In America, there is a higher law governing the rule of law. The Supreme Court is the only court authorized to address that.
So all those circuit courts that keep coming up with claims that this or that are unconstitutional are, what, imposters? Perhaps unconstitutional themselves? An interesting argument.
That's not really true. The number of users equals the lesser of the number of people willing to pay for the spaces and the number of spaces.
That's not really true, either. The number of users of parking spaces will be many times the number of spaces. Each space will be used multiple times a day. Those people are all users, just not simultaneously. If you force ten percent of those users to go elsewhere because the price is too high, you've lost ten percent of your users. It doesn't matter to the local shop owner if one space turns over 10 times in a day, those are 10 users that can come to his shop, versus one space that turns over only 8 times a day. That's two fewer potential customers, multiplied by the number of spaces in the area. (I'll point out that this auction system reduces the turnover, so it has the same effect on the local businesses.)
If you make the price high enough on an hour meter, you will increase the number of people who will not simply drive away from time left on the meter. They've paid for an hour, they might as well use it. That reduces the number of users as well.
And, of course, you will lose completely those who would have tried coming downtown to shop if the cost of parking had not become too high to justify it. Parking at the mall is free even if the stores are mostly cookie-cutter chains. The attraction of a boutique becomes much less when it becomes difficult to physically get there. You have to really want to go to that specific store to pay inflated parking meter rates, and that will hurt all the stores in the area. (I really love browsing Powells, but I would never go there if the parking was artificially inflated in price with the specific goal of reducing demand.)
Conversely, "free parking" doesn't mean you can cram more cars into the same number of spaces.
Can you show me where I said it did? Your straw man is very flimsy.
If you've got empty spaces, sure, you can get more people in by lowering the price. But that's not the problem here.
You're right, that isn't the problem here. The problem here is inflating the prices and driving people away, not trying to attract more. And the original problem is increasing the price by running a private auction for a public resource.
Based on all the money that visitors bring into a city from tourism and just casual visits. San Fran, in particular, is a tourist town. Come see the sites, but don't expect to be able to park -- that's not very tourist friendly. It is those casual visitors who are most unlikely to know the public transportation system and least able to make use of it, therefore most likely to want to drive themselves. (Yes, taxis are an option, but increasing the cost to visitors is increasing the cost to visitors and pushing them away, whether it's a $5 parking meter or a $10 cab ride you force them to pay.)
Commuters are willing to pay big bucks for parking
We're not talking about commuters, we're talking about visitors. Commuters are likely to use the train and take the bus, or to rent parking from a commercial parking service. They aren't likely to be casual transient parkers or even use this app -- they need to be at work on time and they can't depend on the vagaries of a parking space auction to find a space.
And those casual visitors are NOT willing to pay "big bucks" to park. If I knew it was going to cost me big bucks to park at places I am interested in visiting in some city I'm passing through, I will forgo the pleasure of paying big bucks and go elsewhere where my custom is appreciated. (Example: I visit Powells in Portland only because I know that parking is cheap and easy in front of the store -- and that's the technical bookstore, not the big one, where parking is expensive and limited, where I do NOT go for that reason.)
You have a strange definition of "benefit" that is based on inefficiency.
Why yes, maximal efficiency means forcing everyone to do things the way you want them to instead of allowing someone to drop by a store on the way by because they are attracted by the sign, or to visit the store in your city because they happen to be there instead of going somewhere else.
The very act of pricing public parking to reduce demand means you are reducing demand BY CHOICE, so you really can't argue that you haven't reduced the number of users. If you reduce the number of users, you reduce the number of casual visitors, and casual visitors have money in their pockets that they get to keep when they don't spend it in your stores.
This is not rocket science. Keeping people from visiting some parts of town because parking is too expensive is why businesses fail. A business that relies on customers to survive kind of requires customers to survive.
If you go online and say "I'll sell you access to a public parking space", you have clearly demonstrated the intent to sell a public parking space. You claimed that it would be hard to prove intent, and your argument is patently absurd. Intent is easy to prove. The sole purpose for the app is to facilitate that sale via auction. Using that app in the way it was intended shows a clear intent to do what the app is designed to let people do.
Only if you use the app AND break the law
You do not need to break the law to have intent. That's why they call it "intent".
It doesn't matter "prove intent" but the law is not broken.
Yes, intent to break the law is, in many cases, breaking the law. But the issue was proving intent, and simply using the app proves intent.
As long as it wants. THAT'S. ALL. IT. DOES.
That is not true. The seller is also preventing the free use of the public resource by others, not just selling the information that he is leaving the spot. In fact, he has NOT left the spot when the auction is held, he's only promising to leave AFTER THE BUYER SHOWS UP TO CLAIM IT. So no, the "information" is not all that is involved.
That's a completely different issue. I wasn't arguing about the viability of the business. Just about whether it was actually illegal.
I responded specifically to your claim that it was hard to prove intent. It is trivial to prove intent simply by showing use of an app that allows you to go online and sell access to the parking space you are currently occupying.
And inherent in that action (holding the space) lies the viability of the business model. To have any value any information you claim is being sold must have a significant lifetime. The buyer is not just buying the information that you are leaving your parking space, he is buying your time to stay there until he gets there.
