Call me crazy, but I expect a teensy bit more from a graduate of a 4-year university in a math-heavy major, than I do from 4th graders or the general public.
Ok, you're crazy. I work at a University. I see graduates in math-heavy majors on a regular basis. Expect what you want; live in reality.
In a very large percentage of cities, the local government awards an exclusive franchise to one $BIG_CABLE_COMPANY.
No, they award a non-exclusive franchise. I've yet to see an exclusive one, and most cities just copy what other cities have done, changing only the relevant local bits.
A couple of cities have even turned down Google's offer of gigabit fiber because Google didn't want to pay the standard kickbacks to local politicians (aka Franchise Fees).
You mean they would have gotten a franchise had they been willing to pay the same fees that the other competitors do? The fee that is based on the use of public rights of way?
Wouldn't that be an unfair advantage and a tax-break to Google? Doesn't that also kinda disprove the claim of an exclusive franchise?
It's amazing how you expect Joe to know what the capabilities are for a private entity on a topic they know nothing about,
I expect Joe to know that 1) bandwidth is not infinite and 2) the number of days in a month are not infinite. The product of two finite numbers is another finite number. He may not understand it in those terms, but he'll understand it from other areas of life. In a car analogy, there are roads with "no speed limit". Well, yes, there actually is. "Your car's maximum speed" is a limit. At the sublime end, the speed of light is a limit, too. But at some point well below 'c', if enough people get cars that go at outrageous speeds, to the point that it impacts those who have normal cars, a speed limit will be enacted.
yet you hold the corporation in no way responsible for meeting the contractual obligation that they agreed to,
First, I didn't say that, I said he "bought into the lie" and he's an accomplice. Second, if you find a contract that truly says "unlimited data" and not some more specific description (in the contract, not the marketing material) then you might have a case.
What you really need to understand is that "unlimited" doesn't mean "infinite" or "without any limits" even. It cannot POSSIBLY mean that. No rational person could believe that a resource that has a maximum rate of transmission can be "without any limits", because that maximum rate is itself a limit. What "unlimited" means is "no arbitrary fixed limit". And sure enough, the "unlimited" I have with T-Mobile is truly not "infinite", it's "X amount at 4G, then at 2G speeds." How much can you download in a month at those rates? Do you think there is an answer to that question? Well, there isn't. The data rate a 4G/LTE system provides depends on a lot of things, including the number of other people trying to transfer data at the same time. "Up to" is a common description, but not a promise of specific transfer rates.
... even when the vast majority of people are well under their expectations.
Statistically, half the people are "under their expectations".
The $30 was for a "tiny amount of data" and all the physical plant that went into providing telephone service, and for the interconnects to the PSTN so you could call people where weren't cable customers. Someone has to manage and maintain the SIP gateways, and those people get salaries so they can feed their families.
How the fuck is Joe Shithead supposed to know this when all the marketing literature says "unlimited?" It never really was "unlimited" was it?
Nope, and Joe knew this (or should have been able to figure it out in about two minutes of thought). He bought into the lie, so he's a full participant.
As for the fraction of the limited data that can be downloaded, it's called "capacity planning", and it is a requirement for any service provider. No telephone company or ISP can do 100% capacity for every customer, because nobody would want to pay the cost of providing that kind of service that wouldn't be used. Every similar provider has based their plant on statistics of expected use, and those who go far above the upper norm are creating a problem.
Big Pharma seems more interested in tweaking drugs just out of patent to market new patentable ones, and to make new drugs for very uncommon diseases (restless leg? overactive bladder?), and marketing the hell out of both.
Except quite often they find that the drug they've just developed for one thing also functions in another. For example:
Lyrica is used to control seizures and to treat fibromyalgia. It is also used to treat pain caused by nerve damage in people with diabetes (diabetic neuropathy), herpes zoster (post-herpetic neuralgia, or neuropathic pain associated with spinal cord injury.
