Consider how many people have been "chased by a killer" outside of cheesy horror movies. Now consider how many people have been assaulted.
Your point might stand up better in Mexico, or Brazil, or wherever the murder capital of the world is. But if we're talking sociological trends in the US or a developed nation, people whipping out a phone in a conflict is probably the tactically sound move most of the time. A camera is better for de-escalation over a weapon. You have to run into a REAL psycho, alone, to have camera footage trigger a fight response.
And yeah, while I get your sentiment about the shift in attitudes about surveillance.... everyone having a camera on hand has done wonders for keeping big brother in line. Little brother spies back. Cops, politicians, people in power, anyone who could previously depend on their position to get them off the hook have a REAL hard time denying hard physical evidence. In short, cameras ARE a force of good.
(but no, I don't think we should have constant surveillance in school with facial recognition. It's people in power wanting more power.)
No I'm not going to train my children to live in a dystopian hellscape without privacy. They're not prisoners, and principle aren't wardens, and school should not be a panopticon. While the school system teaches an important lesson about how to deal with authority, the authority figure should not be an authoritarian tyarant with complete knowledge.
Common carrier means they're NOT liable for what's in the package. You can ship porn via fedex and fedex isn't required to look in the package. Likewise, if you try and ship C4 or anthrax through UPS, you go to jail while the person who placed a bomb on someone's doorstop is innocent.
But this is telelcommuncations, you're talking about the 1996 telecom act, establishing title I and II and, V the communications decency act which calls out special rules for title III (3) cable providers, and the portions which do apply to the Internet don't care if the ISP is title I or II. Specifically, section 230 gives the Internet the exemption:
No provider or user of an interactive computer service shall be treated as the publisher or speaker of any information provided by another information content provider.
Wheeler went with title II because that's what was in his jurisdiction. The guy can't write legislature. He can classify companies this way or that. And it was GENIUS. The best possible path forward on an otherwise rocky trail next to an inscaleable mountain and a steep cliff down into shitsville.
Ah. You think the very definition of "network neutrality" is bullshit. There was certainly a lot of people referring to it strictly as new regulation while ignoring that the Internet has been neutral as possible from the start. And if you twist words enough you can make a push poll mean pretty much whatever you want it to mean.
But no, Network Neutrality is keeping the Internet neutral with respect to protocol, location, service, and origin. That once you have an internet connection, you get access to ALL of the Internet. That everyone on the Internet is on a level playing field and that the infrastructure itself doesn't favor Gigantic Google's packets over my tiny home server's packets. This is how the Internet started out and it's a fundamental principle for how it functions and everyone expects it to function. The firewall of china and china's policies of blocking specific sites and services are clearly not neutral and they're doing their best to control the Internet and flow of information. Fuck those guys.
So let's say that Network Neutrality actually mean a neutral level playing field on the Internet. One where the ISPs didn't choose what you did with your connection, or where you went with it. Would you STILL be arguing against it?
The major use of net neutrality rules
Hold up. Legislature and regulation enforcing network neutrality is one thing that's very easy to fuck up and I've pointed out repeatedly that there is viable debate there, and network neutrality itself is another. Any US or Euro legislation will only have partial effect around the world. No one but NO ONE, including at this point YOU, has come out against network neutrality.
It's kind of like the difference between free speech and the first amendment.
The major use of net neutrality rules so far has been to prevent ISPs from offering free access to paying partners.
These aren't some theoretical boogeyman that congresscritters are scared of and are trying to clamp down on preemptively. There has been a constant effort to push the boundary of what's acceptable behavior by ISPs and the more that markets consolidate and the less they compete with each other, the less effective public outrage will be at maintaining network neutrality.
It has NOT been used to shut down Network Neutrality violations like ESPN3 (or ESPN360.com). Although it should. This is also the sort of thing you're talking about with "offering (free) access to paying partners". (any access for ESPN3). And it HAS NOT been used to shut that down. Which is bullshit. It's a clear violation of network neutrality and would lead to the horror scenario of bundling the Internet like cable channels.
This isn't "free stuff because ISPs are competing with each other". They are CHOOSING what you pay for. The money is coming from you one way or another. But you don't get to choose NOT to pay for that bundled service. It's just absorbed into the ISP bill which goes up a little. Or worse, it's ISPs competing, not with each other, but with the websites they're supposed to be servicing. Gatekeeprs. Toll-road enforcers. The worry back in the day was that they were going to shake down Netflixs for a buck (who would then charge customers more). But now netflix is POWERFUL enough to tell ISPs to go get b
i mean yes you can waste multiple hours but in the end its the score that maybe matters... i say maybe because why does it matter again?
I think I'm probably an outlier here and only entering the conversation under a technicality, but I occasionally watch foil and epee fencers. Not because I care about who advanced or what the score ends up as, but to see the tactics and motions. Ideally, so I can try the same stuff on the strip when I occasionally go fencing. But clips on youtube I can rewind and watch a dozen times are better for that than... ESPN or something. Do they even show fencing?
