Something doesn't compute with what you're saying. It would take quite an artificial situation to cause this behavior.
Perhaps if you've been downloading an iso for an hour or so, and then start browsing that you'll have to wait for the iso download connection to drop a packet, but come on, is that so bad ?
If you're browsing and downloading you shouldn't notice any slowdown.
You forgot the tiny little fact that unless one pulls his connection to the limit with a lot of tcp connections, there isn't any problem.
Turn off your bittorrent client while you're playing starcraft online, and the problem disappears.
The post fails to explain what happens in the case of insufficient buffers - and dropped packets : it can take up to 2 minutes for tcp to recover from a single dropped packet (granted - on slow links or long distance connections). Would you really feel that interactive response has improved if things work fast 95% of the time, and then your web browser* - for no apparent reason at all - takes 2 minutes to load pages** ?
(yes, I'm an ISP's network engineer. Big buffers or small buffers ? Trust me, you want big)
* the fun thing about webbrowsers is that they open lots of tcp connections, then barely send any packets at all (ie. connection generally closes after 4-5 packets tops - sometimes after 2 packets). If you lose the first packet in a connection, which is quite likely when browsing, the SRTT algorithm has no choice but to wait 2 minutes before retry - guaranteeing the user will have to interfere (ie. "F5"). This results in the massive deterioration of web browsing experience with trivially small packet loss. Unless you've never wondered why internet is near-unusable with 0.1% packet loss on your link, and nothing at all gets through at 1% packet loss. You'd think 99% correctly transmitted packets would translate in 99% of bandwidth available, no ? (in case you have this problem : a simple trick to put everything through a single tcp connection. ssh -D 1025 server_at_work; set up firefox to use socks5 proxy at port localhost:1025. You'll have 40-50% of your link bandwidth available on recent windows or linux) ** Just try, go to a big company that's upgraded to cheap gigabit switches, with tiny buffers. Ask them if, perchance, they've been experiencing sudden "timeouts" all of a sudden. Ask again if they like this.
The way to fix this - not that I'm expecting political interference from large groups of idiots - all large groups are large groups of idiots, because most people are idiots in most subjects - to go in a sensible direction all of a sudden, so "let's get the mob to 'fix' this" doesn't work regardless of good intentions - is not to go with small buffers but to have intelligent queuing algorithms in all devices. Of course, bittorrent will always cause this behavior, because one of two things will happen when bittorrent opens it's 5000 connections 1) either routers slow down bittorrent traffic in favor of http, much better performance, but results in underwear kids who haven't seen sunlight in a year shouting "NET NEUTRALITY !" 2) or they "treat all traffic the same" - and with tcp the one with the most connections "wins" the most bandwidth - meaning if you open 500 connections, your web browser is only going to get 1/500th of the link bandwidth - resulting in abysmal performance
This is what network engineers mean when they're saying bittorrent is destroying network performance. As to what lawyers and politicians mean, yes that's something else, and frankly, I don't care.
Most of the PUD's I'm aware of have boards of directors or commissions who are elected by the members (customers) and are directly answerable to their members.
Then why did they, in this case, not think to inform either their taxpayers (they were politicians - obviously), or their investors, or their customers ? "Directly answerable" - really sad joke. They weren't answerable - to anyone. How you can claim anything else given what happened is beyond me.
I challenge you to find an example of even one Public Utility District that is covering losses with taxes.
How about all of them ? We've already established, and you accepted, that in this specific instance, people were forced to pay for nothing to a government administration...
The fact that you refuse to call this a tax rests on a judicial technicality - one that isn't even correct (no part of the administration technically has the right to levy any form of taxation - only congress does - so you're not paying to any adminstration even one cent of tax).
Of course, in reality we both know that we're paying tax to administrations - to support them. Just like tax was paid for this PUD fiasco.
Sounds to me like you're so invested in your "Government can't do anything right" attitude that you can't accept reality and believe a PUD could possibly be well run.
Heh, you're really getting desperate, aren't you ? How about I find some idiotic and obviously wrong point, like your "this isn't a tax" idiocy, and then use it to "prove" I'm right ?
Let's just say simply that you lie about reality, and I refuse to accept this "corrected" reality. This, clearly, means to you that my reasoning is deficient. To me it does the same : after all, why am I arguing with someone who makes up his own reality ? After all, every time you might need to concede a point, you'll just make up another "correction" to reality ?
After pointing to an article clearly explaining that the APPOINTED representatives of this PUD lied about the state of the PUD's finances - to investors, to clients and to the press you actually claim the following:
Most of the PUD's I'm aware of have boards of directors or commissions who are elected by the members (customers) and are directly answerable to their members.
*sigh*
It's technically true, yet it's a lie. You do realize that the PUD's "members" are local administrations, right ? It's a beautiful sentence, yes, they are elected "by clients" - true. What's happening in reality is of course that politicians are electing politicians. Somehow you consider the outcome of this election to be equivalent to the board of a private sector company.
Now you're going to claim all these massively deceitful wordings happened by accident... am I right ?
*sigh* you MIGHT have a point if we 1) 50% + 1 of the population had an intelligent opinion on net neutrality -or- 2) didn't live in a democracy and had an intelligent dictator
Since neither is true, prepare to get fucked.
Besides, telcos have long since splitted the internet. People here don't know the concepts of VRFs, which are just that, splitted internets. "Internet TV" products run over separate "internets" (sometimes even with exchanges, peering,... and the like). Voice networks run over separate internets (there is actually a world-wide separate internet for this). SMS service runs over a worldwide separate internet. Airports run over a worldwide separate internet.
If you can make a worthwile network, it won't be long before telcos offer access to it. Someone should try it. Preferably a separate internet WITHOUT a gateway to "the internet".
