*sigh* I wasn't criticising Slashdot, I was explaining how I could possibly have known and had an opinion about the merger before Slashdot posted an article about it.
Won't help. T-Mobile has nationwide spectrum already, but doesn't use all of it. MetroPCS's coverage map is mostly a subset of T-Mobile's and MetroPCS uses different, incompatible, network standards so you wouldn't even be able to roam on them even if you found an area where they don't overlap currently.
In context, it overlaps if two operators have the same category of spectrum in the same market.
For example, both MetroPCS and T-Mobile have PCS spectrum in the 33403 zip code. So from the FCC's point of view, some of that spectrum is up for grabs unless T-Mobile can show a compelling case why it should keep all of it, and why it wouldn't be anti-competitive for it do so.
The biggest problem is with AWS. Both T-Mobile and MetroPCS have licenses for 100% of the USA, so T-Metro will almost certainly be required to divest itself of a huge chunk of it as a merger condition, based upon the way the FCC has ruled in the past.
As you can see from the responses to my comment, there's a lot of people making bizarre claims about my motives in posting it. To make a few things clear:
1. I've been a T-Mobile customer since 2002. I've recommended them, repeatedly, online and off.
2. I've been a Slashdot poster for over a decade too. I've had articles accepted. I've joined in many conversations about a variety of topics and been, uh, forthright in my views. More forthright than above, actually.
3. So it should be f---ing obvious that my posting was a reflection of my personal opinions.
However, there's something else to consider. When the AT&T - T-Mobile merger talk was going on, a lot of posters to various forums posted supporting comments that were supportive to the point of absurdity. Mergers can help customers - for example, Voicestream (T-Mobile's predecessor) is itself the merger of numerous GSM networks. They merged because each was regional, and each provided GSM in a seperate region. There was, at the time, no national GSM network, completely undermining the entire point of a mobile phone service. And so they merged. The T-Mobile/AT&T one didn't have this advantage. It was clearly anti-consumer. Before the merger there would be four national networks. After: three. And that was it.
So there was no reason to post in favor. And what those who did post was stuff like "But T-Mobile will close if it doesn't merge!" (a complete lie, and of course, T-Mobile wouldn't exist if it did merge.)" or "T-Mobile will be so much better when it's part of AT&T!" (but it won't exist, so how can it be better?)
Likewise, while some of the responses to my comment have concentrated on the advantages to DT and MetroPCS's management and shareholders (and that's where the advantages are), a few are trying the same FUD that we saw in the prior discussion, except they're usually trying to imply it's me that's underhanded when they do.
So, here's what I think.
I think there's a strong chance that those claiming this is better for consumers, or pretending that T-Mobile has to do this because they're at death's door, are actually shills. I believe this because we've seen it before, because we saw it in connection with T-Mobile before, and it's simply reasonable to suggest that the same tactics would be used for both mergers, given many of the same people are involved.
I'm not saying everyone posting in favor of this crapfest are shills, I'm saying I think a lot of them probably are. T-Mobile wants the groundwork laid so that this will appear to have a lot of popular support.
Unless you're a DT or PCS shareholder, there's no reason to support this merger. None whatsoever. And while I know many will "cheer their team", and T-Mobile is, for many of us, "our team", it's simply hard to believe that so many would be in favor of something that clearly is going to put back much needed network improvements, and cause many more job losses. I think T-Mobile has employed the shills.
What is your deal? I've seen you post this comment almost word for word on various other sites.
Link?
I've commented upon this issue only on Slashdot, TmoNews, and Twitter. I have probably made the same points across multiple posts, but it's an outright fabrication to suggest the above comment was posted "almost word for word" anywhere else.
Your argument seems to mostly have a emotional basis to it. As if you don't like the company/ies involved for whatever reason that you don't seem to be saying.
Would it kill you to believe I'm against a merger for the reasons I gave?