(A surprising amount of "OMG look at this amazing fencer!" videos are just both guys missing and then a sloppy remise. And so many clips are badly cut. Don't just show the final action you twits, all the stuff leading up to it matters!)
more than 30 TV channels delivered over the internet,
This made me realize that I'm unhappy with how Netflix does business. I loathe how cable companies bundle channels together and refuse to sell them ala cart. Power to the people, let me choose, let the free market decide, ra ra, all those slogans. And it only just now hit me that this is exactly what Netflix is doing.
Prior, I considered the "netflix model" to be rounding up all the old IP that no one was using anymore and selling it en bulk online. It was the "old movie" bundle. It made customers happy with far-reaching access to shows they liked but probably couldn't see. It made content owners happy because those things weren't making them ANY money prior. All was well. And then they found out there was money here and the price of old IP shot up. Now Netflix doesn't have near the selection of old stuff it used to, and their source of content is... themselves. They're producing a god-awful number of shows. It's big money. They're no longer acting like netflix, they're just another TV network. Just online. Google Play's model of renting/buying individual shows is better philosophically, but ugh, that price tag.
That's a really rough stance to have if even you yourself are on my side. I've heard some good arguments for people worried about how it'd be enforced, and that's legit. But NO ONE has ever told me that they actually wish the ISPs could fuck with their traffic just to make a buck.
. . . he's been a senator for a decade and a house rep for 2 decades before that. But sure troll, try calling him inexperienced again. It's cute. Hell, if anything that'd be an argument against him. Career politicians and all that.
No, I was asking if there is any group or coalition of politicians refused to accept corporate or PAC money. Anything even close?
Noooooo, it's a top-down problem. The people at the top, the 5 major telecoms, the ones who own the pipes, are the ones trying to abuse their position to make more money and have more control to pick the winners and losers.
It was a bottom up solution when everyone could get pissed at that sort of bullshit, and switch away to a different carrier BUT THEY CAN'T. Because cable and telecom utilities are most certainly natural monopolies. Unless you want 5 different network infrastructures hanging off all the telephone poles. That's not actually all that unreasonable until those companies start snipping each other's lines whenever they have to go service their own wires. Or they lay claim to the poles and disallow Google from running fiber. The won that lawsuit by the way.
I agree with you that for any prayer of competition to happen between telecoms, they have to be able to share the poles (which were bought and paid for and built by the local governments who MOST CERTAINLY have the right to charge ISPs for access to).
And WHY would a local government refuse other companies to compete? No really. If you've been saying this for years, you must have an answer. What's the motivation for a tiny tinpot tyrant of a mayor to block an ISP from servicing an area? If you respond anything at all, this is the one you have to answer. Because my answer is that THE CORPORATIONS BRIBED THEM OR PAID THEM FOR THE MONOPOLY! Regulatory capture. Now sure, potayto potawto. They're both working together to fuck over the little people. But you can't just say "government BAD!" and pretend that the corporations aren't guilty as sin.
Competition works.
It DOES. It absolutely does. Capitalism is best, and it works when there's a free market with competition. I wholeheartedly agree.
BUT THEY'RE NOT COMPETING WITH EACH OTHER! Even where the pole owners didn't sell them exclusive rights, they simply refuse to go compete with each other. It's NOT solely an issue of the government screwing you over. If money-bags Google can't compete in the industry, then there is no competition and there is no free market and capitalism fails and the industry rots. Case in point, we pay a stupid amount for Internet compared to other developed nations.
Yes, there ARE a bunch of really shitty ways to implement any enforcement of NN. But if it's not with title II common carrier status, you can BET YOUR ASS the democrats are going to write brand spanking new legislation the moment they can. OH LOOK, California is ahead of the curve on this one. And the corporations have already started getting their hooks into it. I was really happy with the path Tom Wheeler took. And surprised. I mean, a freaking lobbyist? But seriously, bravo, it was an elegant solution that kept the status quo. For a little while.
Anyway, of course it's perfectly reasonable for people to debate the best way to keep the Internet neutral. This guy Santiago isn't doing that. He's specifically making holes like allowing ISPs to charge any website a fee for people to be able to access it and giving select content preferential treatment. That's just BLATANTLY violating network neutrality. Not network neutrality legislation, the PRINCIPLE of network neutrality. He's not fighting government regulation, he's specifically making the holes the specific size and shape of the death of network neutrality. This isn't some ra ra libertarianism, this handing corporations the tools to implement anti-competitive practices. And he's not on the right. He's a democrat.
Who in their right mind would mod this as flamebait?.....Do the republicans have anything like this? I'm not even sure most of them would understand the question.
