Just the ones who are easily influenced by questions that are designed to produce the answers desired to support whatever political agenda the media is trying to push.
This is the same kind of senseless knee-jerk reaction that happened after the oil spill... it is like issuing a moratorium on building new cars because someone crashed a 1974 Pinto and it spilled some coolant on the ground.
Do you favor or oppose building new nuclear reactors when the risks of damage, meltdown, and nuclear catastrophe due to earthquakes or other natural disasters might not be known?
There have been a lot of these politically left-leaning, vitriolic article summaries posted lately. It's tarnishing Slashdot's image as a relatively unbiased and non-political web resource for nerds who just want to read about the latest tech stuff.
ISPs are only utilities or common carriers when it comes to protection from criminal copyright infringement cases (providing the means of infringement).
They are content providers when it comes to getting protection from biased quality of service from other ISPs.
They get to have it both ways, and any other way they want as well.
I wrote a paper in 1991 outlining how the emissions from fossil fuels were, in aggregate terms, worse for the environment than nuclear energy (particularly due to mercury, sulfur, and other things, not plant food). The paper was decidedly pro-nuclear, and was written for a competition.
When the paper was made public, before the presentation, the result was that anti-nuke people picketed the presentation, and started showing up at my house doing all kinds of vandalistic things.
Oh, yeah, and I was a high school student at the time. I thought the irrational fearmongering was bad back then. It's even worse today.
Look at any tragic event. The reactions have been waaaaay over the top, whether it was 9/11 and the subsequent "lockdown" on civil rights, the Arizona shooting and the clamor to ban magazines of a certain capacity, or this. It's all fear-based emotional fearmongering that has no basis in fact.
>> But the US cell phone market isn't working efficiently: it provides worse service at a higher price.
The cell phone market is not ineffective. It is far from ineffective. Multimegabit service to a handset or netbook is not "ineffectiveness." Coverage is available to something like 99.9% of the US population, with the remaining 0.1% choosing to live in rural areas where it would be unprofitable to build out the infrastructure. That is the model of effectiveness, if anything.
>> The US government picks winners and losers through standards setting all the time; there is nothing illegal or even unusual about it.
This is true, but does not mean it is the appropriate thing to do to the cell phone market. You really need to stop with the "one size fits all, what's right for one thing is right for everything" mentality. It's a fallacy.
>> The US government has the right to regulate what communications protocols people use on the public airwaves; there is no legal, moral, or economic obstacle to such regulations.
Police have no expectation of privacy in the performance of their duty. If they are in a public place, they have no reasonable expectation that their location be kept secret.
In Pennsylvania, police must publish ahead of time when and where they will have a DUI checkpoint, and place signs saying "DUI checkpoint ahead" in all directions beyond the first legal turnoff from the DUI location, to give people the opportunity to avoid it.
>> Well, geez, that's my point: the US government should require a single cell phone standard for all carriers, the way it's done in many other countries.
Just because it is that way in another country does not mean it is appropriate for our country. It is anti-competitive to require a single standard when there is a fierce competitive market for cellular chipsets. The US would be legislating one or more companies out of business, and that runs afoul of numerous constitutional provisions.
There are many markets and groups that have to be represented. The corporations have rights just as the citizens do, and it is the government's job to protect all of them.
>> Instead of reasoning from ideological principles, look at the facts: wireless service in the US (with multiple standards) is slower and much more expensive than in Europe (with effectively a single standard), consumers have less choice among handsets, and they are locked into expensive contracts.
I'm not reasoning from idealogical principles any more or less than you are. The fact is that the market in the US supports a slower cell network because consumers are willing to pay for the slow service. Consumers are just as responsible as carriers for the state of the market. I would also venture a guess that cellular service in Europe is NOT cheaper than in the US when government subsidies are taken into account. It's like arguing that an Airbus is cheaper than a Boeing when the EU is pouring billions of euros into Airbus' pockets behind closed doors. That money comes from the taxpayer and should be incorporated into the cost.
>> So you are willing to trample all over property rights in order to make cell phone companies rich? I don't think so.
You may not think so, but you are not the arbiter of what is and is not constitutional in the US. The Supreme Court ruled in Kelo vs. New London that it was lawful and constitutional to take private land for commercial needs if the local community would benefit from it, and it has long been precedented that the taking of land for public use, as with utilities, was lawful and constitutional. So, you may not like the idea of taking private land to ensure that the wireless telephone utility functioned properly, but the Supreme Court firmly disagrees, and I take their word over yours.
There is no way human activity can contribute to the creation of habitat for wild animals and other organisms. Human activity can only destroy and kill.:rolleyes:
Seriously folks. If your kids are playing video games for 4.5 hours straight, and you're pissing and moaning that they should be able to play longer between charges, perhaps you ought to consider evaluating your skills as a parent.