You'd think, indeed, that programmers should know that you simply cannot solve a program's bugs by adding ever more code (in this case the program is the law). The subprime crisis was created by people following the rules, knowing they had a loophole that allowed them to throw all the risk on a few institutions (that had received guarantees of government backing). Okay, this is probably a bug in the law, so what do we do ? We add a few more rules hoping they make it impossible to "hit" the bug again. Good luck with that.
Why, in the name of the almighty atheismo, aren't we cutting out the hole in the law in the first place (ie. dissolve freddie and fannie entirely and find another way of doing this)
Or at least, you'd think programmers would realize that if a program doesn't fit in a gigabyte of source code, it's HIGH TIME to cut out large parts of what can't be anything but garbage.
The biggest difference between WPPSS and a similar private power provider is that they operate on a non-profit basis.
The biggest difference is that they operate with politically appointed unaccountable bosses like every government project.
Bosses that didn't even see the necessity of informing investors of the trivial fact that they were defaulting on their loans (which was the big reason the judge gave investors some of their money back).
How much more government-run can you get ?
While WPPSS can issue tax free municipal bonds it has no taxing power and exists entirely what
Why would you need taxing power yourself if you have someone do it for you ?
Strictly speaking, there isn't any government authority in the executive that has "taxing power". It doesn't exist. The only taxing power that exists exists in the legislature, which is explicitly not part of the executive branch, which is "the government" we're talking about. This has been the case since the late middle ages, since long before the United States (or any particular state) even existed.
That doesn't mean these public firms aren't extracting taxes to cover their losses. They are.
That way, it's trivially easy to be cheaper, don't you think ?
It was customers and the bondholders that paid for the WPPSS failures, not the taxpayers in general. That was my point.
Let's see you talk yourself out of this corner. Who exactly where these "customers" ? (ie. it was every taxpayer under the governed municipalities)
And were they, as in the private sector, given the choice to pay to this provider or to others, or, were they forced to pay to the government, whether or not they wanted power from this utility ? Heh.
The "green movement" had little to do with it. WPPSS seriously overestimated the demand for power and mismanaged the project and they paid for it.
And WHO EXACTLY appointed this "WPSS" (ie. the actual people involved) ? Who determined the rules they operated under ? The investors ?
(given that the article mentions that the investors weren't even notified of the impending financial disaster, you might want to forgo giving "the investors" as an answer altogether)
In January 1982, the WPPSS board stopped construction on Plants 4 and 5 when total cost for all the plants was projected to exceed $24 billion. Because these plants generated no power and brought in no money, the system was forced to default on $2.25 billion in bonds. This meant that the member utilities, and ultimately the rate payers, were obligated to pay back the borrowed money. In some small towns where unemployment due to the recession was already high, this amounted to more than $12,000 per customer. The bond holders sued and the matter wound it way through courts for the next 13 years. Plants 1 and 3 were never finished either, but their costs were backed by the Bonneville Power Administration and the power it generated from the Columbia River Dams.
So when the public project ran out of money, the government forced regular people to pay for the shortfall. How is this different from taxing the shortfall ? (and part *was* extracted via tax to fund this Boneville administration) ? That's what happened.
What was my original claim again ? Oh right... that's exactly what happened.
Government screwed things up with mismanagement and ridiculously surreal rulemaking, made by people who could never be made to account (ie. nobody charged even a penny to the "green movement" despite their obvious involvement and responsibility in this fiasco, never mind their voters... who are ultimately responsible), even indirectly, then forced taxpayers to pay for... no power at all (which they then imported from counties that *did* let the private sector deal with things).
Now back to you, after all, now you probably want to explain how this situation is so *totally* different from what will happen this time.
This argument is beside the point. You're talking compromise, and all advantages it has, but you agree that the compromise we have will crash and burn the system.
So it is not reasonable at all. Your "kumbayah" compromise, according to you yourself, leads to destruction of all insurance. It leads to millions of people without ANY medical insurance.
Unless, of course, forcibly plunging people into misery, without any healthcare, is your goal. Because, I suppose, when they're punished enough for disagreeing with you they'll finally be open to your "perfect" option ?
ALL first world countries have totally underfunded their care systems and have had to bail them out several times already, leading to per-capita debts that dwarf the disasters Obama has forced upon Americans.
Do we really need to explain what happens the first time a country can no longer bail out it's single payer system ?
And what you might keep in mind is that you, in all likelihood, won't need any medical care you can't pay for yourself in, say 15 years (or 30, depending on your age). With a single payer system you'll be left without any medical care once you actually need it. You'd think such a detail would factor into a lefty's calculation.
You demand the government steals heaven for you. What will happen, obviously, is that that government is going to steal from the richest and easiest target, because that's the only place where such amounts can come from. The government can only steal medical care from the poor, because the total wealth of all others wouldn't cover a year's worth of medical care for the poor. So they'll steal from those who can't pay for their medical care.
That'll be you. And me of course. Thanks for that.
The only way one can reasonably think that a single payer system works is if you seriously think government has unlimited resources and there will always be more. Needless to say, this is beyond stupid.
Your solution is typical lefty : more stuff for you now (free medical care), and lots of suffering for everyone later. The sad fact is that you see yourself as massively different from all other such political systems, whether we're talking fascism (the holocaust, in case you don't know this, was started to pay for massive social benefits for germans. It *did* pay for those benefits, but only for a single year), socialism (with the "engineered famines" in order to pay for social services, population had to drop...) and all the various latin american and south asian disasters. And Zimbabwe. Free stuff now, and tomorrow we don't care about.
The only problem is... no-one can stop tomorrow, no-one can stop the bill from coming in, no matter how much fantasies you have about "let's just steal from a few more rich jews or bankers or arms merchants or...".
