AT&T will just add it to their existing towers and phone/mobile system.
No. At worst, civilian users will get 'as available' access. First responders will get first access. That's what the "First" part means.
They make it sound like some "special" system, but to me, it just sounds like mobile broadband. Inotherwords A NETWORK. Isn't that what we already have with the carriers?
No. Almost, but not exactly.
How is this fair to T-Mobile, Sprint, or Verizon?
They had a chance to bid on it. They lost the bid.
How does this foster competition, good service, good pricing, or good support?
It's not a commercial system, so competition is not a criterion.
How does this allow us to change to some other company if we don't like how it works?
It sounds like you are not a potential user (not a first responder), so nobody cares if you don't like how it works. If AT&T cannot pull it off, it will be rebid to someone else, that's how we change to come other company.
Oops, the nearby AT&T tower went down. NONE of our stuff works now.
FirstNet will have nothing to do with existing voice infrastructure, so saying "none of our stuff works" is patent nonsense. And if a tower goes down, AT&T or the state brings in a COW or airborne system to provide backup until the ground based system is fixed.
This stuff needs to be in LOCAL control, not some national program's control. You need to make sure that the fire fighters who roll in from half a state away will have communications equipment that will be interoperable with the local system.
You just contradicted yourself. The only way to make sure that interoperability is to do it at a level well above the local.
What you get when you have full local control of designing communications is every agency on a different frequency and access method (CTCSS, DCS, NAC) and nobody can talk to anybody else when an event requires mutual aid. That's why the National Interoperability channels were allocated. And yet, you see what happens when there is only local control -- many agencies STILL have not programmed these channels into their radios despite them being available for what, more than a decade? Our two-county local area is three years into creating a mutually agreed set of channels and names so first responders showing up at a neighbor's event know how to communicate. Three years!
But my point is that the fixed parts of this system should be LOCALLY controlled and maintained.
Wrong. Local maintenance is very expensive, and no public safety agency is going to have a budget to pay for a tech to maintain a bunch of LTE sites. It's hard enough to pay for a regional company to maintain the existing voice systems already.
And local "control" means you will wind up with a bunch of independent, non-interoperable systems like we already have when one agency relies on 700MHz trunked and a neighbor is still using 150MHz analog voice. Someone has to either equip everything with dual band radios, or have immediately deployable bridges. Who pays for the bridge and the training necessary to put it into use when needed, the 700MHz user or the 150MHz?
However in ALL cases it would be a great advantage if first responders didn't have to worry about the radios they carry actually working outside of their local area..
History and politics has proven that this social problem cannot be solved by local measures. It isn't a technical issue, it is poly-sci.
And there's no credible answer for how this will serve anything outside major urban areas.
The "credible answer" is first that providers will add this band to existing sites -- which covers a lot of ground outside "major urban areas" already. And second, there are intended to be portable COW or "cell in the air" systems to provide it outside existing coverage when an event takes place.
Basically we've found a way to justify nationalizing first responder comms.
There have been enough major events that required support from distant emergency service agencies that having a national plan and national capability is already well-justified. There already is a national communications plan for voice.
That's the primary reason for FirstNet. Commercial LTE cannot do this. It can prioritize a call when there is bandwidth to connect in the first place, but if a cell overloads with civilian panic calls then the first responder calls don't go through.
The plan to help finance this operation is to allow the cell providers to sell 'as available' space to the public when first responders don't need it.
These agencies use radios that aren't even made any longer, were someone to buy a new fire truck in this area, they would either be scavenging the radios from their old rig or purchasing the primary radio equipment on ebay.
Or purchase new. You can get new radios that do analog narrowband. You can't do wideband legally, so if you're trying to buy a radio compatible with wideband, you need to get with the program.
and operate our own repeater network on our own dime.
When narrowbanding took place, the feds were handing out grants like candy to anyone who needed to replace their infrastructure with new stuff. You apparently didn't have anyone who was able to write one of those, but our local agencies got all new digital radio systems on the federal dime. And operating them costs no more than operating the old wideband analog.
Yes, your point about shorter range on narrowband is correct. This is a known engineering issue, and whoever designed your radio system should have known this.