Claiming is it just "selling information" is absurd. Nobody would pay for information that anyone within fifty feet of the space can see for themselves, and which would be invalid within 30 seconds after you leave. The only value to the service is if the seller stays in the space until the buyer shows up. So no, the business would not be in existence "as long as it wants", because nobody would use the app unless they got something of value for their money, and no honest person would try auctioning off a parking space if they weren't intending to provide the product they were selling, which is not just "information" that they're leaving the space, it is the space itself. And no seller would get paid if the buyer showed up and found that someone else had beaten them to the spot. I don't know what you think a viable business is, but this is a quintessential non-viable one -- without the act of conversion of public parking spaces to private resources for sale.
What it cannot do is (1) regulate the conduct of persons outside of its bounds who want information about those parking spaces,
I would love to see the business plan you would write that is based on facilitating the selling of physical access to a fixed location where neither the seller nor the buyer are actually in the jurisdiction of the municipality that governs that space. It would seem that if the seller is not in the space at the time of the auction he has no control over who is there, and if the buyer is not there to use it it has no value to him. I imagine you could find a few people who would be dishonest enough to try auctioning something they don't control, and stupid enough to bid on something they aren't capable of using, but not enough to make a profit from it.
How is the city going to detect illegal activity, when it can't snoop on wireless traffic without a warrant?
Of course the only way to detect this activity is to sniff wireless packets.
Third, the city is the cause of this market in the first place.
Yes, by implementing public parking they are the proximal cause of people abusing the public parking system. The trivial solution is to simply remove all public parking.
Fourth, their city council is stupid for doing so: they are dissuading people from coming into their city
Really? There are businesses in the big city near here that I would never bother visiting if I knew that the only way to get a parking space was by winning an auction from a scalper. Would you be happy to come to an area and start looking for a space to park, just to find that half the people parked there are only there because they are waiting for the winning bidders in their auction to show up and have no other interest in parking there? No, honestly, I don't care if you would like it or not, I know I would not.
The city has a vested interest in keeping public parking available to the public and not allowing others to convert it into a private system. It would be inarguably against the law for someone to put barracades on the entrances to a city parking facility and charge people $5 to enter. This is not much different.
The "it costs us $.50/hour to maintain a parking space, but we'll charge $1 or $2 per hour because we can" price.
The real issue is that SF doesnt seem to give a shit that they are fucking the local residents (by taxation) for the benefit of out of town visitors to their city (who dont pay SF taxes but enjoy the under-priced parking spots that those SF taxes subsidize)
If SF is charging below cost, that's the SF council's fault. If they're charging at cost, then the city overall benefits because those visitors bring in money that they spend at local businesses. And that happens to be the reason for free parking (if there is any) in the first place.
If efficiency is really the goal, then the city of SF should raise the fee for parking to a market rate. But I suspect that certain interest groups would oppose that...
Yes, like the public who pay taxes that support the system and think that public resources should be available to the people who pay to create them at cost and not some inflated rate.
You want inflated parking rates and profit, buy some land and make it a private parking lot.
But that would mean you -- not the winner of the auction -- were breaking the law. And it would be hard to prove. You fed the meter properly, you're having lunch. Big deal. In order to prove a violation you'd have to prove intent, which is seldom easy.
You're kidding, right? As soon as you use the app you've proven intent. You can't go online and say "I'll sell this space to the highest bidder" and then claim you didn't intend to sell the space to the highest bidder. That's just nuts.
Having said that, I grant that it could be used in ways that are likely illegal... like holding the spot for the person who won the auction.
That's the intent of the service. How long do you think such a service would last if all it did was sell "information" about where someone was leaving a parking spot? The buyer would show up and someone who didn't pay would have already taken it. If it is truly a busy area, then there are going to be people who are watching everyone who approaches any parked car like a hawk, and unless your buyer was also doing that (which defeats the reason to buy the information) he's not going to get an honestly vacated space.
Why would anyone in their right mind bid on "information" that everyone in within fifty feet of the seller can see for himself, and would be there to take advantage of long before any auction could take place, much less the winner driving to the location to accept his prize? The information is worthless within 30 seconds of it appearing; it's only the physical space that makes it valuable.
All that needs to happen is that the server gets moved offshore, and the app be made as a Web app so it survives being pulled from Apple's store.
The problem with the "just move the server offshore" answer is that the system depends on having a local actor -- the person blocking the parking space until the buyer shows up. You can't outsource or offshore that part of the process.
They don't upgrade their infrastructure if they have monopoly, or the customer has no real choice. All your examples are of monopoly situation.
My examples were monopoly situations but the lack of "upgrades" were not because it was a monopoly, it was because nobody could afford the service if it were upgraded to be "100% of peak possible demand". Running 100 long distance trunks to serve a 100 person central office would be "100% peak possible demand", but it would be outrageously expensive.
Such designs are still in place today, and not because of any monopoly. When a municipality puts in a new public safety radio system, for example, they don't build to 100% possible peak (every radio trying to transmit at the same time), they build to some reasonable percentage that will provide what they decide is an acceptable level of service for most of the time.
Our two local counties are building up a 700MHz trunked public service system. Each tower in that system has just five frequencies. That's how many people it can serve at one time. (Yeah, Phase II TDMA makes that ten. Not a significant difference in a city of 50,000.) If we ever have a disaster, it will be a disaster. And you see the same thing with cellular where sites in a disaster area get overloaded immediately.
This should not be a surprise or a mystery to anyone anymore.
The problem here is the fact that ISP business is a situation where customers don't have a real choice.
