When anti-trust was enforced the way it's supposed to be? When it was actually about consumers?
Now we have a bunch of rich old fucks who care more about money than the people. A government full of people profiting off their own decisions. A government that mis-represents it's citizens and calls itself the best country in the world.
Most of the world knows the citizens don't want this. An overwhemling majority don't want it.
But...here we are...the majority is representing the minority opinion simply because they're greedy.
Trump drained the swamp...and replaced it with a cesspool. Actually..that's insulting to cesspools.
But completely deny us the ability to turn off UPnP.
Seriously...unless they changed it in the last update....the page to disable UPnP is hidden; and even when you do manualy access it...it DOES NOT WORK.
Any device plugged in to a FiOS router will get ports assigned to it over UPnP with zero questions asked.
then the government should not be there to prop it up. Period. This does nothing to benefit all those except a small few; it harms the country as a whole.
It just really shows you...our representatives don't work for us. They work for corporations. They work for the rich. They work for whoever can put money in their pocket instead of the people that they're supposed to represent.
This is why political parties need to go...they're just two sides of a "fuck the people" coin. Until people in this country can look past a fucking label...we will never be able to actually get to a point that any of this will do people any good.
That and I'm pretty pissed I had to pay about 20% of my income just to find out I had to pay the government another 10%.
I fail to see how a company that gets blocked out from customers can make a higher margin. If no one will serve your traffic to your customers...you won't have customers. No customers. No Money.
We're about at the point now that the ISP's are forbidding you from using your own equipment. They maintain it's "their network" and will only allow "their equipment".
We are literally going back to pre-Carterphone Ma Bell.
DirecTV CEO (or some exec) basically said the most recent satellite they launched is it. No new satellites. Once the current fleet starts dying out from old age...they'll start reducing capacity. They may quit early, sell what's left to someone else, and let them deal with failing sats and diminishing capacity.
DirecTV as a satellite service is basically dead. AT&T murdered it for the sake of taking it online where they can tighten the rains and extract more out of customers. It will in fact leave Dish as the last major satellite provider....the new guys on the block are literally offering 40 channels of H.265 480i over 2 FSS transponders.
That's going to be the future of rural customers. Completely inferior lousy service because no one wants to build infrastructure to serve them.
That all sounds fine.....
But what if you have 4 choices...just four. All four do the same activity. There is no other alternative than to go with an ISP that blocks the content you want. Your solution is a fantasy. I have exactly one choice for internet at my house. One. The other provider will not run infrastructure to me because "it's not cost effective"; and there's no way in hell a wireless service works. Hell...without wifi calling on my phone; you'd never be able to get in touch with me.
Well...I'm a former Metro subscriber. I left because the CEO promised some of the uncarrier stuff for Metro...flashed us with stuff like free google one and Amazon prime while jacking up the hidden fees. I mean...they charge $15 for a device swap. They try to claim it's free if automated; but automated only works on THEIR phones. If you BYOB....you'll have to get a rep involved. If you have to get a rep involved...they will charge you. The fact this was previously an in-store only charge...I fail to see how anything got "better". If anything...it just reverted to the old prepaid order of "screw these low income customers...we'll make them pay for services and features we provide free to everyone else".
I don't see Binge-On lasting in to the 5G era. I don't see their UnCarrier branding lasting post merger. I don't think Legere has "reformed"...I think he's just doing what every public-face CEO does; act like you've changed...drag this change on long enough to get your monopoly...eliminate competition....revert to old self.
Even if Binge-On lasts in to the 5G era....I really don't see them doing it on home internet plans. They may keep it on phones only...but the rest of the screens in your home...no.
The problem isn't traffic management..it's that just about every ISP in America operates on a very huge conflict of interest:
We have very few stand-alone ISP's anymore; they're all rolled in to some kind of cable/television provider.
The problem is things like Netflix and Hulu hurt your video business...and the high-speed internet connection you sell is allowing people to view your competitors. In captialistic America...this is bad. It's a conflict of interest for them to sell you a service that will let you access a competitor. The companies want all your money, they won't get all your money that way. So there's a LOT of interest on them to block, throttle, or degrade competition.
It's not an issue of "different lanes"; it's the fact the ISP's don't want you to use all those lanes. They absolutely want to deny you the video-streaming lane.