A scene involving my agency, our mutual aid fire agencies, and our local state police, which is a very easy scenario to envision (say, a car crash near the town line), would involve three different radio bands.
There are interoperability channels designed for just such things. Everyone who has a part 90 public safety license can use them.
Project 25.
P25 is a modulation method, not a band. It can be used in VHF, UHF, SHF, whatever. And it is not the only digital system. Motorola is pushing MotoTurbo and Kenwood, I think, has NexDen. Incompatible digital is anathema to good communications, which is why the feds push P25. Anyone who buys something other than P25 is shooting themselves, and their served public, in the foot.
It operates on the same 700mHz band
700MHz.
The idea, as I understand it, is for these two things to be interoperable.
You understand wrong. FirstNet is intended to provide the large scale data on a priority basis that commercial LTE cannot. The immediate voice provided by current handheld radios is something else and has nothing to do with FirstNet. And voice doesn't need to be P25. Analog works better in many situations.
You see, "independently verified" is not spelled out, but the subtext (given the jackass who's pushing this pile of shit) means that any and all science would have to verified by the EPA.
This is the same bill that has come up before, and the same lies are appearing about it again. You say "have to be verified", but the bill actually says "CAN be verified" (emphasis mine.) Do you TRULY not understand the difference between "have to be" and "can be"?
This bill says "peer reviewed science is not good enough".
Bullshit. The bill says that all science used to make laws must be presented with enough data to be verifiable. It says nothing about "peer review", because "peer review" and "verified" are two very, very different things.
"Peer-reviewed science" means that the paper has gone out to a very limited number of presumed experts in the field for them to see if there are any obvious errors. They comment on how the figures are presented, are they clear, and do they show something relevant and important? Is there an obvious flaw in the scientific method? Were the results based on incorrect or inappropriate assumptions or equations? Did the scientist ignore existing precedent that would contradict his results? And, unfortunately, many reviewers are so biased that they skewer any paper that doesn't fit their world view. (I've seen papers come back from review where you can clearly identify the reviewer based on his comments.)
But if you think ANY of the reviewers of this "peer-reviewed science" are actually verifying the RESULTS by repeating the experiment, you are a fool. The reviewers do NOT get to look at the data unless it is already in the paper (and most is not), and they do little to no manipulation of any of the data to "review" it.
No, "peer-review" and "verify" are two different things. The law deals with the ability to verify. Not "must", just "can be". This is a Good Thing, and it allows for free and open science.
Maybe something similar to the way auto manufacturers cope with the fact that California has different emissions requirements than other states.
I'm amazed that anyone here would try equating "the Internet" with some limited number of physical objects. Very expensive physical objects at that.
Think about it for a minute. What do the California laws for emissions require? Cars that are sold within the state of CA, (and licensed therein) must meet certain emissions standards, which are tested on a regular basis when you renew your vehicle registration.
The Internet is a world-wide operation, and people who live in CA may buy Internet service from a company in New York and may use a VA address when doing so. Care to explain how the ISP (which is headquartered in FL) knows which state laws to apply to which user?
Oh, I forgot. The IP address uniquely identifies each internet user, so just keep a database...
"Gravity waves" seems misleading or confusing. Maybe it stuck for historical reasons?
It stuck because it is accurate.
Labeling their cause as one force among multiple is problematic communication.
All scientific communities have their terminologies, and "gravity waves" is an accurate use of the words for fluid dynamics. It is not gravity that CAUSES the waves, it is gravity that moderates them.
Let's see if I got this straight:
Cloud particles gravitationally pull on each other
No. At least not to any significant amount.
It seems we normally don't see these on Earth because our thicker atmosphere and magnetosphere overwhelm gravity's direct influence.
What is it you think that keeps our "thicker atmosphere" where it is if it isn't "gravity's direct influence"?
Gravity waves are waves in something that are moderated by the force of gravity. E.g. regular waves at the beach are gravity waves. The properties depend directly on the difference in densities between the two layers in contact. For surface waves this is air/water. For subaqueous (or "internal") waves, it is a water/water interface.