Yeah, while the repeal of title II classification which was enforcing Network Neutrality came form republicans despite it being massively popular with their voter base, it's important to remember that this is NOT a partisan issue. EVERYONE wants network neutrality and the only people who are pushing against it are those who are bought and paid for. Corruption, through and through. (That said there are a bunch of really shitty ways to implement any enforcement of NN. These two changes are fucking bullshit though, and Santiago can go to hell)
Also, the way political donations work, are there ANY politician that have "Financial Ties" to a telecom?
to allocate the GDP to where it's most useful. This may result in an increase in the GDP, but the goal is a reduction in poverty,
You mean scientific advancement. That's what would be most useful. Because without that, it appears that global warming is going to doom us all, this rock will die, and life as we know it will cease. You know, to some extent. As a reminder, we ARE in the middle of a mass extinction event. Wheeee, fun times. But an existential threat to the species and biosphere seems a little more important, to some people, than making sure the fringes of society are taken care of. On the flip side, scientific advancement also opens new doors like garage-made bioweapons and grey-goo scenarios. So that's a bit of a double-edged sword.
Of course, a way more immediate existential threat would be full scale thermonuclear war. To that extent, keeping world peace among the (sizable) nuclear powers takes priority. Times are good compared to the height of the cold war, but it looks like Putin is putting the band back together and we (USA) are currently in a pissing contest with China over some cash. Officially it's a matter of national security though. You can take that as you will. A big military (in the hands of a democracy) has traditionally been the way to keep work peace. Keeping it a democracy has been a bit of a trick. And ironically, nuclear weapons have gone a long way towards keeping the prats from going at it again.
And if a nation doesn't keep making money and keep the economy going, they'll probably fall apart like the USSR.
And it's important to point out that your stated goal it's just a reduction in poverty. Not an elimination of poverty, which is likely impossible. And if you look at practically any metric of quality of life, times are hella good. So your goal is more accurately be a FURTHER reduction in poverty.
Anyway, I started this out trying to say that various people have various goals in mind when running the country.
Another Universal Basic Income Experiment is Underway... the world's biggest tests of a guaranteed basic income... [Area of test] has about half the people in the pilot -- some 10 percent of the town's population.
The Canadians are testing it as an efficient antipoverty mechanism, a way to give a relatively small segment of the population more flexibility to find work and to strengthen other strands of the safety net.
There's nothing univesal about this.
Welfare. The word for this is welfare. Unless everyone gets it, it's not universal. It is income. And I would say that 75% of poverty is pretty basic. So it's good on those fronts, but it's not universal. It is welfare.
Also, it's a shitty experiment unless the populace WITHIN the area ALSO gets to PAY FOR IT. There's two sides of UBI. Where the money goes and where the money comes from. How much does it help the people it's going to? and how much does it royally piss off the people it's coming from? As long as every experiment is a grant or funded from the national coffers which EVERYONE pays into to redistribute money to a FEW select people, it's bogus. I'd even say that dealing with the obvious issue of the high income earners moving across town to avoid the soul-crushing taxes is an important aspect of any UBI test. If they're wealthy enough, moving somewhere without UBI is a viable option, and FUCKS OVER the area. You can't just ignore this sort of impact.
And any suggestion along the lines of "Well we won't allow them to move away" or "It will work as long as UBI is everywhere" sounds an awfully lot like the tactics of soviet communism.
How about...... the crew of a spaceship are all indentured servants to a all-powerful master race that must be served? With a commissar on board to enforce that. Because most of the crew are AI constructs, with the nameless faceless background characters being more like scripts and drivers. Every bloody solenoid and tcp packet is a valve they need to manually turn or a package they need to deliver. And then they go rogue or something after their "admiral" fails to wake up from cryo.
the Federation to expand to the point where they approach Borg-controlled space and have a full scale war with the Federation.
With fringe worlds getting swamped with refugees fleeing the warfare. And an unsettling number coming into the Federation, any one of which could be a borg sleeper agent/spy. "All it takes is one self-replicating nanomachine hiding in their bloodstream and we've got neighborhoods in SanFran getting assimilated, RIGHT UNDER FEDERATION'S NOSE!"
Everyone is worried about subspace pollution causing planets to get stranded and cut off from the resulting subspace ruptures. International politics try to get the Ferengi traders to limit their freighters to no avail.
Meanwhile the Klingons are STILL there and still rattling sabers. And the Romulans are playing the markets, and undercutting Federation efforts by abusing the shit out of the Remans. And their spies keep stealing Federation tech.
It's like modern day issues could find a sort of PARALLEL in the Star Trek setting. **Cough**COLDWAR**Cough**. But what kind of corporation would have the balls to make meaningful social commentary? Nope, we get commander Michael instead.
