Of course once it goes before a judge, and he reviews the evidence that the Tower was shutoff earlier, then the case will be dismissed because there's an obvious lack of causation.
That 30 years means nothing if you've forgotten it. For example I used to be able to write all kinds of demos from Commodores and Amigas. Today? No. It's been ~20 years and I've forgotten most of it
The present is what's relevant. What can you do for me NOW.
You may have avoided doing the dumb things most of us do when we're teenagers or college students.....
But you still suffer from the sin of pride. Therefore I wouldn't hire a prat like you. I prefer people who have committed mistakes, and learned how to recover.
>>>If a company gets a chance to sabotage a competitor without being caught, they will do so.
Please name a case where, for example, a phone company snipped Comcast's line while doing an install. Or a cable company snipped Verizon's lines while doing an install. Or an electric company pulled phone lines off poles, and dropped them on the ground.
If doesn't happen. Why? Because companies know that creating that kind of open warfare on each other's lines would be like shooting themselves in the foot. .
>>>THey could hog the pipe
If Comcast's fiber is separate from Verizon's fiber is separate from Cox's fiber..... then they don't be interfering with one another at all. Each would have their own dedicated fiber.
As for the actual physical metal underground pipes, they are already owned by the towns. At least that's how it is here - the county owns the metal pipe and Comcast/Verizon/BGE owns the wires that run through it.
>>>hahahaha, tell me more about how the united states postal service is fucking you over.
They are asking Congress for billions of dollars to pay off the post office's (again) (and again), so even though I don't use the USPS anymore, I'm still getting billed by them. I bet Comcast and Microsoft and Apple wish they had that kind of deal where they could charge people who aren't even their customers.
>>>768k is slow as hell and sure as hell isn't broadband
- narrowband == a 64k phoneline at 4000 hertz. That's more narrow than an old-fashioned AM radio station. - wideband or broadband == 100,000 hertz wide or higher. That's 5+ times wider than human hearing.
- 768k is about 200,000 hertz wide - 768k is not narrowband. - QED it's the other one.
Words have meaning - you can't just randomly redefine "broadband" to whatever desire you wish. This word relates to frequency spectrum and how wide that spectrum is. 768k at 200,000 hertz wide (10 times as wide as human hearing) certainly fits the bill of "broad" or "wide" band.
>>>If the US Interstate Highway, and telephone networks can reach all the "hillbillies"
They don't. I personally live 100 miles from the nearest interstate, as do many people. Interstates don't reach to every home. Neither do telephones. In my parents' house the phones only reached to the state highway - they had to pay the extra cost to have it extended five more miles down a back road.
THIS IS NOT A (-1) TROLL POST. IT'S AN OPINION. THERE'S NO NEED TO CENSOR IT. - As to your specific situation, Comcast is a government-granted monopoly. The flaw is with government. Ask your leaders to revoke the monopoly, and allow other competitors to enter the market (like Verizon, AT&T, Cox, Charter,...). .
>>>What's wrong with having the government define broadband as anything over 768Kbps down and 200Kbps up?
Why does some redneck living on top of a Vermont mountain need faster than 768k? More importantly: Why should I pay for it with higher taxes/subsidies? Let the hillbilly move closer to the city if he wants faster service. Or stay put and get, as a minimum, 768k and stop whining.
Next you're going to demand the government hook-up the hillbilly with city water and sewer. Nonsense. It's not my job to provide city-level service to people who *choose* to live in the country. ----- The EU state of Spain mandates 1 Mbit/s minimum. Ditto the state of Sweden. I see nothing wrong with the U.S. being in the same 768k-1.5 Mbit/s range as a minimum broadband requirement.
Oh and as for the rest of the world "laughing at us", I disagree. The U.S. is not doing bad at all. Here are the internet speeds, averaged across the entire population, for the various continent-level federations around the world. As you can see the U.S. is right near the top, and has nothing to feel shame for:
Russian Federation 8.3 Mbit/s U.S. 7.0 E.U. 6.6 Canada 5.7 Australia 5.1 China 3.0 Brazil 2.1 Mexico 1.1 Mbit/s --
>>>For example, they give 768k to the guys like that hermit in Montana, and call it broadband. But then raise that requirement according to how dense the population is.
The hermit would sue the U.S. for violating the Constitution's equal protection clause, and most likely win the right to have the same legal minimum as the people living in the city. So your idea would be converted by the courts from a 768k minimum to a 10,000k minimum even for people living far, far away from civilization.
>>>A lower power factor is caused by inductive loads, so you are charged extra for using too much inductive loading.