There are also infragravity waves. Those are waves created by wave-wave interactions that occur at frequencies very much below those of gravity waves. A surface gravity wave may have a period of 10-15 seconds. An infragravity wave may be 100-200 seconds in period. Think "sneaker".
And while you might think that the ripples on the surface caused by wind are called "ultragravity" waves, they are actually called "capillary waves".
The municipalities are not competing/wanting to compete with Cable TV providers or violate their contracts by laying their own fiber and providing internet.
You cannot condemn Comcast for being a rotten, expensive ISP with one voice and then deny that Comcast is an ISP with another. Yes, municipalities that are trying to run their own internet service are in DIRECT competition with a company that they have a contract with that demands all kinds of other things that the city doesn't want to provide.
The big broadband providers, including cable companies lobbied states to get special laws passed designed to kill the municipal projects.
Of course. Incumbent ISPs that have contracts that demand levels of service and types of services are at a direct disadvantage to local governments that don't have those contractual requirements. If the city wants to play in the ISP market, it should have to follow the same rules they enforce on commercial vendors -- ALL of those rules.
No: municipalities are only able to do this for Cable TV Service,
Which is how the Cable internet providers get access to the rights of way in the first place.
the franchise agreements don't apply to other services that the municipalities are not empowered to create a monopoly in for the first place.
The franchise agreements absolutely apply to services that municipalities cannot create monopolies in, like Cable TV. Exclusive franchises are a violation of federal law and have been so for a very long time.
Telecoms that put in and own fibre optics on the other hand are federally regulated and cannot be franchised by a municipality.
That's pretty funny, since I'm looking at my last CenturyLink (telecom) bill and it contains a specific line item fee for "franchise at 3%." Apparently my city can, and does, franchise the local telecom, despite this special "federal regulated" status they hold.
"highway construction project that gets federal funding"
And it is the local government that is managing the rights of way (not "highways") where "dig once" conduits will be most useful.
State highway construction is currently pretty rare (at least in my part of the country), and when it happens it covers only a short stretch of road that is being replaced outside city limits.
It's pretty useless to require "dig once conduits" for a small stretch of state highway since that is usually where the major internet distributors run fiber anyway, not the local cable company. And it would do little to nothing to help improve last mile distribution in rural areas, and nothing at all within a city.
Speculation: because the local governments have already signed their souls over.
Translation: because the local governments have already entered franchise agreements with the incumbent cable provider.
Sadly (not really), the existence of a franchise agreement between the local government and the cable company is not a reason that this is a power granted to the federal government. "We don't like the way you exercised your local prerogatives" isn't grounds for federal preemption.
Or, you know, you could just eliminate the laws that prohibit/restrict Municipal and/or County fiber projects.
That would be a major change to contract law. The issue with a city competing with an incumbent cable provider is one of contracts. The cable provider has a franchise that has all sorts of conditions and requirements, which would be patently unfair for the city to ignore when it wants to compete. If a company has to do X to operate within a city, then the city itself should be required to do X when it wants to do the same thing.
Of course, the big boys (Verizon et al) Hate it, because it dramatically lowers the bar to their competition.
No, they hate it for two reasons. First, it costs them a lot of money (in franchise fees, for one thing) to comply with the terms of their franchise, none of which will be an expense to the municipal provider. Second, they have to operate at a profit in order to exist; the municipality has the general fund (taxpayer's pockets) to dip into if they operate at a loss, and no requirement to be profitable at all.
And, IMHO, it's an issue for the states, not the feds. Communications which enables Interstate Commerce is not itself Interstate Commerce.
And more important, it is an issue of how a municipality manages it's own rights of way. Since the conduits will be empty, as you point out, it cannot be enabling interstate commerce.
I can see this at the state level, but not federal.
The conglomos want to get you into thinking that by bundling you're saving money when you're not.
For what definition of "save"?
For Comcast in my area, I can get Internet alone, 25MBps, for $30/month for the first 12 months, $60/month after that. I can get "140+ channels" of TV for $50/month for 12 months, $55-$75/month after that "depending on area".
I can get a bundle with both for $80/month for 12 months, $100/month after.
