>>>Will he really be able to ask the REAL tough questions, and expect these to be broadcast over the mass media ?
It's Russia Today. They don't give a shit. They regularly have Alex Jones giving his twisted opinions. Like when he claimed google has enough information about us humans they can predict future trends ala a primitive version of psychohistory (Asimov novels.)
>>>"Apple makes more money from its smartphone than every other smartphone manufacturer in the world combined."
I'm glad Apple is doing well, rather than driven out of existence like Commodore, Atari, and Netscape were (by Microsoft).
But - How come we don't hear the politicians demanding a "windfall profits tax" like they did with Exxon two years ago? I guess it's only bad to make a profit if you're an evil oil company, but if your a tech company it's a good thing to rake-in equivalent amounts of money.
>>>P2P traffic should take a lower priority over VOIP and other more interactive traffic.
You didn't read the ____ing summary. This IS an interactive P2P application and that's why it should not be throttled.
Also
If they laid fatter "pipes", like 100 Mbit/sec to every home, they wouldn't need to throttle anything. Throttling is only necessary when you fail to lay sufficient bandwidth to handle the load.
Here in the U.S. we have two sometimes three different internet companies to choose from. It prevents them from being abusive to customers (since then we would just switch companies).
Another idea is to treat the Nets the same way the roads are treated
- Government owns and maintains the fiber (say 50 per bundle) - Verizon, Apple, Microsoft, et cetera lease one fiber each - The customer connects to whichever fiber/company they like best
It would be like a return to the old Dialup days when you could sign-on to whatever ISP you wanted.
I've thought about it but LED price is nuts, and I suspect they would die early since I frequently turn them on & off (as happens with CFLs). Why can't I just use incandescents? They aren't that much worse in efficiency (3% versus 8%).
And they work in any environment, from my freezer to my stove. Inside or outside. Open fixtures or enclosed (which kills CFLs/LEDs).
If Congress is really concerned about reducing energy usage, they should stop nitpicking the few pennies saved by outlawing incandescents, and focus on outlawing leaky homes (replace them all with Passive Houses). Loss of heat is the biggest energy loss (~100 dollars per home).
Yeah right. The States regulate everything else: Power, water, natural gas, roads, car inspections, emission inspections, land use,........ but for some strange reason they will not regulate internet companies. That is not a logical belief.
I wouldn't hold Europe as some great example of "how to do it right". I remember in the early days of the net (80s) my European colleagues complaining about high access charges applied to their modems, plus having to pay for local calling (therefore they couldn't make large multi-hour downloads).
Meanwhile in the U.S. we had private phone monopolies (regulated by government) that added no modem surcharges and no billing for local calling. We were better-off than the EU computer users.
I'm not saying I'm against government-built companies. Just pointing-out that, for a long time, the European government companies were more of a ripoff to users than a benefit.
>>>You cannot fire the government, neither AT&T and Comcast.
Say what?? I fired Comcast 5 years ago and haven't regretted it since. You're wrong when you say they can't be fired by the customer.
Now if only I could find a way to fire the government-run water company; I have to pay that stupid bill (flat rate) even though I'm not hooked up. Government uses their taxing power to make you pay for services you don't want or use.
>>>What Georgia needs is home rule legislation. Keep the state government out of things the local government can and should do.
We ought to try this concept at the national level, instead of having Congress regulate every little thing, including what kind of lightbulb I can use (incandescents outlawed and replaced with Crap FLs). Yeah I'm a little annoyed by that last one. It made no logical sense. So I save a few pennies on electric but have to waste dollars driving to the landfill to dispose the mercury-laden bulbs. Grrrr.
ANYWAY
I agree it should be left to the cities to decide if they want to install government-run internet. A little competition against Comcast and Verizon would be a good thing
>>>laws governing privacy over publicly funded networks would cease to exist if no tax dollars went into something.
That's not really true. States have power to regulate anything they wish inside their borders. Look at how they regulate private electric and natural-gas companies. They can do the same with Comcast, Verizon, et cetera.
>>>Sure, but how many of those people are watching the major networks? You don't even need 25 digital channels to provide those. >>>
The major networks are still the most-watched channels on TV, but 5-to-1.