I dunno man, I'm not so mad about there being yet another Star Trek series. The format of the show lends itself well to spinoffs. It was an engaging SETTING which fostered a lot of stories. I'm cool with that. I'd honestly be interested in hearing how the most devious Klingon and the most bloodthirsty Romulan managed to team up and keep their sides politically aligned during the ${ST_COLD_WAR_ANALOGY}. And it was cool to see how things played out after the collapse of the Klingon Empire and the war-hawks tried to flare it up. Some of the movies were good. There's room for the stories to continue.
Star Wars on the other hand... Well, honestly, same damn thing. It's an interesting (if less hard) setting. Bounty hunters and rogue squadrons and the Vong. Good stories. Some of them. But NONE of that was picked up by the corporate masters. All that was taken out back and shot. We got ep4, the retelling. A direct path to killing off all the old actors. And filling the gaps. (Personally, Rogue One was probably the best of Disney's effort). And star wars got the same treatment. A "reboot". Fuck your canon. THAT'S not innovative. They're literally retelling the SAME old ideas. They're trying to cash in on the fact that people know the name "spock". tch.
Although, it IS kinda cosmic justice if Picard got a ridiculously bad animated series. Something like the stiff flash graphics from Archer, but with Tribbles?
Someone tells your bank to move some money. Bank verifies it's you because only you would know your password and/or your pets name and what street you were born on. But it was not you. Regardless, bank has successfully followed due process as stated in that form you signed and never read when making an account, and you're fucked.
Someone frauds your visa card, and TYPICALLY Visa will reimburse you. Usually it's pretty simple. When it's not and for whatever reason Visa doesn't want to give away money, it surprisingly comes down to how much you bitch and moan at them. Regardless, the merchants eat the cost through higher transaction fees. What are they going to do? NOT accept Visa, that's a laugh.
No, dollars and crypto are not as safe (or otherwise) as each other.
Correct. Assuming you can properly handle your keys, crypto is much more safe. Assuming you can restrain yourself and not fall into debt, Visa credit is much more safe (unless you're the merchant).
In other news, eggs are once again poison, red wine is still good, but chocolate is bad, going into it's 11th year keto is still a dangerous fad, 5 few types of fats and 3 new types of cholesterol were discovered, and each of them is worse than the last.
Stay tuned for our follow up broadcast at 11, where up to 3 of those dietary facts will be reversed.
The court doesn't care if the contract stipulates payment in cash, cows, gold, barrels of oil, securities, or rick-roll-memes. Someone screws you, you can take them to court. Let me make that clear: You can sue anyone for anything.
If someone breaks into your house and steals your cat, it's not like the police are going to tell "tough shit, cats aren't made of US cash, so you can pound sand". Now, if you somehow give your credit card number to someone online and they start spending your money, the police WILL likely tell you to pound sand as they're laughably unprepared to handle cybercrime. But hey, they'll file a case. Wheeeee. Good luck taking an IP address to court. Even if they make a fraudulent US bank transfer, and steal your certified, totally-real, US dollars, you ain't got NO ONE covering your ass. Not the court, not the police, that money is more than likely JUST GONE.
You realize that Visa just eats the cost of credit card fraud and passes it on to merchants, right? Last year was $16 Billion. B. Billion. YEARLY. In the US. (But, that's all identify theft).
Now, Visa (and credit cards as a whole) is a monetary system. No doubt about it. A privately run monetary system that charges merchants the right to accept money, and takes a slice of every transaction. Anyone with your number can go to nearly any store online in any country and spend YOUR money. But Visa is pretty good about identifying fraud, forgiving the customer, and then just eating it. LIKEWISE, anyone with the key to your bitcoins can simply take your money, but there's no-one taxing all the merchants in the world to offset it.
before they're ready to adopt crypto on a daily use basis.
I honestly don't see that happening. It's pretty trivial to make phone transfers, or something that works like a credit card (And then a massive rollout for merchants to switch their PoS systems, which is happening with Google and Apple's pay by phone systems). But the transaction times would have to come down to seconds. Which isn't going to happen for bitcoin, and probably any other crypto that gets popular. Maybe if there was a culture of "I'll trust this $5 action will clear eventually, go on your way". But... hell dude, it works GREAT for Internet purchases. They don't ship till it clears. Easy peasy. There's really nothing in the way of Amazon accepting bitcoin... you know, other than the wildly fluctuating value.
Slashdot Mirror
Holy shit republicans are fucking assholes.
Not all of you, but the wing-nuts are astoundingly bad. I guess we have our own wingnuts as well.
But sure, hey, lay it on me. How do you suggest we:
-Help kids learn
-Reduce "single motherhood"
-Keep inner city social environment from failing
Come on, you can't just say "this shit sucks" without suggesting some alternative.
Consider how many people have been "chased by a killer" outside of cheesy horror movies. Now consider how many people have been assaulted.