In other words they discourage the use of CFLs (compact fluorescent lamps). Interesting. IMHO that's a good thing, because Edison resistance bulbs eliminate mercury poisoning, dim turnons, premature heat-death, and high cost.
Not really. The State still mandates that the owner of the pipes (BGE) must continue to meet the same level of service as prior to 2000. So really, the electrical monopoly is just as regulated as ever - but now we have multiple choices like we have with telephone
Comcast is a government-granted monopoly. The flaw is with government. Ask your leaders to revoke the monopoly, and allow other competitors to enter the market (like Verizon, AT&T, Cox, Charter,...). .
>>>What's wrong with having the government define broadband as anything over 768Kbps down and 200Kbps up?
Why does some redneck living on top of a Vermont mountain need faster than 768k? More importantly: Why should I pay for it with higher taxes/subsidies? Let the hillbilly move closer to the city if he wants faster service. Or stay put and get, as a minimum, 768k and stop whining.
Next you're going to demand the government hook-up the hillbilly with city water and sewer. Nonsense. It's not my job to provide city-level service to people who *choose* to live in the country. ----- The EU state of Spain mandates 1 Mbit/s minimum. Ditto the state of Sweden. I see nothing wrong with the U.S. being in the same 768k-1.5 Mbit/s range as a minimum broadband requirement.
Oh and as for the rest of the world "laughing at us", I disagree. The U.S. is not doing bad at all. Here are the internet speeds, averaged across the entire population, for the various continent-level federations around the world. As you can see the U.S. is right near the top, and has nothing to feel shame for:
Russian Federation 8.3 Mbit/s U.S. 7.0 E.U. 6.6 Canada 5.7 Australia 5.1 China 3.0 Brazil 2.1 Mexico 1.1 Mbit/s
The distance for 1.5 Mbit/s, using a DSL repeater, is 10 miles. For 768k it's almost twice that. Worst-case the phone company could do for a rural town what they did for my old coworker - run a fiber line to a DSLAM, and then use the DSLAM to provide DSL over the existing phone lines.
As for cost, it probably will be higher for rural users. Oh well. They choose to live there, which means having some inconveniences like having to drill wells for water, bury tanks for sewer, and pay $30 for 768k instead of $15 like I do. They could move closer to the city if they want city-like services.
And finally, I support the idea of government mandating Broadband for everyone. I just don't think the mandate should be unrealistic, like requiring 10,000 kbit/s to some hermit in Montana. 768k is plenty fast. It works for me.
>>>Our 40 year "government regulation is bad" experiment
You have it backwards. Most of the ills of the last 20 years (back to the Savings-and-Loan Crash) were caused by regulation. For example, it was government regulation that caused the current economic crash. I know you won't believe me, but here are the politicians in their own words *encouraging banks to make high-risk doomed-to-default loans* (or else face being drug into court).
A better solution, now that we have fiber optic, is simply let as many companies enter a neighborhood as desire. Fiber is so narrow you could run a dozen companies in the space of a centimeter, and then just let each customer decide which company they like best (Comcast or Cox or Charter or AppleTV or LinuxISP or MSN or AOL or...). And before you say it can't be done, some towns already do have multiple ISPs. You pick your ISP the same way you pick what brand of car you want.
Being a customer of the Uncle Sam Monopoly is even worse than being under the Comcast monopoly. At least I can tell Comcast to go "frak off" and not use their service. Try that with a government-owned ISP and they'll just suck the money from your paycheck instead. Like the U.S.P.S. and Amtrak does.
And if you think RIAA is bad.....
Wait until the government becomes your ISP and spies you downloading a movie or song (or worse: porn). They won't just send you a nasty letter; they'll have the cops collect your body and move it into a jail. And no I'm not over-reacting: the government has already thrown teens in jail just because they got caught sharing naked photos. They've also arrested at least one college student who downloaded "Girls Gone Wild" and got kiddie porn instead. "It was a mistake and I deleted it immediately," didn't work as a defense.
No, no, no. I don't want the government running my ISP.
It works well for me. My natural gas + electricity bill dropped about 10% when I switched companies. That may not sound like much but when multiplied over a year that's ~$250 saved.
My electrical company is discontinuing nightly rates, and I'm not happy about it. My home would heat a tank of water at night, and then use virtually no electricity during the day, but now it won't matter when I run my heat - it will all cost the same.:-( Talk about a step backwards!