If I bought them separately I'd pay the same $80/month for the first 12 months, but then the rates jump to $115-$135/month, which is $15-$35 MORE than the bundled rate. So, while it is true that you don't save with a bundle for the first 12 months, the cost is considerably less after that 12 month ends.
I'd call that "saving money".
Of course, if you don't WANT TV, then you cannot possibly save money by getting TV. It's pretty obvious, it's not a "sale" if it is something you don't want. The "save money" condition is that you want both services and would buy them individually without a better priced bundle, which does save you money.
You've hit it almost on the head. This isn't about better security, it's about worse. It's a Chinese plot to force us all to untape the cameras on our laptops hoping we'll forget to retape them after logging in, and then they can spy on us. And they'll get to see whatever the background is while we're logging in.
Remember, don't leave large blueprints containing intellectual property taped to the wall behind you when you log in to your terminal or all your bases will belong China.
the advantage of speaking the word versus tapping on the keyboard is that it's harder for someone else to duplicate.
And the disadvantage is that anyone within earshot can hear what your password is.
This is why I absolutely loathe voice operated call directors. I'm in an office with other people and I have to tell everyone what I'm doing, instead of simply silently pushing a few buttons. Usually it winds up with me shouting "HUMAN BEING" or "GET ME A DUCKING PERSON" when the voice detection system doesn't have the option I need.
Of course, the fact that they are poorly programmed to start with, asking questions like "are you calling about a current account or opening a new one?" and don't understand when I answer "yes".
So if you make the password itself something that would be incriminating, you could legitimately withhold it?
"You are hereby granted immunity for any criminal act for which the password itself will incriminate you." There -- your password cannot be used against you in a court of law, even if it is "I killed JustNiz in the library with a hammer."
I'm guessing this guy is buying himself an illusive and perhaps imaginary bit of safety by choosing contempt over a conviction for CP. His safety from other inmates lasts only as long as he claims he's in for "contempt of court". When it gets out that his contempt of court is because he's not revealing a password that hides CP he's a target.
Not headlines, but to stave off charges from the US Office That Deals With of Such Things that his spaceships are not ADA compliant. I mean, we almost lost a bunch of UCLA video taped lectures, we wouldn't want to have to shut down the only operating space flight system until they built a ramp...
What better way to prove ADA compliance than this?
But they weren't, or didn't; so we have to deal with reality.
Reality is that we're talking about a PUBLIC SCHOOL that doesn't want to teach about map projections, they want to teach about social justice. What people today know about projections is irrelevant because most people don't care and aren't in a position where they have to. It's that they aren't being taught TODAY what they are and why.
So the choice is to continue trying the same thing, over and over, again, or try something new.
"Something new" might be as simple as to teach them -- the students, who will be the citizens of tomorrow.
They are getting a more accurate depiction of the world in the aspects that matter to them (i.e., not nautics)
Yes, the "aspect" that matters to them the most is not "'nautics", it is removing an alleged imperialist plot to keep the colonies downtrodden, AND TEACHING THE STUDENTS that Mercator was a racist, along with everyone else who uses the Mercator Projection for whatever reason. That's the problem.
1. Poll people on the street. Only a tiny minority even among the educated will know about map distortion.
1. Only a tiny minority have to deal with global maps. The biggest map most people deal with regularly is a city or county map, maybe a state map. The distortions from projections on that scale are small enough to ignore or are irrelevant. And thus point 2:
2. They were, or should have been had they been paying attention, taught about projections in geography class, which is, or should have been, a mandatory middle-school class for everyone. (Seventh grade when I had it.) But since they don't use it, and don't care, they have forgotten -- which is what happens when you don't use and don't care about any topic.
Choosing a better suited projection is the most logical thing one can do.
Yes.
The "most logical thing" one can do is NOT start yapping about how the Mercator projection is an imperialistic plot of the colonizing hegemony and is intended to repress "those people". The best projection is... no projection. It's called "a globe".
Yes technically it is an innovation but unless it does something to improve the cinema experience why do I care?
Who says you have to care about any innovation? The Netflick flack is claiming there has been none, not that there has been nothing that Roger W Moore cares about. "There has been no innovation" is not the same as "there has been no innovation that I care about."