Besides, regulation in Brazil might be tolerable (though govt. corruption isn't), but in Saudi arabia you will find a *LOT* more favelas than in Brazil. They just shoot anyone who talks about it.
And don't worry, these are lots of government regulations : they beat up any woman not covered (yes the police, and they're lucky to get away with a beating), they go in, search houses for signs of homosexuality and execute anyone even mildly suspected,... And if they feel that the US needs to be placated once more they do the same to bomb makers (though most bomb makers don't need the police for this, they execute themselves -and generally at least part of their family- by being idiots with bombs)
Let's not forget that the discussion is about whether we put this government ("partly") in charge of the internet. Seems like a good idea ? I think NOT.
My question to you is, how do we turn it into Beverly Hills without any form of regulation? Companies which profit from it wont certainly do it unless they are forced too.
Needless to say, we wait until they find a good way to do it themselves. And we "teach them to fish". That's it.
Because regulation will only make those favelas into bland, tasteless and horribly poor highrises.
Actually I think he kinda does "know much". How would anyone reasonably support a large commercial (ie. no source available for end-user) GUI application on linux ?
There are few companies that dare do this, and all are huge (google, oracle,...). On windows, there's loads of development environments, high-quality and otherwise, and a single.exe works on everything from windows 95 to windows 7 (and on linux if you really like, wasn't there some huge company that used windows to develop a closed-source windows app and then modified it to run on wine too ? I forgot who this was). Cooperation between applications on windows is standardized and universally deployed, from clipboard, to ODBC, to OLE, to... And while I agree that KDE's internal links between apps are better, they... don't have any apps.
And please don't say "webapp". Let's not pretend this rehash of mainframe software is anything but mainframe software, with all the inherent downsides (starting from "NO compatibility with ANY other app", over "won't operate disconnected", right down to "better hope your provider keeps liking you, or all your data goes *poof*"). No, not even when it's called "web-2.0" or "cloud".
I mean companies just barely escaped the clutches of IBM (to run straight into the somewhat-less-mafia-like clutches of microsoft) to get fucked hard, once again, by Amazon (or whoever becomes the dominant cloud).
(and yes, mainframes were multiprocessor, multicore, and all that. There were even virtual mainframes that were basically like a server farm, and you had "private clouds" and all the bullshit. It didn't help you get to YOUR OWN data, microsoft, by contrast, *did*). And, quite frankly, the databases available in mainframes 20 years ago blow the current amazon and google offerings out of the water easily when it comes to speed of development (forms-based databases... now that's quick development. Can't do it on GAE, of course).
What is wrong with thin clients ? What's the big lesson everyone should have learned from the IBM nightmares 20 years ago ? If you aren't the only one with a finger on the off-switch for your own systems, you're fucked. And broke. Even if you're a $5B company.
Which is more safe for the future ? Hosted SugarCRM or Microsoft Dynamics ? Sorry, but it is most definitely MS Dynamics. Businesses that don't realize this are going to get themselves fucked. Bad. With MS dynamics the data may be in a difficult format, but at least *you can get to it*, and see what format it is. With hosted solutions (google is especially bad in this regard), you're fucked.
The fun thing is I agree, for once, with Stallman. The cloud is worse than microsoft. Yes that includes your sexy linux-server-farm running this very cool web-2.0 app.
Arguing for some utopian and non-existent version of legislation is all that is done in politics these days. On the right AND on the left.
Let's take the left's crown jewels : the mandatory national insurance legislation. Take any lefty you know, even a senator if you like. Were they arguing a) for the actual text of the law, including all it's provisions b) the theoretical accomplishment that "would surely follow" it's passing
The right is as uninformed as the left. How could it possibly be any other way with the average law spanning 800 pages of text ?
That doesn't mean the districts don't do it for them. Running as a non-profit, with gigantic losses, then having those losses covered by the (local/global) government also counts as increasing taxation, for obvious reasons.
Are you sure your sentiments aren't caused by the old "the grass is always greener on the other side" principle ?
If I had a few days I'd look into it, and I'd find the same thing one always finds. The public company having massive loss figures, which are then "made up" by raising taxes (or worse : by borrowing in the name of the taxpayer)
And second, there's always price-quality. Higher prices, even if they mean better service, price people out of the market.
Also If it is truly a private sector company, and you wish to increase reliability. I'm sure you can pay to get a secondary electrical feed (you might check, this is nowhere as expensive as you'd think it would be where I live, hell I'm actually considering it for my private home too). Active-passive electrical equipment can be had for $1000-$2000 for quite large loads, so you shouldn't be afraid of that part of the cost either. It can simply be placed in the feed line that goes to the distribution box of your house.
*sigh* governments, like private sector companies, do the bare minimum that will keep their clients from leaving (or revolting for public companies).
Obviously. So the fact that sometimes the government actually does something does not quite contradict the fact that
public companies do LESS than private companies. Replacing a private sector utility with a public company is a loss for everyone, except of course, for the politicians running it.
It's bad for their clients. It's bad for everybody else, because of increased taxation. It's even bad for government, increased liability and a bigger bureaucracy guaranteeing less will happen when they actually want to change something.
Here's what sort of service you get from government monopolies : AT&T, Verizon, Comcast, and now Government Motors... those are govt services. Not exactly a model of how things should be done, don't you agree ?
Any public sector company will do the bare minimum that will prevent the head of state from getting beheaded by the populace.
The only reason we have any public companies at all, is the greed and lust for power of individuals. That they have a number of deluded fanboys (like you) does not change that simple fact. The natural monopolies argument is (at least partly) idiotic : the fact that we won't build 2 power backbones does NOT have to mean that all other components of the power system have to be done by a singular company. Same for phone lines. Sure, LEXes should probably be under the control of a single entity, but do those companies have to be telephony and internet monopolies ???
