I am as much in favor of net neutrality as anyone, but I totally disagree with this decision.
It would completely stifle creativity - one of the big reasons you have the great content on cable TV...
You lost me here.
What, you don't understand how not allowing cable/sat/telco companies to invest in cable-only TV shows would stifle creativity, or was it a lame attempt at sarcasm about how there's no good cable content?
By cable content, of course, I mean anything NOT broadcast on an over-the-air franchised network like NBC, CBS, ABC, FOX, etc. So, all of the shows from AMC, IFC, FX, USA, A&E, TBS, HBO, Showtime, etc. ie. most of the interesting shows on TV today. And since those "cable" channels are only available from cable (or sat/telco, etc) providers, not OTA broadcast (and therefore also not limited to the same ridiculous censorship rules the broadcast networks have to follow), it's in the providers' interests to give you something you WANT that makes it worth paying for. Same model as Netflix and House of Cards.
Of course, this is also why the proposed merger of AT&T and DirecTV, and Comcast and TWC are also horrible for the same reason - few players means more consolidated control over content broadcasting, so it will be more in the hands of the tastes and whims of even fewer executives making the calls.
Eh, I think you may be the one lacking understanding here...
1) "One or two other providers" is not a monopoly. It's not great, but it's not a monopoly BY DEFINITION.
2) It's not "cable television" anyone cares about, it's about broadcast television. Cable is just one delivery technology. Most areas in the US have 2-3 other broadcast TV options (Dish, DirecTV, and a telco solution like Verizon or AT&T Uverse). And once Google Fiber starts rolling out to more areas, it will cover this as well as Internet - obviously with net neutrality intact.
And the whole point of net neutrality is that content is king, and the ISP should be a dumb pipe. If you found that none of the major web sites you used worked with your current provider because of their anti-competitive practices but there was another similarly priced service that did, would you be more likely to switch to that service or start using alternative email, 2nd rate web searches, forgo streaming, etc. Hell, if Netflix alone did this they might lose a few customers, but the impact on Comcast would be 10x worse.
And this has already worked in practice - when DirecTV decided to play hardball with the college sports networks (Big 10, Pac 12, and especially SEC) Dish and Comcast used it to their advantage to steal customers.
Honestly the best id tech games *have* been without Carmack. Return to Castle Wolfenstein (the best in the series, especially the multiplayer) had little to do with id other than the engine...
I am as much in favor of net neutrality as anyone, but I totally disagree with this decision.
It would completely stifle creativity - one of the big reasons you have the great content on cable TV is because those "data line owners" (like Comcast, Time Warner, Verison, AT&T, DirecTV, etc) have invested a lot of money in the independent cable channels. Which makes sense - it's in their interest to encourage content that is only available with a premium monthly fee on their service. The future of TV content is going to be premium monthly subscriptions or pay per episode/season/etc. The OTA networks are screwed now that there are so many ways so avoid watching the commercials that support them...
Ok, if they want to play hardball, I say let the free market decide - by the companies who are against it putting their money where their mouth is.
Google, Facebook, Apple, Netflix, etc should announce that any company demanding a fee for preferred bandwidth on their service will no longer be supported at ALL. If, say, Comcast starts charging for premium access, imagine how fast everyone would switch to AT&T or Verizon. Make the providers tout it as a feature instead of a weakness. They are all making money hand over fist as is (Comcast made $1.9B in net income last QUARTER) so gaining customer with the status quo would beat losing tons of slightly more profitable customers any daay.
DISH/Echostar is a good example of a company that plays this game well. They honestly don't give a shit about their customers (or employees) beyond the bottom line, but they do actually have the lowest prices because they are not afraid to play chicken with content providers (by dropping their channels during disputes) and haven't blinked yet...
Of course there is a reason (there is no money to pay them), and traffic tickets ARE a major source of revenue, so it doesn't really matter what they were "supposed to be".
The only way to maintain the same number of police officers would be to collect an extra $300,000 per officer in whatever municipality pays their salary. It doesn't matter where the money comes from when they are calculating the budget - if income from fines drops, they have to make it up somewhere else.