Your point might stand up better in Mexico, or Brazil, or wherever the murder capital of the world is. But if we're talking sociological trends in the US or a developed nation, people whipping out a phone in a conflict is probably the tactically sound move most of the time. A camera is better for de-escalation over a weapon. You have to run into a REAL psycho, alone, to have camera footage trigger a fight response.
And yeah, while I get your sentiment about the shift in attitudes about surveillance.... everyone having a camera on hand has done wonders for keeping big brother in line. Little brother spies back. Cops, politicians, people in power, anyone who could previously depend on their position to get them off the hook have a REAL hard time denying hard physical evidence. In short, cameras ARE a force of good.
(but no, I don't think we should have constant surveillance in school with facial recognition. It's people in power wanting more power.)
For the record, while I think Rick is a dick, we're on the same page here and I agree with him.
No I'm not going to train my children to live in a dystopian hellscape without privacy. They're not prisoners, and principle aren't wardens, and school should not be a panopticon. While the school system teaches an important lesson about how to deal with authority, the authority figure should not be an authoritarian tyarant with complete knowledge.
Common carrier means they're NOT liable for what's in the package. You can ship porn via fedex and fedex isn't required to look in the package. Likewise, if you try and ship C4 or anthrax through UPS, you go to jail while the person who placed a bomb on someone's doorstop is innocent.
But this is telelcommuncations, you're talking about the 1996 telecom act, establishing title I and II and, V the communications decency act which calls out special rules for title III (3) cable providers, and the portions which do apply to the Internet don't care if the ISP is title I or II. Specifically, section 230 gives the Internet the exemption:
No provider or user of an interactive computer service shall be treated as the publisher or speaker of any information provided by another information content provider.
Wheeler went with title II because that's what was in his jurisdiction. The guy can't write legislature. He can classify companies this way or that. And it was GENIUS. The best possible path forward on an otherwise rocky trail next to an inscaleable mountain and a steep cliff down into shitsville.
brand names for their products that mislead you
Ah. You think the very definition of "network neutrality" is bullshit. There was certainly a lot of people referring to it strictly as new regulation while ignoring that the Internet has been neutral as possible from the start. And if you twist words enough you can make a push poll mean pretty much whatever you want it to mean.
But no, Network Neutrality is keeping the Internet neutral with respect to protocol, location, service, and origin. That once you have an internet connection, you get access to ALL of the Internet. That everyone on the Internet is on a level playing field and that the infrastructure itself doesn't favor Gigantic Google's packets over my tiny home server's packets. This is how the Internet started out and it's a fundamental principle for how it functions and everyone expects it to function. The firewall of china and china's policies of blocking specific sites and services are clearly not neutral and they're doing their best to control the Internet and flow of information. Fuck those guys.
So let's say that Network Neutrality actually mean a neutral level playing field on the Internet. One where the ISPs didn't choose what you did with your connection, or where you went with it. Would you STILL be arguing against it?
The major use of net neutrality rules
Hold up. Legislature and regulation enforcing network neutrality is one thing that's very easy to fuck up and I've pointed out repeatedly that there is viable debate there, and network neutrality itself is another. Any US or Euro legislation will only have partial effect around the world. No one but NO ONE, including at this point YOU, has come out against network neutrality.
It's kind of like the difference between free speech and the first amendment.
The major use of net neutrality rules so far has been to prevent ISPs from offering free access to paying partners.
Wrong. It's to outlaw and prevent:
Comcast from blocking bittorrent.
AT&T fucking with VoIP to help their own business.
Comcast favoring Microsoft's 360 traffic by not counting it towards data caps. This is the sort of thing you're talking about.
Telecoms blocking Google Wallet.
These aren't some theoretical boogeyman that congresscritters are scared of and are trying to clamp down on preemptively. There has been a constant effort to push the boundary of what's acceptable behavior by ISPs and the more that markets consolidate and the less they compete with each other, the less effective public outrage will be at maintaining network neutrality.
It has NOT been used to shut down Network Neutrality violations like ESPN3 (or ESPN360.com). Although it should. This is also the sort of thing you're talking about with "offering (free) access to paying partners". (any access for ESPN3). And it HAS NOT been used to shut that down. Which is bullshit. It's a clear violation of network neutrality and would lead to the horror scenario of bundling the Internet like cable channels.
This isn't "free stuff because ISPs are competing with each other". They are CHOOSING what you pay for. The money is coming from you one way or another. But you don't get to choose NOT to pay for that bundled service. It's just absorbed into the ISP bill which goes up a little. Or worse, it's ISPs competing, not with each other, but with the websites they're supposed to be servicing. Gatekeeprs. Toll-road enforcers. The worry back in the day was that they were going to shake down Netflixs for a buck (who would then charge customers more). But now netflix is POWERFUL enough to tell ISPs to go get b
i mean yes you can waste multiple hours but in the end its the score that maybe matters... i say maybe because why does it matter again?