That sounds like an argument for government involvement, not against. If power generation and transmission is a responsibility assumed by the government, then the government can do things a private corporation is loathe to do. It can build out capabilities ahead of, and in excess of, present demand, and it can run at a loss over periods of time as necessary.
If the government was run by Jesus Christ himself, then perhaps (I doubt it, at some point humans would be involved after all). For all others, it's going to go like this :
- We need to build expansion capacity, in case something happens - Wow that new Tesla car looks nice, don't you think so ? - A raise for politicians it is, Sir ! Shall I place an order for you too ?
The problem isn't that private corporations are efficient, the problem is that they are far too good at being efficient and don't know when efficiency should give way to the service of the public well being.
And the government is neither efficient, nor does it know or want to improve public well-being. Nobody does (and if somebody claims to, you'd do well to steer far clear of them). If you dislike the monopoly you have now, and you're thinking it couldn't possibly be worse, the government will find new and creative ways to surprise you. But don't worry, prices "won't go up", that'll be your, oh, say property tax bill.
Your whole argument is completely and 100% dependent upon the existence of a huge group of people that are entirely beyond self-interest, and that we can hire to run the government. They don't exists. Look at Al Gore's houses, car collection and boat trailers. I doubt Obama has any less. To put it bluntly :
See you couldn't run the internet like Apple runs its app store for instance, thats ridiculas i could see your point there.
Okay... have you ever been to the middle east ? That's exactly what Saudi Arabia wants, and a whole host of other such states.
Of course, they don't want to allow half what apple allows. You can *hope* they won't agree on what to show or what not, but let's not forget that 2/3rds of the planet is of the opinion that gays should be shot on sight (or stoned, or beheaded, or... I forget what islam "religiously" demands, and even without islam, china's not a fan of homosexuality either, as to why (ex-)communists hate homosexuality, dunno, but they do. Same goes for Hindus). I mean, you're not going to like the regulations that "government" (especially the UN) is going to want.
Google doesn't want regulation because they actually make money from the underground activities with adsense. Perhaps a lot of money.
That government department will be worse in this regard. Internet crime is the reason for their existence, the reason for their (without a doubt less-than-modest) salaries. They won't lower internet crime, they'll raise it.
Google, at least, doesn't depend on people behaving badly.
All the little Bells. Additionally, while the comcast company itself cannot really be said to not have paid for anything itself, generally it went like this : govt. builds network X -> X goes broke and comcast buys it for 5c with the promise of keeping the cable going.
NONE of the big telcos was created from the ground up as a private company.
If I need to prioritize my own traffic, I'll do so with my router. That way my streaming video doesn't interfere with my VOIP calls.
Dear raging lunatic, I would like to introduce Mr. bidirectional. Unless you control both entry and exit routers for the network, you can't do prioritizing. I'm sure you're convinced this problem was introduced by evil AT&T people in black suits with fresh baby blood on their teeth and shoes, but a course in network theory is likely to provide a slightly less extravagant explanation that is somewhat hard to get upset about.
But they're not talking about that, are they? They don't want my streaming video to interfere with their other customers' VOIP calls... which would seem to suggest that they don't actually have the capacity to deliver their Unlimited****** (up to) 10Mbps** that they sold to everyone in my neighborhood.
Of course they don't, but don't worry : they have such plans too. They're called "business" or "synchronous" bandwidth. Of course, you'd best be willing to pay 10 times what you're paying now (and more).
Since even 10 times the price you have now results a profit margin of maybe 50%, there is no possible way to deliver what you ask without quintupling the price (at the very least, since the cost of the internet backbone infrastructure is unfortunately related to the product of all bandwidths worldwide (specifically clients * servers, both averaged, in other words, peer-to-peer networks massively raise backbone costs even without counting the increase in traffic)). Raise bandwidth too much before technology catches up, and you're seriously fucked as a telco. Of course the marketing department can *claim* stuff for free.
What I don't understand is how people seriously claim they didn't know beforehand comcast wouldn't deliver 10 mbit synchronous full-time bandwidth. I mean, really ?
Democracy *might* work... if people were to have a clue before getting involved. Government interference is what created AT&T, comcast and so on. What is the solution to this problem ? Ah, *more* government interference, of course, which is going to make things *so* much better (after all, last time AT&T controlled only all phones, while now all television sets and computers will be included in the new all-encompassing government telecom entity)
Either you trust the government : no choice of provider (that much, history should prove) Or you trust business : you can choose (for a little more money probably, yes, deal with it) a better provider, additionally you can build something yourself
Big business has a huge advantage over the government, even if both are total assholes : one business, no matter how big, is not the only big business. Is there really that much of a contest ?
You'll find these larger providers you speak of are already heavily regulated. To actually own IP classes and fiber is a little different than having a bunch of servers on the internet.
The problem is that one regulates "the industry", not the incumbent telcos. Every regulation thus amplifies the position of the incumbent, instead of opposing it.
Why are we the only ones out there that do no have a formal set of regulations to fall back on? Everyone else does.
Boo-hoo. I can't understand why you think regulations will actually help you. Ask a few electricians or mechanics how their business has evolved under all those "helpful" regulations.
Say, the regulation comes that you need approval for publishing a website ? The same politicians in control of Verizon-AT&T will, of course, run the approval department. What do you think will happen ?
Slashdot Mirror
Something doesn't compute with what you're saying. It would take quite an artificial situation to cause this behavior.
Perhaps if you've been downloading an iso for an hour or so, and then start browsing that you'll have to wait for the iso download connection to drop a packet, but come on, is that so bad ?
If you're browsing and downloading you shouldn't notice any slowdown.
You want to fix this ? Read this : http://lartc.org/howto/lartc.qdisc.html (or install a ready-made router distro and enable qos).