What a lot of people seem to forget is that it is not innovation we want it is useful innovation.
And the digital distribution of movie content is useful to a lot of people, just not to you. That's ok, but it doesn't mean it doesn't count at all.
Slashdot Mirror
AT&T will just add it to their existing towers and phone/mobile system.
No. At worst, civilian users will get 'as available' access. First responders will get first access. That's what the "First" part means.
They make it sound like some "special" system, but to me, it just sounds like mobile broadband. Inotherwords A NETWORK. Isn't that what we already have with the carriers?
No. Almost, but not exactly.
How is this fair to T-Mobile, Sprint, or Verizon?
They had a chance to bid on it. They lost the bid.
How does this foster competition, good service, good pricing, or good support?
It's not a commercial system, so competition is not a criterion.
How does this allow us to change to some other company if we don't like how it works?
It sounds like you are not a potential user (not a first responder), so nobody cares if you don't like how it works. If AT&T cannot pull it off, it will be rebid to someone else, that's how we change to come other company.
Oops, the nearby AT&T tower went down. NONE of our stuff works now.
FirstNet will have nothing to do with existing voice infrastructure, so saying "none of our stuff works" is patent nonsense. And if a tower goes down, AT&T or the state brings in a COW or airborne system to provide backup until the ground based system is fixed.
This stuff needs to be in LOCAL control, not some national program's control. You need to make sure that the fire fighters who roll in from half a state away will have communications equipment that will be interoperable with the local system.
You just contradicted yourself. The only way to make sure that interoperability is to do it at a level well above the local.
What you get when you have full local control of designing communications is every agency on a different frequency and access method (CTCSS, DCS, NAC) and nobody can talk to anybody else when an event requires mutual aid. That's why the National Interoperability channels were allocated. And yet, you see what happens when there is only local control -- many agencies STILL have not programmed these channels into their radios despite them being available for what, more than a decade? Our two-county local area is three years into creating a mutually agreed set of channels and names so first responders showing up at a neighbor's event know how to communicate. Three years!
But my point is that the fixed parts of this system should be LOCALLY controlled and maintained.
Wrong. Local maintenance is very expensive, and no public safety agency is going to have a budget to pay for a tech to maintain a bunch of LTE sites. It's hard enough to pay for a regional company to maintain the existing voice systems already.
And local "control" means you will wind up with a bunch of independent, non-interoperable systems like we already have when one agency relies on 700MHz trunked and a neighbor is still using 150MHz analog voice. Someone has to either equip everything with dual band radios, or have immediately deployable bridges. Who pays for the bridge and the training necessary to put it into use when needed, the 700MHz user or the 150MHz?
However in ALL cases it would be a great advantage if first responders didn't have to worry about the radios they carry actually working outside of their local area..
History and politics has proven that this social problem cannot be solved by local measures. It isn't a technical issue, it is poly-sci.
And there's no credible answer for how this will serve anything outside major urban areas.
The "credible answer" is first that providers will add this band to existing sites -- which covers a lot of ground outside "major urban areas" already. And second, there are intended to be portable COW or "cell in the air" systems to provide it outside existing coverage when an event takes place.
Basically we've found a way to justify nationalizing first responder comms.
There have been enough major events that required support from distant emergency service agencies that having a national plan and national capability is already well-justified. There already is a national communications plan for voice.
The plan to help finance this operation is to allow the cell providers to sell 'as available' space to the public when first responders don't need it.
These agencies use radios that aren't even made any longer, were someone to buy a new fire truck in this area, they would either be scavenging the radios from their old rig or purchasing the primary radio equipment on ebay.
Or purchase new. You can get new radios that do analog narrowband. You can't do wideband legally, so if you're trying to buy a radio compatible with wideband, you need to get with the program.
and operate our own repeater network on our own dime.
When narrowbanding took place, the feds were handing out grants like candy to anyone who needed to replace their infrastructure with new stuff. You apparently didn't have anyone who was able to write one of those, but our local agencies got all new digital radio systems on the federal dime. And operating them costs no more than operating the old wideband analog.
Yes, your point about shorter range on narrowband is correct. This is a known engineering issue, and whoever designed your radio system should have known this.