And hey..while we're at it. WalShart paid us a whole bunch of money to direct customers over there...so we're going to give 100% priority to WalShart's website and we're going to restrict access to Amazon as per our agreement. Hey...Faux News is offering us even more money to make sure all our customers can only consume their news online...so we'll make sure Faux's website loads in two seconds but everyone else will time out.
This is not playing favorites against YouTube and Netflix...this is saying "We don't want you using either so you'll have to pay for our services."
5G is apparently going to focus on home internet as well. Just about every wireless provider owns a TV service in some way or another. You think a customer on TMobile will be able to subscribe to Sling? Hell no! They're going to block every other streaming video service so you will take their Level3 or nothing. Verizon will do it with their TV...hell...AT&T is already walking down the path of making DirecTV an exclusive product that will require their network. Sure, that's a few years down the road...but they've effectively launched the very last satellite. Once the current fleet is dead...they'll be streaming only.
None of this will really be competition. The providers will collude to keep prices high. The consumers will once again be getting fucked by big corporate thanks to the backing of a government that feels consumer rights don't exist.
But you better be getting enough revenue from them...becuase I'm not going to pay you $2000 for a fucking television you'll make even more off me at the expense of making me sit through bullshit ads.
Required $10/month when they cut off the legacy network.
This is not a premium charge...this is how they drastically increase prices. You start small...as an extra option. Then you make that option a requirement without adjusting prices.
Good 'ol premium switcharoo.
Actually...companies do keep you from trying to fix your stuff. Ever tried getting a service manual these days? I tried calling Onkyo to get a service manual so I could trace out a power supply problem. I was denied. They told me I was "not an authorized service center" and refused to sell me a product. They literally told me I did not have the capabilty, or even the right, to have the information to fix my stuff. I had to send the unit...back to them.
I had to resort to underhanded tactics of getting the manual...and I was able to find the problem and fix it for less than $2.
Onkyo wanted $200 just to look at it. That's only $30 less than I paid them for it. They didn't want to fix it, they wanted me to spend another $300 on a brand new unit.
Why should I, as a consumer, be forced to do business with a private entity simply because they demand it?
This is not limited to one company. This just about everyone selling consumer electronics. The only exceptions I see to this are in the ham-radio and maker markets. If I really want a service manual for my digital sampling radio made by iCom....I can easily get a service manual from them. Hell...I got accessories that if something breaks...I can call the company and get the parts sent to me *under warranty*, do my own repair, and *still* have a valid warranty. If I screw the repair up..I can send it back, *and they'll still honor the warranty*.
The bills might not be the best solution...but one could hope if they have to deal with iFixit...then it would prevent them from not dealing directly with people.
The fact is you're just one of those people that thinks business should have more rights because you falsely think corporations actually treat consumers well. They don't. Avoiding a company isn't the solution, they all want this.
Yet...he did absolutely NOTHING to make them pay tax. If anything, the tax plan made sure they paid even less in taxes.
You must be a special kind of stupid if you believe anything that liar says. Mexico was supposed to pay for the wall; instead he's had to rob the treasure for it. TWO YEARS of a Republican controlled house and senate that would have given him whatever he wanted....but he had to wait until there was a conflict. He had to wait until it looked like he had a reason to start the transformation to dictator.
Sure...he complained about Amazon. Then he did nothing.
Seriously...you must be a real special kind of stupid if you actually believe anything that asshole says.
If they are going to let this fraud continue...then the only recourse is to hold YouTube legally responsible for this extortion.
They make money off these people...if they're going to let them be scammed out if operation...maybe the rest of us should decide to just stop watching YouTube
Know a guy who does CANBUS hacking. He showed me a log from a rental car. It kept track of every time the car was started, how many miles, how hard the acceleration, how many times the doors were open, sometimes it had GPS stamps, how hard you stopped. It basically knew everything except your name, age, sex, email, and phone number....which it usually extracted when you connected your phone via bluetooth. So then it knows your name, your friends' names, their phone numbers, who you've called, who has called you, every text message.
The amount of data it was storing was STAGGERING and scary.
I have said that...for the most part, the average consumer is too stupid to know what they're buying most of the time.
I've had people ask me why their Spotify or some online thing doesn't work "when the internet is down".
The collective dumbing-down of consumers has been a boon for business though. People who actually think are the ones who are getting ignored and insulted by everyone else.
I mean..I'd go along with this if they weren't charging insane amounts for a car. Sure..I'll buy the car with the spy-on-me-technology; but I'm not going to pay more than $100 for it. The rest you'll make selling my personal information.