Have you thought of ... you know ... checking what's clogging your buffers ?
Because an empty buffer introduces zero delay. 3000 ms delay means something is in that buffer. Remove it. Problem solved.
And I still think it's bittorrent or kazaa or something. Check your little brother's computer or something.
You forgot the tiny little fact that unless one pulls his connection to the limit with a lot of tcp connections, there isn't any problem.
Turn off your bittorrent client while you're playing starcraft online, and the problem disappears.
The post fails to explain what happens in the case of insufficient buffers - and dropped packets : it can take up to 2 minutes for tcp to recover from a single dropped packet (granted - on slow links or long distance connections). Would you really feel that interactive response has improved if things work fast 95% of the time, and then your web browser* - for no apparent reason at all - takes 2 minutes to load pages** ?
(yes, I'm an ISP's network engineer. Big buffers or small buffers ? Trust me, you want big)
* the fun thing about webbrowsers is that they open lots of tcp connections, then barely send any packets at all (ie. connection generally closes after 4-5 packets tops - sometimes after 2 packets). If you lose the first packet in a connection, which is quite likely when browsing, the SRTT algorithm has no choice but to wait 2 minutes before retry - guaranteeing the user will have to interfere (ie. "F5"). This results in the massive deterioration of web browsing experience with trivially small packet loss. Unless you've never wondered why internet is near-unusable with 0.1% packet loss on your link, and nothing at all gets through at 1% packet loss. You'd think 99% correctly transmitted packets would translate in 99% of bandwidth available, no ? (in case you have this problem : a simple trick to put everything through a single tcp connection. ssh -D 1025 server_at_work; set up firefox to use socks5 proxy at port localhost:1025. You'll have 40-50% of your link bandwidth available on recent windows or linux)
** Just try, go to a big company that's upgraded to cheap gigabit switches, with tiny buffers. Ask them if, perchance, they've been experiencing sudden "timeouts" all of a sudden. Ask again if they like this.
The way to fix this - not that I'm expecting political interference from large groups of idiots - all large groups are large groups of idiots, because most people are idiots in most subjects - to go in a sensible direction all of a sudden, so "let's get the mob to 'fix' this" doesn't work regardless of good intentions - is not to go with small buffers but to have intelligent queuing algorithms in all devices. Of course, bittorrent will always cause this behavior, because one of two things will happen when bittorrent opens it's 5000 connections
1) either routers slow down bittorrent traffic in favor of http, much better performance, but results in underwear kids who haven't seen sunlight in a year shouting "NET NEUTRALITY !"
2) or they "treat all traffic the same" - and with tcp the one with the most connections "wins" the most bandwidth - meaning if you open 500 connections, your web browser is only going to get 1/500th of the link bandwidth - resulting in abysmal performance
This is what network engineers mean when they're saying bittorrent is destroying network performance. As to what lawyers and politicians mean, yes that's something else, and frankly, I don't care.
Most of the PUD's I'm aware of have boards of directors or commissions who are elected by the members (customers) and are directly answerable to their members.
Then why did they, in this case, not think to inform either their taxpayers (they were politicians - obviously), or their investors, or their customers ? "Directly answerable" - really sad joke. They weren't answerable - to anyone. How you can claim anything else given what happened is beyond me.
I challenge you to find an example of even one Public Utility District that is covering losses with taxes.
How about all of them ? We've already established, and you accepted, that in this specific instance, people were forced to pay for nothing to a government administration ...
The fact that you refuse to call this a tax rests on a judicial technicality - one that isn't even correct (no part of the administration technically has the right to levy any form of taxation - only congress does - so you're not paying to any adminstration even one cent of tax).
Of course, in reality we both know that we're paying tax to administrations - to support them. Just like tax was paid for this PUD fiasco.
Sounds to me like you're so invested in your "Government can't do anything right" attitude that you can't accept reality and believe a PUD could possibly be well run.
Heh, you're really getting desperate, aren't you ? How about I find some idiotic and obviously wrong point, like your "this isn't a tax" idiocy, and then use it to "prove" I'm right ?
Let's just say simply that you lie about reality, and I refuse to accept this "corrected" reality. This, clearly, means to you that my reasoning is deficient. To me it does the same : after all, why am I arguing with someone who makes up his own reality ? After all, every time you might need to concede a point, you'll just make up another "correction" to reality ?
After pointing to an article clearly explaining that the APPOINTED representatives of this PUD lied about the state of the PUD's finances - to investors, to clients and to the press you actually claim the following :
Most of the PUD's I'm aware of have boards of directors or commissions who are elected by the members (customers) and are directly answerable to their members.
*sigh*
It's technically true, yet it's a lie. You do realize that the PUD's "members" are local administrations, right ? It's a beautiful sentence, yes, they are elected "by clients" - true. What's happening in reality is of course that politicians are electing politicians. Somehow you consider the outcome of this election to be equivalent to the board of a private sector company.
Now you're going to claim all these massively deceitful wordings happened by accident ... am I right ?
*sigh* you MIGHT have a point if we
1) 50% + 1 of the population had an intelligent opinion on net neutrality -or-
2) didn't live in a democracy and had an intelligent dictator
Since neither is true, prepare to get fucked.
Besides, telcos have long since splitted the internet. People here don't know the concepts of VRFs, which are just that, splitted internets. "Internet TV" products run over separate "internets" (sometimes even with exchanges, peering, ... and the like). Voice networks run over separate internets (there is actually a world-wide separate internet for this). SMS service runs over a worldwide separate internet. Airports run over a worldwide separate internet.
If you can make a worthwile network, it won't be long before telcos offer access to it. Someone should try it. Preferably a separate internet WITHOUT a gateway to "the internet".