Even were that true, it would be irrelevant.
Taxi operators increase their fleet in a growing market - at times they reach peak capacity.
And at times the demand exceeds supply. They don't buy more taxis to cover that, they can't afford it.
ISP is a growing business - everyone knows this for 10 years, visionaries know for 25 years.
ISP is first and foremost a business, and any business that builds to 100% of possible peak demand is wasting money. As demand grows they build, but still not to 100%.
You pay to buy a 200 Mbps connection.
So you're saying that Netflix has to pay to increase the capacity of the delivery system (I was Netflix in the analogy, in case you missed it.)
If he didn't predict, you disconnected that service and got another which did predict the obvious thing and upgraded their network.
Earlier you said that customers don't have a choice. And now you say I would choose a different provider.
while the providers are leaving their peering points to the public Internet under-provisioned DELIBERATELY to damage service to these content providers
You are ascribing motives when there is a much simpler one. They're doing it because transport providers have ALWAYS done it that way and nobody wants to pay for a system than can handle 100% of possible peak demand all the time. And it doesn't matter whose traffic it is, when the gateway that Netflix traffic passes through is congested everything going through that gateway is effected.
Remember when the phone companies were selling "long distance" services? That often meant that only two people in a town could make a long distance call at the same time, because putting in 100 long distance trunks to serve 100 people was economically ridiculous. And not even 50 people in that town could all the other 50 at the same time because the central office wasn't build to handle that load.
Because content providers like Netflix already pay for the bandwidth they use from their own provider(s).
So why aren't the people THEY are paying upgrading the peering connections to get rid of the congestion that their customers are creating? If Netflix is dumping packets onto Level 3 and Level 3 can't get them off their net, why isn't Level 3 paying to do the upgrade?
Here's a question. I run a website with some streaming data. I buy a 100Mbps link. You and your next door neighbor both have 100Mbps service, and both of you want to stream my data at the same time. Who pays for the upgrade to my connection? Who pays for the upgrade from my ISP to your ISP? Shouldn't the people who are putting the load on the system pay for it?
If you are willing to pay for a 100% full-time path at peak possible bandwidth between you and Netflix, that's ok, but most people wouldn't want that. I'd rather my rates not go up because you think your service is too slow.
that being said, there is no analogy for that here, as there is no means by which to pay a provider extra to make them maky your ISP deliver the packets faster;
That is exactly the "fast lane" concept, where you are paying Netflix to pay Comcast...
As for COD/Postage Due, that's a specific shipping option that some carriers make available to the sender, which, again, has no analogue here.
"Postage Due" is not a shipping option, it is (was, really, I think USPS no longer does it) a situation where the destination post office realized that there wasn't enough postage on something that they were about to deliver and instead of sending it all the way back to the sender they tried to get the recipient to pay. Once again, the analogy holds because while the "USPS" isn't asking the "recipient" for more money directly, they are asking the sender for more money with the full realization that the sender will just pass that cost along to the recipient.
And, overall, the "I pay for my post office box, I expect everything addressed there to be delivered since I've already paid for that service" analogy holds quite well. You can't demand that the USPS accept express packages for you from the sender for just the slow price because you pay for your post office box. The sender has to pay extra for express and insurance and certified, and they get to pass that on to you in addition to the rental for the post office box you pay.
UPS has the same kind of "both ends pay" service, if you try to redirect a package that someone has sent to you at an inconvenient address. The sender paid to deliver it to you, but UPS won't deliver it where you want (at the speed you want) without you paying, too.
On the original article, it is important to note the use of the phrase "fair price", because that takes it out of the objective realm and makes it a totally subjective desire. As in, "I don't like Comcast's service because I don't think the price is fair." As in, if you don't like the price, don't buy the service. Buy something else.
I don't like Comcast's voice pricing, so I don't buy from them. I didn't like Dish's pricing, so I stopped buying from them.
it is not Netflix pushing the data through each provider, but rather each consecutive provider pushing the data to the next, and they all have peering agreements which should cover situations where there is an imbalance in traffic.
Except it is not an imbalance of traffic, it is an explosion of (mostly one way) traffic due to high-bandwidth streaming services. The peering agreements are there, but one service provider is having problems getting the data their customers are paying for to the destination because the peering agreements are limiting the traffic.
How many providers carry that box? At least 2. How many do you pay? One. We're talking about the same concept, here.
Ok, great analogy. You've never gotten a package "postage due", I guess. And the people you buy things from always pay just the base rate and don't pass any express charges on to you when the carriers want to charge more for expedited delivery. "What do you mean you want to charge extra for overnight, insured service?" (By the way, international postage is split between the carriers, so yes, if you want faster service in China, you're paying China for that faster service too and not just the driod at the USPS office.) And I'd love to see you discuss the problem with the post office workers when a package arrives COD/postage due and you try telling them "I pay for my post office box, I should get everything sent there without having to pay more!"
On top of that, then I should be able to choose whomever I want to provide my service, and technically I can and do, but I should be allowed to purchase a 10-30-100-150Mbps connection, and HAVE that bandwidth available.
I'm Joe's Friendly ISP, just starting to sell service in your town. Hello, neighbor! I'd love to sell you 150Mbps service over your Bell landline connection. We can set you up today.
What I'll love even more is if I can eavesdrop on your call to Bell demanding that their voice grade phone line support 150Mbps DSL.