You use Restless Leg Syndrome (RLS) as an example. There are several drugs that can be prescribed. All of them are multi-use. Xanax (anti-anxiety, RLS). Vicodan (pain relief, RLS). Catapres (high blood pressure, ADHD, narcotic withdrawal, stop smoking, hot flashes, and RLS). Requip (Parkinson's, RLS).
And then they turn around and claim that the high prices charged for these patented drugs are because they have to pay for R&D for the unprofitable drugs.
Research isn't free. Someone has to pay for it. If you spend a billion on developing the next best thing, but your clinical tries end with a huge number of unexpected, serious side effects that will make your new drug unusable, does the magical drug development fairy put a billion under your pillow to make up for it?
But instead they spend money at cheap, incremental development
Getting an additional use approved costs money.
and even more at marketing and lobbying,
Marketing is a cost that is recouped by additional sales.
and record record profits measured in tens of gigabucks.
Pfizer's first Q earnings for 2015 were $2.4B, which netted shareholders $0.36 on a stock that was selling at $34. That's about 4% per year return on the investment. Not "tens of gigabucks".
Eli Lilly had net income of $2.4B for all of 2014.
It comes under taxing and spending for the general welfare.
If it was truly general enough a need that it would be considered "general welfare", a private company would be happy to step in and fill the need. Unless, of course, there was some governmental regulation that stopped or limited them. THAT is what I expect from government -- get out of the way of people who can provide things that are a general need. But OTOH, getting in the way of people who want to fleece the public and not actually fulfill the need is also a government function. It's a fine balance, and people who want something generally consider it a "general need" so that they can justify the government giving it to them. After all, if they want it, it must be something everyone wants, right?
The western world has enjoyed adding a bit of color and play to simple text messaging by mixing words and pictures for centuries. Rebus
/picture of University of Oregon mascot/ - 'ck' +/picture of people having sex/ - 'ck' +/picture of happy person/ -/5280 feet/
Dufus.
Which took less time to type and was easier for you to understand? Which used a standard 101 key keyboard versus a huge keyboard that takes an hour to find the right character?
The geek's distaste for emoji is irrational. The use of pictographs to supplement and enrich terse messages sent over low bandwidth connections
Why yes, sending an image instead of five or ten one byte characters is soo much more efficient. Or using a 3,000 element character set instead of 128.
If you didn't get it at all: "duck" - ck = du. "fuck" - ck = fu. "smile" - "mile" = s. du-fu-s.
but I hope that they will tell the world not only about our special features but also something about our strengths
Finland's strength is in abandoning modern human languages and reverting to a hieroglyphic method of communication similar to the ancient Egyptians. Their strength is also in eliminating the need for language or spelling classes in their educational system, thereby saving tons of money. 0xffe3 0xf329 0x3f87!
Except it doesn't really spread that way. It uses "Android Beam" or sideloading to transfer, which means that the recipient has to have beaming turned on and the sender has to take specific actions to start the transfer, or the recipient has to load the app himself.
I already consider it nefarious from the intent of the authors. They are smart guys who know what they're doing, so they can't claim it was an innocent creation. Imagine a local cell outage where all of the devices in the outage area are suddenly funneling all their data through the one poor sot who installed this thing and lives close enough to a working cell site to get service. "Poof" goes his data cap...
which is why you give a hourmail address for shipment tracking.
Yes, there are several services that can be used to avoid the problem, but the claim was that no spammer uses a real address, and that claim is just patently absurd. Which is more than proven by the need to have services like hourmail, yes?
That is the very definition of not spam. You have an actual commercial dealing with the company
It is the very definition of spam. Unsolicited commercial bulk email.
and you very likely gave them permission to send you email.
At no time did I give them permission to send me UCE. Not once. Each first appearance nets them an explicit "send nothing further here", so even any pretense you can create that has me giving them permission is unwound by that followup. I have yet to find one that stops when told to.
At the bottom of those emails is an unsubscribe link.