And it's so much more complicated than that, anyway. Some departments (say, Oakland, CA) could easily use more officers (but can't afford them), while others (state highway patrols) are very large and 90% of their work is traffic enforcement, so there would be no need for most of them. And since the budgets, hierarchy, salaries, benefits, etc are COMPLETELY different, you can't just arbitrarily "move" them even if there was money in the budget to pay them.
Unless the locks on your doors are to lock people in, they aren't there because you assume all your houseguests are criminal
Eh... yeah, I said that analogy was "no better than". So, you agree with me that they are both awful analogies?
Ad, for good or bad, the position of the content owners has always been that you license the content, not own it. Your property is the physical disk you bought, and there is no limitation on that, just on the content you licensed that resides on it.
Again, I'm not against fair use copying, etc, but I am against people making hyperbolic bad analogies.
I have a computer that can copy videos and convert them to different formats. If I want to watch a Blu-Ray that feature of my computer is removed. It is nonsensical to say "that you KNEW exactly what you were buying". A feature *was* removed, you can't deny that.
1) no, if you want to "watch a Blu-Ray" that feature (playing a Blu-Ray from a BD player/drive) works fine.
2) of course you can deny it. The Blu-Ray manufacturer has nothing to do with your computer manufacturer. That argument is no better than saying a DVD manufacturer removed your PC's feature to display HD movies when you buy a DVD. It's both common knowledge and stated clearly on the back of the package that Blu-Rays and DVDs do not (without hacking) allow/support copying. Fair use doctrine has determined you can make a backup for yourself If you want, which is great, but no one is required to facilitate it. If don't like that clearly stated restriction you don't have to buy it...
Because any DRM system must at least do two things: a) assume that you are a criminal b) remove rights from you to use your own property.
I'm not arguing for DRM, but that's an awful analogy. No better than saying having a lock on your front door assumes all of your houseguests are criminals. And the latter that you KNEW exactly what you were buying when you did it so nothing was "removed".
And HDMI has nothing to do with Blu-Ray. The software involved in each part is completely unrelated. You had a couple of possibly relevant points in your comment but they were obscured by other nonsense.
Mozilla is big enough that they could have fought this. The endgame of having the largest user base is not as important as their original manifesto of building and maintaining a free and open browser.
No, they are not big enough and could not have fought this. The fact is there as long as there is at least one other browser on a platform that *does* support DRM necessary for Netlfix, Amazon, VUDU, whatever - it's just NOT that hard for a user to download and use that browser. Not hard enough that the content providers (i.e. movie studios) will allow their content to be streamed without DRM...
That's silly. Didn't it take "extra steps" to switch a phone number to a new phone (the answer is: yes). So it's one more step. OH NOOOO!
Fact is since 90% of the texts I send are to iPhones I don't need to pay for a ridiculous SMS plan. Many people get a huge benefit out of the feature. It's main point is to do an end around the ass-raping fees telcos charge for SMS (honestly it was amazing that Apple was able to bully them into allowing it). So, you need to take one extra step to disable the feature, BFD.
Maybe because the unrest in the Ukraine against Yanukovych's government had been building ever since he became president and promptly threw his main opponent into prison for "embezzlement" while living in his giant mansion surrounded by a fleet of cars, boats, and his own personal zoo...
More *pressing shit*? Russia LOVES what's going on, they are likely to gain major new territory while the rest of the world stands around with their dicks in their hands pretending that "freezing" 10% of a bunch of billionaires' assets is going to somehow "hurt" them.
Not really. You know why no one (including the Ukrainians) really did much about Crimea? Because it was actually part of Russia until 1954. While Russia's numbers for the "vote" were obviously highly exaggerated (especially the turnout), it would not be surprising if the majority voted to secede. Russia almost had a plausible argument that they were just "fixing" a bad bureaucratic decision form the 50's (by invading a now sovereign country and lying about it, of course).
The BIG issue now is Eastern Ukraine. Russia saw how easy it was to grab a whole chunk of another country while Europe and the US protested impotently, and now they figure "hey, let's see how far we can go, why not?" It's like a more covert-Putin-KGB version of the Nazi expansion in the 30's. Really hope Obama's legacy isn't as the the modern Chamberlain...