One other thing the broadcasters did to shoot themselves in the foot was to insist on 8-VSB as a modulation method as opposed to the far superior COFDM.
They did not want to spend the money on upgrading their transmitters, which would have needed to be far more linear to work with OFDM. They would cover far more people with OFDM and generate more revenue, but that would have required long-term thinking on the part of the broadcasters.
Wireless carriers are certainly not developing the spectrum they have, either because of over-burdensome regulations associated with doing it, or because the spectrum they have is not appropriate for the mission.
Not all spectrum is good for all uses, and the costs associated with developing an entirely new set of hardware resources for a new frequency band may or may not be worth the investment.
All these regulations are the reason the network is pathetic. I have already explained how profitability is limited by overbearing government regulation increasing the cost of deploying a network ten fold. The over-regulated market cannot support a network that functions well at a $40/month-subscriber price point. If a site cost $250K like it should, then crappy cell service like we have now would cost about $8-12, and we could have wonderfully fantabulous service for $40/month.
Europe is not a fair comparison because Europe does not have the same challenges as the US, and the US network is inherently more difficult and expensive for the same quality due to our more rural population distribution. Also, everything in Europe is heavily subsidized - everything - including the cell networks, so people in Europe are paying a lot more than they think for cellular service.
I am not being funny at all, but you are seriously betraying your own ignorance.
Switching stations don't have to be anywhere near town because switching stations are only for connecting high-voltage sections of the grid. You are probably confusing switching stations with MV transition stations, where high voltage is stepped down to medium voltage (usually 13kV in the US) for neighborhood distribution. Those transition stations are _always_ close to the customer because of I2R losses in the transmission lines.
You also don't seem to understand what Federal Preemption means. Federal Preemption is when the responsible federal regulatory body declares that lower forms of government cannot impose their own regulations. Preemption is not the imposition of regulation, but the forbearance of any regulations being imposed by an unauthorized body.
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Something else to consider is that this is not a nuclear accident. This is not the result of poor design, protocol, or process.
It is the result of a fucking 9.0 Earthquake, which is almost unimaginable in its intensity and destructive power.
Just the ones who are easily influenced by questions that are designed to produce the answers desired to support whatever political agenda the media is trying to push.
This is the same kind of senseless knee-jerk reaction that happened after the oil spill... it is like issuing a moratorium on building new cars because someone crashed a 1974 Pinto and it spilled some coolant on the ground.
Do you favor or oppose building new nuclear reactors when the risks of damage, meltdown, and nuclear catastrophe due to earthquakes or other natural disasters might not be known?
Wish I could mod this up 100 points.
News for nerds? I don't think so.
There have been a lot of these politically left-leaning, vitriolic article summaries posted lately. It's tarnishing Slashdot's image as a relatively unbiased and non-political web resource for nerds who just want to read about the latest tech stuff.
Is it just me, or are Slashdot summaries becoming more and more vitriolic lately?
ISPs are only utilities or common carriers when it comes to protection from criminal copyright infringement cases (providing the means of infringement).
They are content providers when it comes to getting protection from biased quality of service from other ISPs.
They get to have it both ways, and any other way they want as well.
I wrote a paper in 1991 outlining how the emissions from fossil fuels were, in aggregate terms, worse for the environment than nuclear energy (particularly due to mercury, sulfur, and other things, not plant food). The paper was decidedly pro-nuclear, and was written for a competition.
When the paper was made public, before the presentation, the result was that anti-nuke people picketed the presentation, and started showing up at my house doing all kinds of vandalistic things.
Oh, yeah, and I was a high school student at the time. I thought the irrational fearmongering was bad back then. It's even worse today.
Look at any tragic event. The reactions have been waaaaay over the top, whether it was 9/11 and the subsequent "lockdown" on civil rights, the Arizona shooting and the clamor to ban magazines of a certain capacity, or this. It's all fear-based emotional fearmongering that has no basis in fact.
That writer seems very imaginative, which makes it hard to take his "facts" as such. It's a well-written anecdote, however.
Just curious...
>> But the US cell phone market isn't working efficiently: it provides worse service at a higher price.
The cell phone market is not ineffective. It is far from ineffective. Multimegabit service to a handset or netbook is not "ineffectiveness." Coverage is available to something like 99.9% of the US population, with the remaining 0.1% choosing to live in rural areas where it would be unprofitable to build out the infrastructure. That is the model of effectiveness, if anything.
>> The US government picks winners and losers through standards setting all the time; there is nothing illegal or even unusual about it.
This is true, but does not mean it is the appropriate thing to do to the cell phone market. You really need to stop with the "one size fits all, what's right for one thing is right for everything" mentality. It's a fallacy.
>> The US government has the right to regulate what communications protocols people use on the public airwaves; there is no legal, moral, or economic obstacle to such regulations.