This does NOT mean that my connection to Netflix is guaranteed, not in the least, but my connection through my provider CAN NOT be messed with,
That's a very realistic description of the bandwidth that you are buying. "Through my provider" means to their network, but not necessarily through anyone else's.
but don't turn around and sell me a 10Mbps connection and tell me that the reason my connection to Netflix is slow is because of the backhaul on the internet when I know damned well that you have sole my 10Mbps connection to 12 Grannies
They didn't sell your 10Mbps connection to anyone else. They sold other service to twelve grannies and 10,000 other people, at least. And you know that they do that. And you've admitted that "This does NOT mean that my connection to Netflix is guaranteed".
Every communications provider provisions for anticipated demand, not peak possible demand, and they've done that forever. It should not be a surprise to anyone by now.
Shocked you're modded insightful when you seem to have overlooked the obvious point that the idea is to reduce consumption,
Shocked that you missed my entire point that there are two philosophies behind taxation, only one of which is to "reduce consumption" of things that some people feel are evil to consume. I was referring explicitly to the unintended reduction in consumption that was a result of a desire to fund a government service through cigarette taxes. Said reduction in consumption left the service underfunded.
Also overall revenues will not necessarily go down,
"Zero sum game" does not mean that it is a certainty that the tax revenues will decrease with increasing taxes, but that it is not a simple calculation that doubling a tax will double the revenue. There are examples of the zero sum nature of taxation where revenues do go up when rates go down, however.
Errr....Not so much. We are talking about the Federal government here, aren't we?
I was actually referring to gasoline taxes in general. In any case, the US government is good at handing out money to states for use on their roads, so any state maintained road would count, too.
Any device can be 'legally used' in some fashion. It can be used as a decoration.
What a ridiculous argument. A jammer is sold to be used for illegal purposes. There is no legal use of a jammer, because no serious argument tries to claim that "planting flowers in a jamming device" is actually using the jammer. The simple question to ask is, who would buy the device if it did not perform as a jammer? People buy antiques that are non-functional because they are antiques or look cool, but nobody buys a jammer that won't jam. It's called "suitability of purpose" or something like that in the implied warranty laws.
It's called Prior Restraint, and it's a well established legal principle.
Stopping a manufacturer from importing a device that cannot legally be imported into the US is not "prior restraint", it is enforcing the law.
Law enforcement needs to focus on instances where a crime has occurred,
They did, and they are. It is a crime to import and sell such devices, and that's what they enforced. As for "hypothetical cases", it is not a hypothesis that someone who buys a jamming device cannot legally use it, it is a fact.
What if I want to test my home security system that relies on cell towers?
Maybe you could "passively block it", exactly as you said a few lines up.
I needed to test a 4G data device and change settings on it without it connecting to a 4G service and incurring data charges. I could have bought a jammer and broadcast an illegal signal, but it was much cheaper and easier to just put it in an anti-static bag (portable Faraday cage). That didn't interfere with anyone.
But then, I'm not selfish enough to think that my use of the spectrum shared by so many other people is paramount to theirs.
If I ever bought a personal jammer I wouldn't leave it on. I would just press it when needed
When do you ever really NEED to jam someone else's personal communications? Because you are selfish enough that you think your right to silence when you are out in public supersedes everyone else's right to be out in public and enjoy themselves, too?
Honestly, as a movie theatre I think the correct solution is to just install a small tower right on top
of your building (or a micro tower inside each theatre) then charge $5 per minute for all calls not to 911.
So you truly do believe that the parents who are seeking a night out away from the kids so they can keep their relationship fresh and active, who need to be reachable by the baby sitter if there is an emergency, should just fuck off because they might inconvenience you for a few seconds? Because the phone in his pocket might vibrate from a text message that says "Billy broke his arm, meet us at the hospital" and that cannot be allowed to happen because it might detract from your pleasure?
Do you really not realize how selfish that is? Do you really not realize that that kind of obnoxiously selfish attitude on your part could be a reason that people who want YOU to fuck off might deliberately do things to annoy you? I don't even know who you are and you make me want to go to a movie right now and change ringtone settings so I can annoy all the people like you.
So you think passively blocking them like many theatres are doing now is better?
Do you see anyplace where I've said anything like that? You see a comment about people who volunteer their time still being allowed to have a night out while being on call and you think I would support any system that keeps them from being able to have one?
Passively blocking signals is worse as there is no ability to turn it off at all.
Yes, it is bad for that reason, a fact that is not in dispute. It is, however, LEGAL, despite being selfish and stupid, and and pandering to selfish, stupid people. I think it would be just as appropriate for the ob/gyn to be unreachable for the person who supports both active and passive disabling of communications systems other people, who are required for the good of the public, rely on.
And there is no intention for any active jammer to turn off his jammer because there is a doctor in the room who is about to receive an emergency phone call, so the difference you point out between active and passive is effectively moot. The only difference is legality.
Slashdot Mirror
I don't recall a circuit court ever actually invalidating a law.
Google is your friend.
Yes, this was a PITA, but he was trying to teach something that seems to have been lost.
Yes, he was teaching you to turn off warnings for certain operations so that when the warning was really significant it wouldn't happen.
Maybe if professor think your code is functional but not elegant maybe you should suggest professor write login page himself? Be crazy AND proud.
There is a reason why they are warnings and not fatal errors.
In America, there is a higher law governing the rule of law. The Supreme Court is the only court authorized to address that.