A very convenient link NOT at the bottom, which means you have to read through the email to find it, and then most times it does absolutely NOTHING when you access it. Such as GearBest's link which results in nothing but a blank page. Or Walmart's, which as I recall lets you opt out and then continues to send spam long after multiple opt-outs.
And in the case of GearBest, their email is malformed to begin with and I must search through raw HTML to find any link before I can waste my time accessing it. Many such spammers send HTML email that is malformed like that, or malformed enough that I get to see the HTML source. Such fun.
The fact that you think that having an "unsubscribe" link is sufficient to justify unsolicited commercial email spews is fascinating.
Spam is non solicited commercial email,
I know that. Don't tell me the obvious.
if you have a relationship with the company, it is by definition not spam.
That is a lie. Having a "commercial relationship" with a company does not grant them permission to send unsolicited bulk commercial advertising to your email address.
Very likely there was a defaulted checked box that said "we can send you email"
Sometimes, and all times it is unchecked prior to proceeding. Are you trying to claim that because they showed me a pre-selected opt-in menu item that they can spam me ceaselessly forever even when that item is subsequently de-selected? That's pathetic.
there was also likely a box for "our third party buddies can send you email" and you left them checked.
You are wrong. My response was to the statement that no spammers use a real address in their email, and I have proof of the opposite. Whatever guesses you want to make to justify the spam or make it my fault are just a waste of time. If you've never come across a company that takes an email address as part of a one-time transaction and then starts spamming it, that's nice for you. I've seen it a lot of times, and other people have too. That's why there are systems like "hourmail", I think it was, that someone else referred to. People don't need solutions to problems that don't exist.
Unfortunately, I know of no spam emails that don't forge the from address.
I know lots of them. I bought something once from Walmart online and now I get spam from them. I once bought something from GearBest and I'm now on their endless spam list. The number of companies that think "he gave us an email address because we forced him to, with the excuse it was for sending him tracking info on his shipment, so we can now send every bit of advertising we can think of to him" is uncountable.
I think the government agency that didn't know anything about the RADIO station was the FCC.
Don't be silly. The FCC knew about the station. It has an FCC issued authorization to build and operate the station. Check Wikipedia for info and links to the FCC database on them.
What the FCC didn't pay any attention to was the content of the station or who was paying for it. Do you want them to regulate what format and content your local radio stations can air? I don't think so.
That's, uh, the FCC's job, and they weren't doing it.
The FCCs job is to make sure they operate within the FCC regulations as to technical and other standards. They were doing that. Its the FEC and other agencies that deal with people acting on behalf of foreign agencies for political purposes.
I think a radio station naming itself "China Radio Washington" is quite open about who they are speaking for.
Not really. At a basic level, it's either China or Washington (state or district?).
At a more serious level, naming oneself "China Radio" doesn't mean you are speaking on behalf of the government of China (either People's Republic of or just Republic of). In fact, the fact there are two "Chinas" really does point out the inability to assume who is being officially represented, if anyone.
Just from the name, you have no knowledge of who is paying for the speech, if anyone. And the laws don't care what the name of the group is, only that people acting on behalf of foreign governments register when they attempt to influence politicians.
Nonsequitor. It doesn't matter that they've already paid, the question was, is it constitutional that they have to pay? Last week, last month, last year, it was still a payment to be able to use the public airwaves to speak.
Separate is the licence based on content.
I have no idea what this is supposed to mean. What "license based on content"? Not an FCC license, since that license isn't based on content. The registration of the person making the speech on behalf of a foreign government?Also not based on content, and it isn't a license.
Restrictions on anyone's rights are a restriction on everyone's rights.
Political campaign finance reform is a very large, very broad sword that is wielded with unexpected results.
Current rules require donors be identified for certain contributions. Most people think this is a good idea -- knowing that the Koch brothers are paying for an advertising campaign for certain candidates, for example.
The registration in this instance isn't prohibiting any speech, it just identifies the paid source of the speech.
Other than the "clear and present danger" exception for things like yelling fire in a theater, everyone, and every organization, should be free to say whatever they want.