You'd think, indeed, that programmers should know that you simply cannot solve a program's bugs by adding ever more code (in this case the program is the law). The subprime crisis was created by people following the rules, knowing they had a loophole that allowed them to throw all the risk on a few institutions (that had received guarantees of government backing). Okay, this is probably a bug in the law, so what do we do ? We add a few more rules hoping they make it impossible to "hit" the bug again. Good luck with that.
Why, in the name of the almighty atheismo, aren't we cutting out the hole in the law in the first place (ie. dissolve freddie and fannie entirely and find another way of doing this)
Or at least, you'd think programmers would realize that if a program doesn't fit in a gigabyte of source code, it's HIGH TIME to cut out large parts of what can't be anything but garbage.
The biggest difference between WPPSS and a similar private power provider is that they operate on a non-profit basis.
The biggest difference is that they operate with politically appointed unaccountable bosses like every government project.
Bosses that didn't even see the necessity of informing investors of the trivial fact that they were defaulting on their loans (which was the big reason the judge gave investors some of their money back).
How much more government-run can you get ?
While WPPSS can issue tax free municipal bonds it has no taxing power and exists entirely what
Why would you need taxing power yourself if you have someone do it for you ?
Strictly speaking, there isn't any government authority in the executive that has "taxing power". It doesn't exist. The only taxing power that exists exists in the legislature, which is explicitly not part of the executive branch, which is "the government" we're talking about. This has been the case since the late middle ages, since long before the United States (or any particular state) even existed.
That doesn't mean these public firms aren't extracting taxes to cover their losses. They are.
That way, it's trivially easy to be cheaper, don't you think ?
It was customers and the bondholders that paid for the WPPSS failures, not the taxpayers in general. That was my point.
Let's see you talk yourself out of this corner. Who exactly where these "customers" ? (ie. it was every taxpayer under the governed municipalities)
And were they, as in the private sector, given the choice to pay to this provider or to others, or, were they forced to pay to the government, whether or not they wanted power from this utility ? Heh.
The "green movement" had little to do with it. WPPSS seriously overestimated the demand for power and mismanaged the project and they paid for it.
And WHO EXACTLY appointed this "WPSS" (ie. the actual people involved) ? Who determined the rules they operated under ? The investors ?
(given that the article mentions that the investors weren't even notified of the impending financial disaster, you might want to forgo giving "the investors" as an answer altogether)
So here's the relevant paragraph :
In January 1982, the WPPSS board stopped construction on Plants 4 and 5 when total cost for all the plants was projected to exceed $24 billion. Because these plants generated no power and brought in no money, the system was forced to default on $2.25 billion in bonds. This meant that the member utilities, and ultimately the rate payers, were obligated to pay back the borrowed money. In some small towns where unemployment due to the recession was already high, this amounted to more than $12,000 per customer. The bond holders sued and the matter wound it way through courts for the next 13 years. Plants 1 and 3 were never finished either, but their costs were backed by the Bonneville Power Administration and the power it generated from the Columbia River Dams.
So when the public project ran out of money, the government forced regular people to pay for the shortfall. How is this different from taxing the shortfall ? (and part *was* extracted via tax to fund this Boneville administration) ? That's what happened.
What was my original claim again ? Oh right ... that's exactly what happened.
Government screwed things up with mismanagement and ridiculously surreal rulemaking, made by people who could never be made to account (ie. nobody charged even a penny to the "green movement" despite their obvious involvement and responsibility in this fiasco, never mind their voters ... who are ultimately responsible), even indirectly, then forced taxpayers to pay for ... no power at all (which they then imported from counties that *did* let the private sector deal with things).
Now back to you, after all, now you probably want to explain how this situation is so *totally* different from what will happen this time.
This argument is beside the point. You're talking compromise, and all advantages it has, but you agree that the compromise we have will crash and burn the system.
So it is not reasonable at all. Your "kumbayah" compromise, according to you yourself, leads to destruction of all insurance. It leads to millions of people without ANY medical insurance.
Unless, of course, forcibly plunging people into misery, without any healthcare, is your goal. Because, I suppose, when they're punished enough for disagreeing with you they'll finally be open to your "perfect" option ?
ALL first world countries have totally underfunded their care systems and have had to bail them out several times already, leading to per-capita debts that dwarf the disasters Obama has forced upon Americans.
Do we really need to explain what happens the first time a country can no longer bail out it's single payer system ?
And what you might keep in mind is that you, in all likelihood, won't need any medical care you can't pay for yourself in, say 15 years (or 30, depending on your age). With a single payer system you'll be left without any medical care once you actually need it. You'd think such a detail would factor into a lefty's calculation.
You demand the government steals heaven for you. What will happen, obviously, is that that government is going to steal from the richest and easiest target, because that's the only place where such amounts can come from. The government can only steal medical care from the poor, because the total wealth of all others wouldn't cover a year's worth of medical care for the poor. So they'll steal from those who can't pay for their medical care.
That'll be you. And me of course. Thanks for that.
The only way one can reasonably think that a single payer system works is if you seriously think government has unlimited resources and there will always be more. Needless to say, this is beyond stupid.
Your solution is typical lefty : more stuff for you now (free medical care), and lots of suffering for everyone later. The sad fact is that you see yourself as massively different from all other such political systems, whether we're talking fascism (the holocaust, in case you don't know this, was started to pay for massive social benefits for germans. It *did* pay for those benefits, but only for a single year), socialism (with the "engineered famines" in order to pay for social services, population had to drop ...) and all the various latin american and south asian disasters. And Zimbabwe. Free stuff now, and tomorrow we don't care about.
The only problem is ... no-one can stop tomorrow, no-one can stop the bill from coming in, no matter how much fantasies you have about "let's just steal from a few more rich jews or bankers or arms merchants or ...".