This is the umpteenth fucking post here that's implied some kind of conspiracy behind my comments. Here's an idea: if you disagree with my points, explain why. Saying "Yes, you have some good points, but I think you're a poopyhead h4t3r" and lying about my posting record isn't helpful.
When AT&T announced their plan to buy T-Mobile, there was an influx of bizarre, illogical, posts promoting their support for this, claiming that the only way to "save" the "ailing" T-Mobile was to, uh, get rid of it and sell its customers and assets to AT&T. Since the MetroPCS announcement, I've seen the same pattern, people condemnatory about any criticism whatsoever of a deal that's objectively bad for consumers and who insist that the "ailing" T-Mobile must buy MetroPCS or else face oblivion.
What a load of crap. And as long as it's crap, and as something as consumer hostile as this is promoted, I'll criticise it. Because I'm not shilling.
TMO is not as bad as AT&T etc, what bothers me is that they're heading in that direction and have been ever since Android took off. No, I don't blame them for locked bootloaders per-se (although I don't believe they're blameless either, but they are good enough to host a "phone hacking" forum on their own website.) But they have been locking down plans and changing the system over the last few years from the liberal "T-Mobile Internet" and "Change your plan whenever you want with no contract obligations" policies to the policies they have now, which suck.
As far as your question goes: What I do know is this: T-Mobile and MetroPCS have exactly the same kinds of spectrum. They both have PCS, and AWS. Both have nationwide AWS. T-Mobile has a fairly broad swathe of PCS with significant holes, while MetroPCS has a very, very, small PCS footprint, meaning it was a regional carrier until recently.
The combined company will probably have to give up a large portion of its spectrum as most coverage for most types of spectrum overlaps, that is, national AWS is national AWS, and most of MetroPCS's PCS is in areas where T-Mobile has coverage.
From what I've read, MetroPCS's network is relatively congested too, as you'd expect it to be (all of their plans are all-you-can-eat), which also means potential issues for T-Mobile customers if we're going to ultimately share our bandwidth with Metro users.
Ultimately, it's hard to see how it won't be ugly. I'm really unhappy with this.
When you subscribe - which you did originally to remove ads and to block people commenting on your journals that you'd rather not - you get one additional perk which is to see the articles 30 minutes early. They appear with red banners. And thus you have time to craft an "on topic" early post.
There's no conspiracy, and I've been a Slashdotter for over a decade now as my comment history and tiny six digit user ID (I remember when that would have been a joke...) demonstrates. You'll also find, if you're that paranoid that you have to read it all, that I've been a T-Mobile customer for nearly a decade now, and have commented as such, repeatedly.
I'm a subscriber, I wrote it while the article was still red. Although yes, I did know about the merger earlier this morning, Slashdot wasn't exactly first with this news.
MetroPCS has always locked down its phones. T-Mobile has been increasingly locking down its phones and services over the last few years, culminating in the "You can only use this myTouch data plan with myTouch devices and cannot use a non-myTouch data plan with a myTouch phone" stupidity a couple of years ago that, thankfully, they backed out of a little.
Used to be the case that data was data. You had two plans, T-Mobile Internet, which was the Internet, and the T-Mobile web thing (I forget the name) that blocked some ports, and you could use the former for whatever you wanted. For some reason, they decided Android meant they should stop doing that.
Because the two companies have similar spectrum holdings T-Mobile claims the merger will allow them to offer better coverage.
And therein is the lie. Because the FCC hasn't, to the best of my knowledge, allowed a merger in recent history between a major carrier and a smaller one without imposing the requirement that substantial amounts of overlapping spectrum be disposed of. Both carriers have nationwide AWS, and while MetroPCS's PCS spectrum is more limited, it exists mostly in areas that T-Mobile already has coverage.
So what does this mean in practice? It means:
- Less competition - less incentive to reduce prices or improve services
- Another round of layoffs, probably numbering in the thousands, possibly tens of thousands.