I think I'm probably an outlier here and only entering the conversation under a technicality, but I occasionally watch foil and epee fencers. Not because I care about who advanced or what the score ends up as, but to see the tactics and motions. Ideally, so I can try the same stuff on the strip when I occasionally go fencing. But clips on youtube I can rewind and watch a dozen times are better for that than... ESPN or something. Do they even show fencing?
(A surprising amount of "OMG look at this amazing fencer!" videos are just both guys missing and then a sloppy remise. And so many clips are badly cut. Don't just show the final action you twits, all the stuff leading up to it matters!)
more than 30 TV channels delivered over the internet,
This made me realize that I'm unhappy with how Netflix does business. I loathe how cable companies bundle channels together and refuse to sell them ala cart. Power to the people, let me choose, let the free market decide, ra ra, all those slogans. And it only just now hit me that this is exactly what Netflix is doing.
Prior, I considered the "netflix model" to be rounding up all the old IP that no one was using anymore and selling it en bulk online. It was the "old movie" bundle. It made customers happy with far-reaching access to shows they liked but probably couldn't see. It made content owners happy because those things weren't making them ANY money prior. All was well. And then they found out there was money here and the price of old IP shot up. Now Netflix doesn't have near the selection of old stuff it used to, and their source of content is... themselves. They're producing a god-awful number of shows. It's big money. They're no longer acting like netflix, they're just another TV network. Just online. Google Play's model of renting/buying individual shows is better philosophically, but ugh, that price tag.
ok. Do you NOT want the Internet to be neutral?
That's a really rough stance to have if even you yourself are on my side. I've heard some good arguments for people worried about how it'd be enforced, and that's legit. But NO ONE has ever told me that they actually wish the ISPs could fuck with their traffic just to make a buck.
If you think so, I'd like to hear why.
. . . he's been a senator for a decade and a house rep for 2 decades before that. But sure troll, try calling him inexperienced again. It's cute. Hell, if anything that'd be an argument against him. Career politicians and all that.
No, I was asking if there is any group or coalition of politicians refused to accept corporate or PAC money. Anything even close?
Noooooo, it's a top-down problem. The people at the top, the 5 major telecoms, the ones who own the pipes, are the ones trying to abuse their position to make more money and have more control to pick the winners and losers.
It was a bottom up solution when everyone could get pissed at that sort of bullshit, and switch away to a different carrier BUT THEY CAN'T. Because cable and telecom utilities are most certainly natural monopolies. Unless you want 5 different network infrastructures hanging off all the telephone poles. That's not actually all that unreasonable until those companies start snipping each other's lines whenever they have to go service their own wires. Or they lay claim to the poles and disallow Google from running fiber. The won that lawsuit by the way.
I agree with you that for any prayer of competition to happen between telecoms, they have to be able to share the poles (which were bought and paid for and built by the local governments who MOST CERTAINLY have the right to charge ISPs for access to).
And WHY would a local government refuse other companies to compete? No really. If you've been saying this for years, you must have an answer. What's the motivation for a tiny tinpot tyrant of a mayor to block an ISP from servicing an area? If you respond anything at all, this is the one you have to answer. Because my answer is that THE CORPORATIONS BRIBED THEM OR PAID THEM FOR THE MONOPOLY! Regulatory capture. Now sure, potayto potawto. They're both working together to fuck over the little people. But you can't just say "government BAD!" and pretend that the corporations aren't guilty as sin.
Competition works.
It DOES. It absolutely does. Capitalism is best, and it works when there's a free market with competition. I wholeheartedly agree.
BUT THEY'RE NOT COMPETING WITH EACH OTHER! Even where the pole owners didn't sell them exclusive rights, they simply refuse to go compete with each other. It's NOT solely an issue of the government screwing you over. If money-bags Google can't compete in the industry, then there is no competition and there is no free market and capitalism fails and the industry rots. Case in point, we pay a stupid amount for Internet compared to other developed nations.
Yes, there ARE a bunch of really shitty ways to implement any enforcement of NN. But if it's not with title II common carrier status, you can BET YOUR ASS the democrats are going to write brand spanking new legislation the moment they can. OH LOOK, California is ahead of the curve on this one. And the corporations have already started getting their hooks into it. I was really happy with the path Tom Wheeler took. And surprised. I mean, a freaking lobbyist? But seriously, bravo, it was an elegant solution that kept the status quo. For a little while.
Anyway, of course it's perfectly reasonable for people to debate the best way to keep the Internet neutral. This guy Santiago isn't doing that. He's specifically making holes like allowing ISPs to charge any website a fee for people to be able to access it and giving select content preferential treatment. That's just BLATANTLY violating network neutrality. Not network neutrality legislation, the PRINCIPLE of network neutrality. He's not fighting government regulation, he's specifically making the holes the specific size and shape of the death of network neutrality. This isn't some ra ra libertarianism, this handing corporations the tools to implement anti-competitive practices. And he's not on the right. He's a democrat.
hot DAMN! I knew I liked Bernie for a reason.