They just want their cake and to steal our ice cream.
I kinda remember T-Mobile marketing their HSDPA+ network as "4G" despite the fact it's not a 4G technology. I mean, sure; I saw it pump out 45mbps downstream on a tower at 2am...so I mean it did deliver on the marketing hype; and if you dug deep enough they did specify the "4G" was just a marketing thing...and they did adopt the LTE thing when they finally got an LTE network.
Of course Verizon said they'd do the same thing if their 4G network performs like a 5G; and I guess you could call HSDPA a major improvement from whatever the last revision of EVDO was.
This is sounding a lot like the 8/16/32/64-bit console wars.
No one knew how vacuum tubes worked when they started playing with them. In fact, the first tubes pre-date the discovery of the electron; and thermionic emission is how tubes work. But once they figured it out....hoooo boy here comes your electronic revolution.
I've been stuck in the same job for 16 years. I've tried leaving but employers either ignore what skills I have or my current employer gives me a lousy reference just to keep me there. I've never gotten a raise...just pay reductions. I don't get vacations...but I can take unpaid time off. I don't get overtime...I just don't. If I work 35 hours a week, 40 hours a week, or 60 hours a week...I get the same pay. I make below living wage but just a few dollars above poverty. My boss refuses to do proper payroll so I get to 1099 myself and lose half my income to taxes.
The concept that people get paid more...or get paid for not working...or get paid based on how long they work is entirely foreign to me. I've been stuck so long I don't care. I just grind out every single day waiting for the boss to die or me to die.
Welcome to the new working America. Paid just enough to keep struggling....underappreciated enough to not care anymore.
I fully expect Comcast lawyers to fight back and somehow get the FCC and/or the state government to tell the town they absolutely cannot build their own network and be forced to take Comcast....becuase you know those cunts are going to be filing complaints that we all know will be upheld with monopoly-loving GOP in power.
Expect court battles. Expect comcast to bring the most lawyers. Expect this to be a bigger nail in the coffin for municipal broadband.
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When anti-trust was enforced the way it's supposed to be? When it was actually about consumers?
Now we have a bunch of rich old fucks who care more about money than the people. A government full of people profiting off their own decisions. A government that mis-represents it's citizens and calls itself the best country in the world.
Most of the world knows the citizens don't want this. An overwhemling majority don't want it.
But...here we are...the majority is representing the minority opinion simply because they're greedy.
Trump drained the swamp...and replaced it with a cesspool. Actually..that's insulting to cesspools.
But completely deny us the ability to turn off UPnP.
Seriously...unless they changed it in the last update....the page to disable UPnP is hidden; and even when you do manualy access it...it DOES NOT WORK.
Any device plugged in to a FiOS router will get ports assigned to it over UPnP with zero questions asked.
then the government should not be there to prop it up. Period. This does nothing to benefit all those except a small few; it harms the country as a whole.
It just really shows you...our representatives don't work for us. They work for corporations. They work for the rich. They work for whoever can put money in their pocket instead of the people that they're supposed to represent.
This is why political parties need to go...they're just two sides of a "fuck the people" coin. Until people in this country can look past a fucking label...we will never be able to actually get to a point that any of this will do people any good.
That and I'm pretty pissed I had to pay about 20% of my income just to find out I had to pay the government another 10%.
I fail to see how a company that gets blocked out from customers can make a higher margin. If no one will serve your traffic to your customers...you won't have customers. No customers. No Money.
We're about at the point now that the ISP's are forbidding you from using your own equipment. They maintain it's "their network" and will only allow "their equipment".
We are literally going back to pre-Carterphone Ma Bell.
DirecTV CEO (or some exec) basically said the most recent satellite they launched is it. No new satellites. Once the current fleet starts dying out from old age...they'll start reducing capacity. They may quit early, sell what's left to someone else, and let them deal with failing sats and diminishing capacity.
DirecTV as a satellite service is basically dead. AT&T murdered it for the sake of taking it online where they can tighten the rains and extract more out of customers. It will in fact leave Dish as the last major satellite provider....the new guys on the block are literally offering 40 channels of H.265 480i over 2 FSS transponders.
That's going to be the future of rural customers. Completely inferior lousy service because no one wants to build infrastructure to serve them.
