Been gone for months -- work contracts in fall take up 20 hours a day. Weird to be back.
I repudiate copyright. I make content -- written word, music, we even design lighting shows for congregations. We copyright nothing and openly allow people to copy it. I now produce 3 bands who repudiate copyright. At their shows, they say "Hey! Buy our CDs if you like our music, copy it for your friends and family." Why is this bad? The music is a nice income, but their SHOWS are their real labor. A great album takes me 4-12 weeks to produce, and can make significant money for the band over years of show dates.
How about bands (and content creators) get their music on Lime Wire NOW, and try to get their music into the music stores? How about anti-RIAA supporters download this LEGAL music from Lime Wire. Now individuals, NOT CLASS LITIGATION, can work together on a Wiki site that encourages EVERYONE to put together a nice lawsuit to file individually, locally. What does it cost the individual to sue the RIAA in small claims for hampering their freedom to transact business? The RIAA _can not stop_ all the lawsuits, so judgements might be had.
I'm not talking about any group boycott, I'm talking about enabling individuals to help each other in their individual testimony against the RIAA.
FWIW, I repudiate the law, as well, and I would never sue another person in court. If I have a beef, I get a third party arbitrator. I don't do business with individuals who won't agree to this basic hand-shake agreement. Just an idea for others.
When you live far away from a metropolis, you should not require that the people in the metropolis pay for your desire to be away from them.
They should not subsidize your telephone service to be cheap -- you picked to live away, you should pay your fair share. They should not subsidize for your mail service. Maybe people in rural areas could pay UPS/Fedex to come visit once a week to pick up and drop off all the packages for that region. The price for society that wants to live close to the action would go down, and the rural areas would get what they want -- isolation.
I find it ridiculous that people think the mail service is good because it seems to work when they don't realize that MOST public mail is paid for by advertising to the mailbox. Do you really think that big advertisers won't subsidize the mail directly if the competitive mail industry stopped supporting rural areas? I don't think so. And even if they didn't, that is part of the risk that moving away from a metropolis brings with it -- added isolation.
The key to what I said was "residential technologies." Of course you can *get* a fiber 1.5gbps link today -- heck, you can get an OC192 at 10-12Gbps. Sure, you can even get it "just about anywhere" -- if you want to pay $7500 per month and a massive installation charge.
You're thinking in very 2004 terms, technologically. The main impediment is competition at the moment -- we're still waiting for competitive systems to keep pushing the envelope. My home network is currently getting about 600Kbit/s without a cap (likely more, I get 600K downloads in utorrent every day). I can provision a 1Mbit/s line for just a little more. I've already used a 2Mbit/s line in a neighboring town (Deerfield, Illinois) that should be to the residences later this year. Just 2 years ago I was happy to get 50Kbit/s. 2 years before that I was happy to get 10Kbit/s. 2 years before that I was happy to get 4Kbit/s, and 2 years before that 2Kbit/s was my speed. Times have changed, and competitive technologies are what changed it.
But the *only* major provider even close to rolling out fiber *to the home* is Verizon, and they're using G.983 -- 622mbps down, 155mbps up. Even then, they're using most of that bandwidth to provide IPTV services, not to give you raw Internet throughput -- I'm not aware of any plans for them to push broadband tiers over 45mbps.
The main impediment here is the idea of broadcasting rather than narrowcasting. I think the growing popularity of BitTorrent shows that narrowcasting is the future -- most of the major distributors are still focusing on broadcasting and this is why broadband tiers max out at 45Mbit (or realistically much lower). When broadcasting is replaced by narrowcasting (and it will be, very quickly in fact), we'll see things switch very quickly. The analog market is already dying (radio and TV) and Tivo and Torrent are both helping to kill off broadcasting entirely. The distribution companies will move to a narrowcast on-demand format, which will need more IP traffic space than digital video space. We also see that a XViD movie looks darn good, and it occupies significantly less space than the same VoD or broadband video does.
This is also where net neutrality could be an impediment to transitioning from broad to narrow-casting: companies that already have broadvideo will want to prioritize their narrowvideo transmissions over the IP portion of the line, but they might be restricted from doing so if their narrowvideo distribution company is considered a seperate company. Ever consider that problem with net neutrality as a law?
Now, you might be saying, hey, I was close, 622mbps is still a lot more than 1.5mbps, and it's going to your home. Guess what? That coaxial cable carrying digital cable and HD channels into your home is pushing 2gbps. But the cable companies are using only a fraction of that space for Internet connectivity, putting the rest into action for video-on-demand, HD cable, and extended tiers of service -- just like the phone companies intend to.
Telephone connectivity won't need more than 10KBit/s, though. That still leaves a huge amount of space when narrowcasting VoD takes off, as it already is starting to. Of course, much of that 2Gbit/s speed is shared since it is broadcast (the backbone is the limit in this case), but there are already cheaper provisions for sending significantly more than 40Gbit/s through the backbone and those costs are coming down. It might be costly for the current media providers but new providers would have a huge leg up if they got into that market (or if they could).
And if you think fiber to the home is held up on municipal right-of-way, and not the astronomical cost to implement, well, that's your own opinion.
I disagree, but I unfortunately don't have my ammunition handy. There is still a large problem with FCC regulations that convolute other regulations that the FCC has worked to rearrange (I won't say remove). There is still a huge problem in the municipal a
Actually, we developed the system ourselves in-house. Our development PC was an ancient laptop with 64MB of ram, no hard drive, and a bootable OS lite version of Windows 98 with iTunes.
We're waiting for our SOC to be finalized (system-on-a-chip). I'm not patenting the device, I just hope to sell the SOC to OEMs who want to get to market quicker. I think it could be a huge product for more than bands, especially to reach out to the "convention" market of businessmen who would carry iPods if they could get "free" samples of a public speaker's works at a speaking engagement.
The basic idea is simple: the SOC provides a USB-interface on one end, a SD-RAM interface on the other, and a button in-between (we also have a version that requires no button at all). Plug the iPod into the interface, push the button, and it copies the MP3s (and video should work) to the iPod in guest mode, disconnects, and you do the next one. Our hope was to have something at Christmas of last year, but the SOC development was a bit expensive and no one wanted to foot the bill.
I really wanted a version that would let people just plug their iPod into one of a dozen cables and have it automatically dump and cut, but I am still waiting for the hardware to be finalized.
Drop me an e-mail and I'll give you more details. By the way, I "invented" this creation, but I won't patent it as I don't believe in IP laws.
The FSAN/ITU-t G983 standard offers approximately 650Mbit/s or half what I quoted. This is an already two provisions at this speed available for the market, although current state regulations are limiting the effectiveness of rolling it out. APON, as far as I know, will support this speed without major concern although there are overhead considerations. I'm not sure which trade journal I got the information from, but if you really need to know just e-mail me and I'll look it up next time I'm in the office (this or next week).
We've also been informed that FSAN/ITU-t G984 standard quadruples this speed to approximately 2.5Gbit/s, and is also a "real life" system, not just in the labs. I'm fairly sure that GPON falls within the G984 standard, but I don't have my sources in front of me and I'm spouting from memory. I'm sure a quick Google search would work except I'm on a GPRS connection today (my EDGE modem is at home, oops) so it would be a waste of time. If it isn't GPON that serves 2.5Gbit/s, then it is over 1.5Gbit/s for sure.
Look up ZONU's ONU 2C device -- I know (and have seen) that it can support 1.2-1.5Gbit/s or somewhere in that region.
Lastly, I know that the IEEE Ethernet protocol is mostly dead in terms of ultra-high bandwidth to the home/business. The GEM protocol supports considerably higher speeds, upwards of 3Gbit/s if I recall correctly. We just have to wait for FSAN/ITU-t to standardize it, and it will be quickly replaced with whatever IEEE is working on in the labs (again from memory, I believe they're on the verge of a very near term 10Gbit/s standard for FTTF broadband).
This is the problem with trade journals -- they're all print form and impossible to quote. Drop me an e-mail and we'll talk more, especially if you need some source reference. I would not doubt at all that Google will pull up a few secondary sources that at least quote who they're picking the information up in.
My apologies if I am off by even 50% on the numbers, but I've seen the future and it is not 1.5Mbit/s -- it is at least an order of magnitude more and it is very very close to being available if only the local regulations were lifted on rolling out new lines.
BTW--slightly OT here, but I just knew there was a reason I liked you. Which one did you run? ExecPC?