So all those circuit courts that keep coming up with claims that this or that are unconstitutional are, what, imposters? Perhaps unconstitutional themselves? An interesting argument.
That's not really true. The number of users equals the lesser of the number of people willing to pay for the spaces and the number of spaces.
That's not really true, either. The number of users of parking spaces will be many times the number of spaces. Each space will be used multiple times a day. Those people are all users, just not simultaneously. If you force ten percent of those users to go elsewhere because the price is too high, you've lost ten percent of your users. It doesn't matter to the local shop owner if one space turns over 10 times in a day, those are 10 users that can come to his shop, versus one space that turns over only 8 times a day. That's two fewer potential customers, multiplied by the number of spaces in the area. (I'll point out that this auction system reduces the turnover, so it has the same effect on the local businesses.)
If you make the price high enough on an hour meter, you will increase the number of people who will not simply drive away from time left on the meter. They've paid for an hour, they might as well use it. That reduces the number of users as well.
And, of course, you will lose completely those who would have tried coming downtown to shop if the cost of parking had not become too high to justify it. Parking at the mall is free even if the stores are mostly cookie-cutter chains. The attraction of a boutique becomes much less when it becomes difficult to physically get there. You have to really want to go to that specific store to pay inflated parking meter rates, and that will hurt all the stores in the area. (I really love browsing Powells, but I would never go there if the parking was artificially inflated in price with the specific goal of reducing demand.)
Conversely, "free parking" doesn't mean you can cram more cars into the same number of spaces.
Can you show me where I said it did? Your straw man is very flimsy.
If you've got empty spaces, sure, you can get more people in by lowering the price. But that's not the problem here.
You're right, that isn't the problem here. The problem here is inflating the prices and driving people away, not trying to attract more. And the original problem is increasing the price by running a private auction for a public resource.
This contradiction demonstrates in a nutshell why price controls on limited resources are silly.
On publicly traded limited resource, yes. On government provided services, no.
How do you figure that?
Based on all the money that visitors bring into a city from tourism and just casual visits. San Fran, in particular, is a tourist town. Come see the sites, but don't expect to be able to park -- that's not very tourist friendly. It is those casual visitors who are most unlikely to know the public transportation system and least able to make use of it, therefore most likely to want to drive themselves. (Yes, taxis are an option, but increasing the cost to visitors is increasing the cost to visitors and pushing them away, whether it's a $5 parking meter or a $10 cab ride you force them to pay.)
Commuters are willing to pay big bucks for parking
We're not talking about commuters, we're talking about visitors. Commuters are likely to use the train and take the bus, or to rent parking from a commercial parking service. They aren't likely to be casual transient parkers or even use this app -- they need to be at work on time and they can't depend on the vagaries of a parking space auction to find a space.
And those casual visitors are NOT willing to pay "big bucks" to park. If I knew it was going to cost me big bucks to park at places I am interested in visiting in some city I'm passing through, I will forgo the pleasure of paying big bucks and go elsewhere where my custom is appreciated. (Example: I visit Powells in Portland only because I know that parking is cheap and easy in front of the store -- and that's the technical bookstore, not the big one, where parking is expensive and limited, where I do NOT go for that reason.)
You have a strange definition of "benefit" that is based on inefficiency.
Why yes, maximal efficiency means forcing everyone to do things the way you want them to instead of allowing someone to drop by a store on the way by because they are attracted by the sign, or to visit the store in your city because they happen to be there instead of going somewhere else.
The very act of pricing public parking to reduce demand means you are reducing demand BY CHOICE, so you really can't argue that you haven't reduced the number of users. If you reduce the number of users, you reduce the number of casual visitors, and casual visitors have money in their pockets that they get to keep when they don't spend it in your stores.
This is not rocket science. Keeping people from visiting some parts of town because parking is too expensive is why businesses fail. A business that relies on customers to survive kind of requires customers to survive.
As soon as you use the app you've proven intent.
No, you haven't.
If you go online and say "I'll sell you access to a public parking space", you have clearly demonstrated the intent to sell a public parking space. You claimed that it would be hard to prove intent, and your argument is patently absurd. Intent is easy to prove. The sole purpose for the app is to facilitate that sale via auction. Using that app in the way it was intended shows a clear intent to do what the app is designed to let people do.
Only if you use the app AND break the law
You do not need to break the law to have intent. That's why they call it "intent".
It doesn't matter "prove intent" but the law is not broken.
Yes, intent to break the law is, in many cases, breaking the law. But the issue was proving intent, and simply using the app proves intent.
As long as it wants. THAT'S. ALL. IT. DOES.
That is not true. The seller is also preventing the free use of the public resource by others, not just selling the information that he is leaving the spot. In fact, he has NOT left the spot when the auction is held, he's only promising to leave AFTER THE BUYER SHOWS UP TO CLAIM IT. So no, the "information" is not all that is involved.
That's a completely different issue. I wasn't arguing about the viability of the business. Just about whether it was actually illegal.
I responded specifically to your claim that it was hard to prove intent. It is trivial to prove intent simply by showing use of an app that allows you to go online and sell access to the parking space you are currently occupying.
And inherent in that action (holding the space) lies the viability of the business model. To have any value any information you claim is being sold must have a significant lifetime. The buyer is not just buying the information that you are leaving your parking space, he is buying your time to stay there until he gets there.