Free as in beer, or free as in ? Is it unconstitutional that WCRW needs to pay licensing fees to the federal government in order to use the public airwaves to speak?
You're not exempt from that rule just because you're not physically in the aircraft.
No, I'm exempt from that rule because I'm flying a model aircraft. Actually the regs say if you don't have an engine-driven electrical system you're exempt (the engine is electric; it doesn't drive the electrical system)
You are flying an aircraft. 14CFR91.130 contains no exemptions for aircraft without electrical systems. You need to be in two-way communications with ATC -- unless you get an ATC authorization.
14CFR91.215 does not completely exempt aircraft without electrical systems from the transponder requirement. "This requirement applies--
(1) All aircraft. In Class A, Class B, and Class C airspace areas;"
No, they're not being registered as aircraft. They're just being registered.
They're aircraft, and they're being registered. What are they being registered as? Pixie dust, or unicorns?
Perhaps you aren't aware but commercial use already requires registration AS AIRCRAFT, in the existing registration system. I know someone who is having to do that, including getting airworthiness certs and statements from the manufacturer that his aircraft has not been registered in another country before.
The current N-number registration system is not cast in stone, and it is trivial to create an extended version with registrations that start with N and have 10 digits. Or 15.
The FAA designates the beginning of "navigable airspace" as beginning at 500 ft, no aircraft is supposed to fly below that unless coming in for a landing or on private property
The FAA regulates airspace to the ground. And there are aircraft that can fly below 500 feet. Your Causby reference claims it was the congress that defined it as "500 feet", not the FAA.
People actually own the air somewhere 83 ft and above feet from their land, court cases haven't narrowed it in anymore than that.
The court case you are thinking of did not say that. It was a case where the plaintive claimed damages from an aircraft at 83 feet above his chickens when that aircraft was causing significant disruption to that use. It didn't even begin to define "ownership" of airspace, and would have had a hard time getting past the fact that the FAA has regulatory authority to the surface.
Prospective delivery services would of course have a legal rider attached to the purchase requiring the homeowner give permission to the company to enter their property (wherever that begins) for purposes of delivery.
There are very few cities where one person's property is more than 500 feet away from a "person, vessel, vehicle or structure" on someone else's property. You don't get to give permission for an aircraft to operate within that distance from my property, sir.
If you are going to use 47CFR91.119 as justification for a "500 foot floor to navigable airspace" claim, then I will use it to keep you from getting drone deliveries of whatever Amazon toy you just bought.
Most departments allow the instructors to select their own texts for their courses.
This is a multi-section course. That means there are more than one instructor. It is nonsense to have one section of a course using one book and another section using a different book. It is a complete waste of time to have a student go to an instructor and ask for help, and then the instructor has to figure out which book the student has and how that book explains things.
He also demonstrated that the alternative book and additional sources covered all materials required by the syllabus and in the more expensive book.
The FA reports that the book in use was written specifically to cover material requested by other departments at Fullerton.
As for "additional sources", have you never encountered a wonderful website that describes something in just the perfect way, you bookmark it, and a year later you go back to read it again and it is gone? I've found more of those than I can remember. Yes, let's force every instructor to go searching the web for "extra materials" that are appropriate every year, instead of using a book that already has it in permanent, printed form.
This is clearly an attempt by the department leadership to line their own pockets by forcing the purchase of their own material.
The book that was selected by a departmental vote has been in use for more than 20 years, and the author recused himself from deciding on both the use of the new text and reapproving the old one for conflict of interest.
The summary has been written to inflame, but it made the mistake of leaving in the information that it is a multi-section course, and linked to the CSUF report on the issue.
I signed a contract with my cable internet service. In exchange for $x/mo, they provide me with 730 hours of service.
I bet that's not what the contract actually says. I don't remember any guaranteed uptime when I signed with Comcast. The business service I have with Charter doesn't even have a 100% guaranteed uptime.
Slashdot Mirror
"==" Equality "===" Equivalence
So you would have moved the confusion up one character. Instead of a confusion between "=" and "==", you'd have it between "==" and "===".
