>>>You mean the same contract that one party can modify the terms of at any time?
And which you can terminate when that happens, without penalty. If for example you ISP changed from "unlimited" to "5 gigabytes" you can immediately terminate your relationship with that company. You are not bound to stay. .
>>>I agree they are not a monopoly, BUT, getting into this business is not a simple as you seem to believe
Starting any business is never simple, but I'm sure if someone like Bill Gates or Donald Trump decided, "I can make a lot of money in wireless," they'd go ahead and do it. The fact that they CAN do it means the market is open. Look at google. At one time in the 1990s people would have said, "Trying to unseat Yahoo is nuts - nobody can do that." And along came upstart google. .
>>>I agree they are not a monopoly,
I agree we agree. QED there's no need for government to impose net neutrality on Wireless ISPs. Government should only interfere when there's a monopoly (like the electric company or water company).
>>>Latin American countries will continue to have these issues even after drugs are legalized.
Yeah but it won't affect us because we'll be growing our own drugs, rather than dealing with these violent Latin men. They can continue assassinating one another for control of their tiny Panama governments, while those of us in the US and Canada will live in peace.
Also you're a little off on your statement. Mexico had been a stable for decades, prior to this recent drug war. Make drugs legal, which will dry-up the funds for the druglords, making them lose their power, and then Mexico will return to its pre-2000 state.
>>>You didn't hear about this stuff so much last year...isn't that a little surprising? Nor did you hear about it the year before...and yet, that war has been going on for more than just this year.
You are correct that things "ramp up" during election years, but the danger of a porous border where Druglords can cross without restriction was talked about as far back as 2005.
As for my own personal beliefs, I've never trusted Democrats since I consider them just a few steps short of Communists, and I quit the Republicans when the Idiot took office. I can proudly say that I am not to blame for Clinton, Bush, or Obama being in charge. I am Jeffersonian (constitutionally-limited government) and none of those candidates represented that view.
As for the "anonymous coward" below who thinks I'm nuts, then so be it. I am in the company of great men. Most of my ideas don't come from me - they come directly from the US Founders.
>>>If there's a war in Mexico, then we should be giving shelter and asylum to refugees trying to escape it.
Good point but "asylum" is usually temporary, not permanent. Personally I'd rather end the war by moving the drug-growing out of Mexican warlords hands, and into the hands of American and Canadian farmers where the crops can be grown .
>>>I don't really know how you'd "close the border" without harming a lot of people
Anyone who enters my home or country without first asking permission should not be allowed. Anyone who asks permission, like my immigrant coworkers, is welcome.
As for "harm" I don't know if you've noticed but the US is overpopulated. We have water shortages in the southwest and the southeast, and land shortages in the northeast, plus a coming oil crisis as oil wells start to dry up (aka Peak Oil). Now is the time to start decreasing US population, not increase it.
Nice sarcasm, but yes a consumer device is different from a professional device. Nobody had VTRs or VCRs in their home in the 1950s and 60s, even though they did exist at the time. The first VCR that people could actually afford was Betamax in 1975. And later Sony released the Betacam VCR which was aimed solely at pro level.
Likewise the earliest digitizing tablet that people could afford to bring home would probably be the Apple Tablet, just as Apple II was the first consumer-level computer. (Although not the most popular - the number one machine at the time was Radio Shack's TRS-80.)
"The first commercially available tablet-type portable computer [i.e. iPad like] was the GRiDPad from GRiD Systems, released in September. Its operating system was based on MS-DOS." - wikipedia
>>>The problem is some have decided to take advantage of the changes to position themselves better.
Spot on. Having a Monopoly like Comcast control the net is tame, compared to what happens if the Government gets hold of the internet (via regulation). We can expect the following to happen:
- Porn will be pulled off the net. - Even nudity will eventually be outlawed. The internet will become as tame & boring as broadcast television, thanks to the FCC. - Internet licenses will be required if you want to publish a blog. i.e. No more free speech for the citizenry - - And possibly a reinvigoration of the fairness doctrine. So if I want to publish an article on my web journal about the Tyranny of Bush and the loss of freedom under the Patriot Act, I then have to link to a counter-article that claims Bush was a great president and the Act was brilliant.