A scene involving my agency, our mutual aid fire agencies, and our local state police, which is a very easy scenario to envision (say, a car crash near the town line), would involve three different radio bands.
There are interoperability channels designed for just such things. Everyone who has a part 90 public safety license can use them.
Project 25.
P25 is a modulation method, not a band. It can be used in VHF, UHF, SHF, whatever. And it is not the only digital system. Motorola is pushing MotoTurbo and Kenwood, I think, has NexDen. Incompatible digital is anathema to good communications, which is why the feds push P25. Anyone who buys something other than P25 is shooting themselves, and their served public, in the foot.
It operates on the same 700mHz band
700MHz.
The idea, as I understand it, is for these two things to be interoperable.
You understand wrong. FirstNet is intended to provide the large scale data on a priority basis that commercial LTE cannot. The immediate voice provided by current handheld radios is something else and has nothing to do with FirstNet. And voice doesn't need to be P25. Analog works better in many situations.
Anybody know what frequency range this spectrum is in?
It's Band 14. FirstNet has been in the works for a long time now.
You see, "independently verified" is not spelled out, but the subtext (given the jackass who's pushing this pile of shit) means that any and all science would have to verified by the EPA.
This is the same bill that has come up before, and the same lies are appearing about it again. You say "have to be verified", but the bill actually says "CAN be verified" (emphasis mine.) Do you TRULY not understand the difference between "have to be" and "can be"?
This bill says "peer reviewed science is not good enough".
Bullshit. The bill says that all science used to make laws must be presented with enough data to be verifiable. It says nothing about "peer review", because "peer review" and "verified" are two very, very different things.
"Peer-reviewed science" means that the paper has gone out to a very limited number of presumed experts in the field for them to see if there are any obvious errors. They comment on how the figures are presented, are they clear, and do they show something relevant and important? Is there an obvious flaw in the scientific method? Were the results based on incorrect or inappropriate assumptions or equations? Did the scientist ignore existing precedent that would contradict his results? And, unfortunately, many reviewers are so biased that they skewer any paper that doesn't fit their world view. (I've seen papers come back from review where you can clearly identify the reviewer based on his comments.)
But if you think ANY of the reviewers of this "peer-reviewed science" are actually verifying the RESULTS by repeating the experiment, you are a fool. The reviewers do NOT get to look at the data unless it is already in the paper (and most is not), and they do little to no manipulation of any of the data to "review" it.
No, "peer-review" and "verify" are two different things. The law deals with the ability to verify. Not "must", just "can be". This is a Good Thing, and it allows for free and open science.
Maybe something similar to the way auto manufacturers cope with the fact that California has different emissions requirements than other states.
I'm amazed that anyone here would try equating "the Internet" with some limited number of physical objects. Very expensive physical objects at that.
Think about it for a minute. What do the California laws for emissions require? Cars that are sold within the state of CA, (and licensed therein) must meet certain emissions standards, which are tested on a regular basis when you renew your vehicle registration.
The Internet is a world-wide operation, and people who live in CA may buy Internet service from a company in New York and may use a VA address when doing so. Care to explain how the ISP (which is headquartered in FL) knows which state laws to apply to which user?
Oh, I forgot. The IP address uniquely identifies each internet user, so just keep a database...
"Gravity waves" seems misleading or confusing. Maybe it stuck for historical reasons?
It stuck because it is accurate.
Labeling their cause as one force among multiple is problematic communication.
All scientific communities have their terminologies, and "gravity waves" is an accurate use of the words for fluid dynamics. It is not gravity that CAUSES the waves, it is gravity that moderates them.
Let's see if I got this straight: Cloud particles gravitationally pull on each other
No. At least not to any significant amount.
It seems we normally don't see these on Earth because our thicker atmosphere and magnetosphere overwhelm gravity's direct influence.
What is it you think that keeps our "thicker atmosphere" where it is if it isn't "gravity's direct influence"?
Gravity waves are waves in something that are moderated by the force of gravity. E.g. regular waves at the beach are gravity waves. The properties depend directly on the difference in densities between the two layers in contact. For surface waves this is air/water. For subaqueous (or "internal") waves, it is a water/water interface.