But at least those rates are based-upon a realistic limitation (it's cheaper to run generators at night rather than shut them down, and that benefit is passed to the consumer). With internet non-neutrality, we're discussing Comcast ISP charging 1 dollar per gigabyte to access youtube.com, but providing comcast.com at no cost. It's using monopoly power for an unfair competitive advantage.
>>>ISPs themself do not pay anything based on amount transferred.
You're going to sit there and tell me there's no difference in electricity usage for a Server to feed me 1 gigabyte versus 1000 gigabytes each month? C'mon! Of course high-usage costs more money, and I see nothing wrong with passing that on to the high-usage customer.
The flaw with your reasoning is that ISPs are already undercharging. So there's no "spare money" to decrease rates. I'm personally paying $15/month - how much cheaper can it get? Instead people are using more data, which will require laying more lines, and therefore require higher rates for those demanding users while everyone else holds steady.
ALSO FROM THE ARTICLE:
"AT&T is asking asking the government to define broadband as anything over 768Kbps downstream and 200Kbps upstream." What's wrong with that. That's ~30 times faster than the typical rural farm or country home connection. When Verizon ran 768k to my home I was thrilled, and I'm sure most people living in empty states like Idaho or Wyoming would also be similarly thrilled. It's better than having no broadband.
Plus 768k can use the existing phone lines - no need to dig-up a million miles of dirt.
Society needs to wake-up and realize punishing someone for what they did 20 years ago is ridiculous. Nobody is perfect. It's like what Harlan Ellison said on Sci-Fi Channel: "People accuse me of contradicting myself because 30 years ago I said this or that. And they're right. That's because 30 years ago I was young and stupid, and now I'm older and wiser and changed my mind. judge me on who I am today, now when I was some young brat."
IMHO just as thre's a 7-year stature of limitations on law, so too should employers have a limitation on how far back they can dig. Anything that predates this decade should be irrelevant.
Sorry for the typos - I'm typing on a mac. I'm not usd to this keyboard'
Ahhh the 70s - the lost decade where almost everything produced for TV was fueled by drug experimentation. Or sounded like disco. Or worse - had a little of both (Buck Rogers) so it could be twice as craptacular.
Slashdot Mirror
You're both correct.
Of course once it goes before a judge, and he reviews the evidence that the Tower was shutoff earlier, then the case will be dismissed because there's an obvious lack of causation.
The symptoms must be caused by something else.
That 30 years means nothing if you've forgotten it. For example I used to be able to write all kinds of demos from Commodores and Amigas. Today? No. It's been ~20 years and I've forgotten most of it
The present is what's relevant. What can you do for me NOW.
You may have avoided doing the dumb things most of us do when we're teenagers or college students.....
But you still suffer from the sin of pride.
Therefore I wouldn't hire a prat like you.
I prefer people who have committed mistakes, and learned how to recover.
>>>If a company gets a chance to sabotage a competitor without being caught, they will do so.
Please name a case where, for example, a phone company snipped Comcast's line while doing an install. Or a cable company snipped Verizon's lines while doing an install. Or an electric company pulled phone lines off poles, and dropped them on the ground.
If doesn't happen. Why? Because companies know that creating that kind of open warfare on each other's lines would be like shooting themselves in the foot.
.
>>>THey could hog the pipe
If Comcast's fiber is separate from Verizon's fiber is separate from Cox's fiber..... then they don't be interfering with one another at all. Each would have their own dedicated fiber.
As for the actual physical metal underground pipes, they are already owned by the towns. At least that's how it is here - the county owns the metal pipe and Comcast/Verizon/BGE owns the wires that run through it.
>>>hahahaha, tell me more about how the united states postal service is fucking you over.
They are asking Congress for billions of dollars to pay off the post office's (again) (and again), so even though I don't use the USPS anymore, I'm still getting billed by them. I bet Comcast and Microsoft and Apple wish they had that kind of deal where they could charge people who aren't even their customers.
If what you say is true, you should be buying stock in as many ISPs as you can.
However I don't think what you say is true.
>>>768k is slow as hell and sure as hell isn't broadband
- narrowband == a 64k phoneline at 4000 hertz. That's more narrow than an old-fashioned AM radio station.
- wideband or broadband == 100,000 hertz wide or higher. That's 5+ times wider than human hearing.
- 768k is about 200,000 hertz wide
- 768k is not narrowband.
- QED it's the other one.
Words have meaning - you can't just randomly redefine "broadband" to whatever desire you wish. This word relates to frequency spectrum and how wide that spectrum is. 768k at 200,000 hertz wide (10 times as wide as human hearing) certainly fits the bill of "broad" or "wide" band.
