconscionable.
Though I suspect ultimately we're not going to see eye to eye on everything, I appreciate you taking the time to discuss.
Likewise! I always appreciate thoughtful responses, even if I may disagree with them. Also, I'll apologize in advance for my lack of brevity.
Congress has had seven years, under two different administrations and under control of both parties (four of those years prior to Wheeler's NN rules), to legislatively change that. They didn't. IMO that facially makes "never intended" a bit thin. Do you have more specifics on why they took no action on this if it was so blazingly contrary to what they wanted?
It's a few different things, the first of which is that people simply didn't see the need to legislate it. As I mentioned, everyone (including the FCC) seemed to think that the FCC already had the authority back when Bush deregulated ISPs, so there wasn't any perceived reason whatsoever to legislate the issue prior to the 2010 ruling. And even after that ruling, the FCC moved very quickly to update their policies to something they thought wouldn't run afoul of the law.
Second, legislating it was viewed as both an extreme approach and one that was unlikely to succeed. It wasn't until the 2014 ruling that attitudes began to shift and that legislation finally entered the discussion, but Congress had started its ongoing, bipartisan deadlock by then and legislation was seen as an inflexible approach that was poorly-suited to keep up with a rapidly changing field. While Title II was by no means an ideal choice, it was certainly better than legislation.
(Third, I'll point out is that I referred to administrations. Congress hasn't meaningfully legislated this topic in at least two decades, so it's a bit hard to say what Congress would have intended. Instead, they generally leave these sorts of issues to commissions and agencies under the control of the President, hence why I relegated my comments regarding intent to Presidential administrations.)
Unfortunately, that's when the worst thing that has probably ever happened to Net Neutrality took place: Obama publicly endorsed it.
Practically overnight it became a partisan issue. What had previously been a quiet, bipartisan issue that boiled down to consumer interests vs. ISP interests suddenly turned into a partisan issue dividing Democrats and Republicans. As a registered Republican from a family of Republicans who's been following this topic for years, it was a shock to me when my dad was suddenly both aware of "Net Neutrality" and was referring to it as "Obamacare for the Internet".
Help me out with that. As I understand it, Pai is replacing Wheeler's set of regulations with another set of regulations. How is that not at a minimum equally restrictive as what existed pre-Wheeler? What holes is today's FCC actively trying to open?
Yes and no. From a legal perspective, yes, the FCC is roughly back to where it was before (i.e. incapable of legally enforcing neutrality). Practically, however, the situations couldn't be more different.
To draw an analogy, imagine you (FCC chairman from 2005-2016) are coaching basketball and your team (the FCC) is using a zone defense (Title II) to great effect in protecting your basket (net neutrality). Seemingly everyone agrees that zone defense is boring to watch and stifles gameplay (i.e. it's heavy regulation), so you voluntarily switch to man-on-man coverage (Title I) while using new techniques you've invented (policy statements). Some people doubt they will work, but sure enough these new techniques prove to be just as effective at protecting your team's basket, while also being more fun to watch. Later, some teams (ISPs) complain that your new techniques skirt the rules. After a few rounds of a back-and-forth, the ruling body tells you that half your techniques (the half that were useful) are actually against the rules, so you go back to boring, old zone defense to p
Actually, Fox does have the Fantastic Four film rights. They were explicitly stated to be included in this deal, so it's likely that one of the renegotiations over the rights throughout the years (e.g. in 1994 when Marvel bought out the low-budget Fantastic Four film to spike its release, or around 2000 when Fox and Constantin negotiated an extension to the rights) resulted in Fox buying out Constantin's rights, perhaps in exchange for some other obligation, such as being required to attach Constantin to each subsequent entry in the series.
I'm guessing you're responding broadly to points like mine, rather than to mine specifically, since you're responding to things that I didn't actually say. Even so, those are good points, even if they aren't exactly in response to the things I said.
For instance, I cited the court ruling, not the behavior itself. The problem isn't the particular instance of bad behavior Comcast was engaging in, since as you pointed out, it was resolved years earlier. The problem is the precedent it created. When the Bush-era FCC reclassified cable and then DSL and dial-up ISPs under Title I (in 2002 and 2005, respectively), effectively deregulating them, they issued policy statements making it clear they had ancillary jurisdiction to continue enforcing the open Internet, which served as a discouragement against disreputable companies engaging in bad behavior. Following Comcast's bad behavior in 2008, the 2010 ruling stated that the FCC was incorrect in its legal analysis and that they lacked the authority to enforce neutrality with the current rules they had in place, essentially opening a massive hole in policy that was never intended by any administration.