Don't get mad. I'm merely quoting ideas direct from Obama's white house employee/advisors. Don't shoot the messenger.
There's a war in Mexico, and the soldiers routinely cross-over to US territory, kidnap citizens, and drag them back to Mexico. Or just outright kill them. Washington DC used to be the murder capitol of the nation, but now it's been eclipsed by Phoenix Arizona. (Phoenix is also the #1 city for kidnapping.) It's a sad state of affairs.
[Deleted paragraph about closing the border.] I've decided to self-censor myself because I'm tired of being marked "troll". Heaven forbid I share my Jeffersonian views in public (i.e. defense of self, defense of home, defense of country is a right), so I'll just keep them to myself. .
Oh and I agree that legalizing marijuana/cocaine growing in the US would basically end the war. Mexican and South American druglords could no longer fund their wars without that money. They would die-off like the bootleggers died-off after Alcohol was legalized. Across the ocean, the EU state of Portugal(?) legalized drugs and opened-up addiction centers to help people get cured, and the drug-related crime plummeted to almost nothing.
>>>Almost as well as letting banks and investment companies police themselves.
Don't blame them. It was government that caused the housing bubble (and subsequent crash). It was *too much* regulation not a lack of regulation. Basically it boils down to: Loan mortgages to people who can't pay them back, else the US Government will drag you into court and prosecute you. The government speaker even admits it in this video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ivmL-lXNy64#t=2m10s [youtube.com]
Just show me how any corporation (or corporations) that have deliberately killed ~100 million citizens by leading them into gas chambers (Germany) or firing squads (China) or willfully withholding food (Soviet Union) or army-led executions (Iraq) in the last hundred years.
You can't because no corporation (or corporations) has that level of power. They could probably get away with shooting a few hundred workers, but would soon be caught and prosecuted for murder. Or else consumer backlash would rise so high that the corporation would be bankrupted via boycotts.
Government is far, far, far more deadly.... by at least four orders of magnitude. Over 100 million of their own citizens, executed.
Government is responsible for killing over 100 million of its own citizens (since 1910). Government used executions, gas chambers, and genocide in places like Germany, Russia, China, Turkey, Iraq, Cambodia, and so on.
How many corporations do that? NONE. So yes government IS the greater evil.
>>>Government bad, corporate self-regulation good. Just stick to that DNC line and ignore any evidence to the contrary.
+4 insightful? Hardly. More like pro-tyrannical government and anti-free citizen trolling. Which agency is responsible for executing over 100 million of its own citizens (worldwide) during the last hundred years? Corporations? Nope. They don't operate firing squads or gas chambers. It's government.
I consider BOTH entities to be evil, dangerous, and untrustworthy and so should you. The difference: Corporations don't have power to throw me in jail, bust down my door, send me to Afghanistan to die, or suck money directly from my wallet. Corporations are the lesser evil. Government is the greater evil.
Also "free market" simply means "power to the citizen". i.e. Microsoft sucks, I'm switching to a different OS.
Finally: It was government that caused the housing bubble (and subsequent crash). It was *too much* regulation not a lack of regulation. Here is the late-90s regulation that made it happen. Basically it boils down to: Loan mortgages to people who can't pay them back, else the US Government will drag you into court and prosecute you. The government speaker even admits it in this video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ivmL-lXNy64#t=2m10s
>>>>>Precisely. The "free market" simply means "power to the citizen". >> >>And "power to every corporation"
Fear-mongering and nonsense. Ford has no power over me. Boeing Airlines has no power over me. Microsoft and Apple have no power over me. Nor ATT, Verizon, Google, or Yahoo. Why? Because I decided long ago to keep my dollars to myself..... and if enough citizens did the same, we'd have the power to bankrupt these corporations. (See bankrupt Circuit City as example.)
Actually a free market is as close to pure democracy as you can get. I only get to vote for my representative (or kick him out) every 2 or 6 years. With corporations *every time* I spend (or keep) a dollar, I am voting to support (or reject) the corporation and its policies. We the People have the power to make a corporation succeed or fail.
>>>personally be happy to get 0.03GB/sec - that's still a tremendous data rate!
You can get that right now from Cable. And I disagree with the premise it will be cheaper to run a 1 Gbit/s fiber to everyone's home now, rather than later. Due to advances in technology, the cost of that quality fiber and switches will probably be 1/1000th as much in 2020.