This is true, and irrelevant.
The rest of your post is not worth a response...
Police have no expectation of privacy in the performance of their duty. If they are in a public place, they have no reasonable expectation that their location be kept secret.
In Pennsylvania, police must publish ahead of time when and where they will have a DUI checkpoint, and place signs saying "DUI checkpoint ahead" in all directions beyond the first legal turnoff from the DUI location, to give people the opportunity to avoid it.
>> Well, geez, that's my point: the US government should require a single cell phone standard for all carriers, the way it's done in many other countries.
Just because it is that way in another country does not mean it is appropriate for our country. It is anti-competitive to require a single standard when there is a fierce competitive market for cellular chipsets. The US would be legislating one or more companies out of business, and that runs afoul of numerous constitutional provisions.
There are many markets and groups that have to be represented. The corporations have rights just as the citizens do, and it is the government's job to protect all of them.
>> Instead of reasoning from ideological principles, look at the facts: wireless service in the US (with multiple standards) is slower and much more expensive than in Europe (with effectively a single standard), consumers have less choice among handsets, and they are locked into expensive contracts.
I'm not reasoning from idealogical principles any more or less than you are. The fact is that the market in the US supports a slower cell network because consumers are willing to pay for the slow service. Consumers are just as responsible as carriers for the state of the market. I would also venture a guess that cellular service in Europe is NOT cheaper than in the US when government subsidies are taken into account. It's like arguing that an Airbus is cheaper than a Boeing when the EU is pouring billions of euros into Airbus' pockets behind closed doors. That money comes from the taxpayer and should be incorporated into the cost.
>> So you are willing to trample all over property rights in order to make cell phone companies rich? I don't think so.
You may not think so, but you are not the arbiter of what is and is not constitutional in the US. The Supreme Court ruled in Kelo vs. New London that it was lawful and constitutional to take private land for commercial needs if the local community would benefit from it, and it has long been precedented that the taking of land for public use, as with utilities, was lawful and constitutional. So, you may not like the idea of taking private land to ensure that the wireless telephone utility functioned properly, but the Supreme Court firmly disagrees, and I take their word over yours.
He has something like a few weeks to live. Let the guy be in peace.
There is no way human activity can contribute to the creation of habitat for wild animals and other organisms. Human activity can only destroy and kill. :rolleyes:
And scan all email for viruses and malware? I've never so much as had a peep from anything I've gotten in GMail in 5 years.
A month? I bet this is reposted tomorrow...
What is the cost, and how long will it take to generate enough power to recover that cost?
Also, how much taxpayer money is being spent on this?
Seriously folks. If your kids are playing video games for 4.5 hours straight, and you're pissing and moaning that they should be able to play longer between charges, perhaps you ought to consider evaluating your skills as a parent.
The "Earth is Flat" crowd just doesn't know when to quit!
One other thing the broadcasters did to shoot themselves in the foot was to insist on 8-VSB as a modulation method as opposed to the far superior COFDM.
They did not want to spend the money on upgrading their transmitters, which would have needed to be far more linear to work with OFDM. They would cover far more people with OFDM and generate more revenue, but that would have required long-term thinking on the part of the broadcasters.
Wireless carriers are certainly not developing the spectrum they have, either because of over-burdensome regulations associated with doing it, or because the spectrum they have is not appropriate for the mission.
Not all spectrum is good for all uses, and the costs associated with developing an entirely new set of hardware resources for a new frequency band may or may not be worth the investment.
How can they say they won't reveal any financial details when they have already disclosed the purchase price? Or, is that not a financial detail?
All these regulations are the reason the network is pathetic. I have already explained how profitability is limited by overbearing government regulation increasing the cost of deploying a network ten fold. The over-regulated market cannot support a network that functions well at a $40/month-subscriber price point. If a site cost $250K like it should, then crappy cell service like we have now would cost about $8-12, and we could have wonderfully fantabulous service for $40/month.
Europe is not a fair comparison because Europe does not have the same challenges as the US, and the US network is inherently more difficult and expensive for the same quality due to our more rural population distribution. Also, everything in Europe is heavily subsidized - everything - including the cell networks, so people in Europe are paying a lot more than they think for cellular service.
I am not being funny at all, but you are seriously betraying your own ignorance.
Switching stations don't have to be anywhere near town because switching stations are only for connecting high-voltage sections of the grid. You are probably confusing switching stations with MV transition stations, where high voltage is stepped down to medium voltage (usually 13kV in the US) for neighborhood distribution. Those transition stations are _always_ close to the customer because of I2R losses in the transmission lines.
You also don't seem to understand what Federal Preemption means. Federal Preemption is when the responsible federal regulatory body declares that lower forms of government cannot impose their own regulations. Preemption is not the imposition of regulation, but the forbearance of any regulations being imposed by an unauthorized body.