Claiming is it just "selling information" is absurd. Nobody would pay for information that anyone within fifty feet of the space can see for themselves, and which would be invalid within 30 seconds after you leave. The only value to the service is if the seller stays in the space until the buyer shows up. So no, the business would not be in existence "as long as it wants", because nobody would use the app unless they got something of value for their money, and no honest person would try auctioning off a parking space if they weren't intending to provide the product they were selling, which is not just "information" that they're leaving the space, it is the space itself. And no seller would get paid if the buyer showed up and found that someone else had beaten them to the spot. I don't know what you think a viable business is, but this is a quintessential non-viable one -- without the act of conversion of public parking spaces to private resources for sale.
What it cannot do is (1) regulate the conduct of persons outside of its bounds who want information about those parking spaces,
I would love to see the business plan you would write that is based on facilitating the selling of physical access to a fixed location where neither the seller nor the buyer are actually in the jurisdiction of the municipality that governs that space. It would seem that if the seller is not in the space at the time of the auction he has no control over who is there, and if the buyer is not there to use it it has no value to him. I imagine you could find a few people who would be dishonest enough to try auctioning something they don't control, and stupid enough to bid on something they aren't capable of using, but not enough to make a profit from it.
How is the city going to detect illegal activity, when it can't snoop on wireless traffic without a warrant?
Of course the only way to detect this activity is to sniff wireless packets.
Third, the city is the cause of this market in the first place.
Yes, by implementing public parking they are the proximal cause of people abusing the public parking system. The trivial solution is to simply remove all public parking.
Fourth, their city council is stupid for doing so: they are dissuading people from coming into their city
Really? There are businesses in the big city near here that I would never bother visiting if I knew that the only way to get a parking space was by winning an auction from a scalper. Would you be happy to come to an area and start looking for a space to park, just to find that half the people parked there are only there because they are waiting for the winning bidders in their auction to show up and have no other interest in parking there? No, honestly, I don't care if you would like it or not, I know I would not.
The city has a vested interest in keeping public parking available to the public and not allowing others to convert it into a private system. It would be inarguably against the law for someone to put barracades on the entrances to a city parking facility and charge people $5 to enter. This is not much different.
What inflated rate is that?
The "it costs us $.50/hour to maintain a parking space, but we'll charge $1 or $2 per hour because we can" price.
The real issue is that SF doesnt seem to give a shit that they are fucking the local residents (by taxation) for the benefit of out of town visitors to their city (who dont pay SF taxes but enjoy the under-priced parking spots that those SF taxes subsidize)
If SF is charging below cost, that's the SF council's fault. If they're charging at cost, then the city overall benefits because those visitors bring in money that they spend at local businesses. And that happens to be the reason for free parking (if there is any) in the first place.
If efficiency is really the goal, then the city of SF should raise the fee for parking to a market rate. But I suspect that certain interest groups would oppose that...
Yes, like the public who pay taxes that support the system and think that public resources should be available to the people who pay to create them at cost and not some inflated rate.
You want inflated parking rates and profit, buy some land and make it a private parking lot.
But that would mean you -- not the winner of the auction -- were breaking the law. And it would be hard to prove. You fed the meter properly, you're having lunch. Big deal. In order to prove a violation you'd have to prove intent, which is seldom easy.
You're kidding, right? As soon as you use the app you've proven intent. You can't go online and say "I'll sell this space to the highest bidder" and then claim you didn't intend to sell the space to the highest bidder. That's just nuts.
Having said that, I grant that it could be used in ways that are likely illegal... like holding the spot for the person who won the auction.
That's the intent of the service. How long do you think such a service would last if all it did was sell "information" about where someone was leaving a parking spot? The buyer would show up and someone who didn't pay would have already taken it. If it is truly a busy area, then there are going to be people who are watching everyone who approaches any parked car like a hawk, and unless your buyer was also doing that (which defeats the reason to buy the information) he's not going to get an honestly vacated space.
Why would anyone in their right mind bid on "information" that everyone in within fifty feet of the seller can see for himself, and would be there to take advantage of long before any auction could take place, much less the winner driving to the location to accept his prize? The information is worthless within 30 seconds of it appearing; it's only the physical space that makes it valuable.
All that needs to happen is that the server gets moved offshore, and the app be made as a Web app so it survives being pulled from Apple's store.
The problem with the "just move the server offshore" answer is that the system depends on having a local actor -- the person blocking the parking space until the buyer shows up. You can't outsource or offshore that part of the process.
They don't upgrade their infrastructure if they have monopoly, or the customer has no real choice. All your examples are of monopoly situation.
My examples were monopoly situations but the lack of "upgrades" were not because it was a monopoly, it was because nobody could afford the service if it were upgraded to be "100% of peak possible demand". Running 100 long distance trunks to serve a 100 person central office would be "100% peak possible demand", but it would be outrageously expensive.
Such designs are still in place today, and not because of any monopoly. When a municipality puts in a new public safety radio system, for example, they don't build to 100% possible peak (every radio trying to transmit at the same time), they build to some reasonable percentage that will provide what they decide is an acceptable level of service for most of the time.
Our two local counties are building up a 700MHz trunked public service system. Each tower in that system has just five frequencies. That's how many people it can serve at one time. (Yeah, Phase II TDMA makes that ten. Not a significant difference in a city of 50,000.) If we ever have a disaster, it will be a disaster. And you see the same thing with cellular where sites in a disaster area get overloaded immediately.