Also you presume everyone needs 1 Gbit/s..... that's like presuming everyone needs homes made of gold walls. Nice luxury to have but not really necessary. It's really just a waste.
If he had said something stupid like, "We choose to go to visit our nearest star Alpha Centauri in this decade," he would have looked stupid. That's essentially what this Aussie politician is promising. Right now NO country has 100% gigabit internet to all its citizens..... not even close to that numbers. (The fastest country averages just 0.03 Gbps.)
I don't see research. I just see a lot of ranting. Anybody can do that... show me some actual numbers. As for the average cost jumping from 10 to 20 cents, we've also seen a corresponding price drop in voice minutes from 50 downto about 15 cents. Funny how everyone overlooks that. Internet pricing has also dropped much lower than it used to be.
Also did you notice this part? "T-Mobile called Mr. Kohl's attention to the fact that its "average revenue per text message, which takes into account the revenue for all text messages, has declined by more than 50 percent since 2005.""
And finally I looked for the results of those price-fixing lawsuits. The result? Dismissed due to lack of evidence that the companies were meeting with one another.
>>>You mean the same contract that one party can modify the terms of at any time?
And which you can terminate when that happens, without penalty. If for example you ISP changed from "unlimited" to "5 gigabytes" you can immediately terminate your relationship with that company. You are not bound to stay. .
>>>I agree they are not a monopoly, BUT, getting into this business is not a simple as you seem to believe
Starting any business is never simple, but I'm sure if someone like Bill Gates or Donald Trump decided, "I can make a lot of money in wireless," they'd go ahead and do it. The fact that they CAN do it means the market is open. Look at google. At one time in the 1990s people would have said, "Trying to unseat Yahoo is nuts - nobody can do that." But google did. .
>>>I agree they are not a monopoly,
I agree we agree. QED there's no need for government to impose net neutrality on Wireless ISPs. Government should only interfere when there's a monopoly (like the electric company or water company). .
>>>You named 7 competitors, of which I've heard of 3. I don't consider that a healthy market.
You've probably never heard of Mussers, Darrenkamps, Weis, Turkey Hill, Fergusons, or Amelias either. That doesn't mean my local community doesn't have a "healthy market" within the grocery store sector. Likewise if you've not heard of Boost, Net 10, Cricket, or Clear, so what? It still doesn't change the fact I have ~10 choices overall. My market is very competitive.
Besides I don't think it's harmful to be addicted to reading slashdot or facebook updates. It's perfectly normal and healthy. Now where's that "F" icon so I can share this interesting article with a bunch of "friends" I've never met?
FB is probably like CB Radio - a fad that will die out in a few years when people realize what a gigantic waste of time it is
Again according to wikipedia, Open Office was the original name used in the 90s, but it was later discovered to be copyrighted by some European company, so Sun/Oracle simply appended ".org" to the end starting around 2000 or 2001.
>>>but the FBI is I believe part of the executive branch, where the consitution and the first amendment in particular is aimed at the legislature: "Congress shall make no law"
In which case the 10th Amendment applies - The Executive of the US shall exercise no power (like muzzling citizens) that it was never granted by the constitution. If such a power exists, it is reserved to the Member States' Governments or the Individuals.
I was just reading on wikipedia last night that OpenOffice.org is a "limited" version of the office suite, and that most Linux installs (like Ubuntu) actually come with Go O-O instead because it offers full *.docx functionality that OpenOffice.org does not. Is that true?
If so I've been recommending the wrong office suite to friends, coworkers.
Rather than follow your complicated prescription with hundreds of pages of regulations, just remove the barriers for new entrants. i.e. Government needs to allow a new carrier like Sprint to either erect towers, or share the existing ones with ATT, Verizon, et cetera.
In my state a new provider named "Cricket" just arrived. Why? Because this state requires sharing of existing towers with new upstarts. Your state government apparently does not, and you should petition your politicians to change that.
>>>I essentially have no choice if I wish to use wireless service.
I make the same argument about Public Schools and the Proposed Government-run Health Service (i.e. no real choice), but for some reason, that's different? (shrug). In any case if "all" the wireless ISPs are throttling, there's probably a good reason for it - the EM spectrum is naturally throttled because it's limited.