Actually, I provisioned an X.25 packet switching connection before I left the pre-Internet business:) So technically I had very nice net access before the big boys. My first ISP as a consumer was Chicago's InterAccess (one of the first large local ISPs). I also did try ExecPC for a while.
When I ran my FidoNet node (I wish I could recall the number), I had something called a CallPak because my suburb of Chicago had a competitive telephone company (Centel) and they let me make any call up to Band D for free (unlimited calls for a set price). Ameritech didn't have this program. Because of this I could bring in data from a fairly long distance for no cost, which is why my BBS grew in leaps and bounds with the FidoNet days. That was pretty awesome and financed my X.25, which was very short-lived because my users didn't understand the Internet (which we were NOT a part of yet, theoretically), so it was a bigger cost than it created.
As if they had the power in the first place. The Commerce clause doesn't give them any more right to regulate the Internet than it does to the FCC to regulate the airwaves. But they just continually ignore the highest law in the land, referring to it as "archaic" and "out of date". The Founding Fathers must be rolling in their graves...
If only the consumers realized this and just stopped voting entirely. That power came from the mad majority just throwing it away.
You almost had me convinced until you said that competition will give us what we want. We want better service at lower prices. Corporations want more money for less output. Mutally exclusive goals. Not that regulation will fix it; it is an intractible position where all sides are morally bankrupt.
You're ignoring what competition really is -- it isn't corporations or unions or markets or groups of anything; it is individuals looking to get more out of something they put into.
When you go to a gas station to buy gas, you take dollars with you. The gas station owner wants to sell gas for more dollars than the gas is worth to him. You want to buy gas that is worth more to you than the dollars you give up -- you mutually exchange these products/services for a mutual gain. After the transaction, you BOTH profit.
Competition means that people have choices as to who they'll barter with. Imagine if 100 gas stations only had 1 consumer to serve in total -- a consumption monopoly. What would that one consumer do? He'd buy from the cheapest person who would sell him what he wants. But that's a consumption monopoly, so the consumer could also put EVERYONE out of business by witholding his dollars. The best market is one where competition is available on both ends -- multiple consumers competing with each other (increasing the demand for goods and increasing the supply of dollars) as well as multiple providers competing with each other (increasing the supply of goods and decreasing the cost in dollars).
Corporations are no different than two individual bartering -- a corporation is a group of individuals ALL bartering with one another for personal gain. When the corporation has government power, now it can control the competition in the market -- it is the government power that is evil.
You live in a trailer park in south milwaukee and drive a used toyota corolla.
Actually, I now own 6 mobile homes in my area (halfway between Milwaukee and Chicago) and am expanding that holding to at least 20 throughout the country in the next few months in hopes of a pending bubble collapse that will leave a lot of families needing a place to move to. The mobile home idea came directly from Gary North's article on opportunities and living expenses last year (the article I link to is a more recent recap of his 2004 opinion that I can't seem to find right now).
Last year the lady and I drove new cars (Land Rover, Volkswagen and a Lexus) and lived in a large house and had a few vacation homes. Liquidating these unneeded assets have expanded our ability to do what we want (travel, spend time with our church, etc) rather than worry about how we'll pay the bills each month.
Who, exactly, do you think wants to "mimic" your lifestyle? Junis?
I'm not sure who Junis is, but considering that I've helped a few dozen people downside their lives and increase their happiness and free time in the last year (through example alone), I think far more people would wish they made adaptations like I did.
There were years when I made a strong 6 figures and had really zero to show for it. Now I can make 1/2 my previous income but my monthly living expenses are about 90% lower. If you're working 50-60 hours a week and have no money to travel, raise kids, spend time with friends and family and do the things you want to do, you may not realize how profitable it can be to downsize extravagently. Owning a US$400,000 house in Chicago was not as amazing as I thought it was (especially since most of my friends owned similar homes on 95% debt). Owning 20 US$20,000 trailers throughout the country that I can live in when I am on a work contract really makes my life easier. Try it sometime.
As for the Toyota Corolla, that has been a long standing joke between friends here and in real life. We're a 4 vehicle family (SUV, Toyota beater, car to drive customers around in and a joy ride vehicle). We're still trying to downsize all those vehicles to two.
You sure about that? In a response to one of my posts earlier this year, that $300,000 figure was much lower... an order of magnitude lower, IIRC. If I was a subscriber, I'd check my post history (and/or yours) for the specific post.
We closed up shop in Q4 of 2005 (or were forced to, actually). My original figures were US$40,000 of debt that wasn't easily payable. 12 different attempts to liquidate our inventory (which I believe was about US$200,000) failed, so we had to use a liquidation company which ended up losing us about US$160,000 (the final numbers are still pending). We had leases to pay out (which I didn't realize would be as costly but we were unable to negotiate) as well as tax liabilities which we're still auditing. My original figure of US$40,000 grew to US$100,000 quickly and seems to have settled around the US$300K mark as of last Friday. According to my lawyer, it may come down about 30% depending on settlements and some outstanding income, which I'm hoping is true because it still is a year or two of income out the window.
That is the unfortunately aspect of business failure -- as time goes on, losses grow. We were expecting a Christmas profit of about that loss figure (around US$300,000) which was going to help us open 5 more retail stores. I'm not one to factor "future income" lost as a real lost, but I'd peg that figure at around a clean million over the next year had we not had the issues we had (and the State which kept us from fixing the problem).
I've received a very small deal from a publisher to go through the 4 years of our history -- how we grew so fast, how we fell so fast, and what it was that we should have done to protect ourselves. Hopefully I can get the entire story (with back up facts) done after we've actually closed the books completely and legally without anyone still dangling. I hate having ex-customers and suppliers hurt over our mistakes. The odd thing is that the loss actually gave me a little more room to sell my services because I had now had both sides of the business cycle: profit and failure. Life is funny.
And often those people would have no access to broadband if it weren't for regulated monopoly. In exchange for building out to West Dingleberry, the telco is granted the sole right to serve that area. Otherwise the risk outwieghs the potential profit.
There are numerous satellite broadband providers offering 1.5Mbps down and up to 256Kbps up throughout all 50 states at around US$50 to US$100 per month. Nothing precludes one person from getting a corporate account that allows reselling of the bandwidth. These speeds are only held back by FCC regulations.
Hardly. As long as there is competition in a hugely capital-intensive market, you'll have a minimum of providers undercutting potential new competition, along with collusion. At best you'll get very, very slow one-upmanship without major capital improvements.Let it crush more? So that we have fewer, not more, options as to how we get deliverables?
Every thing I listed that was crushed was replaced by more choice and lower cost. Regulation did not help this, it was the lack of regulation that gave people incentives to take risks. Some people failed, but the hardware and labor up to that point was bought by someone else to use.
Unregulated markets of non-commodity goods (like internet service) result in monopolies and oligopolies. That's the natural state...
No, it isn't. Look at www.dslreports.com to see how many competitors there are -- the less regulation there is in a municipality, the more competition there is.
even your totally unregulated Austrian model has to adjust for monopolistic force in order to work properly. If you really want better performance in terms of net result for the consumer, you either need to take actions to prevent monopolies, or take actions to regulate them -- whether you're from the Austrian school of thought (such as yourself), the Keynesian (such as the FRB), or another (such as myself). In the case of the telcos, it was determined that regulation was a better bet because of the alternative would have either been state-owned infrastructure, or no service to less dense areas.
Again, untrue. Once local service regulations were reduced (and not removed), we saw incredible outreach for cell phone service and broadband access. It wasn't the regulations that gave us this growth, it was new technologies that were finally allowed to compete with the old and dead monopoly technologies that provided it.
I can (and have) driven all over the country and North America and I'm shocked at the cell reception I get compared to 5 years ago. This isn't regulation that provides for consumers, it is companies taking risks. In small towns, we seen tiny companies put up a cell phone tower to re-lease to the large providers so that they can offer their customers service.
Don't forget that a good part of the country still does not have broadband available. Video streaming in is impossible for many places, not to mention streaming in HD. Physical media isn't going anywhere, for quite a while.
Really? I see you as being wrong. Check out this image. For those VERY few white spots on the map, you have Satellite broadband which is available in 99.9% of the US.
According to various trade journal publications, the days of 1.5Mb/s are over, soon to be replaced with 1.5Gb/s bandwidth almost everywhere -- except where the municipality or the state prevents it.
I consider myself a Republican, but I'm going to say something against the party line - the free market does NOT solve all ills!
Of course it doesn't -- but it can. I bet that most of the ills you speak of are completely non-existent.
