Universal service is an aspirational goal. Wanting to hold telecoms responsible for failing is like saying Obamacare is fraudulent because it promised universal health care and failed, so the government should refund all of the tax money collected for it.
Eh I've read other websites about this issue. It sounds like mostly bullshit to me. From what I recall, the biggest source of "theft" or whatever that people accuse AT&T of is that they were depreciating their copper network and getting a tax break for that. It's a really common theme... people have no clue about how taxes work, and then fly into a rage when they find out some company is "using loopholes" or "not paying taxes."
The other big complaint I've heard is that companies like Verizon and AT&T let their copper networks degrade on purpose for some reason (I forget exactly what the conspiracy theory is). The funny thing is, looking back on it they were right. If they had spent umpteen billions of dollars in the 90s fixing up copper, that would be a waste since we're kind of moving to fiber. It actually worked out pretty well.
And if AT&T somehow took a tax writeoff when they installed fiber into my neighborhood because they abandoned their copper plant and wrote it down to $0, hey that's fine with me.
GPON is well established technology. Costs are not likely to drop very much.
Don't be ridiculous! Costs are dropping and will continue to drop as the technology is deployed more to residential customers. The cost of fiber optic cable itself is going down. The cost of fiber network equipment is going down. The labor costs of installing are going down. I mean for example, when AT&T installed fiber in my neighborhood they sent a guy out to fuse the cables. Last time I talked to a tech doing an install, he told me they stopped doing that and use pre-terminated cables. It's cheaper. It's faster. Putting the cable in the ground is also getting cheaper, easier, and less labor intensive.
I suspect if you read the fine print you'd find that they have lived up to their obligations. Even if there was a goal established for reaching x% of households with y mbps speed, failing to reach that goal doesn't necessarily mean they violated the agreement. I'm curious if you have any concrete details with links to the relevant legislation (or regulation, or executive order, or whatever) that specifies the terms of the agreement including consequences.
I would think rich people do have priority for food, water, and shelter. Don't they? Last I checked, only the rich and the very kooky poor are planning for things like nuclear armageddon where those things will suddenly be an issue.
The cost to provision a dwelling for fiber ranges from $3,000 to $12,000
I think the low end must be lower than $3k, based on my observations of AT&T installing fiber in my neighborhood. Where did you get that figure and how old is it?
I don't believe you. Your mental notes don't work that well unless, ironically, you're the one with a cognitive disorder.
What you probably do (and what I do as well, since google home doesn't even support the feature I'm talking about) is that when you're at the store you run over a list of things that you commonly need to buy. I really don't believe for a second that you say to yourself "Next time I'm at the store I'll buy dishwashing liquid" and then it actually happens without a long introspection at the store first "what was it that I needed... um... milk? Toilet paper? Paper towels?" first. Brains don't work like machines.
Yeah or I could rely on technology. That's also helpful in all walks of life, and generally more reliable.
I used to be like you until I the first time I read about someone forgetting their baby in a hot car. Now I'm all for technology to supplement my own attention span.
Google already has a "trusted voice" setting in android to unlock your phone. I'm shocked that they haven't integrated it with google home yet, but it definitely exists and I'd bet any amount of money it's coming soon. It'll be necessary to support multiple independent users as well.
You don't need to shout through the letter slot. Just shout outside the front door or a window. My friend had to disable his smart lock integration because alexa is so good at hearing.
If I'm doing dishes and I'm almost out of soap, it's so much easier to say "ok google order more dishwashing liquid" than to stop what I'm doing, get my phone (or turn on the computer), open up amazon, make an order. And if I don't do it right away there's a good chance that 5 minutes later I'll have forgotten. I'm looking forward to google home supporting that.
It would be great for stuff like that, obviously it's not good for buying something that requires some research or buying something new that isn't in your recent order history.
As for not understanding you, have you actually tried any of these devices? They're really really good at understanding. My 3 year old can give commands to my google home. At first the success rate was about 20% but he's gotten better at talking clearly (without pausing to giggle about his question etc) and I think google has gotten better at understanding. Just last night he said "ok google tell me a joke" and got a joke like "what's the easter bunny's favorite music? hip hop" -- then he asked me what hip hop was and also said "ok google play hip hop" -- which led me to find the setting about filtering music content in the google home app.
One of the first things I did when my friend was showing me his new iphone was say "siri send $20 to [my name]" and it launched a paypal transfer. However, you had to complete the action with a fingerprint scan. So they aren't completely stupid about security.
They're at the same place that Christianity was at during the dark ages, yet they don't live in the dark ages. They have all the advantages of global communication and travel, widespread literacy, huge advances in science, easy access to the arts, literature, history, etc.