Also you DO have a choice. If ATT starts blocking your access to youtube.com, you charge that they changed the terms of the contract, terminate it w/o penalty, and switch to a new provider like Verizon or Virgin or Cricket or Clear or Cingular or Google or MSN or...... that doesn't block youtube.
Of course ATT's not dumb. They probably never will block youtube.com, because they fear loss of customers like you and me. i.e. WE hold the power.
>>>ALL of the US carriers charge for SMS on reception. they all colluded to do this. in europe, you only pay for messages you SEND. duh. clear proof that the carriers can't be trusted >>>
Vice-versa Europeans had to pay a fee for every call they made, whereas Americans had free local calling. So for example if a 1990s or early 2000s European spent 10 hours downloading music over his Dialup connection, he'd be charged the equivalent of 2 cents per minute == 12 dollars. An American could do the same thing for free.
Does this "prove" there was collusion in the local calling market? No. It only proves that different cultures do things differently. We don't all speak the same language - neither do we all pay the same cost for service. Europeans pay ~4 dollars in taxes per gallon gasoline; Americans pay about 70 cents. Europeans pay a ~30% national sales tax (VAT) plus local sales tax. Americans only pay the local tax and no VAT. And on and on and on.
You have "proved" nothing, except that two continents spread ~5000 miles apart have differing expenses. No surprise there.
They don't "all" charge 20 cents. My provider gives unlimited SMS messaging for just $15 extra a month.... or 2 cents if I average one message per hour. Personally I prefer to pay-as-I-go for just 10 cents. Both of these plans are less than 20. .
>>>it does NOT cost them 20 cents per SMS message
How do you know? Have you done research to determine how much it costs to (1) install several thousand towers (2) hire thousands of workers to keep them maintained so that (3) people can send messages anytime they desire? If so please share it with us. (Or else admit that you, like me, have no idea what messaging *actually* costs.)
Slashdot Mirror
>>>You mean the same contract that one party can modify the terms of at any time?
And which you can terminate when that happens, without penalty. If for example you ISP changed from "unlimited" to "5 gigabytes" you can immediately terminate your relationship with that company. You are not bound to stay.
.
>>>I agree they are not a monopoly, BUT, getting into this business is not a simple as you seem to believe
Starting any business is never simple, but I'm sure if someone like Bill Gates or Donald Trump decided, "I can make a lot of money in wireless," they'd go ahead and do it. The fact that they CAN do it means the market is open. Look at google. At one time in the 1990s people would have said, "Trying to unseat Yahoo is nuts - nobody can do that." And along came upstart google.
.
>>>I agree they are not a monopoly,
I agree we agree. QED there's no need for government to impose net neutrality on Wireless ISPs. Government should only interfere when there's a monopoly (like the electric company or water company).
>>>Latin American countries will continue to have these issues even after drugs are legalized.
Yeah but it won't affect us because we'll be growing our own drugs, rather than dealing with these violent Latin men. They can continue assassinating one another for control of their tiny Panama governments, while those of us in the US and Canada will live in peace.
Also you're a little off on your statement. Mexico had been a stable for decades, prior to this recent drug war. Make drugs legal, which will dry-up the funds for the druglords, making them lose their power, and then Mexico will return to its pre-2000 state.
>>>You didn't hear about this stuff so much last year...isn't that a little surprising? Nor did you hear about it the year before...and yet, that war has been going on for more than just this year.
You are correct that things "ramp up" during election years, but the danger of a porous border where Druglords can cross without restriction was talked about as far back as 2005.
As for my own personal beliefs, I've never trusted Democrats since I consider them just a few steps short of Communists, and I quit the Republicans when the Idiot took office. I can proudly say that I am not to blame for Clinton, Bush, or Obama being in charge. I am Jeffersonian (constitutionally-limited government) and none of those candidates represented that view.
As for the "anonymous coward" below who thinks I'm nuts, then so be it. I am in the company of great men.
Most of my ideas don't come from me - they come directly from the US Founders.
>>>If there's a war in Mexico, then we should be giving shelter and asylum to refugees trying to escape it.