I live in the northeast. There are multiple overlapping cities and a total of 45 channels (7 through 51). Every single one of them is occupied by a broadcast TV station. (And each statiion broadcasts 2-3 programs each or about 120 programs.)
It would be impossible to squeeze all those stations/programs into only 25 channels. Well, in theory you could, but they would be severely compressed and not watchable.
The number of TV channels can not be reduced downto 25. It's a bad idea.
According to U.S. law, if GM had sold the EV1 they would be obligated to provide service/parts for the next 25 years (2001 through 2025). GM made a decision that it didn't want that expense, and it would be cheaper to discontinue the car and terminate all future costs. As an accountant I probably would have made the same decision (to save the company money).
GM selling battery rights is not as dumb as you think. That tech was based upon NiCad which is now obsolete. So GM made money and Texaco got stuck with useless patents.
The Member States still exist as part of the U.S. compact. Your logic would mean the European Union could no longer exist, because most of its founding treaties were signed by now-dead persons. The reason the EU continues forward is because it was created by State governments which never die, and the same is true for the US.
You're wrong (and I suspect the other posters are wrong too). Not long ago a man living near York PA was charged with aggravated assault after he hit a car thief with a bat.
According to the arresting officer, if the thief had been killed, he'd have been up for homicide. Your only option in this state is to call 911, and let the thief take your car.
The Civil War did not repeal the 10th amendment, and in fact multiple Supreme Courts Cases have affirmed the power of the States to regulate their own affairs, such as when the justices nullified the Congressional law to ban smoking within 1 mile radius of schools. And when they nullified congressional law that forced States to build underground mines for nuclear waste.
If you think ATT is being unfair, consider the old-fashioned wired phone pricing.
- $15 for unlimited calls. - Or $5 plus 10 cents per call.
Clearly the latter is more expensive if you talk all the time, but that economy plan exists for those who barely use the phone (like me), but want to save money. The same is true for ATT's new tiers.
Low demand on a fixed cost will raise each individual cost. It's similar to when I asked, "Why does limited cable cost 7 dollars in northern Maryland and 15 in southern PA?" Answer: Because PA is less-densely packed than nortern MD. Comcast has to run the same amount of cable, but only serves 1/2 as many people, therefore each person's cost goes up.
If you think ATT is fair, consider the old-fashioned phone pricing. $15 for unlimited calls. Or $5 plus 10 cents per call. Clearly the latter is more expensive if you talk all the time, but that economy plan exists for those who barely use the phone, but want to save money.
The word you're looking for is not monopoly but cartel (companies colluding with one another to keep prices high). The record companies were prosecuted by the US DOJ for doing that with CD pricing.
If you believe cellphone companies are guilty too of collusion, then maybe you should start building your case to prove it's true. Can you do that?
>>>Are the $20/day people supposed to be outraged..... or should they be happy they saved money for something they didn't really want.
Yes. Exactly. My plan also offers 250MB per month, and I'm okay with that because I never use data. The main attraction for me is saving money (20 dollars/month saved) .
>>>"how much does AT&T pay for that bandwidth for which they charge $20/250MB?"
No the real question is how much does ATT pay for adding a customer who barely uses their dataphone? The bandwidth is probably trivial, but the paperwork is expensive (figure 5 dollars just to print and mail the monthly bill). This is similar to how banks don't really want savings customers, because it Costs them money rather than earning money.
>>>Mature software is not seen as something "good" but as "something to be replaced". It's a sad time we live in.
"Engineers..... they love to change things."
The interface reached a usable state long, long ago (circa 2000). All these other changes are just change for the sake of change that serve no real useful purpose, except to justify charging labor hours & selling new packages.
What I want is an OS that doesn't crash once a week, or require 8 gigabytes of RAM to run, even if that means it looks like an old Commodore 64 with GEOS. Just make the damn thing work.
It's amazing how many people don't understand checks-and-balances even though they learned it in school. And I'm not just talking about the 3 branches of government, but also the Check of the States upon the central power (tenth amendment).
The U.S. is like the European Union. A single whole but composed of multiple sovereign governments that retain most of the power to themselves.
Slashdot Mirror
>>>Will he really be able to ask the REAL tough questions, and expect these to be broadcast over the mass media ?
It's Russia Today.
They don't give a shit. They regularly have Alex Jones giving his twisted opinions.