Given Apple now has almost 15% of the laptop market (and way more if you count tablets, like some silly analysts do), it's clearly not a niche any more.
Especially since it's the top end of the market. Like iPhones, Apple may not have the #1 market share, but their customers spend a *lot* more per device than other hardware owners, which is a lot of motivation for high-end peripheral manufacturers to build it into their high-end peripherals...
Exactly - the cost of the external enclosure alone is more than a decent desktop PC. Not to mention the Thunderbolt speed limits its performance to basically the level of a much cheaper video card, anyway.
Problem is, quoting the summary doesn't help understand the article, because the summary completely misrepresented it. It says "the premise is simple: " and then proceeds to totally mischaracterize the premise.
I was about to add on to your indignation, but I went back and read TFA - and agree with much of it. Now the only thing I'm indignant with is the horrible title and summary posted on/. about an interesting article. I'm assuming you didn't RTFA or the article TFA was based on, since most of your points actually have nothing to to with the author's premise, just the bad slashdot summary.
The real premise is NOT that the *employees* slack and so you can do math like "12 jobs doing the work of 10", etc. It's that the jobs themselves have a lot of useless make-work (often paper pushing) where there really isn't enough to do to even occupy someone in a 40 hour week, so people "browse the Internet" to look busy. And those people in that situation often know it (and based on feedback the author got, often hate it). It's browsing the Internet because there's nothing else to do, not to avoid doing something.
Slashdot Mirror
I am as much in favor of net neutrality as anyone, but I totally disagree with this decision.
It would completely stifle creativity - one of the big reasons you have the great content on cable TV...
You lost me here.
What, you don't understand how not allowing cable/sat/telco companies to invest in cable-only TV shows would stifle creativity, or was it a lame attempt at sarcasm about how there's no good cable content?
By cable content, of course, I mean anything NOT broadcast on an over-the-air franchised network like NBC, CBS, ABC, FOX, etc. So, all of the shows from AMC, IFC, FX, USA, A&E, TBS, HBO, Showtime, etc. ie. most of the interesting shows on TV today. And since those "cable" channels are only available from cable (or sat/telco, etc) providers, not OTA broadcast (and therefore also not limited to the same ridiculous censorship rules the broadcast networks have to follow), it's in the providers' interests to give you something you WANT that makes it worth paying for. Same model as Netflix and House of Cards.
Of course, this is also why the proposed merger of AT&T and DirecTV, and Comcast and TWC are also horrible for the same reason - few players means more consolidated control over content broadcasting, so it will be more in the hands of the tastes and whims of even fewer executives making the calls.
I don't think you understand how monopolies work.
Eh, I think you may be the one lacking understanding here...
1) "One or two other providers" is not a monopoly. It's not great, but it's not a monopoly BY DEFINITION.
2) It's not "cable television" anyone cares about, it's about broadcast television. Cable is just one delivery technology. Most areas in the US have 2-3 other broadcast TV options (Dish, DirecTV, and a telco solution like Verizon or AT&T Uverse). And once Google Fiber starts rolling out to more areas, it will cover this as well as Internet - obviously with net neutrality intact.
And the whole point of net neutrality is that content is king, and the ISP should be a dumb pipe. If you found that none of the major web sites you used worked with your current provider because of their anti-competitive practices but there was another similarly priced service that did, would you be more likely to switch to that service or start using alternative email, 2nd rate web searches, forgo streaming, etc. Hell, if Netflix alone did this they might lose a few customers, but the impact on Comcast would be 10x worse.
And this has already worked in practice - when DirecTV decided to play hardball with the college sports networks (Big 10, Pac 12, and especially SEC) Dish and Comcast used it to their advantage to steal customers.
Honestly the best id tech games *have* been without Carmack. Return to Castle Wolfenstein (the best in the series, especially the multiplayer) had little to do with id other than the engine...
I am as much in favor of net neutrality as anyone, but I totally disagree with this decision.