Call me crazy, but I expect a teensy bit more from a graduate of a 4-year university in a math-heavy major, than I do from 4th graders or the general public.
Ok, you're crazy. I work at a University. I see graduates in math-heavy majors on a regular basis. Expect what you want; live in reality.
In a very large percentage of cities, the local government awards an exclusive franchise to one $BIG_CABLE_COMPANY.
No, they award a non-exclusive franchise. I've yet to see an exclusive one, and most cities just copy what other cities have done, changing only the relevant local bits.
A couple of cities have even turned down Google's offer of gigabit fiber because Google didn't want to pay the standard kickbacks to local politicians (aka Franchise Fees).
You mean they would have gotten a franchise had they been willing to pay the same fees that the other competitors do? The fee that is based on the use of public rights of way?
Wouldn't that be an unfair advantage and a tax-break to Google? Doesn't that also kinda disprove the claim of an exclusive franchise?
It's amazing how you expect Joe to know what the capabilities are for a private entity on a topic they know nothing about,
I expect Joe to know that 1) bandwidth is not infinite and 2) the number of days in a month are not infinite. The product of two finite numbers is another finite number. He may not understand it in those terms, but he'll understand it from other areas of life. In a car analogy, there are roads with "no speed limit". Well, yes, there actually is. "Your car's maximum speed" is a limit. At the sublime end, the speed of light is a limit, too. But at some point well below 'c', if enough people get cars that go at outrageous speeds, to the point that it impacts those who have normal cars, a speed limit will be enacted.
yet you hold the corporation in no way responsible for meeting the contractual obligation that they agreed to,
First, I didn't say that, I said he "bought into the lie" and he's an accomplice. Second, if you find a contract that truly says "unlimited data" and not some more specific description (in the contract, not the marketing material) then you might have a case.
What you really need to understand is that "unlimited" doesn't mean "infinite" or "without any limits" even. It cannot POSSIBLY mean that. No rational person could believe that a resource that has a maximum rate of transmission can be "without any limits", because that maximum rate is itself a limit. What "unlimited" means is "no arbitrary fixed limit". And sure enough, the "unlimited" I have with T-Mobile is truly not "infinite", it's "X amount at 4G, then at 2G speeds." How much can you download in a month at those rates? Do you think there is an answer to that question? Well, there isn't. The data rate a 4G/LTE system provides depends on a lot of things, including the number of other people trying to transfer data at the same time. "Up to" is a common description, but not a promise of specific transfer rates.
Statistically, half the people are "under their expectations".
the phone part was $30 for a tiny amount of data.
The $30 was for a "tiny amount of data" and all the physical plant that went into providing telephone service, and for the interconnects to the PSTN so you could call people where weren't cable customers. Someone has to manage and maintain the SIP gateways, and those people get salaries so they can feed their families.
How the fuck is Joe Shithead supposed to know this when all the marketing literature says "unlimited?" It never really was "unlimited" was it?
Nope, and Joe knew this (or should have been able to figure it out in about two minutes of thought). He bought into the lie, so he's a full participant.
As for the fraction of the limited data that can be downloaded, it's called "capacity planning", and it is a requirement for any service provider. No telephone company or ISP can do 100% capacity for every customer, because nobody would want to pay the cost of providing that kind of service that wouldn't be used. Every similar provider has based their plant on statistics of expected use, and those who go far above the upper norm are creating a problem.
Big Pharma seems more interested in tweaking drugs just out of patent to market new patentable ones, and to make new drugs for very uncommon diseases (restless leg? overactive bladder?), and marketing the hell out of both.
Except quite often they find that the drug they've just developed for one thing also functions in another. For example:
You use Restless Leg Syndrome (RLS) as an example. There are several drugs that can be prescribed. All of them are multi-use. Xanax (anti-anxiety, RLS). Vicodan (pain relief, RLS). Catapres (high blood pressure, ADHD, narcotic withdrawal, stop smoking, hot flashes, and RLS). Requip (Parkinson's, RLS).