- More customers on less spectrum, with at least initially multiple network standards making spectrum sharing even harder.
- More costly spectrum refarming
- Either maintenance of four largely incompatible networks (2GSM, IS95/2000, UMTS, and LTE) or the migration of all IS95/2000 customers to 2GSM/UMTS/LTE, at considerable cost.
- Funds spent on the above that could be spent on rolling out 3G to uncovered areas, or rolling out LTE. Or improving their deteriorating customer service.
Oh, and to add insult to injury, there'll be one less alternative existing T-Mobile customers can jump to in the event T-Mobile gets worse. Which it will.
Also, from a phone geek's PoV, this is a merger between a company that's always been hostile towards customers having control over their own devices, and one that used to be liberal on the subject but has become more and more controlling lately. And directors of the former will be taking up prominent roles in the new company.
This is a terrible, terrible, idea, and the people behind it are terrible, terrible, people.
It is important that state government officials know the drug, organized crime, etc situation in their state, and this is how they find out.
Perhaps, but the DHS was founded in an atmosphere of paranoia about terrorism. The rights that politicians granted it were granted in the belief that the DHS was necessary to prevent terrorists from killing large numbers of people. For it to be coopted into the war on drugs or anything similar is overreach in that context (even if there's some line item in some bill somewhere that allows it to do that.)
I think the DHS is a pretty absurd response to terrorism. But much of the opposition to it comes not from it obeying its perceived public mandate, but for a government agency to be endowed with such powers using them in contexts that were never publicly justified. Let the FBI work with local authorities if they have to on organized crime, and the DEA on drugs, but let's leave the monster of an organization tasked with investigating politically motivated violent crimes - out of it.
I have to disagree with your "back to the drawing board" thing.
Have you used both Vista and 7? 7 is very obviously the same operating system, with some bugs fixed and an revamped dock/taskbar (Vista's was pretty much unchanged from XP, so I don't think you can point at the taskbar and say "That's why people didn't like Vista but liked 7!")
The major complaint about Vista, other than some compatibility problems that 7 fixed, was the UAC system. Guess what - it's still there, it's still doing exactly the same thing, Microsoft barely touched it. The people who went "back to the drawing board" were, by and large, the third party developers who realized they couldn't continue storing volatile data in C:\Program Files and fixed that.
(Which is good. UAC was a good thing. It needed to be done. Quite honestly, all of Vista needed to be done, it's just a shame the first version was so buggy and that they made people pay for the first release that wasn't bug ridden.)
BTW, I'm still getting updates for Ubuntu 8.04LTS. While that's not as impressive, perhaps, as getting patches for Windows 2000 in 2009 (if I understand you correctly, although I could swear W2K was EOL'd long before then), it's still perfectly reasonable, and at least I don't have to pay for future version when Canonical does finally EOL it.
Absolutely. And I'd like a computer that can be used as a desktop when it's appropriate, and a tablet or (better, given how big most "serious" tablets are) phone at other times.
I'm hoping Ubuntu is able to partner with CyanogenMod or some similar group at some point to put out their Ubuntu for Android thing.
Qualcomm licensed those patents from Samsung. Everyone else buys chips from Qualcomm and these chips included the damned patent licenses (or else why would you buy them?)
Samsung obviously disagrees with you and is willing to go to court over it. They don't believe any licence they gave Qualcomm covers Apple. Given Samsung's usual rate is "% of final product price", I find it hard to believe any license they gave Qualcomm would cover third parties too.
As for why you'd buy Qualcomm's chips - it's because they're a pre-made component. Why do you think? A business sourcing components from a supplier doesn't assume that any product they make using said components will suddenly become licensed. Why would you?
What you've read is obviously wrong, or you've taken away a completely false impression from it. Either way, no, it's entirely possible that other users of Qualcomm's chips have negotiated patent licenses, and Apple has done its usual thing of "holding out for a better deal" (or simply ignoring patents held by rivals, in the hope it gets another dumbass Jury foreman on its side.)