Good point but "asylum" is usually temporary, not permanent. Personally I'd rather end the war by moving the drug-growing out of Mexican warlords hands, and into the hands of American and Canadian farmers where the crops can be grown
.
>>>I don't really know how you'd "close the border" without harming a lot of people
Anyone who enters my home or country without first asking permission should not be allowed. Anyone who asks permission, like my immigrant coworkers, is welcome.
As for "harm" I don't know if you've noticed but the US is overpopulated. We have water shortages in the southwest and the southeast, and land shortages in the northeast, plus a coming oil crisis as oil wells start to dry up (aka Peak Oil). Now is the time to start decreasing US population, not increase it.
Nice sarcasm, but yes a consumer device is different from a professional device. Nobody had VTRs or VCRs in their home in the 1950s and 60s, even though they did exist at the time. The first VCR that people could actually afford was Betamax in 1975. And later Sony released the Betacam VCR which was aimed solely at pro level.
Likewise the earliest digitizing tablet that people could afford to bring home would probably be the Apple Tablet, just as Apple II was the first consumer-level computer. (Although not the most popular - the number one machine at the time was Radio Shack's TRS-80.)
"The first commercially available tablet-type portable computer [i.e. iPad like] was the GRiDPad from GRiD Systems, released in September. Its operating system was based on MS-DOS." - wikipedia
>>>The problem is some have decided to take advantage of the changes to position themselves better.
Spot on. Having a Monopoly like Comcast control the net is tame, compared to what happens if the Government gets hold of the internet (via regulation). We can expect the following to happen:
- Porn will be pulled off the net.
- Even nudity will eventually be outlawed. The internet will become as tame & boring as broadcast television, thanks to the FCC.
- Internet licenses will be required if you want to publish a blog. i.e. No more free speech for the citizenry
-
- And possibly a reinvigoration of the fairness doctrine. So if I want to publish an article on my web journal about the Tyranny of Bush and the loss of freedom under the Patriot Act, I then have to link to a counter-article that claims Bush was a great president and the Act was brilliant.
Don't get mad. I'm merely quoting ideas direct from Obama's white house employee/advisors. Don't shoot the messenger.
That's right.
There's a war in Mexico, and the soldiers routinely cross-over to US territory, kidnap citizens, and drag them back to Mexico. Or just outright kill them. Washington DC used to be the murder capitol of the nation, but now it's been eclipsed by Phoenix Arizona. (Phoenix is also the #1 city for kidnapping.) It's a sad state of affairs.
[Deleted paragraph about closing the border.] I've decided to self-censor myself because I'm tired of being marked "troll". Heaven forbid I share my Jeffersonian views in public (i.e. defense of self, defense of home, defense of country is a right), so I'll just keep them to myself.
.
Oh and I agree that legalizing marijuana/cocaine growing in the US would basically end the war. Mexican and South American druglords could no longer fund their wars without that money. They would die-off like the bootleggers died-off after Alcohol was legalized. Across the ocean, the EU state of Portugal(?) legalized drugs and opened-up addiction centers to help people get cured, and the drug-related crime plummeted to almost nothing.
>>>Almost as well as letting banks and investment companies police themselves.
Don't blame them. It was government that caused the housing bubble (and subsequent crash). It was *too much* regulation not a lack of regulation. Basically it boils down to: Loan mortgages to people who can't pay them back, else the US Government will drag you into court and prosecute you. The government speaker even admits it in this video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ivmL-lXNy64#t=2m10s [youtube.com]
An Inconvenient Truth indeed.
Whatever.
Just show me how any corporation (or corporations) that have deliberately killed ~100 million citizens by leading them into gas chambers (Germany) or firing squads (China) or willfully withholding food (Soviet Union) or army-led executions (Iraq) in the last hundred years.
You can't because no corporation (or corporations) has that level of power. They could probably get away with shooting a few hundred workers, but would soon be caught and prosecuted for murder. Or else consumer backlash would rise so high that the corporation would be bankrupted via boycotts.
Government is far, far, far more deadly.... by at least four orders of magnitude. Over 100 million of their own citizens, executed.
Government is responsible for killing over 100 million of its own citizens (since 1910). Government used executions, gas chambers, and genocide in places like Germany, Russia, China, Turkey, Iraq, Cambodia, and so on.
How many corporations do that? NONE. So yes government IS the greater evil.