Where exactly is this competition of which you speak? Tell that to the masses of Americans who do not live in large towns and have only source for broadband. Where exactly do they go when their local broadband provider charges them AND Google and friends more?
So start your own provider. I live in a tiny town of about 2000-3000 people. I run my own mini-ISP with my ISP's approval (WiFi to about 32 neighbors now). I used to own property in a farm town in western Illinois, and I set up a very expensive digital line to provide service to about 15 houses out there. They each pay about US$70 for the line and it works great. I long left the area, but I've heard that two more companies have started to compete. In some towns, they can't compete because the town doesn't allow it.
If there is no competition, it is for two reasons: government says no, or there is no demand. Why supply in either case?
By the way, AOL and Prodigy are both still around.
Sure they are, as competitors to the rest. They were HUGE for years, though, and many people thought they'd be monopolies. Competition eased that concern -- not the law.
I'm no republican, in fact I detest the republicans more than the democrats 50% of the time (vice versa the other 50% of the time). I am a-political. If there is a demand, the market will provide a supply if it is not restricted from doing so.
I'm curious because I'd like to have a similar lifestyle - if you're for real. I don't mean any insult, it's just that; well, you know better than I considering you've been on the 'Net MUCH longer than me, you can be whomever you want online.
I'm very good about keeping my companies under holding companies rather than under myself. This is a good question, though, and it is one that a lot of slashdotters are asking me often.
There are 3-4 Adam Dada's in the U.S. that I am aware of. There are some searches that will bring up a little "proof" that I am real:
A Google search of "Adam Dada" (with quotes) brings up an old article in Electrical Contractor Magazine that talks about my IT consulting business. It also brings up an ancient BBS text file list that has my old BBS phone number for my old BBS (The Melting Point) which grew from a single node to 5 nodes to 12 nodes before I sold it just before the Internet boom (I foresaw it and knew I'd never compete). Going to page 2 of that search pulls up an advertisement for my (failed) retail chain of stores that fell apart due to a bad accountant not filing taxes properly. I lost about US$300,000 on that business last year.
There are those who want to "mimic" my lifestyle, but they don't see how it is done. I'll be talking about how I do what I do in my Be The Boss blog (click my about URL) in the next week or two. There are a few secrets:
1. Love information over fast financial gain. 2. Take huge risks to get into a market before the average layman has heard of it 3. Find a GREAT team that will support your business responsibilities so you can enter new markets. 4. Live life without great expense (by used cars, don't buy a huge house, focus on real savings rather than gambles)
Life isn't easy, but I always feel that you need to re-invent yourself every 2-3 years. The reason why I have so many stories and knowledge on so many topics is that I've taken huge risks (with rewards and losses) to keep reinventing myself. Many of my businesses I've started are still around today (like www.deeplabs.com which I founded 13 years ago and is very successful in a niche market). Many of my businesses I've started are gone in name because I either sold them or gave them to a previous employee, so the names have changed by the people that know me will thank me in person but understand my desire to keep my name off of things as I don't believe in ego or pride -- I believe the best we can do is just keep finding what the market wants, provide it, and move on to a new market.
The government has ALREADY created monopoly powers for internet companies - unless you want 45 different lines running down your street, you get one, maybe two providers.
Huh? Why is this a problem? 45 different lines won't occupy much more space than they already do -- plus I doubt we'd see this problem as I think we'd see companies dedicated to pulling lines to re-lease to others if we had more competition in the municipalities. To think that every company would want their own lines is unrealistic, just as every company doesn't do their own website hosting or handle their own business card printing in house or whatever. Companies that can offer services to others will always be around. I'd rather see 3 or 4 competitive line-leasers than 1. In my community, we already have about 8 ISPs over various mediums (and 2 WiFi ones).
The tradeoff that these natural monopolies provide is that they don't get to benefit from being a monopoly (i.e., regulation and price ceilings). It's a non-ideal solution for an unsolveable problem, but it's a necessary solution that is practical, much as the anti-regulation crowd may hate it.
Of course they get a benefit -- they get to set the prices without competition. They get to keep new technologies out of the market, as well. Cell phones were kept out of the market for decades because of Ma Bell's power over everyone else. DSL and Cable were kept out for a long time while old laws were replaced. It is a non-ideal solution because there is an ideal solution -- allow competition.
Everyone I've seen rail against regulation on the grounds that "regulation never encourages competition" always seems to forget that Net Neutrality proponents are only trying to restore the very balance that DID exist, the balance that the FCC removed last year.
It NEVER existed because the "net" was too young and companies were still trying to overcome technological barriers. The FCC is a great evil and arguably unconstitutional. No new law will create any balance or harmony, you have to be incredibly naive to believe that a new law will "balance" a market that is already very competitive and working just fine. Net neutrality, as I said in my OP, is FUD. It doesn't need to exist based on a law, it exists fine without any regulation.
You mean "peaking." Blockbuster and NetFlix offices are running around freaking out as we push our net connections to 1Gb/s -- more than fast enough to display HD video real time to the home. While sales numbers may keep climbing, I would venture a guess (an industry-educated guess, at that) that the DVD is already replaced with XViD and fast connections. Two more "evolutionary" steps for video and HD-DVD will be forgotten, too.
For that matter, CD sales are still brisk (even now)
I'm already helping bands sell their music at shows straight-to-iPod. A US$100 device (basically a memory stick, a button and an iPod cable) lets bands make infinite margins since they have zero distribution cost (no CDs, no printing costs, etc). It won't be long for CD to be forgotten, either.
and there's a lot of dead trees turning into newspapers.
Massive layouts at every newspaper, the resurgence of limited-distribution zines online, and the blogosphere would disagree with you in terms of the next 2 years.
The Internet does not exist. It is a figment of the imagination of people in power and the laymen who listen to them. I come from a glorious history of the BBS days (I ran a fairly large multinode Chicagoland BBS for years) where I witnessed the "birth" of the consumer Internet -- thousands of interconnected mini-networks that created a larger one. Now it is millions of mini-networks that make up this thing we call the Net, but it still doesn't exist. There are thousands of Internets, and there is no real way to regulate them.
We have to realize that EVERY law that goes into existence does so for two reasons:
1. To try to fix some problem that exists TODAY. 2. To try to give more power to the few who love power over the masses.
These both go hand-in-hand. Laws don't regularly leave the books, so they stick around for generations, usually preventing new creations from makig our lives better. The power passes hands from one politician to the next, and the elite few know they can use that power to make their lives better at a very small expense to each individual of the masses. What do you care if a regulation costs you US$10 a year more? When 100 million taxpayers each pay that US$10 per year for a regulation or preferential treatment, someone is taking in US$1 billion because of it. It is in their interest to keep the laws on the books.
Net neutrality doesn't matter because the Internet as it is today doesn't matter. Over time, preferred networks will have to occur in some way, and that is OK. AOL had their own network, but it failed. Compuserve had a huge "Internet" for years before IP was the preferred transport, and it failed. Google has its own network of caches and archives, but it isn't what people want to browse (I rarely use Google's cache, unless a site is down or gone). Right now people will switch from ial-up to DSL to cable based on their desire to access information quickly. You can switch over in less than 2 weeks, sometimes days.
But there are reasons some are precluded from switching easily. Usually it is because a local municipality or state has laws creating a monopoly provider. You can't blame competition for this -- you can blame government. Now some people want to give more power to the Federal government even though the Constitution says they can't have that power. It won't matter -- the politicians are producing large amounts of FUD (along with the businesses that rely on government's ability to create monopolies in markets) to scare the average consumer into believing the "Net" will fall apart if it doesn't remain neutral.
It won't happen. As long as government doesn't create monopoly powers through Internet regulations, the Net will change to what the consumers want. Right now, the municipalities that dictate which monopoly provider can give the residents access create HUGE problems for those residents. States that do the same also create a huge problem for their residents. Imagine if we pushed those problems to the national level -- we'd all lose the ability to work around monopoly-mandates created by government.
Don't do it -- don't give the Federal government ANY chance to regulate or require ANYTHING. Let competition give us what we want. Competition crushed AOL, Compuserve, and Prodigy in the U.S. Competition crushed the BBSes that hung around while ISPs gave users more information and quicker. Competition crushed the modem to be replaced by 8 different ways to connect to other computers. Competition crushed the CD, the DVD and the newspaper. Let it crush more so we get more for less.
You make some good points, for sure, but I think you have to look at human history to realize that we've had hundreds of cases of massive doom situations already -- droughts, wars, plagues and environmentally caused destruction. Why did we make it past these situations? Someone came up with a solution.