Besides, regulation in Brazil might be tolerable (though govt. corruption isn't), but in Saudi arabia you will find a *LOT* more favelas than in Brazil. They just shoot anyone who talks about it.
And don't worry, these are lots of government regulations : they beat up any woman not covered (yes the police, and they're lucky to get away with a beating), they go in, search houses for signs of homosexuality and execute anyone even mildly suspected, ... And if they feel that the US needs to be placated once more they do the same to bomb makers (though most bomb makers don't need the police for this, they execute themselves -and generally at least part of their family- by being idiots with bombs)
Let's not forget that the discussion is about whether we put this government ("partly") in charge of the internet. Seems like a good idea ? I think NOT.
My question to you is, how do we turn it into Beverly Hills without any form of regulation? Companies which profit from it wont certainly do it unless they are forced too.
Needless to say, we wait until they find a good way to do it themselves. And we "teach them to fish". That's it.
Because regulation will only make those favelas into bland, tasteless and horribly poor highrises.
Curious example. So what happened to the infrastructure that company owned ? Transferred to the bondholders, as is proper ?
Somehow I doubt it. But please enlighten me.
Actually I think he kinda does "know much". How would anyone reasonably support a large commercial (ie. no source available for end-user) GUI application on linux ?
There are few companies that dare do this, and all are huge (google, oracle, ...). On windows, there's loads of development environments, high-quality and otherwise, and a single .exe works on everything from windows 95 to windows 7 (and on linux if you really like, wasn't there some huge company that used windows to develop a closed-source windows app and then modified it to run on wine too ? I forgot who this was). Cooperation between applications on windows is standardized and universally deployed, from clipboard, to ODBC, to OLE, to ... And while I agree that KDE's internal links between apps are better, they ... don't have any apps.
And please don't say "webapp". Let's not pretend this rehash of mainframe software is anything but mainframe software, with all the inherent downsides (starting from "NO compatibility with ANY other app", over "won't operate disconnected", right down to "better hope your provider keeps liking you, or all your data goes *poof*"). No, not even when it's called "web-2.0" or "cloud".
I mean companies just barely escaped the clutches of IBM (to run straight into the somewhat-less-mafia-like clutches of microsoft) to get fucked hard, once again, by Amazon (or whoever becomes the dominant cloud).
(and yes, mainframes were multiprocessor, multicore, and all that. There were even virtual mainframes that were basically like a server farm, and you had "private clouds" and all the bullshit. It didn't help you get to YOUR OWN data, microsoft, by contrast, *did*). And, quite frankly, the databases available in mainframes 20 years ago blow the current amazon and google offerings out of the water easily when it comes to speed of development (forms-based databases ... now that's quick development. Can't do it on GAE, of course).
What is wrong with thin clients ? What's the big lesson everyone should have learned from the IBM nightmares 20 years ago ? If you aren't the only one with a finger on the off-switch for your own systems, you're fucked. And broke. Even if you're a $5B company.
Which is more safe for the future ? Hosted SugarCRM or Microsoft Dynamics ? Sorry, but it is most definitely MS Dynamics. Businesses that don't realize this are going to get themselves fucked. Bad. With MS dynamics the data may be in a difficult format, but at least *you can get to it*, and see what format it is. With hosted solutions (google is especially bad in this regard), you're fucked.
The fun thing is I agree, for once, with Stallman. The cloud is worse than microsoft. Yes that includes your sexy linux-server-farm running this very cool web-2.0 app.
So passing a law that you *KNOW* will collapse the system you're creating is somehow equally good as the principle ?
Man, is the left that ideologically entrenched ? Or is there simply some desire to *make* the system collapse ?
Arguing for some utopian and non-existent version of legislation is all that is done in politics these days. On the right AND on the left.
Let's take the left's crown jewels : the mandatory national insurance legislation. Take any lefty you know, even a senator if you like. Were they arguing
a) for the actual text of the law, including all it's provisions
b) the theoretical accomplishment that "would surely follow" it's passing
The right is as uninformed as the left. How could it possibly be any other way with the average law spanning 800 pages of text ?
That doesn't mean the districts don't do it for them. Running as a non-profit, with gigantic losses, then having those losses covered by the (local/global) government also counts as increasing taxation, for obvious reasons.
Are you sure your sentiments aren't caused by the old "the grass is always greener on the other side" principle ?
If I had a few days I'd look into it, and I'd find the same thing one always finds. The public company having massive loss figures, which are then "made up" by raising taxes (or worse : by borrowing in the name of the taxpayer)
And second, there's always price-quality. Higher prices, even if they mean better service, price people out of the market.
Also If it is truly a private sector company, and you wish to increase reliability. I'm sure you can pay to get a secondary electrical feed (you might check, this is nowhere as expensive as you'd think it would be where I live, hell I'm actually considering it for my private home too). Active-passive electrical equipment can be had for $1000-$2000 for quite large loads, so you shouldn't be afraid of that part of the cost either. It can simply be placed in the feed line that goes to the distribution box of your house.
*sigh* governments, like private sector companies, do the bare minimum that will keep their clients from leaving (or revolting for public companies).
Obviously. So the fact that sometimes the government actually does something does not quite contradict the fact that
public companies do LESS than private companies. Replacing a private sector utility with a public company is a loss for everyone, except of course, for the politicians running it.
It's bad for their clients. It's bad for everybody else, because of increased taxation. It's even bad for government, increased liability and a bigger bureaucracy guaranteeing less will happen when they actually want to change something.
Here's what sort of service you get from government monopolies : AT&T, Verizon, Comcast, and now Government Motors ... those are govt services. Not exactly a model of how things should be done, don't you agree ?
Any public sector company will do the bare minimum that will prevent the head of state from getting beheaded by the populace.