So how can Samsung bring a suit against Apple that would not be valid to bring against every other user of that same chip?
Well, just an idea, but maybe other users of said chip licensed the patent? (Something particularly likely given the amount of cross licensing that goes on.)
"Misconduct, Not Error, Is the Main Cause of Scientific Retractions"
How many cases of misconduct do you think were discovered by reading emails, vs the standard post-publication mass peer review many-eyeballs "Wait a moment, this doesn't look right" process?
So if you are a medicare or social security recipient, we have a right to see your medical records.
Of course not! That would be relevent. What we have a right to see is the ridiculous stuff, you know, transcripts of every conversation you have with a doctor, for example, or of talks with fellow pensioners when you were out playing Bingo.
Remember, Microsoft used underhanded business dealings to kill OS/2. Therefore, twenty years later, everything it does must be eeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeevil.
But as soon as you communicate with a native IPv6 address you are relying on two third party relays to handle traffic in both directions.
Welcome to the Internet, which has worked like that since Al Gore invented it!
To the best of my knowledge, there has never been a time that an arbitrary Internet user, sending or receiving IP packets to another arbitrary Internet user not on the same ISP, has been able to avoid unknown third party relays. That's how packet switching works. The best part is, it works great.
Perhaps that's the solution. If the US Military was cut to the bone, just about able to defend the US against an attack from Canada or Mexico but nothing more, then perhaps we'd have a few less stupid, evil, unnecessary wars and our politicians would be forced to actually help the country for once.
NAT is not a firewall. And anyone deploying IPv6 should be doing so on a machine modern enough to have a strong, centrally administered, software firewall.
I actually prefer 6to4. It's less efficient, but reverse DNS is guaranteed to work - you don't have to rely on your ISP setting it up - and you can talk to pretty much any IPv6 address with it,
Are there many cities (I mean, real ones, not "A disparate group of buildings, divided by excessive zoning, spread over a wide area, connected legally purely for political organizational, and taxation purposes" Anytown USA type places) in Nebraska? I always thought it was mostly rural.
Slashdot Mirror
*sigh* I wasn't criticising Slashdot, I was explaining how I could possibly have known and had an opinion about the merger before Slashdot posted an article about it.
Won't help. T-Mobile has nationwide spectrum already, but doesn't use all of it. MetroPCS's coverage map is mostly a subset of T-Mobile's and MetroPCS uses different, incompatible, network standards so you wouldn't even be able to roam on them even if you found an area where they don't overlap currently.
In context, it overlaps if two operators have the same category of spectrum in the same market.
For example, both MetroPCS and T-Mobile have PCS spectrum in the 33403 zip code. So from the FCC's point of view, some of that spectrum is up for grabs unless T-Mobile can show a compelling case why it should keep all of it, and why it wouldn't be anti-competitive for it do so.
The biggest problem is with AWS. Both T-Mobile and MetroPCS have licenses for 100% of the USA, so T-Metro will almost certainly be required to divest itself of a huge chunk of it as a merger condition, based upon the way the FCC has ruled in the past.
As you can see from the responses to my comment, there's a lot of people making bizarre claims about my motives in posting it. To make a few things clear:
1. I've been a T-Mobile customer since 2002. I've recommended them, repeatedly, online and off.
2. I've been a Slashdot poster for over a decade too. I've had articles accepted. I've joined in many conversations about a variety of topics and been, uh, forthright in my views. More forthright than above, actually.
3. So it should be f---ing obvious that my posting was a reflection of my personal opinions.
However, there's something else to consider. When the AT&T - T-Mobile merger talk was going on, a lot of posters to various forums posted supporting comments that were supportive to the point of absurdity. Mergers can help customers - for example, Voicestream (T-Mobile's predecessor) is itself the merger of numerous GSM networks. They merged because each was regional, and each provided GSM in a seperate region. There was, at the time, no national GSM network, completely undermining the entire point of a mobile phone service. And so they merged. The T-Mobile/AT&T one didn't have this advantage. It was clearly anti-consumer. Before the merger there would be four national networks. After: three. And that was it.