Go back before even biblical times and we see stories (and find proof even) that humans found ways to overcome crises that might have wiped us out. People will die -- rich and poor -- but the next generation will be stronger and will understand some of the causes of the crisis. I can not foresee any crisis short of a massive nuclear war that would wipe out all of the billions. If the Earth or God (or whatever) wants to wipe out a large portion of society, those remaining will be stronger for it. I'm not openly advocating this, but we can see even in recent times that society made it through some really scary situations. In many cases, it was an inventive entrepreneur that came up with the solution.
Influenza brought us new medicines AND new ways to take care of trash and pests -- millions died but now billions are aware of the problems that created the mass crisis. I can only point to human ingenuity to why history didn't end when a massive worldwide crisis occurred. It wasn't "chance" that did it.
As for wanting to live in a bubble city; no-one's stopping you. You can just move into the basement and hook up the airco. I for one like having some forrest on hand to walk about in, with fresh air too.
And that's the problem with relying on force to try to keep those trees -- we just don't know what is out there that would provide for your tree-love. I also love trees, in fact I own a few acres of property that is currently heavily forested. I love visiting it (there is NOTHING nearby).
Why wouldn't a bubble-city have more trees that we currently do? Who is to say that some inventor won't come up with an interesting way to divert CO2 emissions from factories within the bubble city straight into the ground so the trees can use it to create oxygen for the city? We just don't know. We didn't know about plasma TVs a few decades ago, but that invention will greatly cut down on the garbage created from large CRT TVs that get thrown into the dumps (and plasma TVs far outlive the life-span of a CRT). Thank the market for that "pro-environment" creation, and we'll thank the market when they find cleaner ways to create those plasmas or flat panels. Remember, every ounce of waste that is created by industry is WASTE -- it means something goes into the mix that is a loss for the company. Companies would likely try to find ways to cut that waste or find productive uses for it rather than tossing it.
I'm not sure that the future will look anything like what our lives look like today. I know that my life is significantly better than that of my ancestors, who had to deal with smelly and polluted cities. It wasn't government that cut pollutions, it was industries striving to reduce waste and increase efficiency that did it. I was in communist Russia before the USSR fell, and I was in the DDR before the wall fell, and those "heavily regulated" societies stank and were incredibly dirty.
All I know is that mankind has always found ways to better themselves, and it is always an individual that does it because of the desire to increase their own wealth. I don't see why we wouldn't at least give a consideration to the future from a market perspective rather than just give the doom-and-gloom people the only opinion. They've been wrong each and every time before it seems.
I've always hated doomsday scenarios because they completely ignore what the market (that's billions of individuals looking to better themselves regardless of what government says is good and evil) has provided us over the years. Everything that doomsdayers say is evil is part of the market giving us better lives -- engines, industrialization replacing human labor, commoditization of common goods and needs, etc.
They say "CO2 will kill us all" and I say the market may provide us a better life because of a rougher environment. We've seen science fiction talk about living in bubble/dome cities, but why would this be bad? Can you imagine what life would be like if we did have better control over our local environments? Would a bubbled city offer a better life for millions in the upper north, people who deal with more winter than summer? Would we see better air scrubbers providing better air? Would we see better control over irrigation and drought?
Who knows. I know that I trust that out of the billions of humans today we'll find a few who can find the utility and invention needed to create tomorrow's world. I don't like to think of us living in vaults because that "invention" is based on yesterday's technology. Yesterday's technology came out of need created by the time before yesterday. Tomorrow's technology will come out of need we face today. Don't sell the future short, especially considering how far we've come in the past 1000 years, 200 years, 100 years, 50 years and 10 years. Humanity is not going to go away, it will just find ways to make life better no matter what seems to happen to the world around us.
Does that mean we should ignore "the environment" or "the poor" or the other big words? Absolutely not. What we need to do is consider the local system rather than the global system -- the local system that we can make better. We also need to consider who is the worst polluter, the worst destroyer of human ingenuity and invention, the worst murderer of future geniuses and the worst controller/waster of our resources and expansion -- that would be the State in each case. The State wastes a huge portion of oil on warmongering and control; it wastes a huge portion of useful labor in maintaining that control; it wastes opportunities by overregulating industries based on yesterday's problems rather than tomorrow's needs; it wastes a huge portion of resources by attempting to prevent change and by creating weapons and items to instill fear in the residents and "the enemy."
It is those who are against what the State does that are giving us the most opportunity; the anti-State inventor who finds ways around the controls and regulations that actually make our lives worse in the future. The State has no desire to make your life better -- it only wants to maintain and increase control over your life. Yet there are billions of people out there, and it is the individuals who look to meet current and future needs that make your life better. They have to, because if they don't, you won't buy from them -- you won't sustain their attempt to make their lives better by providing for what you want and need. No regulation and no use of force can do that.
I'm not sure I agree with the "Be like a Mac!" comparison. For most PC manufacturers, having their own "look and feel" has been part of what has given them a strong brand name. Sure, Microsoft wants to grab some of that brand recognition beyond just the bootup splash screen (and the desktop look and feel), but I also think this will create more than just brand recognition for Microsoft -- I believe it will also produce an interesting "playing field" for companies beyond the Big Four (Dell, Gateway, HP/Compaq, Toshiba). Consider the smaller OEMs and white box companies -- by providing a standardized look and feel, this will open the door of opportunity for many more companies. Sure, the big guys probably don't WANT this (they want to keep their look and feel in order to keep their branding strong), but it could create a new competitive atmosphere by giving smaller companies a foot in the door to compete on the look and feel front.
I've always loved third party cases and keyboards and monitors moreso than the Big Four for the same reason that I've always liked clones -- they've pushed the envelope before the big guys did. The downside is that the clones never seemed to sell well in the corporate environment nor in the newb home environment; the clones were just powerhouse sellers for us geeks. By having Microsoft "dictate" what they want to see, we may actually see more third parties offering competition to the Big Four, which in turn could see prices drop a bit more, which could push more legal Microsoft products into the fray.
All around, there are some Mac-branding similarities, but I don't really think that is Microsoft's desired goal to miMac (mimic the Mac, in my vernacular). I think it is just a good idea that will help the little(r) guys, and still give the big guys a chance to offer different products that the market can choose from.
No, DMCA has nothing to do with copyright. DMCA is about reverse engineering, not about duplicating or distribution.
Also, it could be well argued (not by me as I repudiate copyright entirely) that DMCA has not been enforced by "authors" nor "inventors" but by distribution cartels. Again, not within the meaning of the Constitution.
The DMCA has zero to do with copyright and everything to do with enforcing actions of others that any free thinker would deem legal. Figuring out how something works is part of making a new device that will be better (and not potentially disturb any patents). The DMCA prevents you from figuring out how something works -- it doesn't actually enable or disable copying.
How is the DMCA unconstitutional? (I'm not trying to be contrarian here; well, OK, maybe I am, but I'm honestly curious as well.)
Good question. The U.S. Congress has very specific enumerated powers as listed in the U.S. Constitution. Anything that isn't specifically enumerated for Congress to govern/make laws for is considered a right of the State or the Individual.
The DMCA has no provision in the U.S. Constitution. I believe that the law passes muster only because individuals of today have accepted an outrageous definition of what the "interstate commerce clause" offers as a Congressional power. Rather than have power over making sure that interstate commerce wasn't regulated by the States (as originally envisioned by the founding fathers), the U.S. Congress and Supreme Court believe that the clause offers Congress the right to regulate Interstate commerce as a force instead of as a watchman for individual rights.
The DMCA and all IP laws show that you need to use government force to support inefficient and unprofitable businesses. Without government force, these businesses would be much more competitive, and new markets and profitable sectors would arise out of the creation of content. Unfortunately, the average consumer, taxpayer and voter doesn't see the freedom that real freedom would bring us -- instead they think we need more force to battle the problems that previous use of force created.
How is this a troll? This is a very important opinion and one that I support 100%. Blizzard used the DMCA to blow an open source company out of existance (and take over their domain name and property). The attitude here should not be "Blizzard is doing this and that" it should be "Blizzard, the company that used the unconstitutional DMCA against individuals committing no property crime, is still in business. Let's remind each other not to ever buy anything by Blizzard or Vivendi again."
I'm always shocked how pro-freedom geeks forget their morals when it comes to a game or a product they like. Blizzard is Vivendi, folks, and Vivendi is evil based on their corruption of Congress. Why are we still caring what they do to players who forgot they're evil?
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I guess I won't be able to drink coffee, take photos and work on my ninja talents.