That all sounds fine..... But what if you have 4 choices...just four. All four do the same activity. There is no other alternative than to go with an ISP that blocks the content you want. Your solution is a fantasy. I have exactly one choice for internet at my house. One. The other provider will not run infrastructure to me because "it's not cost effective"; and there's no way in hell a wireless service works. Hell...without wifi calling on my phone; you'd never be able to get in touch with me.
Well...I'm a former Metro subscriber. I left because the CEO promised some of the uncarrier stuff for Metro...flashed us with stuff like free google one and Amazon prime while jacking up the hidden fees. I mean...they charge $15 for a device swap. They try to claim it's free if automated; but automated only works on THEIR phones. If you BYOB....you'll have to get a rep involved. If you have to get a rep involved...they will charge you. The fact this was previously an in-store only charge...I fail to see how anything got "better". If anything...it just reverted to the old prepaid order of "screw these low income customers...we'll make them pay for services and features we provide free to everyone else". I don't see Binge-On lasting in to the 5G era. I don't see their UnCarrier branding lasting post merger. I don't think Legere has "reformed"...I think he's just doing what every public-face CEO does; act like you've changed...drag this change on long enough to get your monopoly...eliminate competition....revert to old self. Even if Binge-On lasts in to the 5G era....I really don't see them doing it on home internet plans. They may keep it on phones only...but the rest of the screens in your home...no.
The problem isn't traffic management..it's that just about every ISP in America operates on a very huge conflict of interest: We have very few stand-alone ISP's anymore; they're all rolled in to some kind of cable/television provider. The problem is things like Netflix and Hulu hurt your video business...and the high-speed internet connection you sell is allowing people to view your competitors. In captialistic America...this is bad. It's a conflict of interest for them to sell you a service that will let you access a competitor. The companies want all your money, they won't get all your money that way. So there's a LOT of interest on them to block, throttle, or degrade competition. It's not an issue of "different lanes"; it's the fact the ISP's don't want you to use all those lanes. They absolutely want to deny you the video-streaming lane. And hey..while we're at it. WalShart paid us a whole bunch of money to direct customers over there...so we're going to give 100% priority to WalShart's website and we're going to restrict access to Amazon as per our agreement. Hey...Faux News is offering us even more money to make sure all our customers can only consume their news online...so we'll make sure Faux's website loads in two seconds but everyone else will time out. This is not playing favorites against YouTube and Netflix...this is saying "We don't want you using either so you'll have to pay for our services." 5G is apparently going to focus on home internet as well. Just about every wireless provider owns a TV service in some way or another. You think a customer on TMobile will be able to subscribe to Sling? Hell no! They're going to block every other streaming video service so you will take their Level3 or nothing. Verizon will do it with their TV...hell...AT&T is already walking down the path of making DirecTV an exclusive product that will require their network. Sure, that's a few years down the road...but they've effectively launched the very last satellite. Once the current fleet is dead...they'll be streaming only. None of this will really be competition. The providers will collude to keep prices high. The consumers will once again be getting fucked by big corporate thanks to the backing of a government that feels consumer rights don't exist.
Somewhere there's a bridge.....
But you better be getting enough revenue from them...becuase I'm not going to pay you $2000 for a fucking television you'll make even more off me at the expense of making me sit through bullshit ads.
I automatically don't buy shit advertised to me.
Remember when TMobile slammed AT&T for that despite the fact they sold a non 4G technology as 4G and acted like they were god for it?
Required $10/month when they cut off the legacy network. This is not a premium charge...this is how they drastically increase prices. You start small...as an extra option. Then you make that option a requirement without adjusting prices. Good 'ol premium switcharoo.
Actually...companies do keep you from trying to fix your stuff. Ever tried getting a service manual these days? I tried calling Onkyo to get a service manual so I could trace out a power supply problem. I was denied. They told me I was "not an authorized service center" and refused to sell me a product. They literally told me I did not have the capabilty, or even the right, to have the information to fix my stuff. I had to send the unit...back to them.
I had to resort to underhanded tactics of getting the manual...and I was able to find the problem and fix it for less than $2.
Onkyo wanted $200 just to look at it. That's only $30 less than I paid them for it. They didn't want to fix it, they wanted me to spend another $300 on a brand new unit.
Why should I, as a consumer, be forced to do business with a private entity simply because they demand it?