>>>Government bad, corporate self-regulation good. Just stick to that DNC line and ignore any evidence to the contrary.
+4 insightful? Hardly. More like pro-tyrannical government and anti-free citizen trolling. Which agency is responsible for executing over 100 million of its own citizens (worldwide) during the last hundred years? Corporations? Nope. They don't operate firing squads or gas chambers. It's government.
I consider BOTH entities to be evil, dangerous, and untrustworthy and so should you. The difference: Corporations don't have power to throw me in jail, bust down my door, send me to Afghanistan to die, or suck money directly from my wallet. Corporations are the lesser evil. Government is the greater evil.
Also "free market" simply means "power to the citizen". i.e. Microsoft sucks, I'm switching to a different OS.
Finally: It was government that caused the housing bubble (and subsequent crash). It was *too much* regulation not a lack of regulation. Here is the late-90s regulation that made it happen. Basically it boils down to: Loan mortgages to people who can't pay them back, else the US Government will drag you into court and prosecute you. The government speaker even admits it in this video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ivmL-lXNy64#t=2m10s
An Inconvenient Truth indeed.
>>>>>Precisely. The "free market" simply means "power to the citizen".
>>
>>And "power to every corporation"
Fear-mongering and nonsense. Ford has no power over me. Boeing Airlines has no power over me. Microsoft and Apple have no power over me. Nor ATT, Verizon, Google, or Yahoo. Why? Because I decided long ago to keep my dollars to myself..... and if enough citizens did the same, we'd have the power to bankrupt these corporations. (See bankrupt Circuit City as example.)
Actually a free market is as close to pure democracy as you can get. I only get to vote for my representative (or kick him out) every 2 or 6 years. With corporations *every time* I spend (or keep) a dollar, I am voting to support (or reject) the corporation and its policies. We the People have the power to make a corporation succeed or fail.
>>>personally be happy to get 0.03GB/sec - that's still a tremendous data rate!
You can get that right now from Cable. And I disagree with the premise it will be cheaper to run a 1 Gbit/s fiber to everyone's home now, rather than later. Due to advances in technology, the cost of that quality fiber and switches will probably be 1/1000th as much in 2020.
Also you presume everyone needs 1 Gbit/s..... that's like presuming everyone needs homes made of gold walls. Nice luxury to have but not really necessary. It's really just a waste.
At least his idea was realistic.
If he had said something stupid like, "We choose to go to visit our nearest star Alpha Centauri in this decade," he would have looked stupid. That's essentially what this Aussie politician is promising. Right now NO country has 100% gigabit internet to all its citizens..... not even close to that numbers. (The fastest country averages just 0.03 Gbps.)
I don't see research. I just see a lot of ranting. Anybody can do that... show me some actual numbers. As for the average cost jumping from 10 to 20 cents, we've also seen a corresponding price drop in voice minutes from 50 downto about 15 cents. Funny how everyone overlooks that. Internet pricing has also dropped much lower than it used to be.
Also did you notice this part? "T-Mobile called Mr. Kohl's attention to the fact that its "average revenue per text message, which takes into account the revenue for all text messages, has declined by more than 50 percent since 2005.""
And finally I looked for the results of those price-fixing lawsuits. The result? Dismissed due to lack of evidence that the companies were meeting with one another.
>>>You mean the same contract that one party can modify the terms of at any time?
And which you can terminate when that happens, without penalty. If for example you ISP changed from "unlimited" to "5 gigabytes" you can immediately terminate your relationship with that company. You are not bound to stay.
.
>>>I agree they are not a monopoly, BUT, getting into this business is not a simple as you seem to believe
Starting any business is never simple, but I'm sure if someone like Bill Gates or Donald Trump decided, "I can make a lot of money in wireless," they'd go ahead and do it. The fact that they CAN do it means the market is open. Look at google. At one time in the 1990s people would have said, "Trying to unseat Yahoo is nuts - nobody can do that." But google did.
.
>>>I agree they are not a monopoly,
I agree we agree. QED there's no need for government to impose net neutrality on Wireless ISPs. Government should only interfere when there's a monopoly (like the electric company or water company).
.
>>>You named 7 competitors, of which I've heard of 3. I don't consider that a healthy market.