There are also infragravity waves. Those are waves created by wave-wave interactions that occur at frequencies very much below those of gravity waves. A surface gravity wave may have a period of 10-15 seconds. An infragravity wave may be 100-200 seconds in period. Think "sneaker".
And while you might think that the ripples on the surface caused by wind are called "ultragravity" waves, they are actually called "capillary waves".
The municipalities are not competing/wanting to compete with Cable TV providers or violate their contracts by laying their own fiber and providing internet.
You cannot condemn Comcast for being a rotten, expensive ISP with one voice and then deny that Comcast is an ISP with another. Yes, municipalities that are trying to run their own internet service are in DIRECT competition with a company that they have a contract with that demands all kinds of other things that the city doesn't want to provide.
The big broadband providers, including cable companies lobbied states to get special laws passed designed to kill the municipal projects.
Of course. Incumbent ISPs that have contracts that demand levels of service and types of services are at a direct disadvantage to local governments that don't have those contractual requirements. If the city wants to play in the ISP market, it should have to follow the same rules they enforce on commercial vendors -- ALL of those rules.
No: municipalities are only able to do this for Cable TV Service,
Which is how the Cable internet providers get access to the rights of way in the first place.
the franchise agreements don't apply to other services that the municipalities are not empowered to create a monopoly in for the first place.
The franchise agreements absolutely apply to services that municipalities cannot create monopolies in, like Cable TV. Exclusive franchises are a violation of federal law and have been so for a very long time.
Telecoms that put in and own fibre optics on the other hand are federally regulated and cannot be franchised by a municipality.
That's pretty funny, since I'm looking at my last CenturyLink (telecom) bill and it contains a specific line item fee for "franchise at 3%." Apparently my city can, and does, franchise the local telecom, despite this special "federal regulated" status they hold.
"highway construction project that gets federal funding"
And it is the local government that is managing the rights of way (not "highways") where "dig once" conduits will be most useful.
State highway construction is currently pretty rare (at least in my part of the country), and when it happens it covers only a short stretch of road that is being replaced outside city limits.
It's pretty useless to require "dig once conduits" for a small stretch of state highway since that is usually where the major internet distributors run fiber anyway, not the local cable company. And it would do little to nothing to help improve last mile distribution in rural areas, and nothing at all within a city.
Speculation: because the local governments have already signed their souls over.
Translation: because the local governments have already entered franchise agreements with the incumbent cable provider.
Sadly (not really), the existence of a franchise agreement between the local government and the cable company is not a reason that this is a power granted to the federal government. "We don't like the way you exercised your local prerogatives" isn't grounds for federal preemption.
Did you want federal funds to help pay for it? Okay, then you have to install a conduit.
Uhhh, pay for what? The existing rights-of-way? The feds don't pay for those.
Or, you know, you could just eliminate the laws that prohibit/restrict Municipal and/or County fiber projects.
That would be a major change to contract law. The issue with a city competing with an incumbent cable provider is one of contracts. The cable provider has a franchise that has all sorts of conditions and requirements, which would be patently unfair for the city to ignore when it wants to compete. If a company has to do X to operate within a city, then the city itself should be required to do X when it wants to do the same thing.
Of course, the big boys (Verizon et al) Hate it, because it dramatically lowers the bar to their competition.
No, they hate it for two reasons. First, it costs them a lot of money (in franchise fees, for one thing) to comply with the terms of their franchise, none of which will be an expense to the municipal provider. Second, they have to operate at a profit in order to exist; the municipality has the general fund (taxpayer's pockets) to dip into if they operate at a loss, and no requirement to be profitable at all.
And, IMHO, it's an issue for the states, not the feds. Communications which enables Interstate Commerce is not itself Interstate Commerce.
And more important, it is an issue of how a municipality manages it's own rights of way. Since the conduits will be empty, as you point out, it cannot be enabling interstate commerce.
I can see this at the state level, but not federal.
The conglomos want to get you into thinking that by bundling you're saving money when you're not.
For what definition of "save"?