Like when he claimed google has enough information about us humans they can predict future trends ala a primitive version of psychohistory (Asimov novels.)
>>>"Apple makes more money from its smartphone than every other smartphone manufacturer in the world combined."
I'm glad Apple is doing well, rather than driven out of existence like Commodore, Atari, and Netscape were (by Microsoft).
But - How come we don't hear the politicians demanding a "windfall profits tax" like they did with Exxon two years ago? I guess it's only bad to make a profit if you're an evil oil company, but if your a tech company it's a good thing to rake-in equivalent amounts of money.
I hate double standards.
Having 1000 separate lines (one per home) is more costly than having 50 wires that are shared by the whole village.
>>>P2P traffic should take a lower priority over VOIP and other more interactive traffic.
You didn't read the ____ing summary. This IS an interactive P2P application and that's why it should not be throttled.
Also
If they laid fatter "pipes", like 100 Mbit/sec to every home, they wouldn't need to throttle anything. Throttling is only necessary when you fail to lay sufficient bandwidth to handle the load.
Why is Canada dominated by this company?
Here in the U.S. we have two sometimes three different internet companies to choose from. It prevents them from being abusive to customers (since then we would just switch companies).
Another idea is to treat the Nets the same way the roads are treated
- Government owns and maintains the fiber (say 50 per bundle)
- Verizon, Apple, Microsoft, et cetera lease one fiber each
- The customer connects to whichever fiber/company they like best
It would be like a return to the old Dialup days when you could sign-on to whatever ISP you wanted.
I've thought about it but LED price is nuts, and I suspect they would die early since I frequently turn them on & off (as happens with CFLs). Why can't I just use incandescents? They aren't that much worse in efficiency (3% versus 8%).
And they work in any environment, from my freezer to my stove. Inside or outside. Open fixtures or enclosed (which kills CFLs/LEDs).
If Congress is really concerned about reducing energy usage, they should stop nitpicking the few pennies saved by outlawing incandescents, and focus on outlawing leaky homes (replace them all with Passive Houses). Loss of heat is the biggest energy loss (~100 dollars per home).
Yeah right. The States regulate everything else: Power, water, natural gas, roads, car inspections, emission inspections, land use, ........ but for some strange reason they will not regulate internet companies. That is not a logical belief.
I wouldn't hold Europe as some great example of "how to do it right". I remember in the early days of the net (80s) my European colleagues complaining about high access charges applied to their modems, plus having to pay for local calling (therefore they couldn't make large multi-hour downloads).
Meanwhile in the U.S. we had private phone monopolies (regulated by government) that added no modem surcharges and no billing for local calling. We were better-off than the EU computer users.
I'm not saying I'm against government-built companies. Just pointing-out that, for a long time, the European government companies were more of a ripoff to users than a benefit.
>>>You cannot fire the government, neither AT&T and Comcast.
Say what?? I fired Comcast 5 years ago and haven't regretted it since. You're wrong when you say they can't be fired by the customer.
Now if only I could find a way to fire the government-run water company; I have to pay that stupid bill (flat rate) even though I'm not hooked up. Government uses their taxing power to make you pay for services you don't want or use.
>>>What Georgia needs is home rule legislation. Keep the state government out of things the local government can and should do.
We ought to try this concept at the national level, instead of having Congress regulate every little thing, including what kind of lightbulb I can use (incandescents outlawed and replaced with Crap FLs). Yeah I'm a little annoyed by that last one. It made no logical sense. So I save a few pennies on electric but have to waste dollars driving to the landfill to dispose the mercury-laden bulbs. Grrrr.
ANYWAY
I agree it should be left to the cities to decide if they want to install government-run internet. A little competition against Comcast and Verizon would be a good thing
.
What limitations on wired phone service?
>>>laws governing privacy over publicly funded networks would cease to exist if no tax dollars went into something.
That's not really true. States have power to regulate anything they wish inside their borders. Look at how they regulate private electric and natural-gas companies. They can do the same with Comcast, Verizon, et cetera.
>>>Sure, but how many of those people are watching the major networks? You don't even need 25 digital channels to provide those.
>>>
The major networks are still the most-watched channels on TV, but 5-to-1.