And then they turn around and claim that the high prices charged for these patented drugs are because they have to pay for R&D for the unprofitable drugs.
Research isn't free. Someone has to pay for it. If you spend a billion on developing the next best thing, but your clinical tries end with a huge number of unexpected, serious side effects that will make your new drug unusable, does the magical drug development fairy put a billion under your pillow to make up for it?
But instead they spend money at cheap, incremental development
Getting an additional use approved costs money.
and even more at marketing and lobbying,
Marketing is a cost that is recouped by additional sales.
and record record profits measured in tens of gigabucks.
Pfizer's first Q earnings for 2015 were $2.4B, which netted shareholders $0.36 on a stock that was selling at $34. That's about 4% per year return on the investment. Not "tens of gigabucks".
Eli Lilly had net income of $2.4B for all of 2014.
It comes under taxing and spending for the general welfare.
If it was truly general enough a need that it would be considered "general welfare", a private company would be happy to step in and fill the need. Unless, of course, there was some governmental regulation that stopped or limited them. THAT is what I expect from government -- get out of the way of people who can provide things that are a general need. But OTOH, getting in the way of people who want to fleece the public and not actually fulfill the need is also a government function. It's a fine balance, and people who want something generally consider it a "general need" so that they can justify the government giving it to them. After all, if they want it, it must be something everyone wants, right?
The western world has enjoyed adding a bit of color and play to simple text messaging by mixing words and pictures for centuries. Rebus
Dufus.
Which took less time to type and was easier for you to understand? Which used a standard 101 key keyboard versus a huge keyboard that takes an hour to find the right character?
The geek's distaste for emoji is irrational. The use of pictographs to supplement and enrich terse messages sent over low bandwidth connections
Why yes, sending an image instead of five or ten one byte characters is soo much more efficient. Or using a 3,000 element character set instead of 128.
If you didn't get it at all: "duck" - ck = du. "fuck" - ck = fu. "smile" - "mile" = s. du-fu-s.
but I hope that they will tell the world not only about our special features but also something about our strengths
Finland's strength is in abandoning modern human languages and reverting to a hieroglyphic method of communication similar to the ancient Egyptians. Their strength is also in eliminating the need for language or spelling classes in their educational system, thereby saving tons of money. 0xffe3 0xf329 0x3f87!
Does seem that it would be a good vector for malware embedded in a compromised copy though.
No more so than any app that is discovered by "word of mouth" and downloaded from someone's website -- or passed around from user to user.
By the way, here is a link to an amazing app I found on the web. It's really cool, give it a try and let me know how you like it!
spreads virally,
Except it doesn't really spread that way. It uses "Android Beam" or sideloading to transfer, which means that the recipient has to have beaming turned on and the sender has to take specific actions to start the transfer, or the recipient has to load the app himself.
I already consider it nefarious from the intent of the authors. They are smart guys who know what they're doing, so they can't claim it was an innocent creation. Imagine a local cell outage where all of the devices in the outage area are suddenly funneling all their data through the one poor sot who installed this thing and lives close enough to a working cell site to get service. "Poof" goes his data cap ...
which is why you give a hourmail address for shipment tracking.
Yes, there are several services that can be used to avoid the problem, but the claim was that no spammer uses a real address, and that claim is just patently absurd. Which is more than proven by the need to have services like hourmail, yes?
That is the very definition of not spam. You have an actual commercial dealing with the company
It is the very definition of spam. Unsolicited commercial bulk email.
and you very likely gave them permission to send you email.
At no time did I give them permission to send me UCE. Not once. Each first appearance nets them an explicit "send nothing further here", so even any pretense you can create that has me giving them permission is unwound by that followup. I have yet to find one that stops when told to.
At the bottom of those emails is an unsubscribe link.
A very convenient link NOT at the bottom, which means you have to read through the email to find it, and then most times it does absolutely NOTHING when you access it. Such as GearBest's link which results in nothing but a blank page. Or Walmart's, which as I recall lets you opt out and then continues to send spam long after multiple opt-outs.