This should not be a surprise or a mystery to anyone anymore.
The problem here is the fact that ISP business is a situation where customers don't have a real choice.
Even were that true, it would be irrelevant.
Taxi operators increase their fleet in a growing market - at times they reach peak capacity.
And at times the demand exceeds supply. They don't buy more taxis to cover that, they can't afford it.
ISP is a growing business - everyone knows this for 10 years, visionaries know for 25 years.
ISP is first and foremost a business, and any business that builds to 100% of possible peak demand is wasting money. As demand grows they build, but still not to 100%.
You pay to buy a 200 Mbps connection.
So you're saying that Netflix has to pay to increase the capacity of the delivery system (I was Netflix in the analogy, in case you missed it.)
If he didn't predict, you disconnected that service and got another which did predict the obvious thing and upgraded their network.
Earlier you said that customers don't have a choice. And now you say I would choose a different provider.
while the providers are leaving their peering points to the public Internet under-provisioned DELIBERATELY to damage service to these content providers
You are ascribing motives when there is a much simpler one. They're doing it because transport providers have ALWAYS done it that way and nobody wants to pay for a system than can handle 100% of possible peak demand all the time. And it doesn't matter whose traffic it is, when the gateway that Netflix traffic passes through is congested everything going through that gateway is effected.
Remember when the phone companies were selling "long distance" services? That often meant that only two people in a town could make a long distance call at the same time, because putting in 100 long distance trunks to serve 100 people was economically ridiculous. And not even 50 people in that town could all the other 50 at the same time because the central office wasn't build to handle that load.
Because content providers like Netflix already pay for the bandwidth they use from their own provider(s).
So why aren't the people THEY are paying upgrading the peering connections to get rid of the congestion that their customers are creating? If Netflix is dumping packets onto Level 3 and Level 3 can't get them off their net, why isn't Level 3 paying to do the upgrade?
Here's a question. I run a website with some streaming data. I buy a 100Mbps link. You and your next door neighbor both have 100Mbps service, and both of you want to stream my data at the same time. Who pays for the upgrade to my connection? Who pays for the upgrade from my ISP to your ISP? Shouldn't the people who are putting the load on the system pay for it?
If you are willing to pay for a 100% full-time path at peak possible bandwidth between you and Netflix, that's ok, but most people wouldn't want that. I'd rather my rates not go up because you think your service is too slow.
that being said, there is no analogy for that here, as there is no means by which to pay a provider extra to make them maky your ISP deliver the packets faster;
That is exactly the "fast lane" concept, where you are paying Netflix to pay Comcast ...
As for COD/Postage Due, that's a specific shipping option that some carriers make available to the sender, which, again, has no analogue here.
"Postage Due" is not a shipping option, it is (was, really, I think USPS no longer does it) a situation where the destination post office realized that there wasn't enough postage on something that they were about to deliver and instead of sending it all the way back to the sender they tried to get the recipient to pay. Once again, the analogy holds because while the "USPS" isn't asking the "recipient" for more money directly, they are asking the sender for more money with the full realization that the sender will just pass that cost along to the recipient.
And, overall, the "I pay for my post office box, I expect everything addressed there to be delivered since I've already paid for that service" analogy holds quite well. You can't demand that the USPS accept express packages for you from the sender for just the slow price because you pay for your post office box. The sender has to pay extra for express and insurance and certified, and they get to pass that on to you in addition to the rental for the post office box you pay.
UPS has the same kind of "both ends pay" service, if you try to redirect a package that someone has sent to you at an inconvenient address. The sender paid to deliver it to you, but UPS won't deliver it where you want (at the speed you want) without you paying, too.
On the original article, it is important to note the use of the phrase "fair price", because that takes it out of the objective realm and makes it a totally subjective desire. As in, "I don't like Comcast's service because I don't think the price is fair." As in, if you don't like the price, don't buy the service. Buy something else. I don't like Comcast's voice pricing, so I don't buy from them. I didn't like Dish's pricing, so I stopped buying from them.
it is not Netflix pushing the data through each provider, but rather each consecutive provider pushing the data to the next, and they all have peering agreements which should cover situations where there is an imbalance in traffic.
Except it is not an imbalance of traffic, it is an explosion of (mostly one way) traffic due to high-bandwidth streaming services. The peering agreements are there, but one service provider is having problems getting the data their customers are paying for to the destination because the peering agreements are limiting the traffic.
How many providers carry that box? At least 2. How many do you pay? One. We're talking about the same concept, here.
Ok, great analogy. You've never gotten a package "postage due", I guess. And the people you buy things from always pay just the base rate and don't pass any express charges on to you when the carriers want to charge more for expedited delivery. "What do you mean you want to charge extra for overnight, insured service?" (By the way, international postage is split between the carriers, so yes, if you want faster service in China, you're paying China for that faster service too and not just the driod at the USPS office.) And I'd love to see you discuss the problem with the post office workers when a package arrives COD/postage due and you try telling them "I pay for my post office box, I should get everything sent there without having to pay more!"
On top of that, then I should be able to choose whomever I want to provide my service, and technically I can and do, but I should be allowed to purchase a 10-30-100-150Mbps connection, and HAVE that bandwidth available.
I'm Joe's Friendly ISP, just starting to sell service in your town. Hello, neighbor! I'd love to sell you 150Mbps service over your Bell landline connection. We can set you up today.