Obama's FCC moved to quickly close the loopholes exposed in that case, and you can trace a straight line from that case to the 2011 policy changes to the 2014 Verizon v. FCC case that partially struck them down to the 2015 Title II reclassification that re-established the FCC's authority to enforce neutrality (at the cost of heavier regulation), each of which was in response to the previous event. Because of the ongoing legal wrangling, none of the companies involved made major moves to take advantage of the loopholes, given that it was shaky ground that they knew could disappear at any moment. The FCC's continued action was a check against the misdeeds of the ISPs.
But the situation is very different today. That check is gone. The FCC of today is actively working to open holes that were never intended to exist, despite bipartisan attempts by the three previous administrations to keep them closed (some through regulation, others through policy, but all in an attempt to protect neutrality). And in contrast with the previous deregulation that didn't immediately lead to problems, today's FCC is sending strong signals that are encouraging companies to leverage the holes the FCC is creating. As such, I expect the companies to take full advantage of the holes as they resume the worst of the behaviors we were seeing tested prior to 2015. They'll give it a few months before doing so, of course, that way we don't all cry foul, but I'm calling it now: we'll be seeing shenanigans again within a year.
As for the false dichotomy that you point out, I quite agree with you that there are more options available. In fact, I'm convinced that deregulation is the ideal way to go when it comes to this stuff, but not at this moment. Were the market in a healthy condition, I'd agree that there are sufficient checks and balances in place to (generally) ensure good behavior, but with the state of the market as it is (i.e. regional monopolies have stripped the ability for Americans to vote with their wallet) and with companies already demonstrating an ability to circumvent the checks you mentioned (e.g. rather than going after customers who complain loudly and might file costly class action suits, target Netflix and other content providers who do business with your customers), I feel that there is simply no choice but to maintain the existing regulations until the market is once again healthy.
The big tech companies all voiced support for Net Neutrality because it was good PR or aligned with their interests. At this point, however, the cause is lost, and, frankly, they’re accepting that while it’s not an ideal situation, it will actually work out okay for them.
For instance, if ISPs decide to “tax” companies like Netflix, they’ll have to do so in a consistent manner lest they run into other regulatory issues, but those sorts of fees would basically establish a higher bar for entry that would prevent new competitors from entering the field against Netflix. Sure, Netflix will have to raise its prices, but so would anyone else who’s just trying to get started, so in the end it works out okay for them.
If there was something to be gained by voicing opposition to these changes, they’d be doing it, but there’s nothing to be done now and nothing to be gained for them by remaining in opposition, so they’ve tapped out.
Yes, I do. We had court rulings that permitted ISPs to block BitTorrent (see the results of Comcast v. FCC), ISPs extorting the companies I do business with to deliver the packets their customers had already paid their ISP to deliver to them (which then affects me, since the companies I do business with have to raise their rates to makes up the difference, which ends up impacting me), and ISPs interfering with SSL handshakes to prevent secure connections while simultaneously injecting advertising identifiers (i.e. supercookies) into all of their customer’s traffic.
Ah, the good old times, right? How quickly you forget.
The only good thing back then for me was that the local cable ISP hadn’t yet managed to consolidate their complete control of my region, so their prices were about 40% lower, but that’s a separate issue, sadly, and one that won’t be affected by these changes. Even so, if they decide to misbehave like other ISPs were in 2015, the only choice I’ll have for broadband this time around is “take it or leave it” with the local cable monopoly.
At least in the case of AI, I think you're confusing overhype for a bubble. Yes, AI is being overhyped, and sure, everyone is trying to slap "AI" and "machine learning" on their products, but there's nothing I've seen to suggest it's being overvalued. I'm not really seeing the sort of run-up that you'd expect in a bubble, and the places I'm seeing ML being applied are providing real value (e.g. better artificial voices, better image recognition, better speech recognit....okay, scratch that last one), as opposed to things like the dot-com startups of the early 2000s that slapped "...on the Internet!" onto bad ideas and hoped for the best.
In contrast, I quite agree with most of the rest of the items in your list, and fully expect that we'll see a fresh recession in the not-too-distant future.
I like the idea of raising their taxation based on their market share.
Wouldn’t that just favor their current approach of carving out regional monopolies that don’t compete with one another? None has more than X%, yet all have complete dominion over their little fiefdom.
Don’t get me wrong, I like the idea of creative yet simple approaches to taxation, but I’m not convinced this one would work in practice.
A simple solution would be for Patreon to allow pre-funding your account which would allow for a single fee.
Exactly. There’s no reason Patreon can’t batch the payments together to reduce processing fees for everyone involved. Moreover, the incentives are misaligned in this new system.
When I buy stuff from Apple, I generally don’t see the charge show up on my card for 2-3 days. If I end up buying multiple apps in that time, they batch them together in the same transaction, saving them those processing fees. And that works out well for them, since those transaction fees come from their slice of the pie.