>>>If the US Interstate Highway, and telephone networks can reach all the "hillbillies"
They don't. I personally live 100 miles from the nearest interstate, as do many people. Interstates don't reach to every home. Neither do telephones. In my parents' house the phones only reached to the state highway - they had to pay the extra cost to have it extended five more miles down a back road.
THIS IS NOT A (-1) TROLL POST. IT'S AN OPINION. THERE'S NO NEED TO CENSOR IT. - As to your specific situation, Comcast is a government-granted monopoly. The flaw is with government. Ask your leaders to revoke the monopoly, and allow other competitors to enter the market (like Verizon, AT&T, Cox, Charter, ...).
.
>>>What's wrong with having the government define broadband as anything over 768Kbps down and 200Kbps up?
Why does some redneck living on top of a Vermont mountain need faster than 768k? More importantly: Why should I pay for it with higher taxes/subsidies? Let the hillbilly move closer to the city if he wants faster service. Or stay put and get, as a minimum, 768k and stop whining.
Next you're going to demand the government hook-up the hillbilly with city water and sewer. Nonsense. It's not my job to provide city-level service to people who *choose* to live in the country. ----- The EU state of Spain mandates 1 Mbit/s minimum. Ditto the state of Sweden. I see nothing wrong with the U.S. being in the same 768k-1.5 Mbit/s range as a minimum broadband requirement.
Oh and as for the rest of the world "laughing at us", I disagree. The U.S. is not doing bad at all. Here are the internet speeds, averaged across the entire population, for the various continent-level federations around the world. As you can see the U.S. is right near the top, and has nothing to feel shame for:
Russian Federation 8.3 Mbit/s
U.S. 7.0
E.U. 6.6
Canada 5.7
Australia 5.1
China 3.0
Brazil 2.1
Mexico 1.1 Mbit/s
--
>>>For example, they give 768k to the guys like that hermit in Montana, and call it broadband. But then raise that requirement according to how dense the population is.
The hermit would sue the U.S. for violating the Constitution's equal protection clause, and most likely win the right to have the same legal minimum as the people living in the city. So your idea would be converted by the courts from a 768k minimum to a 10,000k minimum even for people living far, far away from civilization.
>>>A lower power factor is caused by inductive loads, so you are charged extra for using too much inductive loading.
In other words they discourage the use of CFLs (compact fluorescent lamps). Interesting. IMHO that's a good thing, because Edison resistance bulbs eliminate mercury poisoning, dim turnons, premature heat-death, and high cost.
Not really. The State still mandates that the owner of the pipes (BGE) must continue to meet the same level of service as prior to 2000. So really, the electrical monopoly is just as regulated as ever - but now we have multiple choices like we have with telephone
Comcast is a government-granted monopoly. The flaw is with government. Ask your leaders to revoke the monopoly, and allow other competitors to enter the market (like Verizon, AT&T, Cox, Charter, ...).
.
>>>What's wrong with having the government define broadband as anything over 768Kbps down and 200Kbps up?
Why does some redneck living on top of a Vermont mountain need faster than 768k? More importantly: Why should I pay for it with higher taxes/subsidies? Let the hillbilly move closer to the city if he wants faster service. Or stay put and get, as a minimum, 768k and stop whining.
Next you're going to demand the government hook-up the hillbilly with city water and sewer. Nonsense. It's not my job to provide city-level service to people who *choose* to live in the country. ----- The EU state of Spain mandates 1 Mbit/s minimum. Ditto the state of Sweden. I see nothing wrong with the U.S. being in the same 768k-1.5 Mbit/s range as a minimum broadband requirement.
Oh and as for the rest of the world "laughing at us", I disagree. The U.S. is not doing bad at all. Here are the internet speeds, averaged across the entire population, for the various continent-level federations around the world. As you can see the U.S. is right near the top, and has nothing to feel shame for:
Russian Federation 8.3 Mbit/s
U.S. 7.0
E.U. 6.6
Canada 5.7
Australia 5.1
China 3.0
Brazil 2.1
Mexico 1.1 Mbit/s
The distance for 1.5 Mbit/s, using a DSL repeater, is 10 miles. For 768k it's almost twice that. Worst-case the phone company could do for a rural town what they did for my old coworker - run a fiber line to a DSLAM, and then use the DSLAM to provide DSL over the existing phone lines.
As for cost, it probably will be higher for rural users. Oh well. They choose to live there, which means having some inconveniences like having to drill wells for water, bury tanks for sewer, and pay $30 for 768k instead of $15 like I do. They could move closer to the city if they want city-like services.