For Comcast in my area, I can get Internet alone, 25MBps, for $30/month for the first 12 months, $60/month after that. I can get "140+ channels" of TV for $50/month for 12 months, $55-$75/month after that "depending on area".
I can get a bundle with both for $80/month for 12 months, $100/month after.
If I bought them separately I'd pay the same $80/month for the first 12 months, but then the rates jump to $115-$135/month, which is $15-$35 MORE than the bundled rate. So, while it is true that you don't save with a bundle for the first 12 months, the cost is considerably less after that 12 month ends.
I'd call that "saving money".
Of course, if you don't WANT TV, then you cannot possibly save money by getting TV. It's pretty obvious, it's not a "sale" if it is something you don't want. The "save money" condition is that you want both services and would buy them individually without a better priced bundle, which does save you money.
Remember, don't leave large blueprints containing intellectual property taped to the wall behind you when you log in to your terminal or all your bases will belong China.
the advantage of speaking the word versus tapping on the keyboard is that it's harder for someone else to duplicate.
And the disadvantage is that anyone within earshot can hear what your password is.
This is why I absolutely loathe voice operated call directors. I'm in an office with other people and I have to tell everyone what I'm doing, instead of simply silently pushing a few buttons. Usually it winds up with me shouting "HUMAN BEING" or "GET ME A DUCKING PERSON" when the voice detection system doesn't have the option I need.
Of course, the fact that they are poorly programmed to start with, asking questions like "are you calling about a current account or opening a new one?" and don't understand when I answer "yes".
So if you make the password itself something that would be incriminating, you could legitimately withhold it?
"You are hereby granted immunity for any criminal act for which the password itself will incriminate you." There -- your password cannot be used against you in a court of law, even if it is "I killed JustNiz in the library with a hammer."
I'm guessing this guy is buying himself an illusive and perhaps imaginary bit of safety by choosing contempt over a conviction for CP. His safety from other inmates lasts only as long as he claims he's in for "contempt of court". When it gets out that his contempt of court is because he's not revealing a password that hides CP he's a target.
What better way to prove ADA compliance than this?
But they weren't, or didn't; so we have to deal with reality.
Reality is that we're talking about a PUBLIC SCHOOL that doesn't want to teach about map projections, they want to teach about social justice. What people today know about projections is irrelevant because most people don't care and aren't in a position where they have to. It's that they aren't being taught TODAY what they are and why.
So the choice is to continue trying the same thing, over and over, again, or try something new.
"Something new" might be as simple as to teach them -- the students, who will be the citizens of tomorrow.
They are getting a more accurate depiction of the world in the aspects that matter to them (i.e., not nautics)
Yes, the "aspect" that matters to them the most is not "'nautics", it is removing an alleged imperialist plot to keep the colonies downtrodden, AND TEACHING THE STUDENTS that Mercator was a racist, along with everyone else who uses the Mercator Projection for whatever reason. That's the problem.
1. Poll people on the street. Only a tiny minority even among the educated will know about map distortion.
1. Only a tiny minority have to deal with global maps. The biggest map most people deal with regularly is a city or county map, maybe a state map. The distortions from projections on that scale are small enough to ignore or are irrelevant. And thus point 2:
2. They were, or should have been had they been paying attention, taught about projections in geography class, which is, or should have been, a mandatory middle-school class for everyone. (Seventh grade when I had it.) But since they don't use it, and don't care, they have forgotten -- which is what happens when you don't use and don't care about any topic.
Choosing a better suited projection is the most logical thing one can do.
Yes. The "most logical thing" one can do is NOT start yapping about how the Mercator projection is an imperialistic plot of the colonizing hegemony and is intended to repress "those people". The best projection is ... no projection. It's called "a globe".
Yes technically it is an innovation but unless it does something to improve the cinema experience why do I care?
Who says you have to care about any innovation? The Netflick flack is claiming there has been none, not that there has been nothing that Roger W Moore cares about. "There has been no innovation" is not the same as "there has been no innovation that I care about."
What a lot of people seem to forget is that it is not innovation we want it is useful innovation.
And the digital distribution of movie content is useful to a lot of people, just not to you. That's ok, but it doesn't mean it doesn't count at all.