Trademarks are ridiculous when they're normal, everyday words. While I don't support trademark law, I can understand "Xerox," but pod? Come on.
Been gone for months -- work contracts in fall take up 20 hours a day. Weird to be back.
I repudiate copyright. I make content -- written word, music, we even design lighting shows for congregations. We copyright nothing and openly allow people to copy it. I now produce 3 bands who repudiate copyright. At their shows, they say "Hey! Buy our CDs if you like our music, copy it for your friends and family." Why is this bad? The music is a nice income, but their SHOWS are their real labor. A great album takes me 4-12 weeks to produce, and can make significant money for the band over years of show dates.
How about bands (and content creators) get their music on Lime Wire NOW, and try to get their music into the music stores? How about anti-RIAA supporters download this LEGAL music from Lime Wire. Now individuals, NOT CLASS LITIGATION, can work together on a Wiki site that encourages EVERYONE to put together a nice lawsuit to file individually, locally. What does it cost the individual to sue the RIAA in small claims for hampering their freedom to transact business? The RIAA _can not stop_ all the lawsuits, so judgements might be had.
I'm not talking about any group boycott, I'm talking about enabling individuals to help each other in their individual testimony against the RIAA.
FWIW, I repudiate the law, as well, and I would never sue another person in court. If I have a beef, I get a third party arbitrator. I don't do business with individuals who won't agree to this basic hand-shake agreement. Just an idea for others.
When you live far away from a metropolis, you should not require that the people in the metropolis pay for your desire to be away from them.
They should not subsidize your telephone service to be cheap -- you picked to live away, you should pay your fair share. They should not subsidize for your mail service. Maybe people in rural areas could pay UPS/Fedex to come visit once a week to pick up and drop off all the packages for that region. The price for society that wants to live close to the action would go down, and the rural areas would get what they want -- isolation.
I find it ridiculous that people think the mail service is good because it seems to work when they don't realize that MOST public mail is paid for by advertising to the mailbox. Do you really think that big advertisers won't subsidize the mail directly if the competitive mail industry stopped supporting rural areas? I don't think so. And even if they didn't, that is part of the risk that moving away from a metropolis brings with it -- added isolation.
The key to what I said was "residential technologies." Of course you can *get* a fiber 1.5gbps link today -- heck, you can get an OC192 at 10-12Gbps. Sure, you can even get it "just about anywhere" -- if you want to pay $7500 per month and a massive installation charge.
You're thinking in very 2004 terms, technologically. The main impediment is competition at the moment -- we're still waiting for competitive systems to keep pushing the envelope. My home network is currently getting about 600Kbit/s without a cap (likely more, I get 600K downloads in utorrent every day). I can provision a 1Mbit/s line for just a little more. I've already used a 2Mbit/s line in a neighboring town (Deerfield, Illinois) that should be to the residences later this year. Just 2 years ago I was happy to get 50Kbit/s. 2 years before that I was happy to get 10Kbit/s. 2 years before that I was happy to get 4Kbit/s, and 2 years before that 2Kbit/s was my speed. Times have changed, and competitive technologies are what changed it.
But the *only* major provider even close to rolling out fiber *to the home* is Verizon, and they're using G.983 -- 622mbps down, 155mbps up. Even then, they're using most of that bandwidth to provide IPTV services, not to give you raw Internet throughput -- I'm not aware of any plans for them to push broadband tiers over 45mbps.
The main impediment here is the idea of broadcasting rather than narrowcasting. I think the growing popularity of BitTorrent shows that narrowcasting is the future -- most of the major distributors are still focusing on broadcasting and this is why broadband tiers max out at 45Mbit (or realistically much lower). When broadcasting is replaced by narrowcasting (and it will be, very quickly in fact), we'll see things switch very quickly. The analog market is already dying (radio and TV) and Tivo and Torrent are both helping to kill off broadcasting entirely. The distribution companies will move to a narrowcast on-demand format, which will need more IP traffic space than digital video space. We also see that a XViD movie looks darn good, and it occupies significantly less space than the same VoD or broadband video does.
This is also where net neutrality could be an impediment to transitioning from broad to narrow-casting: companies that already have broadvideo will want to prioritize their narrowvideo transmissions over the IP portion of the line, but they might be restricted from doing so if their narrowvideo distribution company is considered a seperate company. Ever consider that problem with net neutrality as a law?
Now, you might be saying, hey, I was close, 622mbps is still a lot more than 1.5mbps, and it's going to your home. Guess what? That coaxial cable carrying digital cable and HD channels into your home is pushing 2gbps. But the cable companies are using only a fraction of that space for Internet connectivity, putting the rest into action for video-on-demand, HD cable, and extended tiers of service -- just like the phone companies intend to.
Telephone connectivity won't need more than 10KBit/s, though. That still leaves a huge amount of space when narrowcasting VoD takes off, as it already is starting to. Of course, much of that 2Gbit/s speed is shared since it is broadcast (the backbone is the limit in this case), but there are already cheaper provisions for sending significantly more than 40Gbit/s through the backbone and those costs are coming down. It might be costly for the current media providers but new providers would have a huge leg up if they got into that market (or if they could).
And if you think fiber to the home is held up on municipal right-of-way, and not the astronomical cost to implement, well, that's your own opinion.
I disagree, but I unfortunately don't have my ammunition handy. There is still a large problem with FCC regulations that convolute other regulations that the FCC has worked to rearrange (I won't say remove). There is still a huge problem in the municipal a
Actually, we developed the system ourselves in-house. Our development PC was an ancient laptop with 64MB of ram, no hard drive, and a bootable OS lite version of Windows 98 with iTunes.
We're waiting for our SOC to be finalized (system-on-a-chip). I'm not patenting the device, I just hope to sell the SOC to OEMs who want to get to market quicker. I think it could be a huge product for more than bands, especially to reach out to the "convention" market of businessmen who would carry iPods if they could get "free" samples of a public speaker's works at a speaking engagement.
The basic idea is simple: the SOC provides a USB-interface on one end, a SD-RAM interface on the other, and a button in-between (we also have a version that requires no button at all). Plug the iPod into the interface, push the button, and it copies the MP3s (and video should work) to the iPod in guest mode, disconnects, and you do the next one. Our hope was to have something at Christmas of last year, but the SOC development was a bit expensive and no one wanted to foot the bill.
I really wanted a version that would let people just plug their iPod into one of a dozen cables and have it automatically dump and cut, but I am still waiting for the hardware to be finalized.
Drop me an e-mail and I'll give you more details. By the way, I "invented" this creation, but I won't patent it as I don't believe in IP laws.
Yet.
The FSAN/ITU-t G983 standard offers approximately 650Mbit/s or half what I quoted. This is an already two provisions at this speed available for the market, although current state regulations are limiting the effectiveness of rolling it out. APON, as far as I know, will support this speed without major concern although there are overhead considerations. I'm not sure which trade journal I got the information from, but if you really need to know just e-mail me and I'll look it up next time I'm in the office (this or next week).
We've also been informed that FSAN/ITU-t G984 standard quadruples this speed to approximately 2.5Gbit/s, and is also a "real life" system, not just in the labs. I'm fairly sure that GPON falls within the G984 standard, but I don't have my sources in front of me and I'm spouting from memory. I'm sure a quick Google search would work except I'm on a GPRS connection today (my EDGE modem is at home, oops) so it would be a waste of time. If it isn't GPON that serves 2.5Gbit/s, then it is over 1.5Gbit/s for sure.
Look up ZONU's ONU 2C device -- I know (and have seen) that it can support 1.2-1.5Gbit/s or somewhere in that region.
Lastly, I know that the IEEE Ethernet protocol is mostly dead in terms of ultra-high bandwidth to the home/business. The GEM protocol supports considerably higher speeds, upwards of 3Gbit/s if I recall correctly. We just have to wait for FSAN/ITU-t to standardize it, and it will be quickly replaced with whatever IEEE is working on in the labs (again from memory, I believe they're on the verge of a very near term 10Gbit/s standard for FTTF broadband).
This is the problem with trade journals -- they're all print form and impossible to quote. Drop me an e-mail and we'll talk more, especially if you need some source reference. I would not doubt at all that Google will pull up a few secondary sources that at least quote who they're picking the information up in.
My apologies if I am off by even 50% on the numbers, but I've seen the future and it is not 1.5Mbit/s -- it is at least an order of magnitude more and it is very very close to being available if only the local regulations were lifted on rolling out new lines.