And finally, I support the idea of government mandating Broadband for everyone. I just don't think the mandate should be unrealistic, like requiring 10,000 kbit/s to some hermit in Montana. 768k is plenty fast. It works for me.
>>>Our 40 year "government regulation is bad" experiment
You have it backwards. Most of the ills of the last 20 years (back to the Savings-and-Loan Crash) were caused by regulation. For example, it was government regulation that caused the current economic crash. I know you won't believe me, but here are the politicians in their own words *encouraging banks to make high-risk doomed-to-default loans* (or else face being drug into court).
Clinton-era: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ivmL-lXNy64
Bush-era: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iW5qKYfqALE
Result: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cMnSp4qEXNM
P.S.
A better solution, now that we have fiber optic, is simply let as many companies enter a neighborhood as desire. Fiber is so narrow you could run a dozen companies in the space of a centimeter, and then just let each customer decide which company they like best (Comcast or Cox or Charter or AppleTV or LinuxISP or MSN or AOL or...). And before you say it can't be done, some towns already do have multiple ISPs. You pick your ISP the same way you pick what brand of car you want.
Being a customer of the Uncle Sam Monopoly is even worse than being under the Comcast monopoly. At least I can tell Comcast to go "frak off" and not use their service. Try that with a government-owned ISP and they'll just suck the money from your paycheck instead. Like the U.S.P.S. and Amtrak does.
And if you think RIAA is bad.....
Wait until the government becomes your ISP and spies you downloading a movie or song (or worse: porn). They won't just send you a nasty letter; they'll have the cops collect your body and move it into a jail. And no I'm not over-reacting: the government has already thrown teens in jail just because they got caught sharing naked photos. They've also arrested at least one college student who downloaded "Girls Gone Wild" and got kiddie porn instead. "It was a mistake and I deleted it immediately," didn't work as a defense.
No, no, no. I don't want the government running my ISP.
>>>screwed it all up with electrical deregulation
It works well for me. My natural gas + electricity bill dropped about 10% when I switched companies. That may not sound like much but when multiplied over a year that's ~$250 saved.
P.S.
My electrical company is discontinuing nightly rates, and I'm not happy about it. My home would heat a tank of water at night, and then use virtually no electricity during the day, but now it won't matter when I run my heat - it will all cost the same. :-( Talk about a step backwards!
But at least those rates are based-upon a realistic limitation (it's cheaper to run generators at night rather than shut them down, and that benefit is passed to the consumer). With internet non-neutrality, we're discussing Comcast ISP charging 1 dollar per gigabyte to access youtube.com, but providing comcast.com at no cost. It's using monopoly power for an unfair competitive advantage.
>>>ISPs themself do not pay anything based on amount transferred.
You're going to sit there and tell me there's no difference in electricity usage for a Server to feed me 1 gigabyte versus 1000 gigabytes each month? C'mon! Of course high-usage costs more money, and I see nothing wrong with passing that on to the high-usage customer.
The flaw with your reasoning is that ISPs are already undercharging. So there's no "spare money" to decrease rates. I'm personally paying $15/month - how much cheaper can it get? Instead people are using more data, which will require laying more lines, and therefore require higher rates for those demanding users while everyone else holds steady.
ALSO FROM THE ARTICLE:
"AT&T is asking asking the government to define broadband as anything over 768Kbps downstream and 200Kbps upstream." What's wrong with that. That's ~30 times faster than the typical rural farm or country home connection. When Verizon ran 768k to my home I was thrilled, and I'm sure most people living in empty states like Idaho or Wyoming would also be similarly thrilled. It's better than having no broadband.
Plus 768k can use the existing phone lines - no need to dig-up a million miles of dirt.
Society needs to wake-up and realize punishing someone for what they did 20 years ago is ridiculous. Nobody is perfect. It's like what Harlan Ellison said on Sci-Fi Channel: "People accuse me of contradicting myself because 30 years ago I said this or that. And they're right. That's because 30 years ago I was young and stupid, and now I'm older and wiser and changed my mind. judge me on who I am today, now when I was some young brat."
IMHO just as thre's a 7-year stature of limitations on law, so too should employers have a limitation on how far back they can dig. Anything that predates this decade should be irrelevant.
Sorry for the typos - I'm typing on a mac.
I'm not usd to this keyboard'
also wires let you multiply the spectrum. With wireless you just get one, whereas with wires you get as many spectrums as you can lay down.
Ahhh the 70s - the lost decade where almost everything produced for TV was fueled by drug experimentation. Or sounded like disco. Or worse - had a little of both (Buck Rogers) so it could be twice as craptacular.