You've probably never heard of Mussers, Darrenkamps, Weis, Turkey Hill, Fergusons, or Amelias either. That doesn't mean my local community doesn't have a "healthy market" within the grocery store sector. Likewise if you've not heard of Boost, Net 10, Cricket, or Clear, so what? It still doesn't change the fact I have ~10 choices overall. My market is very competitive.
Agreed.
Besides I don't think it's harmful to be addicted to reading slashdot or facebook updates. It's perfectly normal and healthy. Now where's that "F" icon so I can share this interesting article with a bunch of "friends" I've never met?
FB is probably like CB Radio
- a fad that will die out in a few years when
people realize what a gigantic waste of time it is
Again according to wikipedia, Open Office was the original name used in the 90s, but it was later discovered to be copyrighted by some European company, so Sun/Oracle simply appended ".org" to the end starting around 2000 or 2001.
>>>but the FBI is I believe part of the executive branch, where the consitution and the first amendment in particular is aimed at the legislature: "Congress shall make no law"
In which case the 10th Amendment applies - The Executive of the US shall exercise no power (like muzzling citizens) that it was never granted by the constitution. If such a power exists, it is reserved to the Member States' Governments or the Individuals.
I was just reading on wikipedia last night that OpenOffice.org is a "limited" version of the office suite, and that most Linux installs (like Ubuntu) actually come with Go O-O instead because it offers full *.docx functionality that OpenOffice.org does not. Is that true?
If so I've been recommending the wrong office suite to friends, coworkers.
Simplify; simplify.
Rather than follow your complicated prescription with hundreds of pages of regulations, just remove the barriers for new entrants. i.e. Government needs to allow a new carrier like Sprint to either erect towers, or share the existing ones with ATT, Verizon, et cetera.
In my state a new provider named "Cricket" just arrived. Why? Because this state requires sharing of existing towers with new upstarts. Your state government apparently does not, and you should petition your politicians to change that.
>>>I essentially have no choice if I wish to use wireless service.
I make the same argument about Public Schools and the Proposed Government-run Health Service (i.e. no real choice), but for some reason, that's different? (shrug). In any case if "all" the wireless ISPs are throttling, there's probably a good reason for it - the EM spectrum is naturally throttled because it's limited.
Also you DO have a choice. If ATT starts blocking your access to youtube.com, you charge that they changed the terms of the contract, terminate it w/o penalty, and switch to a new provider like Verizon or Virgin or Cricket or Clear or Cingular or Google or MSN or...... that doesn't block youtube.
Of course ATT's not dumb. They probably never will block youtube.com, because they fear loss of customers like you and me. i.e. WE hold the power.
>>>Then why do they still whine about the likes of Youtube clogging up all their bandwidth?
Same reason users whine. Free speech.
>>>ALL of the US carriers charge for SMS on reception. they all colluded to do this. in europe, you only pay for messages you SEND. duh. clear proof that the carriers can't be trusted
>>>
Vice-versa Europeans had to pay a fee for every call they made, whereas Americans had free local calling. So for example if a 1990s or early 2000s European spent 10 hours downloading music over his Dialup connection, he'd be charged the equivalent of 2 cents per minute == 12 dollars. An American could do the same thing for free.
Does this "prove" there was collusion in the local calling market? No. It only proves that different cultures do things differently. We don't all speak the same language - neither do we all pay the same cost for service. Europeans pay ~4 dollars in taxes per gallon gasoline; Americans pay about 70 cents. Europeans pay a ~30% national sales tax (VAT) plus local sales tax. Americans only pay the local tax and no VAT. And on and on and on.
You have "proved" nothing, except that two continents spread ~5000 miles apart have differing expenses. No surprise there.
They don't "all" charge 20 cents. My provider gives unlimited SMS messaging for just $15 extra a month.... or 2 cents if I average one message per hour. Personally I prefer to pay-as-I-go for just 10 cents. Both of these plans are less than 20.
.
>>>it does NOT cost them 20 cents per SMS message
How do you know? Have you done research to determine how much it costs to (1) install several thousand towers (2) hire thousands of workers to keep them maintained so that (3) people can send messages anytime they desire? If so please share it with us. (Or else admit that you, like me, have no idea what messaging *actually* costs.)