The only reason we have any public companies at all, is the greed and lust for power of individuals. That they have a number of deluded fanboys (like you) does not change that simple fact. The natural monopolies argument is (at least partly) idiotic : the fact that we won't build 2 power backbones does NOT have to mean that all other components of the power system have to be done by a singular company. Same for phone lines. Sure, LEXes should probably be under the control of a single entity, but do those companies have to be telephony and internet monopolies ???
That sounds like an argument for government involvement, not against. If power generation and transmission is a responsibility assumed by the government, then the government can do things a private corporation is loathe to do. It can build out capabilities ahead of, and in excess of, present demand, and it can run at a loss over periods of time as necessary.
If the government was run by Jesus Christ himself, then perhaps (I doubt it, at some point humans would be involved after all). For all others, it's going to go like this :
- We need to build expansion capacity, in case something happens
- Wow that new Tesla car looks nice, don't you think so ?
- A raise for politicians it is, Sir ! Shall I place an order for you too ?
The problem isn't that private corporations are efficient, the problem is that they are far too good at being efficient and don't know when efficiency should give way to the service of the public well being.
And the government is neither efficient, nor does it know or want to improve public well-being. Nobody does (and if somebody claims to, you'd do well to steer far clear of them). If you dislike the monopoly you have now, and you're thinking it couldn't possibly be worse, the government will find new and creative ways to surprise you. But don't worry, prices "won't go up", that'll be your, oh, say property tax bill.
Your whole argument is completely and 100% dependent upon the existence of a huge group of people that are entirely beyond self-interest, and that we can hire to run the government. They don't exists. Look at Al Gore's houses, car collection and boat trailers. I doubt Obama has any less. To put it bluntly :
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RWsx1X8PV_A
See you couldn't run the internet like Apple runs its app store for instance, thats ridiculas i could see your point there.
Okay ... have you ever been to the middle east ? That's exactly what Saudi Arabia wants, and a whole host of other such states.
Of course, they don't want to allow half what apple allows. You can *hope* they won't agree on what to show or what not, but let's not forget that 2/3rds of the planet is of the opinion that gays should be shot on sight (or stoned, or beheaded, or ... I forget what islam "religiously" demands, and even without islam, china's not a fan of homosexuality either, as to why (ex-)communists hate homosexuality, dunno, but they do. Same goes for Hindus). I mean, you're not going to like the regulations that "government" (especially the UN) is going to want.
Google doesn't want regulation because they actually make money from the underground activities with adsense. Perhaps a lot of money.
That government department will be worse in this regard. Internet crime is the reason for their existence, the reason for their (without a doubt less-than-modest) salaries. They won't lower internet crime, they'll raise it.
Google, at least, doesn't depend on people behaving badly.
All the little Bells. Additionally, while the comcast company itself cannot really be said to not have paid for anything itself, generally it went like this : govt. builds network X -> X goes broke and comcast buys it for 5c with the promise of keeping the cable going.
NONE of the big telcos was created from the ground up as a private company.
If I need to prioritize my own traffic, I'll do so with my router. That way my streaming video doesn't interfere with my VOIP calls.
Dear raging lunatic, I would like to introduce Mr. bidirectional. Unless you control both entry and exit routers for the network, you can't do prioritizing. I'm sure you're convinced this problem was introduced by evil AT&T people in black suits with fresh baby blood on their teeth and shoes, but a course in network theory is likely to provide a slightly less extravagant explanation that is somewhat hard to get upset about.
But they're not talking about that, are they? They don't want my streaming video to interfere with their other customers' VOIP calls... which would seem to suggest that they don't actually have the capacity to deliver their Unlimited****** (up to) 10Mbps** that they sold to everyone in my neighborhood.
Of course they don't, but don't worry : they have such plans too. They're called "business" or "synchronous" bandwidth. Of course, you'd best be willing to pay 10 times what you're paying now (and more).
Since even 10 times the price you have now results a profit margin of maybe 50%, there is no possible way to deliver what you ask without quintupling the price (at the very least, since the cost of the internet backbone infrastructure is unfortunately related to the product of all bandwidths worldwide (specifically clients * servers, both averaged, in other words, peer-to-peer networks massively raise backbone costs even without counting the increase in traffic)). Raise bandwidth too much before technology catches up, and you're seriously fucked as a telco. Of course the marketing department can *claim* stuff for free.
What I don't understand is how people seriously claim they didn't know beforehand comcast wouldn't deliver 10 mbit synchronous full-time bandwidth. I mean, really ?
Democracy *might* work ... if people were to have a clue before getting involved. Government interference is what created AT&T, comcast and so on. What is the solution to this problem ? Ah, *more* government interference, of course, which is going to make things *so* much better (after all, last time AT&T controlled only all phones, while now all television sets and computers will be included in the new all-encompassing government telecom entity)
Then the answer is simple :
Either you trust the government : no choice of provider (that much, history should prove)
Or you trust business : you can choose (for a little more money probably, yes, deal with it) a better provider, additionally you can build something yourself
Big business has a huge advantage over the government, even if both are total assholes : one business, no matter how big, is not the only big business. Is there really that much of a contest ?
You'll find these larger providers you speak of are already heavily regulated. To actually own IP classes and fiber is a little different than having a bunch of servers on the internet.
The problem is that one regulates "the industry", not the incumbent telcos. Every regulation thus amplifies the position of the incumbent, instead of opposing it.
Why are we the only ones out there that do no have a formal set of regulations to fall back on? Everyone else does.
Boo-hoo. I can't understand why you think regulations will actually help you. Ask a few electricians or mechanics how their business has evolved under all those "helpful" regulations.
Say, the regulation comes that you need approval for publishing a website ? The same politicians in control of Verizon-AT&T will, of course, run the approval department. What do you think will happen ?