It's amazing that a huge group of people people living today can still be so backwards, isn't it?
you do not have specific identifier you can assign 100%, you have a continuum
Why is that a problem? It's the paradox of the heap. A grain of sand is not a heap. Two grains are not a heap (in my view). Three grains are not. But as you continue, at some point it is a heap. Many people would disagree on the exact number of grains of sand that make a heap. Yet heaps exist.
it's absolutely necessary to have open fora -- and for platforms like Twitter etc. -- for the presentation of minority views
I agree. What does "open" mean though? For that to be meaningful the platform has to be moderated. The quality of the outcome correlates with the quality of the people involved. The fact that you think it's a silly viewpoint tells me that you lack experience in unmoderated discussions with large groups of hostile people. When you have 20 people all arguing slight variations of the same theme against you, and not reading your replies to other people, it's just a quagmire. If you have no way of "muting" most of the people, the exercise is pointless.
Slashdot is open enough for me and has great moderation because it's mostly great people who mostly value principles like free speech.
It's virtually impossible in an unmoderated forum. For instance if your opponents vastly outnumber you, your brilliant repudiations will largely go unnoticed due to the noise. Not to mention many people judge arguments based on apparent popularity. If lots of people are acting offended by what you say, regardless of the merit of your argument, there is a huge group of people who simply won't want to believe you because you're a troll/jerk/mean/whatever.
unless your own wack bullshit depends on similar constructions
Your own wack bullshit DOES depend on similar constructions! Unless you're only going to go out and argue the most basic, obvious things that virtually nobody disagrees with.
But then they don't have a lot of control over how that investment performs, Uber does. If Uber lowers the rate (as may have happened, it's unclear) you're suddenly getting a pay cut
Nobody has more control than that over how their investment performs. You see that right? Hey Warren Buffett just said people should invest in a low cost index fund.... but if I follow his advice, I might lose money. I don't control the S&P 500's performance.
If you currently only drive for one TNC, you may be wondering why you would ever want to complicate your life by running two services at once. Well, running two apps at the same time actually increases your chances of getting a request and in turn will increase your earnings.
Can you explain to me why that's wrong? He goes on to say you should also sign up for a delivery service since those tend to have peak traffic times that complement ride sharing.
Slashdot Mirror
Universal service is an aspirational goal. Wanting to hold telecoms responsible for failing is like saying Obamacare is fraudulent because it promised universal health care and failed, so the government should refund all of the tax money collected for it.
Eh I've read other websites about this issue. It sounds like mostly bullshit to me. From what I recall, the biggest source of "theft" or whatever that people accuse AT&T of is that they were depreciating their copper network and getting a tax break for that. It's a really common theme... people have no clue about how taxes work, and then fly into a rage when they find out some company is "using loopholes" or "not paying taxes."
The other big complaint I've heard is that companies like Verizon and AT&T let their copper networks degrade on purpose for some reason (I forget exactly what the conspiracy theory is). The funny thing is, looking back on it they were right. If they had spent umpteen billions of dollars in the 90s fixing up copper, that would be a waste since we're kind of moving to fiber. It actually worked out pretty well.
And if AT&T somehow took a tax writeoff when they installed fiber into my neighborhood because they abandoned their copper plant and wrote it down to $0, hey that's fine with me.
So you don't know what the word "necessity" means I take it?
Let's see, if you successfully lobbied the government to declare that water is not a necessity... would it stop being a necessity in your view?
GPON is well established technology. Costs are not likely to drop very much.
Don't be ridiculous! Costs are dropping and will continue to drop as the technology is deployed more to residential customers. The cost of fiber optic cable itself is going down. The cost of fiber network equipment is going down. The labor costs of installing are going down. I mean for example, when AT&T installed fiber in my neighborhood they sent a guy out to fuse the cables. Last time I talked to a tech doing an install, he told me they stopped doing that and use pre-terminated cables. It's cheaper. It's faster. Putting the cable in the ground is also getting cheaper, easier, and less labor intensive.
I suspect if you read the fine print you'd find that they have lived up to their obligations. Even if there was a goal established for reaching x% of households with y mbps speed, failing to reach that goal doesn't necessarily mean they violated the agreement. I'm curious if you have any concrete details with links to the relevant legislation (or regulation, or executive order, or whatever) that specifies the terms of the agreement including consequences.
I would think rich people do have priority for food, water, and shelter. Don't they? Last I checked, only the rich and the very kooky poor are planning for things like nuclear armageddon where those things will suddenly be an issue.
If you can lobby to change it, it's not really a necessity is it.
The cost to provision a dwelling for fiber ranges from $3,000 to $12,000
I think the low end must be lower than $3k, based on my observations of AT&T installing fiber in my neighborhood. Where did you get that figure and how old is it?
Wow that's amazing, you have another way of accomplishing the same thing, only less efficient? Who would have thought. Fucking hipster trash.
I don't believe you. Your mental notes don't work that well unless, ironically, you're the one with a cognitive disorder.