This is not limited to one company. This just about everyone selling consumer electronics. The only exceptions I see to this are in the ham-radio and maker markets. If I really want a service manual for my digital sampling radio made by iCom....I can easily get a service manual from them. Hell...I got accessories that if something breaks...I can call the company and get the parts sent to me *under warranty*, do my own repair, and *still* have a valid warranty. If I screw the repair up..I can send it back, *and they'll still honor the warranty*.
The bills might not be the best solution...but one could hope if they have to deal with iFixit...then it would prevent them from not dealing directly with people.
The fact is you're just one of those people that thinks business should have more rights because you falsely think corporations actually treat consumers well. They don't. Avoiding a company isn't the solution, they all want this.
Yet...he did absolutely NOTHING to make them pay tax. If anything, the tax plan made sure they paid even less in taxes.
You must be a special kind of stupid if you believe anything that liar says. Mexico was supposed to pay for the wall; instead he's had to rob the treasure for it. TWO YEARS of a Republican controlled house and senate that would have given him whatever he wanted....but he had to wait until there was a conflict. He had to wait until it looked like he had a reason to start the transformation to dictator.
Sure...he complained about Amazon. Then he did nothing.
Seriously...you must be a real special kind of stupid if you actually believe anything that asshole says.
If they are going to let this fraud continue...then the only recourse is to hold YouTube legally responsible for this extortion. They make money off these people...if they're going to let them be scammed out if operation...maybe the rest of us should decide to just stop watching YouTube
Know a guy who does CANBUS hacking. He showed me a log from a rental car. It kept track of every time the car was started, how many miles, how hard the acceleration, how many times the doors were open, sometimes it had GPS stamps, how hard you stopped. It basically knew everything except your name, age, sex, email, and phone number....which it usually extracted when you connected your phone via bluetooth. So then it knows your name, your friends' names, their phone numbers, who you've called, who has called you, every text message. The amount of data it was storing was STAGGERING and scary.
I have said that...for the most part, the average consumer is too stupid to know what they're buying most of the time.
I've had people ask me why their Spotify or some online thing doesn't work "when the internet is down".
The collective dumbing-down of consumers has been a boon for business though. People who actually think are the ones who are getting ignored and insulted by everyone else.
I mean..I'd go along with this if they weren't charging insane amounts for a car. Sure..I'll buy the car with the spy-on-me-technology; but I'm not going to pay more than $100 for it. The rest you'll make selling my personal information.
They just want their cake and to steal our ice cream.
You sell us a car and spy on us to make money?
Fuck you. I can't wait to see the industry that pops up having to protect us from THE SHIT WE OWN!
I kinda remember T-Mobile marketing their HSDPA+ network as "4G" despite the fact it's not a 4G technology. I mean, sure; I saw it pump out 45mbps downstream on a tower at 2am...so I mean it did deliver on the marketing hype; and if you dug deep enough they did specify the "4G" was just a marketing thing...and they did adopt the LTE thing when they finally got an LTE network.
Of course Verizon said they'd do the same thing if their 4G network performs like a 5G; and I guess you could call HSDPA a major improvement from whatever the last revision of EVDO was.
This is sounding a lot like the 8/16/32/64-bit console wars.
No one knew how vacuum tubes worked when they started playing with them. In fact, the first tubes pre-date the discovery of the electron; and thermionic emission is how tubes work. But once they figured it out....hoooo boy here comes your electronic revolution.
From how much you assume it sounds like you're an ass.
I've been stuck in the same job for 16 years. I've tried leaving but employers either ignore what skills I have or my current employer gives me a lousy reference just to keep me there. I've never gotten a raise...just pay reductions. I don't get vacations...but I can take unpaid time off. I don't get overtime...I just don't. If I work 35 hours a week, 40 hours a week, or 60 hours a week...I get the same pay. I make below living wage but just a few dollars above poverty. My boss refuses to do proper payroll so I get to 1099 myself and lose half my income to taxes.
The concept that people get paid more...or get paid for not working...or get paid based on how long they work is entirely foreign to me. I've been stuck so long I don't care. I just grind out every single day waiting for the boss to die or me to die.
Welcome to the new working America. Paid just enough to keep struggling....underappreciated enough to not care anymore.
I fully expect Comcast lawyers to fight back and somehow get the FCC and/or the state government to tell the town they absolutely cannot build their own network and be forced to take Comcast....becuase you know those cunts are going to be filing complaints that we all know will be upheld with monopoly-loving GOP in power.
Expect court battles. Expect comcast to bring the most lawyers. Expect this to be a bigger nail in the coffin for municipal broadband.