Who in their right mind would mod this as flamebait? .....Do the republicans have anything like this? I'm not even sure most of them would understand the question.
VOTE: Heckruler's ass for congress!
An asshole you can trust, and cheeky enough to be entertaining.
Yeah, while the repeal of title II classification which was enforcing Network Neutrality came form republicans despite it being massively popular with their voter base, it's important to remember that this is NOT a partisan issue. EVERYONE wants network neutrality and the only people who are pushing against it are those who are bought and paid for. Corruption, through and through. (That said there are a bunch of really shitty ways to implement any enforcement of NN. These two changes are fucking bullshit though, and Santiago can go to hell)
Also, the way political donations work, are there ANY politician that have "Financial Ties" to a telecom?
to allocate the GDP to where it's most useful. This may result in an increase in the GDP, but the goal is a reduction in poverty,
You mean scientific advancement. That's what would be most useful. Because without that, it appears that global warming is going to doom us all, this rock will die, and life as we know it will cease. You know, to some extent. As a reminder, we ARE in the middle of a mass extinction event. Wheeee, fun times. But an existential threat to the species and biosphere seems a little more important, to some people, than making sure the fringes of society are taken care of. On the flip side, scientific advancement also opens new doors like garage-made bioweapons and grey-goo scenarios. So that's a bit of a double-edged sword.
Of course, a way more immediate existential threat would be full scale thermonuclear war. To that extent, keeping world peace among the (sizable) nuclear powers takes priority. Times are good compared to the height of the cold war, but it looks like Putin is putting the band back together and we (USA) are currently in a pissing contest with China over some cash. Officially it's a matter of national security though. You can take that as you will. A big military (in the hands of a democracy) has traditionally been the way to keep work peace. Keeping it a democracy has been a bit of a trick. And ironically, nuclear weapons have gone a long way towards keeping the prats from going at it again.
And if a nation doesn't keep making money and keep the economy going, they'll probably fall apart like the USSR.
And it's important to point out that your stated goal it's just a reduction in poverty. Not an elimination of poverty, which is likely impossible. And if you look at practically any metric of quality of life, times are hella good. So your goal is more accurately be a FURTHER reduction in poverty.
Anyway, I started this out trying to say that various people have various goals in mind when running the country.
Another Universal Basic Income Experiment is Underway ... the world's biggest tests of a guaranteed basic income... [Area of test] has about half the people in the pilot -- some 10 percent of the town's population.
The Canadians are testing it as an efficient antipoverty mechanism, a way to give a relatively small segment of the population more flexibility to find work and to strengthen other strands of the safety net.
There's nothing univesal about this.
Welfare. The word for this is welfare. Unless everyone gets it, it's not universal. It is income. And I would say that 75% of poverty is pretty basic. So it's good on those fronts, but it's not universal. It is welfare.
Also, it's a shitty experiment unless the populace WITHIN the area ALSO gets to PAY FOR IT. There's two sides of UBI. Where the money goes and where the money comes from. How much does it help the people it's going to? and how much does it royally piss off the people it's coming from? As long as every experiment is a grant or funded from the national coffers which EVERYONE pays into to redistribute money to a FEW select people, it's bogus. I'd even say that dealing with the obvious issue of the high income earners moving across town to avoid the soul-crushing taxes is an important aspect of any UBI test. If they're wealthy enough, moving somewhere without UBI is a viable option, and FUCKS OVER the area. You can't just ignore this sort of impact.
And any suggestion along the lines of "Well we won't allow them to move away" or "It will work as long as UBI is everywhere" sounds an awfully lot like the tactics of soviet communism.
Half flashbacks to crazy good-day-to-die war stories and half drunken Klingon version of.... are you thinking more Red-Green, Hee-Haw, or LetterKenny?
How about...... the crew of a spaceship are all indentured servants to a all-powerful master race that must be served? With a commissar on board to enforce that. Because most of the crew are AI constructs, with the nameless faceless background characters being more like scripts and drivers. Every bloody solenoid and tcp packet is a valve they need to manually turn or a package they need to deliver. And then they go rogue or something after their "admiral" fails to wake up from cryo.
the Federation to expand to the point where they approach Borg-controlled space and have a full scale war with the Federation.
With fringe worlds getting swamped with refugees fleeing the warfare. And an unsettling number coming into the Federation, any one of which could be a borg sleeper agent/spy. "All it takes is one self-replicating nanomachine hiding in their bloodstream and we've got neighborhoods in SanFran getting assimilated, RIGHT UNDER FEDERATION'S NOSE!"
Everyone is worried about subspace pollution causing planets to get stranded and cut off from the resulting subspace ruptures. International politics try to get the Ferengi traders to limit their freighters to no avail.