It would completely stifle creativity - one of the big reasons you have the great content on cable TV is because those "data line owners" (like Comcast, Time Warner, Verison, AT&T, DirecTV, etc) have invested a lot of money in the independent cable channels. Which makes sense - it's in their interest to encourage content that is only available with a premium monthly fee on their service. The future of TV content is going to be premium monthly subscriptions or pay per episode/season/etc. The OTA networks are screwed now that there are so many ways so avoid watching the commercials that support them...
Ok, if they want to play hardball, I say let the free market decide - by the companies who are against it putting their money where their mouth is.
Google, Facebook, Apple, Netflix, etc should announce that any company demanding a fee for preferred bandwidth on their service will no longer be supported at ALL. If, say, Comcast starts charging for premium access, imagine how fast everyone would switch to AT&T or Verizon. Make the providers tout it as a feature instead of a weakness. They are all making money hand over fist as is (Comcast made $1.9B in net income last QUARTER) so gaining customer with the status quo would beat losing tons of slightly more profitable customers any daay.
DISH/Echostar is a good example of a company that plays this game well. They honestly don't give a shit about their customers (or employees) beyond the bottom line, but they do actually have the lowest prices because they are not afraid to play chicken with content providers (by dropping their channels during disputes) and haven't blinked yet...
Of course there is a reason (there is no money to pay them), and traffic tickets ARE a major source of revenue, so it doesn't really matter what they were "supposed to be".
The only way to maintain the same number of police officers would be to collect an extra $300,000 per officer in whatever municipality pays their salary. It doesn't matter where the money comes from when they are calculating the budget - if income from fines drops, they have to make it up somewhere else.
And it's so much more complicated than that, anyway. Some departments (say, Oakland, CA) could easily use more officers (but can't afford them), while others (state highway patrols) are very large and 90% of their work is traffic enforcement, so there would be no need for most of them. And since the budgets, hierarchy, salaries, benefits, etc are COMPLETELY different, you can't just arbitrarily "move" them even if there was money in the budget to pay them.
Yes, obviously he does. If the First Amendment applied, he wouldn't need to pass a law.
Unless the locks on your doors are to lock people in, they aren't there because you assume all your houseguests are criminal
Eh... yeah, I said that analogy was "no better than". So, you agree with me that they are both awful analogies?
Ad, for good or bad, the position of the content owners has always been that you license the content, not own it. Your property is the physical disk you bought, and there is no limitation on that, just on the content you licensed that resides on it.
Again, I'm not against fair use copying, etc, but I am against people making hyperbolic bad analogies.
You just quoted an article on HDCP, not HDMI.
I have a computer that can copy videos and convert them to different formats. If I want to watch a Blu-Ray that feature of my computer is removed. It is nonsensical to say "that you KNEW exactly what you were buying". A feature *was* removed, you can't deny that.
1) no, if you want to "watch a Blu-Ray" that feature (playing a Blu-Ray from a BD player/drive) works fine.
2) of course you can deny it. The Blu-Ray manufacturer has nothing to do with your computer manufacturer. That argument is no better than saying a DVD manufacturer removed your PC's feature to display HD movies when you buy a DVD. It's both common knowledge and stated clearly on the back of the package that Blu-Rays and DVDs do not (without hacking) allow/support copying. Fair use doctrine has determined you can make a backup for yourself If you want, which is great, but no one is required to facilitate it. If don't like that clearly stated restriction you don't have to buy it...
Because any DRM system must at least do two things: a) assume that you are a criminal b) remove rights from you to use your own property.
I'm not arguing for DRM, but that's an awful analogy. No better than saying having a lock on your front door assumes all of your houseguests are criminals. And the latter that you KNEW exactly what you were buying when you did it so nothing was "removed".
And HDMI has nothing to do with Blu-Ray. The software involved in each part is completely unrelated. You had a couple of possibly relevant points in your comment but they were obscured by other nonsense.
Mozilla is big enough that they could have fought this. The endgame of having the largest user base is not as important as their original manifesto of building and maintaining a free and open browser.