So there was no reason to post in favor. And what those who did post was stuff like "But T-Mobile will close if it doesn't merge!" (a complete lie, and of course, T-Mobile wouldn't exist if it did merge.)" or "T-Mobile will be so much better when it's part of AT&T!" (but it won't exist, so how can it be better?)
Likewise, while some of the responses to my comment have concentrated on the advantages to DT and MetroPCS's management and shareholders (and that's where the advantages are), a few are trying the same FUD that we saw in the prior discussion, except they're usually trying to imply it's me that's underhanded when they do.
So, here's what I think.
I think there's a strong chance that those claiming this is better for consumers, or pretending that T-Mobile has to do this because they're at death's door, are actually shills. I believe this because we've seen it before, because we saw it in connection with T-Mobile before, and it's simply reasonable to suggest that the same tactics would be used for both mergers, given many of the same people are involved.
I'm not saying everyone posting in favor of this crapfest are shills, I'm saying I think a lot of them probably are. T-Mobile wants the groundwork laid so that this will appear to have a lot of popular support.
Unless you're a DT or PCS shareholder, there's no reason to support this merger. None whatsoever. And while I know many will "cheer their team", and T-Mobile is, for many of us, "our team", it's simply hard to believe that so many would be in favor of something that clearly is going to put back much needed network improvements, and cause many more job losses. I think T-Mobile has employed the shills.
Link?
I've commented upon this issue only on Slashdot, TmoNews, and Twitter. I have probably made the same points across multiple posts, but it's an outright fabrication to suggest the above comment was posted "almost word for word" anywhere else.
Would it kill you to believe I'm against a merger for the reasons I gave?
This is the umpteenth fucking post here that's implied some kind of conspiracy behind my comments. Here's an idea: if you disagree with my points, explain why. Saying "Yes, you have some good points, but I think you're a poopyhead h4t3r" and lying about my posting record isn't helpful.
When AT&T announced their plan to buy T-Mobile, there was an influx of bizarre, illogical, posts promoting their support for this, claiming that the only way to "save" the "ailing" T-Mobile was to, uh, get rid of it and sell its customers and assets to AT&T. Since the MetroPCS announcement, I've seen the same pattern, people condemnatory about any criticism whatsoever of a deal that's objectively bad for consumers and who insist that the "ailing" T-Mobile must buy MetroPCS or else face oblivion.
What a load of crap. And as long as it's crap, and as something as consumer hostile as this is promoted, I'll criticise it. Because I'm not shilling.
But you might be.
TMO is not as bad as AT&T etc, what bothers me is that they're heading in that direction and have been ever since Android took off. No, I don't blame them for locked bootloaders per-se (although I don't believe they're blameless either, but they are good enough to host a "phone hacking" forum on their own website.) But they have been locking down plans and changing the system over the last few years from the liberal "T-Mobile Internet" and "Change your plan whenever you want with no contract obligations" policies to the policies they have now, which suck.
As far as your question goes: What I do know is this: T-Mobile and MetroPCS have exactly the same kinds of spectrum. They both have PCS, and AWS. Both have nationwide AWS. T-Mobile has a fairly broad swathe of PCS with significant holes, while MetroPCS has a very, very, small PCS footprint, meaning it was a regional carrier until recently.
The combined company will probably have to give up a large portion of its spectrum as most coverage for most types of spectrum overlaps, that is, national AWS is national AWS, and most of MetroPCS's PCS is in areas where T-Mobile has coverage.
From what I've read, MetroPCS's network is relatively congested too, as you'd expect it to be (all of their plans are all-you-can-eat), which also means potential issues for T-Mobile customers if we're going to ultimately share our bandwidth with Metro users.