BTW--slightly OT here, but I just knew there was a reason I liked you. Which one did you run? ExecPC?
Actually, I provisioned an X.25 packet switching connection before I left the pre-Internet business
When I ran my FidoNet node (I wish I could recall the number), I had something called a CallPak because my suburb of Chicago had a competitive telephone company (Centel) and they let me make any call up to Band D for free (unlimited calls for a set price). Ameritech didn't have this program. Because of this I could bring in data from a fairly long distance for no cost, which is why my BBS grew in leaps and bounds with the FidoNet days. That was pretty awesome and financed my X.25, which was very short-lived because my users didn't understand the Internet (which we were NOT a part of yet, theoretically), so it was a bigger cost than it created.
As if they had the power in the first place. The Commerce clause doesn't give them any more right to regulate the Internet than it does to the FCC to regulate the airwaves. But they just continually ignore the highest law in the land, referring to it as "archaic" and "out of date". The Founding Fathers must be rolling in their graves...
If only the consumers realized this and just stopped voting entirely. That power came from the mad majority just throwing it away.
You almost had me convinced until you said that competition will give us what we want. We want better service at lower prices. Corporations want more money for less output. Mutally exclusive goals. Not that regulation will fix it; it is an intractible position where all sides are morally bankrupt.
You're ignoring what competition really is -- it isn't corporations or unions or markets or groups of anything; it is individuals looking to get more out of something they put into.
When you go to a gas station to buy gas, you take dollars with you. The gas station owner wants to sell gas for more dollars than the gas is worth to him. You want to buy gas that is worth more to you than the dollars you give up -- you mutually exchange these products/services for a mutual gain. After the transaction, you BOTH profit.
Competition means that people have choices as to who they'll barter with. Imagine if 100 gas stations only had 1 consumer to serve in total -- a consumption monopoly. What would that one consumer do? He'd buy from the cheapest person who would sell him what he wants. But that's a consumption monopoly, so the consumer could also put EVERYONE out of business by witholding his dollars. The best market is one where competition is available on both ends -- multiple consumers competing with each other (increasing the demand for goods and increasing the supply of dollars) as well as multiple providers competing with each other (increasing the supply of goods and decreasing the cost in dollars).
Corporations are no different than two individual bartering -- a corporation is a group of individuals ALL bartering with one another for personal gain. When the corporation has government power, now it can control the competition in the market -- it is the government power that is evil.
You live in a trailer park in south milwaukee and drive a used toyota corolla.
Actually, I now own 6 mobile homes in my area (halfway between Milwaukee and Chicago) and am expanding that holding to at least 20 throughout the country in the next few months in hopes of a pending bubble collapse that will leave a lot of families needing a place to move to. The mobile home idea came directly from Gary North's article on opportunities and living expenses last year (the article I link to is a more recent recap of his 2004 opinion that I can't seem to find right now).
Last year the lady and I drove new cars (Land Rover, Volkswagen and a Lexus) and lived in a large house and had a few vacation homes. Liquidating these unneeded assets have expanded our ability to do what we want (travel, spend time with our church, etc) rather than worry about how we'll pay the bills each month.
Who, exactly, do you think wants to "mimic" your lifestyle? Junis?
I'm not sure who Junis is, but considering that I've helped a few dozen people downside their lives and increase their happiness and free time in the last year (through example alone), I think far more people would wish they made adaptations like I did.
There were years when I made a strong 6 figures and had really zero to show for it. Now I can make 1/2 my previous income but my monthly living expenses are about 90% lower. If you're working 50-60 hours a week and have no money to travel, raise kids, spend time with friends and family and do the things you want to do, you may not realize how profitable it can be to downsize extravagently. Owning a US$400,000 house in Chicago was not as amazing as I thought it was (especially since most of my friends owned similar homes on 95% debt). Owning 20 US$20,000 trailers throughout the country that I can live in when I am on a work contract really makes my life easier. Try it sometime.
As for the Toyota Corolla, that has been a long standing joke between friends here and in real life. We're a 4 vehicle family (SUV, Toyota beater, car to drive customers around in and a joy ride vehicle). We're still trying to downsize all those vehicles to two.
You sure about that? In a response to one of my posts earlier this year, that $300,000 figure was much lower... an order of magnitude lower, IIRC. If I was a subscriber, I'd check my post history (and/or yours) for the specific post.
We closed up shop in Q4 of 2005 (or were forced to, actually). My original figures were US$40,000 of debt that wasn't easily payable. 12 different attempts to liquidate our inventory (which I believe was about US$200,000) failed, so we had to use a liquidation company which ended up losing us about US$160,000 (the final numbers are still pending). We had leases to pay out (which I didn't realize would be as costly but we were unable to negotiate) as well as tax liabilities which we're still auditing. My original figure of US$40,000 grew to US$100,000 quickly and seems to have settled around the US$300K mark as of last Friday. According to my lawyer, it may come down about 30% depending on settlements and some outstanding income, which I'm hoping is true because it still is a year or two of income out the window.
That is the unfortunately aspect of business failure -- as time goes on, losses grow. We were expecting a Christmas profit of about that loss figure (around US$300,000) which was going to help us open 5 more retail stores. I'm not one to factor "future income" lost as a real lost, but I'd peg that figure at around a clean million over the next year had we not had the issues we had (and the State which kept us from fixing the problem).
I've received a very small deal from a publisher to go through the 4 years of our history -- how we grew so fast, how we fell so fast, and what it was that we should have done to protect ourselves. Hopefully I can get the entire story (with back up facts) done after we've actually closed the books completely and legally without anyone still dangling. I hate having ex-customers and suppliers hurt over our mistakes. The odd thing is that the loss actually gave me a little more room to sell my services because I had now had both sides of the business cycle: profit and failure. Life is funny.
And often those people would have no access to broadband if it weren't for regulated monopoly. In exchange for building out to West Dingleberry, the telco is granted the sole right to serve that area. Otherwise the risk outwieghs the potential profit.
There are numerous satellite broadband providers offering 1.5Mbps down and up to 256Kbps up throughout all 50 states at around US$50 to US$100 per month. Nothing precludes one person from getting a corporate account that allows reselling of the bandwidth. These speeds are only held back by FCC regulations.
Hardly. As long as there is competition in a hugely capital-intensive market, you'll have a minimum of providers undercutting potential new competition, along with collusion. At best you'll get very, very slow one-upmanship without major capital improvements.Let it crush more? So that we have fewer, not more, options as to how we get deliverables?
Every thing I listed that was crushed was replaced by more choice and lower cost. Regulation did not help this, it was the lack of regulation that gave people incentives to take risks. Some people failed, but the hardware and labor up to that point was bought by someone else to use.
Unregulated markets of non-commodity goods (like internet service) result in monopolies and oligopolies. That's the natural state...
No, it isn't. Look at www.dslreports.com to see how many competitors there are -- the less regulation there is in a municipality, the more competition there is.
even your totally unregulated Austrian model has to adjust for monopolistic force in order to work properly. If you really want better performance in terms of net result for the consumer, you either need to take actions to prevent monopolies, or take actions to regulate them -- whether you're from the Austrian school of thought (such as yourself), the Keynesian (such as the FRB), or another (such as myself). In the case of the telcos, it was determined that regulation was a better bet because of the alternative would have either been state-owned infrastructure, or no service to less dense areas.
Again, untrue. Once local service regulations were reduced (and not removed), we saw incredible outreach for cell phone service and broadband access. It wasn't the regulations that gave us this growth, it was new technologies that were finally allowed to compete with the old and dead monopoly technologies that provided it.
I can (and have) driven all over the country and North America and I'm shocked at the cell reception I get compared to 5 years ago. This isn't regulation that provides for consumers, it is companies taking risks. In small towns, we seen tiny companies put up a cell phone tower to re-lease to the large providers so that they can offer their customers service.
Don't forget that a good part of the country still does not have broadband available. Video streaming in is impossible for many places, not to mention streaming in HD. Physical media isn't going anywhere, for quite a while.
Really? I see you as being wrong. Check out this image. For those VERY few white spots on the map, you have Satellite broadband which is available in 99.9% of the US.
According to various trade journal publications, the days of 1.5Mb/s are over, soon to be replaced with 1.5Gb/s bandwidth almost everywhere -- except where the municipality or the state prevents it.
I consider myself a Republican, but I'm going to say something against the party line - the free market does NOT solve all ills!
Of course it doesn't -- but it can. I bet that most of the ills you speak of are completely non-existent.