What I'll love even more is if I can eavesdrop on your call to Bell demanding that their voice grade phone line support 150Mbps DSL.
This does NOT mean that my connection to Netflix is guaranteed, not in the least, but my connection through my provider CAN NOT be messed with,
That's a very realistic description of the bandwidth that you are buying. "Through my provider" means to their network, but not necessarily through anyone else's.
but don't turn around and sell me a 10Mbps connection and tell me that the reason my connection to Netflix is slow is because of the backhaul on the internet when I know damned well that you have sole my 10Mbps connection to 12 Grannies
They didn't sell your 10Mbps connection to anyone else. They sold other service to twelve grannies and 10,000 other people, at least. And you know that they do that. And you've admitted that "This does NOT mean that my connection to Netflix is guaranteed".
Every communications provider provisions for anticipated demand, not peak possible demand, and they've done that forever. It should not be a surprise to anyone by now.
I was perhaps too subtle in pointing out the inappropriate assumption that all judges are women. "... a judge ... she ..."
But if the formula is too complex for her to understand, then she concludes that it's something more than a mathematical algorithm and uphold it.
Thus demonstrating that the entire patent problem is because women cannot understand simple mathematical algorithms.
Shocked you're modded insightful when you seem to have overlooked the obvious point that the idea is to reduce consumption,
Shocked that you missed my entire point that there are two philosophies behind taxation, only one of which is to "reduce consumption" of things that some people feel are evil to consume. I was referring explicitly to the unintended reduction in consumption that was a result of a desire to fund a government service through cigarette taxes. Said reduction in consumption left the service underfunded.
Also overall revenues will not necessarily go down,
"Zero sum game" does not mean that it is a certainty that the tax revenues will decrease with increasing taxes, but that it is not a simple calculation that doubling a tax will double the revenue. There are examples of the zero sum nature of taxation where revenues do go up when rates go down, however.
Errr....Not so much. We are talking about the Federal government here, aren't we?
I was actually referring to gasoline taxes in general. In any case, the US government is good at handing out money to states for use on their roads, so any state maintained road would count, too.
Any device can be 'legally used' in some fashion. It can be used as a decoration.
What a ridiculous argument. A jammer is sold to be used for illegal purposes. There is no legal use of a jammer, because no serious argument tries to claim that "planting flowers in a jamming device" is actually using the jammer. The simple question to ask is, who would buy the device if it did not perform as a jammer? People buy antiques that are non-functional because they are antiques or look cool, but nobody buys a jammer that won't jam. It's called "suitability of purpose" or something like that in the implied warranty laws.
It's called Prior Restraint, and it's a well established legal principle.
Stopping a manufacturer from importing a device that cannot legally be imported into the US is not "prior restraint", it is enforcing the law.
Law enforcement needs to focus on instances where a crime has occurred,
They did, and they are. It is a crime to import and sell such devices, and that's what they enforced. As for "hypothetical cases", it is not a hypothesis that someone who buys a jamming device cannot legally use it, it is a fact.
What if I want to test my home security system that relies on cell towers?
Maybe you could "passively block it", exactly as you said a few lines up.
I needed to test a 4G data device and change settings on it without it connecting to a 4G service and incurring data charges. I could have bought a jammer and broadcast an illegal signal, but it was much cheaper and easier to just put it in an anti-static bag (portable Faraday cage). That didn't interfere with anyone.
But then, I'm not selfish enough to think that my use of the spectrum shared by so many other people is paramount to theirs.
If I ever bought a personal jammer I wouldn't leave it on. I would just press it when needed
When do you ever really NEED to jam someone else's personal communications? Because you are selfish enough that you think your right to silence when you are out in public supersedes everyone else's right to be out in public and enjoy themselves, too?
Honestly, as a movie theatre I think the correct solution is to just install a small tower right on top of your building (or a micro tower inside each theatre) then charge $5 per minute for all calls not to 911.
So you truly do believe that the parents who are seeking a night out away from the kids so they can keep their relationship fresh and active, who need to be reachable by the baby sitter if there is an emergency, should just fuck off because they might inconvenience you for a few seconds? Because the phone in his pocket might vibrate from a text message that says "Billy broke his arm, meet us at the hospital" and that cannot be allowed to happen because it might detract from your pleasure?
Do you really not realize how selfish that is? Do you really not realize that that kind of obnoxiously selfish attitude on your part could be a reason that people who want YOU to fuck off might deliberately do things to annoy you? I don't even know who you are and you make me want to go to a movie right now and change ringtone settings so I can annoy all the people like you.
So you think passively blocking them like many theatres are doing now is better?
Do you see anyplace where I've said anything like that? You see a comment about people who volunteer their time still being allowed to have a night out while being on call and you think I would support any system that keeps them from being able to have one?
Passively blocking signals is worse as there is no ability to turn it off at all.
Yes, it is bad for that reason, a fact that is not in dispute. It is, however, LEGAL, despite being selfish and stupid, and and pandering to selfish, stupid people. I think it would be just as appropriate for the ob/gyn to be unreachable for the person who supports both active and passive disabling of communications systems other people, who are required for the good of the public, rely on.
And there is no intention for any active jammer to turn off his jammer because there is a doctor in the room who is about to receive an emergency phone call, so the difference you point out between active and passive is effectively moot. The only difference is legality.