Ultimately, it's hard to see how it won't be ugly. I'm really unhappy with this.
The myTouch is a standard Android phone. The plan wasn't cheaper, and there wasn't any reason to have a seperate plan.
*sigh*
OK, here's the deal.
When you subscribe - which you did originally to remove ads and to block people commenting on your journals that you'd rather not - you get one additional perk which is to see the articles 30 minutes early. They appear with red banners. And thus you have time to craft an "on topic" early post.
There's no conspiracy, and I've been a Slashdotter for over a decade now as my comment history and tiny six digit user ID (I remember when that would have been a joke...) demonstrates. You'll also find, if you're that paranoid that you have to read it all, that I've been a T-Mobile customer for nearly a decade now, and have commented as such, repeatedly.
I'm a subscriber, I wrote it while the article was still red. Although yes, I did know about the merger earlier this morning, Slashdot wasn't exactly first with this news.
MetroPCS has always locked down its phones. T-Mobile has been increasingly locking down its phones and services over the last few years, culminating in the "You can only use this myTouch data plan with myTouch devices and cannot use a non-myTouch data plan with a myTouch phone" stupidity a couple of years ago that, thankfully, they backed out of a little.
Used to be the case that data was data. You had two plans, T-Mobile Internet, which was the Internet, and the T-Mobile web thing (I forget the name) that blocked some ports, and you could use the former for whatever you wanted. For some reason, they decided Android meant they should stop doing that.
And therein is the lie. Because the FCC hasn't, to the best of my knowledge, allowed a merger in recent history between a major carrier and a smaller one without imposing the requirement that substantial amounts of overlapping spectrum be disposed of. Both carriers have nationwide AWS, and while MetroPCS's PCS spectrum is more limited, it exists mostly in areas that T-Mobile already has coverage.
So what does this mean in practice? It means:
- Less competition - less incentive to reduce prices or improve services
- Another round of layoffs, probably numbering in the thousands, possibly tens of thousands.
- More customers on less spectrum, with at least initially multiple network standards making spectrum sharing even harder.
- More costly spectrum refarming
- Either maintenance of four largely incompatible networks (2GSM, IS95/2000, UMTS, and LTE) or the migration of all IS95/2000 customers to 2GSM/UMTS/LTE, at considerable cost.
- Funds spent on the above that could be spent on rolling out 3G to uncovered areas, or rolling out LTE. Or improving their deteriorating customer service.
Oh, and to add insult to injury, there'll be one less alternative existing T-Mobile customers can jump to in the event T-Mobile gets worse. Which it will.
Also, from a phone geek's PoV, this is a merger between a company that's always been hostile towards customers having control over their own devices, and one that used to be liberal on the subject but has become more and more controlling lately. And directors of the former will be taking up prominent roles in the new company.
This is a terrible, terrible, idea, and the people behind it are terrible, terrible, people.
Perhaps, but the DHS was founded in an atmosphere of paranoia about terrorism. The rights that politicians granted it were granted in the belief that the DHS was necessary to prevent terrorists from killing large numbers of people. For it to be coopted into the war on drugs or anything similar is overreach in that context (even if there's some line item in some bill somewhere that allows it to do that.)
I think the DHS is a pretty absurd response to terrorism. But much of the opposition to it comes not from it obeying its perceived public mandate, but for a government agency to be endowed with such powers using them in contexts that were never publicly justified. Let the FBI work with local authorities if they have to on organized crime, and the DEA on drugs, but let's leave the monster of an organization tasked with investigating politically motivated violent crimes - out of it.
I have to disagree with your "back to the drawing board" thing.
Have you used both Vista and 7? 7 is very obviously the same operating system, with some bugs fixed and an revamped dock/taskbar (Vista's was pretty much unchanged from XP, so I don't think you can point at the taskbar and say "That's why people didn't like Vista but liked 7!")