Patreon should be doing something similar, either by allowing people to prepay, allowing people to be charged once per month for whatever has happened that month, or allowing people to be charged as things occur, but then batching them like Apple. Even if Patreon did the same but then passed those fees onto content creators instead of taking it from their own slice, it’d still be an improvement over what they had (since creators would effectively be splitting the fees, rather than paying them by themselves) and what they’re doing now (which seems designed to give credit card companies as much money as possible).
I could see them possibly having a valid trademark on the term taken together as a whole, but on just “comic con”? That’s like when Apple was slapped down for trying to sue Amazon for referring to their mobile apps marketplace as an “App Store”. The terms are generic and unenforceable.
It’d be one thing if they had branded it as “Comicon”, but “con” being short for “convention” pre-dates SDCC. The university I attended has held AggieCon annually since 1969, a year before SDCC was a thing. And “comic” is simply a descriptor of the topic, nothing more. Without the “San Diego” in front, there’s nothing specific about the name. Swap the city out for something else, and I’d assume it’s a different organization.
The fact that choosing nothing more than a city name for their trademark was poor planning on their part (e.g. PAX East, RTX Sydney, and even the aforementioned AggieCon all demonstrate better ways to uniquely brand a conference while indicating a location) shouldn’t mean that others have to pay for their mistakes.
This is a common misconception. The commercial or non-commercial nature of one's copying is not relevant to copyright per se, and is only one of several tests used when a Fair Use defense is invoked.
Actually, you're talking about different things and you're both right about your respective topics.
The stuff he was talking about has little to do with copyright. He was talking about stripping copy protections, and he's quite correct that the DMCA says it's illegal (i.e. a criminal activity) to bypass copy protection mechanisms. In fact, according to the DMCA, it's illegal regardless of whether you engage in copyright infringement after bypassing the protection. He was arguing that it shouldn't be considered a criminal activity to do so for non-commercial use (e.g. format shifting), and I quite agree with him.
In contrast, you're talking about whether the distinction between commercial and non-commercial has an impact on determining whether a copyright violation has occurred in the first place, and you're quite correct in saying that it doesn't matter much. That said, it may matter if it's clear that you engaged in copyright infringement and it's time to determine whether you'll be going to civil or criminal court, since large-scale commercial infringement can easily be treated as a criminal activity.
I don’t think many of us on this side of the pond would object if you arrested our bankers. I also don’t see why you’re taking this moment to give us a hard time. Can’t we take a minute to be astonished together at justice actually being served? That we’re finally seeing executives receive prison time for their wrongdoings, which is exactly what we’re always clamoring for here on Slashdot?
Is the world perfect? No. Has America gotten everything it’s done right? Certainly not. Did we get this one right? Hell, yes, so let’s celebrate this rare victory together.
I quite agree, which is why I've stayed out of it. Perhaps a later incarnation of it or a different cryptocurrency will fare better, but I'm not getting in on Bitcoin, as it exists today.
Life is full of missed opportunities. Bitcoin—as it exists today—isn't scalable, since the cost per transaction increases as the system grows, rather than decreasing as you'd expect in a well-functioning system. While it will most likely survive this upcoming crash, it may not. And if not this one, then it could be the next or the one after that and so on.
If you know a crash will occur and have reason to believe that the system won't survive one of the upcoming crashes, holding your currency through a crash is an extraordinarily risky venture. Sure, there's money to be made if the system recovers, and I'm not saying that people should avoid risk, but some sucker will eventually be left holding the bag when the system crashes for the last time, so weigh the risks and decide whether the possibility of being that sucker is worth it to you.
Or, put differently, treat it no differently than any other high-risk commodity or stock. Diversify and be smart.
Transaction costs are NOT fixed. They grow as the system grows. Perhaps you're thinking of transaction fees? They grow too, but they don't cover all of the transaction costs.
The portion of the costs that the fees don't cover is borne by miners via their electric bills, since validating transactions is a large part of what they do when mining. They'recompensated for their efforts by receiving BTC. In practice, this is more or less a form of arbitrage as they exchange cheap electricity for valuable BTC, and it works fine when the value of BTC remains high against whatever currency they use to pay their electric bill. When the price of BTC slides against traditional currencies, however, those electric bills become outsized compared to the value gained, leaving them holding the bag with mining rigs that are significant sunk costs incapable of delivering a return on their value and that can only be sold at a fraction of what they cost.
In contrast, whether the dollar is strong or the dollar is weak, the cost to validate a cash transaction remains the same: within a rounding error of zero.
I can also hand someone 1 bitcoin without electricity. Put a wallet with exactly 1 bc on a cheap USB stick, presto.
By "presto", you're referring to the way that you just managed to double the cost of that transaction, right? Because now there are two transactions: one to move the BTC to your USB wallet, and a second to move the BTC to the seller's wallet after you hand the USB drive to them. Rather than saving electricity, you just made things worse.
https://blockchain.info/charts...