And in the case of GearBest, their email is malformed to begin with and I must search through raw HTML to find any link before I can waste my time accessing it. Many such spammers send HTML email that is malformed like that, or malformed enough that I get to see the HTML source. Such fun.
The fact that you think that having an "unsubscribe" link is sufficient to justify unsolicited commercial email spews is fascinating.
Spam is non solicited commercial email,
I know that. Don't tell me the obvious.
if you have a relationship with the company, it is by definition not spam.
That is a lie. Having a "commercial relationship" with a company does not grant them permission to send unsolicited bulk commercial advertising to your email address.
Very likely there was a defaulted checked box that said "we can send you email"
Sometimes, and all times it is unchecked prior to proceeding. Are you trying to claim that because they showed me a pre-selected opt-in menu item that they can spam me ceaselessly forever even when that item is subsequently de-selected? That's pathetic.
there was also likely a box for "our third party buddies can send you email" and you left them checked.
You are wrong. My response was to the statement that no spammers use a real address in their email, and I have proof of the opposite. Whatever guesses you want to make to justify the spam or make it my fault are just a waste of time. If you've never come across a company that takes an email address as part of a one-time transaction and then starts spamming it, that's nice for you. I've seen it a lot of times, and other people have too. That's why there are systems like "hourmail", I think it was, that someone else referred to. People don't need solutions to problems that don't exist.
Unfortunately, I know of no spam emails that don't forge the from address.
I know lots of them. I bought something once from Walmart online and now I get spam from them. I once bought something from GearBest and I'm now on their endless spam list. The number of companies that think "he gave us an email address because we forced him to, with the excuse it was for sending him tracking info on his shipment, so we can now send every bit of advertising we can think of to him" is uncountable.
I think the government agency that didn't know anything about the RADIO station was the FCC.
Don't be silly. The FCC knew about the station. It has an FCC issued authorization to build and operate the station. Check Wikipedia for info and links to the FCC database on them.
What the FCC didn't pay any attention to was the content of the station or who was paying for it. Do you want them to regulate what format and content your local radio stations can air? I don't think so.
That's, uh, the FCC's job, and they weren't doing it.
The FCCs job is to make sure they operate within the FCC regulations as to technical and other standards. They were doing that. Its the FEC and other agencies that deal with people acting on behalf of foreign agencies for political purposes.
I think a radio station naming itself "China Radio Washington" is quite open about who they are speaking for.
Not really. At a basic level, it's either China or Washington (state or district?).
At a more serious level, naming oneself "China Radio" doesn't mean you are speaking on behalf of the government of China (either People's Republic of or just Republic of). In fact, the fact there are two "Chinas" really does point out the inability to assume who is being officially represented, if anyone.
Just from the name, you have no knowledge of who is paying for the speech, if anyone. And the laws don't care what the name of the group is, only that people acting on behalf of foreign governments register when they attempt to influence politicians.
WCRW already paid for the radio license.
Nonsequitor. It doesn't matter that they've already paid, the question was, is it constitutional that they have to pay? Last week, last month, last year, it was still a payment to be able to use the public airwaves to speak.
Separate is the licence based on content.
I have no idea what this is supposed to mean. What "license based on content"? Not an FCC license, since that license isn't based on content. The registration of the person making the speech on behalf of a foreign government?Also not based on content, and it isn't a license.
Restrictions on anyone's rights are a restriction on everyone's rights.
Political campaign finance reform is a very large, very broad sword that is wielded with unexpected results.
Current rules require donors be identified for certain contributions. Most people think this is a good idea -- knowing that the Koch brothers are paying for an advertising campaign for certain candidates, for example.
The registration in this instance isn't prohibiting any speech, it just identifies the paid source of the speech.
Other than the "clear and present danger" exception for things like yelling fire in a theater, everyone, and every organization, should be free to say whatever they want.