Where exactly is this competition of which you speak? Tell that to the masses of Americans who do not live in large towns and have only source for broadband. Where exactly do they go when their local broadband provider charges them AND Google and friends more?
So start your own provider. I live in a tiny town of about 2000-3000 people. I run my own mini-ISP with my ISP's approval (WiFi to about 32 neighbors now). I used to own property in a farm town in western Illinois, and I set up a very expensive digital line to provide service to about 15 houses out there. They each pay about US$70 for the line and it works great. I long left the area, but I've heard that two more companies have started to compete. In some towns, they can't compete because the town doesn't allow it.
If there is no competition, it is for two reasons: government says no, or there is no demand. Why supply in either case?
By the way, AOL and Prodigy are both still around.
Sure they are, as competitors to the rest. They were HUGE for years, though, and many people thought they'd be monopolies. Competition eased that concern -- not the law.
I'm no republican, in fact I detest the republicans more than the democrats 50% of the time (vice versa the other 50% of the time). I am a-political. If there is a demand, the market will provide a supply if it is not restricted from doing so.
I'm curious because I'd like to have a similar lifestyle - if you're for real. I don't mean any insult, it's just that; well, you know better than I considering you've been on the 'Net MUCH longer than me, you can be whomever you want online.
I'm very good about keeping my companies under holding companies rather than under myself. This is a good question, though, and it is one that a lot of slashdotters are asking me often.
There are 3-4 Adam Dada's in the U.S. that I am aware of. There are some searches that will bring up a little "proof" that I am real:
A Google search of "Adam Dada" (with quotes) brings up an old article in Electrical Contractor Magazine that talks about my IT consulting business. It also brings up an ancient BBS text file list that has my old BBS phone number for my old BBS (The Melting Point) which grew from a single node to 5 nodes to 12 nodes before I sold it just before the Internet boom (I foresaw it and knew I'd never compete). Going to page 2 of that search pulls up an advertisement for my (failed) retail chain of stores that fell apart due to a bad accountant not filing taxes properly. I lost about US$300,000 on that business last year.
There are those who want to "mimic" my lifestyle, but they don't see how it is done. I'll be talking about how I do what I do in my Be The Boss blog (click my about URL) in the next week or two. There are a few secrets:
1. Love information over fast financial gain.
2. Take huge risks to get into a market before the average layman has heard of it
3. Find a GREAT team that will support your business responsibilities so you can enter new markets.
4. Live life without great expense (by used cars, don't buy a huge house, focus on real savings rather than gambles)
Life isn't easy, but I always feel that you need to re-invent yourself every 2-3 years. The reason why I have so many stories and knowledge on so many topics is that I've taken huge risks (with rewards and losses) to keep reinventing myself. Many of my businesses I've started are still around today (like www.deeplabs.com which I founded 13 years ago and is very successful in a niche market). Many of my businesses I've started are gone in name because I either sold them or gave them to a previous employee, so the names have changed by the people that know me will thank me in person but understand my desire to keep my name off of things as I don't believe in ego or pride -- I believe the best we can do is just keep finding what the market wants, provide it, and move on to a new market.
The government has ALREADY created monopoly powers for internet companies - unless you want 45 different lines running down your street, you get one, maybe two providers.
Huh? Why is this a problem? 45 different lines won't occupy much more space than they already do -- plus I doubt we'd see this problem as I think we'd see companies dedicated to pulling lines to re-lease to others if we had more competition in the municipalities. To think that every company would want their own lines is unrealistic, just as every company doesn't do their own website hosting or handle their own business card printing in house or whatever. Companies that can offer services to others will always be around. I'd rather see 3 or 4 competitive line-leasers than 1. In my community, we already have about 8 ISPs over various mediums (and 2 WiFi ones).
The tradeoff that these natural monopolies provide is that they don't get to benefit from being a monopoly (i.e., regulation and price ceilings). It's a non-ideal solution for an unsolveable problem, but it's a necessary solution that is practical, much as the anti-regulation crowd may hate it.
Of course they get a benefit -- they get to set the prices without competition. They get to keep new technologies out of the market, as well. Cell phones were kept out of the market for decades because of Ma Bell's power over everyone else. DSL and Cable were kept out for a long time while old laws were replaced. It is a non-ideal solution because there is an ideal solution -- allow competition.
Everyone I've seen rail against regulation on the grounds that "regulation never encourages competition" always seems to forget that Net Neutrality proponents are only trying to restore the very balance that DID exist, the balance that the FCC removed last year.
It NEVER existed because the "net" was too young and companies were still trying to overcome technological barriers. The FCC is a great evil and arguably unconstitutional. No new law will create any balance or harmony, you have to be incredibly naive to believe that a new law will "balance" a market that is already very competitive and working just fine. Net neutrality, as I said in my OP, is FUD. It doesn't need to exist based on a law, it exists fine without any regulation.
The DVD is in its prime right now.
You mean "peaking." Blockbuster and NetFlix offices are running around freaking out as we push our net connections to 1Gb/s -- more than fast enough to display HD video real time to the home. While sales numbers may keep climbing, I would venture a guess (an industry-educated guess, at that) that the DVD is already replaced with XViD and fast connections. Two more "evolutionary" steps for video and HD-DVD will be forgotten, too.
For that matter, CD sales are still brisk (even now)
I'm already helping bands sell their music at shows straight-to-iPod. A US$100 device (basically a memory stick, a button and an iPod cable) lets bands make infinite margins since they have zero distribution cost (no CDs, no printing costs, etc). It won't be long for CD to be forgotten, either.
and there's a lot of dead trees turning into newspapers.
Massive layouts at every newspaper, the resurgence of limited-distribution zines online, and the blogosphere would disagree with you in terms of the next 2 years.
The Internet does not exist. It is a figment of the imagination of people in power and the laymen who listen to them. I come from a glorious history of the BBS days (I ran a fairly large multinode Chicagoland BBS for years) where I witnessed the "birth" of the consumer Internet -- thousands of interconnected mini-networks that created a larger one. Now it is millions of mini-networks that make up this thing we call the Net, but it still doesn't exist. There are thousands of Internets, and there is no real way to regulate them.
We have to realize that EVERY law that goes into existence does so for two reasons:
1. To try to fix some problem that exists TODAY.
2. To try to give more power to the few who love power over the masses.
These both go hand-in-hand. Laws don't regularly leave the books, so they stick around for generations, usually preventing new creations from makig our lives better. The power passes hands from one politician to the next, and the elite few know they can use that power to make their lives better at a very small expense to each individual of the masses. What do you care if a regulation costs you US$10 a year more? When 100 million taxpayers each pay that US$10 per year for a regulation or preferential treatment, someone is taking in US$1 billion because of it. It is in their interest to keep the laws on the books.
Net neutrality doesn't matter because the Internet as it is today doesn't matter. Over time, preferred networks will have to occur in some way, and that is OK. AOL had their own network, but it failed. Compuserve had a huge "Internet" for years before IP was the preferred transport, and it failed. Google has its own network of caches and archives, but it isn't what people want to browse (I rarely use Google's cache, unless a site is down or gone). Right now people will switch from ial-up to DSL to cable based on their desire to access information quickly. You can switch over in less than 2 weeks, sometimes days.
But there are reasons some are precluded from switching easily. Usually it is because a local municipality or state has laws creating a monopoly provider. You can't blame competition for this -- you can blame government. Now some people want to give more power to the Federal government even though the Constitution says they can't have that power. It won't matter -- the politicians are producing large amounts of FUD (along with the businesses that rely on government's ability to create monopolies in markets) to scare the average consumer into believing the "Net" will fall apart if it doesn't remain neutral.
It won't happen. As long as government doesn't create monopoly powers through Internet regulations, the Net will change to what the consumers want. Right now, the municipalities that dictate which monopoly provider can give the residents access create HUGE problems for those residents. States that do the same also create a huge problem for their residents. Imagine if we pushed those problems to the national level -- we'd all lose the ability to work around monopoly-mandates created by government.
Don't do it -- don't give the Federal government ANY chance to regulate or require ANYTHING. Let competition give us what we want. Competition crushed AOL, Compuserve, and Prodigy in the U.S. Competition crushed the BBSes that hung around while ISPs gave users more information and quicker. Competition crushed the modem to be replaced by 8 different ways to connect to other computers. Competition crushed the CD, the DVD and the newspaper. Let it crush more so we get more for less.
You make some good points, for sure, but I think you have to look at human history to realize that we've had hundreds of cases of massive doom situations already -- droughts, wars, plagues and environmentally caused destruction. Why did we make it past these situations? Someone came up with a solution.