What you probably do (and what I do as well, since google home doesn't even support the feature I'm talking about) is that when you're at the store you run over a list of things that you commonly need to buy. I really don't believe for a second that you say to yourself "Next time I'm at the store I'll buy dishwashing liquid" and then it actually happens without a long introspection at the store first "what was it that I needed... um... milk? Toilet paper? Paper towels?" first. Brains don't work like machines.
Yeah or I could rely on technology. That's also helpful in all walks of life, and generally more reliable.
I used to be like you until I the first time I read about someone forgetting their baby in a hot car. Now I'm all for technology to supplement my own attention span.
Google already has a "trusted voice" setting in android to unlock your phone. I'm shocked that they haven't integrated it with google home yet, but it definitely exists and I'd bet any amount of money it's coming soon. It'll be necessary to support multiple independent users as well.
You don't need to shout through the letter slot. Just shout outside the front door or a window. My friend had to disable his smart lock integration because alexa is so good at hearing.
The xbox one came with the kinect (it was not optional) for quite a while so I doubt that's a good example of "rich kids."
If I'm doing dishes and I'm almost out of soap, it's so much easier to say "ok google order more dishwashing liquid" than to stop what I'm doing, get my phone (or turn on the computer), open up amazon, make an order. And if I don't do it right away there's a good chance that 5 minutes later I'll have forgotten. I'm looking forward to google home supporting that.
It would be great for stuff like that, obviously it's not good for buying something that requires some research or buying something new that isn't in your recent order history.
As for not understanding you, have you actually tried any of these devices? They're really really good at understanding. My 3 year old can give commands to my google home. At first the success rate was about 20% but he's gotten better at talking clearly (without pausing to giggle about his question etc) and I think google has gotten better at understanding. Just last night he said "ok google tell me a joke" and got a joke like "what's the easter bunny's favorite music? hip hop" -- then he asked me what hip hop was and also said "ok google play hip hop" -- which led me to find the setting about filtering music content in the google home app.
One of the first things I did when my friend was showing me his new iphone was say "siri send $20 to [my name]" and it launched a paypal transfer. However, you had to complete the action with a fingerprint scan. So they aren't completely stupid about security.
Considering they have a "trusted voice" setting to unlock phones, I really don't understand why it isn't available on Google Home.
They're at the same place that Christianity was at during the dark ages, yet they don't live in the dark ages. They have all the advantages of global communication and travel, widespread literacy, huge advances in science, easy access to the arts, literature, history, etc.
It's amazing that a huge group of people people living today can still be so backwards, isn't it?
you do not have specific identifier you can assign 100%, you have a continuum
Why is that a problem? It's the paradox of the heap. A grain of sand is not a heap. Two grains are not a heap (in my view). Three grains are not. But as you continue, at some point it is a heap. Many people would disagree on the exact number of grains of sand that make a heap. Yet heaps exist.
No not their gender, their desired gender.
it's absolutely necessary to have open fora -- and for platforms like Twitter etc. -- for the presentation of minority views
I agree. What does "open" mean though? For that to be meaningful the platform has to be moderated. The quality of the outcome correlates with the quality of the people involved. The fact that you think it's a silly viewpoint tells me that you lack experience in unmoderated discussions with large groups of hostile people. When you have 20 people all arguing slight variations of the same theme against you, and not reading your replies to other people, it's just a quagmire. If you have no way of "muting" most of the people, the exercise is pointless.
Slashdot is open enough for me and has great moderation because it's mostly great people who mostly value principles like free speech.
It's virtually impossible in an unmoderated forum. For instance if your opponents vastly outnumber you, your brilliant repudiations will largely go unnoticed due to the noise. Not to mention many people judge arguments based on apparent popularity. If lots of people are acting offended by what you say, regardless of the merit of your argument, there is a huge group of people who simply won't want to believe you because you're a troll/jerk/mean/whatever.
unless your own wack bullshit depends on similar constructions
Your own wack bullshit DOES depend on similar constructions! Unless you're only going to go out and argue the most basic, obvious things that virtually nobody disagrees with.
I think it is grammatically correct to have a list without either "or" or "and." Here are some good examples: http://english.stackexchange.c...
But then they don't have a lot of control over how that investment performs, Uber does. If Uber lowers the rate (as may have happened, it's unclear) you're suddenly getting a pay cut
Nobody has more control than that over how their investment performs. You see that right? Hey Warren Buffett just said people should invest in a low cost index fund.... but if I follow his advice, I might lose money. I don't control the S&P 500's performance.
Furthermore, why do you think the driver is fully reliant on Uber? I did a quick search and found http://therideshareguy.com/how...
Excerpt:
If you currently only drive for one TNC, you may be wondering why you would ever want to complicate your life by running two services at once. Well, running two apps at the same time actually increases your chances of getting a request and in turn will increase your earnings.
Can you explain to me why that's wrong? He goes on to say you should also sign up for a delivery service since those tend to have peak traffic times that complement ride sharing.
Agreed. This seems like a situation where a bunch of people who already hate Uber are continuing to hate Uber. I don't see the problem here.