Free as in beer, or free as in ? Is it unconstitutional that WCRW needs to pay licensing fees to the federal government in order to use the public airwaves to speak?
You're not exempt from that rule just because you're not physically in the aircraft.
No, I'm exempt from that rule because I'm flying a model aircraft. Actually the regs say if you don't have an engine-driven electrical system you're exempt (the engine is electric; it doesn't drive the electrical system)
You are flying an aircraft. 14CFR91.130 contains no exemptions for aircraft without electrical systems. You need to be in two-way communications with ATC -- unless you get an ATC authorization.
14CFR91.215 does not completely exempt aircraft without electrical systems from the transponder requirement. "This requirement applies-- (1) All aircraft. In Class A, Class B, and Class C airspace areas;"
It's not trivial; it would literally take an act of Congress.
Maybe someone could appoint a group to study the problem and come up with a way of implementing it? Oh wait ... they already have.
No, they're not being registered as aircraft. They're just being registered.
They're aircraft, and they're being registered. What are they being registered as? Pixie dust, or unicorns?
Perhaps you aren't aware but commercial use already requires registration AS AIRCRAFT, in the existing registration system. I know someone who is having to do that, including getting airworthiness certs and statements from the manufacturer that his aircraft has not been registered in another country before.
The current N-number registration system is not cast in stone, and it is trivial to create an extended version with registrations that start with N and have 10 digits. Or 15.
The FAA designates the beginning of "navigable airspace" as beginning at 500 ft, no aircraft is supposed to fly below that unless coming in for a landing or on private property
The FAA regulates airspace to the ground. And there are aircraft that can fly below 500 feet. Your Causby reference claims it was the congress that defined it as "500 feet", not the FAA.
People actually own the air somewhere 83 ft and above feet from their land, court cases haven't narrowed it in anymore than that.
The court case you are thinking of did not say that. It was a case where the plaintive claimed damages from an aircraft at 83 feet above his chickens when that aircraft was causing significant disruption to that use. It didn't even begin to define "ownership" of airspace, and would have had a hard time getting past the fact that the FAA has regulatory authority to the surface.
Prospective delivery services would of course have a legal rider attached to the purchase requiring the homeowner give permission to the company to enter their property (wherever that begins) for purposes of delivery.
There are very few cities where one person's property is more than 500 feet away from a "person, vessel, vehicle or structure" on someone else's property. You don't get to give permission for an aircraft to operate within that distance from my property, sir. If you are going to use 47CFR91.119 as justification for a "500 foot floor to navigable airspace" claim, then I will use it to keep you from getting drone deliveries of whatever Amazon toy you just bought.
Most departments allow the instructors to select their own texts for their courses.
This is a multi-section course. That means there are more than one instructor. It is nonsense to have one section of a course using one book and another section using a different book. It is a complete waste of time to have a student go to an instructor and ask for help, and then the instructor has to figure out which book the student has and how that book explains things.
He also demonstrated that the alternative book and additional sources covered all materials required by the syllabus and in the more expensive book.
The FA reports that the book in use was written specifically to cover material requested by other departments at Fullerton.
As for "additional sources", have you never encountered a wonderful website that describes something in just the perfect way, you bookmark it, and a year later you go back to read it again and it is gone? I've found more of those than I can remember. Yes, let's force every instructor to go searching the web for "extra materials" that are appropriate every year, instead of using a book that already has it in permanent, printed form.
This is clearly an attempt by the department leadership to line their own pockets by forcing the purchase of their own material.
The book that was selected by a departmental vote has been in use for more than 20 years, and the author recused himself from deciding on both the use of the new text and reapproving the old one for conflict of interest.
The summary has been written to inflame, but it made the mistake of leaving in the information that it is a multi-section course, and linked to the CSUF report on the issue.
I signed a contract with my cable internet service. In exchange for $x/mo, they provide me with 730 hours of service.
I bet that's not what the contract actually says. I don't remember any guaranteed uptime when I signed with Comcast. The business service I have with Charter doesn't even have a 100% guaranteed uptime.