Sorry, what were you saying?
...which is true regardless of which payment system you use, hence why no one bothers accounting for those transportation costs when discussing the differences between payment systems.
If you actually do the comparison, you see that bitcoin transaction costs (per $1,000 equivalent) is CHEAPER than dollar. It wouldn't work any other way.
Come again? I don't even understand what the unit of measure you're proposing means, but I can already tell you that if you want to understand the cost of transactions, we don't measure them "per $1,000 equivalent". We measure them per transaction.
According to these researchers, each Bitcoin transaction currently costs the equivalent of 9 days worth of energy for an average US household, with that number growing over time as more resources are added to the system. The average US household consumed 10,766 kWh annually in 2016, which we'll assume hasn't shifted much in the last year. The average residential price was 13.30 cents/kWh in September, which we'll assume is comparable to today. Taken together, they suggest that the average US household pays about $1431.878 annually for electricity, or about $3.92/day. As such, a single Bitcoin transaction currently costs the world $35.28 in electricity to process. Other places put the current cost closer to $72-77 per transaction.
In contrast, the cost to process a cash transaction is the amount of time it takes someone to recognize that the dollar bill is now in the seller's hand instead of mine. Or, put differently, effectively zero. That's why we can use cash to purchase everything from a stick of gum to an entire estate.
From those numbers, we can say a few things:
1) Bitcoin is (currently) unviable for small transactions. In fact, if you look at the average transaction value, you'll see that it correlates to the average transaction fee, suggesting that as fees go up, the system becomes unusable for day-to-day purchases, making it unsuitable as a cash replacement. A system only works as a cash replacement when it is capable of scaling from our smallest purchases to our largest purchases while maintaining a cost per transaction that is FAR less than the value of the transaction.
2) Transaction fees don't cover transaction costs. Note that the fees listed in that last chart are far lower than the costs listed in the earlier chart. This is an example of an externalized cost (and explains how the system can work contrary to your claim that it can't work any other way), where someone else is paying for something you're doing. In the case of Bitcoin, it's the miners who are paying the remainder of the costs for each transaction (i.e. their electric bills), but they're paying those electric bills in USD, EUR, GBP, and similar currencies, rather than BTC, which means that their electric bills don't track with fluctuations in the value of BTC. This isn't a problem when BTC valuations are high, since additional miners join in to take advantage of the imbalance (this is more or less a form of arbitrage, exchanging cheap electricity for more valuable BTC). Unfortunately, when BTC valuations slide against the other currencies this becomes a major problem for those miners. Their rigs become sunk costs that are incapable of producing a return on their value and can only be sold for a fraction of what they cost.
3) Transaction costs can exceed their benefits. If you want to buy $15 in groceries and are told every transaction has a $75 fee to confirm your purchase, you won't buy those groceries. You'll wait until you need a lot more before you make the purchase. That's both a good thing (the system discourages wasteful activity) and a bad thing (why are small transactions wasteful in the first place?). If, however, you're told that the cost to confirm the transaction is merely $7.50, you
It's time for Hollywood's free cash cow to dry up. There's absolutely no reason cable TV should cost $100+.
I remember a time when cable cost $30 a month for about 60-70ish channels. Maybe their overpaid actors and production staff will take a pay cut if they want to survive /sarcasm
Swap “channels” for “mbps” and you’ll suddenly realize it’s actually just more of the same. You’re paying the same people. You just swapped the product. Give it a few years and you’ll be thinking fondly of what you paid back, well, now.
Meanwhile, Hollywood is laughing all the way to the bank. Though the indie scene has been exploding in popularity, Hollywood itself has still been producing roughly the same number of feature length films each year for the last three decades, with no signs of slowing down. With cable TV on the way out and streaming on demand on the way in, companies like Disney are able to directly monetize their catalogs without the middle men. Which is exactly what Disney is doing, what with their announcement that they’re pulling their content from Netflix and moving it to their own streaming service in the next year or two.
So sure, I agree that there’s no reason it should cost what it does. There’s also no reason my cable ISP charges me 2x what it charged two years ago, even though my plan hasn’t changed. Well, other than the fact that the sole DSL competitor in the area got bought out and then scaled back its operations around that time, leaving us with 0 broadband alternatives.
I quite agree that if someone owned enough of the real estate market they'd have the same problem, but that actually gets at the point I was making.
The sort of thing we're talking about here—where a person owns so much of something that the sale of some devalues the price of the rest—is essentially never a problem in real estate due to the size, diversity, and maturity of the market, yet it IS a problem in cryptocurrencies and stocks, where a single person can own or control a large amount. Were the situations the same, you're right, they'd have the same problem, but the situations aren't the same, hence the problem.