I live in the northeast. There are multiple overlapping cities and a total of 45 channels (7 through 51). Every single one of them is occupied by a broadcast TV station. (And each statiion broadcasts 2-3 programs each or about 120 programs.)
It would be impossible to squeeze all those stations/programs into only 25 channels. Well, in theory you could, but they would be severely compressed and not watchable.
The number of TV channels can not be reduced downto 25. It's a bad idea.
>>>>>5 GB data.
>>
>>Holy crap, 5GB of texts is 33,554,432 messages
Somebody can't read.
According to U.S. law, if GM had sold the EV1 they would be obligated to provide service/parts for the next 25 years (2001 through 2025). GM made a decision that it didn't want that expense, and it would be cheaper to discontinue the car and terminate all future costs. As an accountant I probably would have made the same decision (to save the company money).
GM selling battery rights is not as dumb as you think. That tech was based upon NiCad which is now obsolete. So GM made money and Texaco got stuck with useless patents.
>>>all of its parties are dead?
The Member States still exist as part of the U.S. compact. Your logic would mean the European Union could no longer exist, because most of its founding treaties were signed by now-dead persons. The reason the EU continues forward is because it was created by State governments which never die, and the same is true for the US.
You're wrong (and I suspect the other posters are wrong too). Not long ago a man living near York PA was charged with aggravated assault after he hit a car thief with a bat.
According to the arresting officer, if the thief had been killed, he'd have been up for homicide. Your only option in this state is to call 911, and let the thief take your car.
The Civil War did not repeal the 10th amendment, and in fact multiple Supreme Courts Cases have affirmed the power of the States to regulate their own affairs, such as when the justices nullified the Congressional law to ban smoking within 1 mile radius of schools. And when they nullified congressional law that forced States to build underground mines for nuclear waste.
P.S.
If you think ATT is being unfair, consider the old-fashioned wired phone pricing.
- $15 for unlimited calls.
- Or $5 plus 10 cents per call.
Clearly the latter is more expensive if you talk all the time, but that economy plan exists for those who barely use the phone (like me), but want to save money. The same is true for ATT's new tiers.
Low demand on a fixed cost will raise each individual cost. It's similar to when I asked, "Why does limited cable cost 7 dollars in northern Maryland and 15 in southern PA?" Answer: Because PA is less-densely packed than nortern MD. Comcast has to run the same amount of cable, but only serves 1/2 as many people, therefore each person's cost goes up.
If you think ATT is fair, consider the old-fashioned phone pricing. $15 for unlimited calls. Or $5 plus 10 cents per call. Clearly the latter is more expensive if you talk all the time, but that economy plan exists for those who barely use the phone, but want to save money.
The word you're looking for is not monopoly but cartel (companies colluding with one another to keep prices high). The record companies were prosecuted by the US DOJ for doing that with CD pricing.
If you believe cellphone companies are guilty too of collusion, then maybe you should start building your case to prove it's true. Can you do that?
>>>Are the $20/day people supposed to be outraged..... or should they be happy they saved money for something they didn't really want.
Yes. Exactly. My plan also offers 250MB per month, and I'm okay with that because I never use data. The main attraction for me is saving money (20 dollars/month saved)
.
>>>"how much does AT&T pay for that bandwidth for which they charge $20/250MB?"
No the real question is how much does ATT pay for adding a customer who barely uses their dataphone? The bandwidth is probably trivial, but the paperwork is expensive (figure 5 dollars just to print and mail the monthly bill). This is similar to how banks don't really want savings customers, because it Costs them money rather than earning money.
>>>Mature software is not seen as something "good" but as "something to be replaced". It's a sad time we live in.
"Engineers..... they love to change things."
The interface reached a usable state long, long ago (circa 2000). All these other changes are just change for the sake of change that serve no real useful purpose, except to justify charging labor hours & selling new packages.
What I want is an OS that doesn't crash once a week, or require 8 gigabytes of RAM to run, even if that means it looks like an old Commodore 64 with GEOS. Just make the damn thing work.
Your post should be +5
It's amazing how many people don't understand checks-and-balances even though they learned it in school. And I'm not just talking about the 3 branches of government, but also the Check of the States upon the central power (tenth amendment).
The U.S. is like the European Union. A single whole but composed of multiple sovereign governments that retain most of the power to themselves.