No, they are not big enough and could not have fought this. The fact is there as long as there is at least one other browser on a platform that *does* support DRM necessary for Netlfix, Amazon, VUDU, whatever - it's just NOT that hard for a user to download and use that browser. Not hard enough that the content providers (i.e. movie studios) will allow their content to be streamed without DRM...
Finally, there is the possibility that there is an easy method that works - for 99.9% of the people. And some bug keeps it from working for 0.1%.
Which is apparently the case. Good luck suing for that. Precedent is overwhelmingly against you...
That's silly. Didn't it take "extra steps" to switch a phone number to a new phone (the answer is: yes). So it's one more step. OH NOOOO!
Fact is since 90% of the texts I send are to iPhones I don't need to pay for a ridiculous SMS plan. Many people get a huge benefit out of the feature. It's main point is to do an end around the ass-raping fees telcos charge for SMS (honestly it was amazing that Apple was able to bully them into allowing it). So, you need to take one extra step to disable the feature, BFD.
Ok, correction.
So, she's suing because she's too clueless to figure out how to deactivate iMessage support on her number?
http://support.apple.com/kb/TS...
http://www.samsung.com/us/supp...
Both Apple and Samsung have clear solutions to this if anyone cares to ask. How is that worthy of a lawsuit?
You can also choose in the message settings on your iPhone to automatically send via sms if iMessage delivery failed.
Yeah, that's what I don't understand. So, she's suing because she can't figure out the iOS settings menu?
Maybe because the unrest in the Ukraine against Yanukovych's government had been building ever since he became president and promptly threw his main opponent into prison for "embezzlement" while living in his giant mansion surrounded by a fleet of cars, boats, and his own personal zoo...
More *pressing shit*? Russia LOVES what's going on, they are likely to gain major new territory while the rest of the world stands around with their dicks in their hands pretending that "freezing" 10% of a bunch of billionaires' assets is going to somehow "hurt" them.
Not really. You know why no one (including the Ukrainians) really did much about Crimea? Because it was actually part of Russia until 1954. While Russia's numbers for the "vote" were obviously highly exaggerated (especially the turnout), it would not be surprising if the majority voted to secede. Russia almost had a plausible argument that they were just "fixing" a bad bureaucratic decision form the 50's (by invading a now sovereign country and lying about it, of course).
The BIG issue now is Eastern Ukraine. Russia saw how easy it was to grab a whole chunk of another country while Europe and the US protested impotently, and now they figure "hey, let's see how far we can go, why not?" It's like a more covert-Putin-KGB version of the Nazi expansion in the 30's. Really hope Obama's legacy isn't as the the modern Chamberlain...
Given Apple now has almost 15% of the laptop market (and way more if you count tablets, like some silly analysts do), it's clearly not a niche any more.
Especially since it's the top end of the market. Like iPhones, Apple may not have the #1 market share, but their customers spend a *lot* more per device than other hardware owners, which is a lot of motivation for high-end peripheral manufacturers to build it into their high-end peripherals...
But it only runs at 88mph...
Exactly - the cost of the external enclosure alone is more than a decent desktop PC. Not to mention the Thunderbolt speed limits its performance to basically the level of a much cheaper video card, anyway.
Well, I should really give proper credit to Mel Brooks... (from To Be or Not to Be)
Problem is, quoting the summary doesn't help understand the article, because the summary completely misrepresented it. It says "the premise is simple: " and then proceeds to totally mischaracterize the premise.
I was about to add on to your indignation, but I went back and read TFA - and agree with much of it. Now the only thing I'm indignant with is the horrible title and summary posted on /. about an interesting article. I'm assuming you didn't RTFA or the article TFA was based on, since most of your points actually have nothing to to with the author's premise, just the bad slashdot summary.
The real premise is NOT that the *employees* slack and so you can do math like "12 jobs doing the work of 10", etc. It's that the jobs themselves have a lot of useless make-work (often paper pushing) where there really isn't enough to do to even occupy someone in a 40 hour week, so people "browse the Internet" to look busy. And those people in that situation often know it (and based on feedback the author got, often hate it). It's browsing the Internet because there's nothing else to do, not to avoid doing something.
It was very German humor, really. Come up with four jokes and then spend the next 30 minutes explaining why they are funny.