Go back before even biblical times and we see stories (and find proof even) that humans found ways to overcome crises that might have wiped us out. People will die -- rich and poor -- but the next generation will be stronger and will understand some of the causes of the crisis. I can not foresee any crisis short of a massive nuclear war that would wipe out all of the billions. If the Earth or God (or whatever) wants to wipe out a large portion of society, those remaining will be stronger for it. I'm not openly advocating this, but we can see even in recent times that society made it through some really scary situations. In many cases, it was an inventive entrepreneur that came up with the solution.
Influenza brought us new medicines AND new ways to take care of trash and pests -- millions died but now billions are aware of the problems that created the mass crisis. I can only point to human ingenuity to why history didn't end when a massive worldwide crisis occurred. It wasn't "chance" that did it.
As for wanting to live in a bubble city; no-one's stopping you. You can just move into the basement and hook up the airco. I for one like having some forrest on hand to walk about in, with fresh air too.
And that's the problem with relying on force to try to keep those trees -- we just don't know what is out there that would provide for your tree-love. I also love trees, in fact I own a few acres of property that is currently heavily forested. I love visiting it (there is NOTHING nearby).
Why wouldn't a bubble-city have more trees that we currently do? Who is to say that some inventor won't come up with an interesting way to divert CO2 emissions from factories within the bubble city straight into the ground so the trees can use it to create oxygen for the city? We just don't know. We didn't know about plasma TVs a few decades ago, but that invention will greatly cut down on the garbage created from large CRT TVs that get thrown into the dumps (and plasma TVs far outlive the life-span of a CRT). Thank the market for that "pro-environment" creation, and we'll thank the market when they find cleaner ways to create those plasmas or flat panels. Remember, every ounce of waste that is created by industry is WASTE -- it means something goes into the mix that is a loss for the company. Companies would likely try to find ways to cut that waste or find productive uses for it rather than tossing it.
I'm not sure that the future will look anything like what our lives look like today. I know that my life is significantly better than that of my ancestors, who had to deal with smelly and polluted cities. It wasn't government that cut pollutions, it was industries striving to reduce waste and increase efficiency that did it. I was in communist Russia before the USSR fell, and I was in the DDR before the wall fell, and those "heavily regulated" societies stank and were incredibly dirty.
All I know is that mankind has always found ways to better themselves, and it is always an individual that does it because of the desire to increase their own wealth. I don't see why we wouldn't at least give a consideration to the future from a market perspective rather than just give the doom-and-gloom people the only opinion. They've been wrong each and every time before it seems.
I've always hated doomsday scenarios because they completely ignore what the market (that's billions of individuals looking to better themselves regardless of what government says is good and evil) has provided us over the years. Everything that doomsdayers say is evil is part of the market giving us better lives -- engines, industrialization replacing human labor, commoditization of common goods and needs, etc.
They say "CO2 will kill us all" and I say the market may provide us a better life because of a rougher environment. We've seen science fiction talk about living in bubble/dome cities, but why would this be bad? Can you imagine what life would be like if we did have better control over our local environments? Would a bubbled city offer a better life for millions in the upper north, people who deal with more winter than summer? Would we see better air scrubbers providing better air? Would we see better control over irrigation and drought?
Who knows. I know that I trust that out of the billions of humans today we'll find a few who can find the utility and invention needed to create tomorrow's world. I don't like to think of us living in vaults because that "invention" is based on yesterday's technology. Yesterday's technology came out of need created by the time before yesterday. Tomorrow's technology will come out of need we face today. Don't sell the future short, especially considering how far we've come in the past 1000 years, 200 years, 100 years, 50 years and 10 years. Humanity is not going to go away, it will just find ways to make life better no matter what seems to happen to the world around us.
Does that mean we should ignore "the environment" or "the poor" or the other big words? Absolutely not. What we need to do is consider the local system rather than the global system -- the local system that we can make better. We also need to consider who is the worst polluter, the worst destroyer of human ingenuity and invention, the worst murderer of future geniuses and the worst controller/waster of our resources and expansion -- that would be the State in each case. The State wastes a huge portion of oil on warmongering and control; it wastes a huge portion of useful labor in maintaining that control; it wastes opportunities by overregulating industries based on yesterday's problems rather than tomorrow's needs; it wastes a huge portion of resources by attempting to prevent change and by creating weapons and items to instill fear in the residents and "the enemy."
It is those who are against what the State does that are giving us the most opportunity; the anti-State inventor who finds ways around the controls and regulations that actually make our lives worse in the future. The State has no desire to make your life better -- it only wants to maintain and increase control over your life. Yet there are billions of people out there, and it is the individuals who look to meet current and future needs that make your life better. They have to, because if they don't, you won't buy from them -- you won't sustain their attempt to make their lives better by providing for what you want and need. No regulation and no use of force can do that.
I'm not sure I agree with the "Be like a Mac!" comparison. For most PC manufacturers, having their own "look and feel" has been part of what has given them a strong brand name. Sure, Microsoft wants to grab some of that brand recognition beyond just the bootup splash screen (and the desktop look and feel), but I also think this will create more than just brand recognition for Microsoft -- I believe it will also produce an interesting "playing field" for companies beyond the Big Four (Dell, Gateway, HP/Compaq, Toshiba). Consider the smaller OEMs and white box companies -- by providing a standardized look and feel, this will open the door of opportunity for many more companies. Sure, the big guys probably don't WANT this (they want to keep their look and feel in order to keep their branding strong), but it could create a new competitive atmosphere by giving smaller companies a foot in the door to compete on the look and feel front.
I've always loved third party cases and keyboards and monitors moreso than the Big Four for the same reason that I've always liked clones -- they've pushed the envelope before the big guys did. The downside is that the clones never seemed to sell well in the corporate environment nor in the newb home environment; the clones were just powerhouse sellers for us geeks. By having Microsoft "dictate" what they want to see, we may actually see more third parties offering competition to the Big Four, which in turn could see prices drop a bit more, which could push more legal Microsoft products into the fray.
All around, there are some Mac-branding similarities, but I don't really think that is Microsoft's desired goal to miMac (mimic the Mac, in my vernacular). I think it is just a good idea that will help the little(r) guys, and still give the big guys a chance to offer different products that the market can choose from.
No, DMCA has nothing to do with copyright. DMCA is about reverse engineering, not about duplicating or distribution.
Also, it could be well argued (not by me as I repudiate copyright entirely) that DMCA has not been enforced by "authors" nor "inventors" but by distribution cartels. Again, not within the meaning of the Constitution.
The DMCA has zero to do with copyright and everything to do with enforcing actions of others that any free thinker would deem legal. Figuring out how something works is part of making a new device that will be better (and not potentially disturb any patents). The DMCA prevents you from figuring out how something works -- it doesn't actually enable or disable copying.
Good question. The U.S. Congress has very specific enumerated powers as listed in the U.S. Constitution. Anything that isn't specifically enumerated for Congress to govern/make laws for is considered a right of the State or the Individual.
The DMCA has no provision in the U.S. Constitution. I believe that the law passes muster only because individuals of today have accepted an outrageous definition of what the "interstate commerce clause" offers as a Congressional power. Rather than have power over making sure that interstate commerce wasn't regulated by the States (as originally envisioned by the founding fathers), the U.S. Congress and Supreme Court believe that the clause offers Congress the right to regulate Interstate commerce as a force instead of as a watchman for individual rights.
The DMCA and all IP laws show that you need to use government force to support inefficient and unprofitable businesses. Without government force, these businesses would be much more competitive, and new markets and profitable sectors would arise out of the creation of content. Unfortunately, the average consumer, taxpayer and voter doesn't see the freedom that real freedom would bring us -- instead they think we need more force to battle the problems that previous use of force created.
How is this a troll? This is a very important opinion and one that I support 100%. Blizzard used the DMCA to blow an open source company out of existance (and take over their domain name and property). The attitude here should not be "Blizzard is doing this and that" it should be "Blizzard, the company that used the unconstitutional DMCA against individuals committing no property crime, is still in business. Let's remind each other not to ever buy anything by Blizzard or Vivendi again."
I'm always shocked how pro-freedom geeks forget their morals when it comes to a game or a product they like. Blizzard is Vivendi, folks, and Vivendi is evil based on their corruption of Congress. Why are we still caring what they do to players who forgot they're evil?
For Bnetd information:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bnetd
I don't buy anything from Blizzard based on this idiocy and support of unconstitutional laws in order to control content. No thanks.