Meanwhile the Klingons are STILL there and still rattling sabers. And the Romulans are playing the markets, and undercutting Federation efforts by abusing the shit out of the Remans. And their spies keep stealing Federation tech.
It's like modern day issues could find a sort of PARALLEL in the Star Trek setting. **Cough**COLDWAR**Cough**. But what kind of corporation would have the balls to make meaningful social commentary? Nope, we get commander Michael instead.
I dunno man, I'm not so mad about there being yet another Star Trek series. The format of the show lends itself well to spinoffs. It was an engaging SETTING which fostered a lot of stories. I'm cool with that. I'd honestly be interested in hearing how the most devious Klingon and the most bloodthirsty Romulan managed to team up and keep their sides politically aligned during the ${ST_COLD_WAR_ANALOGY}. And it was cool to see how things played out after the collapse of the Klingon Empire and the war-hawks tried to flare it up. Some of the movies were good. There's room for the stories to continue.
Star Wars on the other hand... Well, honestly, same damn thing. It's an interesting (if less hard) setting. Bounty hunters and rogue squadrons and the Vong. Good stories. Some of them. But NONE of that was picked up by the corporate masters. All that was taken out back and shot. We got ep4, the retelling. A direct path to killing off all the old actors. And filling the gaps. (Personally, Rogue One was probably the best of Disney's effort). And star wars got the same treatment. A "reboot". Fuck your canon. THAT'S not innovative. They're literally retelling the SAME old ideas. They're trying to cash in on the fact that people know the name "spock". tch.
Although, it IS kinda cosmic justice if Picard got a ridiculously bad animated series. Something like the stiff flash graphics from Archer, but with Tribbles?
Someone tells your bank to move some money. Bank verifies it's you because only you would know your password and/or your pets name and what street you were born on. But it was not you. Regardless, bank has successfully followed due process as stated in that form you signed and never read when making an account, and you're fucked.
Someone frauds your visa card, and TYPICALLY Visa will reimburse you. Usually it's pretty simple. When it's not and for whatever reason Visa doesn't want to give away money, it surprisingly comes down to how much you bitch and moan at them. Regardless, the merchants eat the cost through higher transaction fees. What are they going to do? NOT accept Visa, that's a laugh.
No, dollars and crypto are not as safe (or otherwise) as each other.
Correct. Assuming you can properly handle your keys, crypto is much more safe. Assuming you can restrain yourself and not fall into debt, Visa credit is much more safe (unless you're the merchant).
In other news, eggs are once again poison, red wine is still good, but chocolate is bad, going into it's 11th year keto is still a dangerous fad, 5 few types of fats and 3 new types of cholesterol were discovered, and each of them is worse than the last.
Stay tuned for our follow up broadcast at 11, where up to 3 of those dietary facts will be reversed.
....The COURT.
The court doesn't care if the contract stipulates payment in cash, cows, gold, barrels of oil, securities, or rick-roll-memes. Someone screws you, you can take them to court. Let me make that clear: You can sue anyone for anything.
If someone breaks into your house and steals your cat, it's not like the police are going to tell "tough shit, cats aren't made of US cash, so you can pound sand". Now, if you somehow give your credit card number to someone online and they start spending your money, the police WILL likely tell you to pound sand as they're laughably unprepared to handle cybercrime. But hey, they'll file a case. Wheeeee. Good luck taking an IP address to court. Even if they make a fraudulent US bank transfer, and steal your certified, totally-real, US dollars, you ain't got NO ONE covering your ass. Not the court, not the police, that money is more than likely JUST GONE.
You realize that Visa just eats the cost of credit card fraud and passes it on to merchants, right? Last year was $16 Billion. B. Billion. YEARLY. In the US. (But, that's all identify theft).
Now, Visa (and credit cards as a whole) is a monetary system. No doubt about it. A privately run monetary system that charges merchants the right to accept money, and takes a slice of every transaction. Anyone with your number can go to nearly any store online in any country and spend YOUR money. But Visa is pretty good about identifying fraud, forgiving the customer, and then just eating it. LIKEWISE, anyone with the key to your bitcoins can simply take your money, but there's no-one taxing all the merchants in the world to offset it.
before they're ready to adopt crypto on a daily use basis.
I honestly don't see that happening. It's pretty trivial to make phone transfers, or something that works like a credit card (And then a massive rollout for merchants to switch their PoS systems, which is happening with Google and Apple's pay by phone systems). But the transaction times would have to come down to seconds. Which isn't going to happen for bitcoin, and probably any other crypto that gets popular. Maybe if there was a culture of "I'll trust this $5 action will clear eventually, go on your way". But... hell dude, it works GREAT for Internet purchases. They don't ship till it clears. Easy peasy. There's really nothing in the way of Amazon accepting bitcoin... you know, other than the wildly fluctuating value.