The major complaint about Vista, other than some compatibility problems that 7 fixed, was the UAC system. Guess what - it's still there, it's still doing exactly the same thing, Microsoft barely touched it. The people who went "back to the drawing board" were, by and large, the third party developers who realized they couldn't continue storing volatile data in C:\Program Files and fixed that.
(Which is good. UAC was a good thing. It needed to be done. Quite honestly, all of Vista needed to be done, it's just a shame the first version was so buggy and that they made people pay for the first release that wasn't bug ridden.)
BTW, I'm still getting updates for Ubuntu 8.04LTS. While that's not as impressive, perhaps, as getting patches for Windows 2000 in 2009 (if I understand you correctly, although I could swear W2K was EOL'd long before then), it's still perfectly reasonable, and at least I don't have to pay for future version when Canonical does finally EOL it.
Absolutely. And I'd like a computer that can be used as a desktop when it's appropriate, and a tablet or (better, given how big most "serious" tablets are) phone at other times.
I'm hoping Ubuntu is able to partner with CyanogenMod or some similar group at some point to put out their Ubuntu for Android thing.
Samsung obviously disagrees with you and is willing to go to court over it. They don't believe any licence they gave Qualcomm covers Apple. Given Samsung's usual rate is "% of final product price", I find it hard to believe any license they gave Qualcomm would cover third parties too.
As for why you'd buy Qualcomm's chips - it's because they're a pre-made component. Why do you think? A business sourcing components from a supplier doesn't assume that any product they make using said components will suddenly become licensed. Why would you?
What you've read is obviously wrong, or you've taken away a completely false impression from it. Either way, no, it's entirely possible that other users of Qualcomm's chips have negotiated patent licenses, and Apple has done its usual thing of "holding out for a better deal" (or simply ignoring patents held by rivals, in the hope it gets another dumbass Jury foreman on its side.)
Well, just an idea, but maybe other users of said chip licensed the patent? (Something particularly likely given the amount of cross licensing that goes on.)
How many cases of misconduct do you think were discovered by reading emails, vs the standard post-publication mass peer review many-eyeballs "Wait a moment, this doesn't look right" process?
Of course not! That would be relevent. What we have a right to see is the ridiculous stuff, you know, transcripts of every conversation you have with a doctor, for example, or of talks with fellow pensioners when you were out playing Bingo.
Dude, it's quite simple. It's Microsoft!!! ARGH!!! Noooo!!!
Remember, Microsoft used underhanded business dealings to kill OS/2. Therefore, twenty years later, everything it does must be eeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeevil.
Welcome to the Internet, which has worked like that since Al Gore invented it!
To the best of my knowledge, there has never been a time that an arbitrary Internet user, sending or receiving IP packets to another arbitrary Internet user not on the same ISP, has been able to avoid unknown third party relays. That's how packet switching works. The best part is, it works great.
Quite, don't they understand it would run 5-10% faster under Gentoo?..
(Is Gentoo still a thing? I mean, I haven't heard anything about it for a while. Did the ricers find a new thing to latch onto?)
Perhaps that's the solution. If the US Military was cut to the bone, just about able to defend the US against an attack from Canada or Mexico but nothing more, then perhaps we'd have a few less stupid, evil, unnecessary wars and our politicians would be forced to actually help the country for once.
NAT is not a firewall. And anyone deploying IPv6 should be doing so on a machine modern enough to have a strong, centrally administered, software firewall.
6to4 works on most ISPs too.
I actually prefer 6to4. It's less efficient, but reverse DNS is guaranteed to work - you don't have to rely on your ISP setting it up - and you can talk to pretty much any IPv6 address with it,
Are there many cities (I mean, real ones, not "A disparate group of buildings, divided by excessive zoning, spread over a wide area, connected legally purely for political organizational, and taxation purposes" Anytown USA type places) in Nebraska? I always thought it was mostly rural.