I concur in theory. However, in practice, how would that work?
Simple. A federal law that presidential ballots cannot begin to be counted until the last poll closes.
The twatterblagoversetubes would have some sort of "wisdom of the crowd" tweetpost exit-poll-like mashup
The whatever you call it will always have exit polls and hypotheses and guesses and try to make themselves look like the best news source. But exit polls carry much less weight in the process than actual poll results.
As I recall, the Bush camp wanted one recount method, and the Gore camp wanted a different one, and under the rules they each proposed, the other side would have won.
You recall wrong. Bush wanted the recount that was already completed to stand, which would allow the Secretary of State to certify the result in time for the Electoral College, and Gore wanted another recount that would have pushed the result back so Florida's votes wouldn't have counted at all, no matter who won another recount. That's what most people missed. If the electors cannot vote when the Electoral College meets, it doesn't matter who won the state, the votes don't matter. Gore knew that, and he knew he'd win if Florida's electors couldn't vote.
That's what the Supreme Court case was about -- whether the Florida legislature had the authority to define the election process or the courts could change it. The US and Florida constitutions both gave the legislature the responsibility, and the legislature had a process in place for counting and recounting and certifying the results. Gore wanted that changed after the polls had closed, just like he got the counting process changed to include "dimpled chads" in a system that said "poke a hole in a piece of paper" and his voters couldn't manage to do that simple task. A "poke a hole" system that both Republican AND Democrat election officials had approved prior to the actual election.
Yes, every single one. Don't forget that Gore tried to goose the results by having only Dem heavy counties recounted rather than the entire state.
And his people were in court trying to get already counted Republican heavy areas thrown out. They challenged the absentees from the military because many military votes went via APO/FPO and lacked postmarks, and in one county they challenged all the Republican absentees because the Republican precinct captain was smart enough to write the voter's id number on the absentee request and the Democrat wasn't.
Many voters left lines while voting was open once Florida was called for Gore. IF that hadn't have happened, the recount wouldn't have been close at all.
That, too. That's why there should be NO reporting of results until ALL the ballots have been cast. If that means that east coast voters don't know who won until after Hawaii's polls close, that's just too damn bad.
Yes, normal (i.e. practically occurring and recurring) peak volumes.
No, peak is not normal. That's why they call it peak and not normal.
But on the other hand, if you sell "up to 16Mbps" to your customers, and then your network or your peerings limit them to a lower speed, you need to upgrade.
So you're a small ISP and have 1000 customers, all of whom you've sold 16Mbps service to. That's a sum of 16Gbps if my math is right. But that's only if they ALL put the same, maximum demand on the system at the same time. You can be a socially responsible scrupulously honest business person and try to find a 16Gbps upstream connection and pay the money for it, charging your customers a premium for never hitting a bottleneck on your network, or you can keep the costs to your customers lower by getting a connection that is maxed out 5% of the time. Or 10%.
Should it matter if that 5% is at the same time every day? Well, how much is it worth spending to have a network that is mostly idle for half the day and maybe half capacity for another 45%, to solve the 100% capacity for 5% of the time problem? Would your customers want to pay what it would cost? I suspect not, based on the claims here that Comcast is the only ISP because it is the only cheap fast ISP available, not because it truly is the only ISP available. People seem to care about prices a lot.
They did in the very recent past. I'm not sure if they still have this, but in many areas, they had franchise agreements that allowed only one cable or telcom providers in an area for upwards of 10 years.
In none of the cities I've been in for the last thirty years has there been an exclusive franchise agreement. If you know of one I can see online, point me to it. Any city that made such an agreement was a fool, and if any of them did then the problem isn't the cable company it was the local government that did the stupid thing.
But you clipped the statement I made before it ended and changed the meaning significantly. I said they had no monopoly "on the internet". They did not have one, they do not have one, and nobody in the future will ever grant them one. Whether or not they have an exclusive franchise for cable in an area, they do not have a monopoly on the kinds of services that are carried on that cable. There are too many other internet providers for Comcast to get that kind of franchise agreement anywhere, and franchise agreements do not cover that to begin with.
Even without franchise agreements, around here, that have city ordinances that were voted on by the people
Wow. You have people who micromanage the local utilities to that level? How is this idiocy Comcast's fault? How is "government by the people" a bad thing?
The problem with being a fixed line ISP, is you also need to get property rights for both public and private property.
It's called an easement and the city or local government has already managed that. That's what the franchise agreement deals with. That's how the cable or telco or power company gets transit rights. For the drops, the customer has to grant access if they want service. This is not a new or unsolved problem, and it doesn't create a monopoly.
What's happening is that last-mile providers are selling internet bandwidth that they in turn haven't bought from their upstream providers.
This has been true from the early days of even just the simple telephone system. Capacity costs money, and providers build enough capacity to handle normal volumes.
Back when telephones were "spin the crank and ask Mabel to connect you", the capacity limits were "one Mabel" and "one patchboard". You want Mabel to do something for you, but she may be busy with someone else. Too many people want to talk to each other, you run out of patch cords. And if more than one or two people wanted to talk "long distance", well, the one or two trunk lines put a limit on that, too. But most of the time, one Mabel was enough. The telco could hire another one, but most of the time she'd be doing her knitting instead of having to work.
That was solved by dial phones, right? Except the local office only had a certain number of dialtone generators, so you could sometimes, in peak usage periods, pick up your phone and not get a dialtone for 30 seconds or so. And there were still a limited number of trunks. It used to be fun to try to make calls on Mother's Day -- one of the busiest days of the telephone year -- and see how the system failed. Sometimes you'd get random connections.
So we've got the same thing now. It's obvious when there's a major event that the cell system is designed for normal loads and not "every possible load". Our networks are the same. Those who don't know history are doomed to repeat it, or to think they're seeing something that has never happened before.
The cost of bandwidth is determined by peak loads,
Nobody builds to peak loads because none of the customers want to pay what that would cost. A company that builds its systems for peak loads would have unused bandwidth most of the time, but someone has to pay for it.
The only real place for debate is to what level below peak do they build. If you think regulation would help here, then be prepared to pay for it in increased rates with no real increase in levels of service.
Meh, just because you like your Comcast-sponsored assfucking does not mean everyone else does.
Meh, just because you see a statement that Comcast is not a monopoly doesn't mean it is loved. And thanks for expressing your opinion in a civil manner.
Let's break down your alternatives, shall we? None of what you mentioned happen to actually be broadband.
So, as I expected, the complaint is not that there is no other source of internet, it is there is no other source of internet that is as fast as you want it to be for a price that you want to pay. Sorry, that's not what "monopoly" means.
Sure you have other options, none of them really all that good.
So you admit that the monopoly on the internet is a fiction. Thanks.
Well, it's a Government monopoly with no oversight.
It's not a monopoly, and there is government oversight. At least my city was smart enough not to grant an exclusive franchise, and they do have a staff member that deals with franchise issues. We're on a first-name basis, I've called him about the shenanigans of a certain non-monopoly cable company so many times.
Because practically speaking, you can't just let any yahoo with a garden trowel and some fiberoptic cables just start digging around everywhere, it's a freaking nightmare to do that.
That's why you have franchise agreements that grant access to the rights of way for a fee. The fact that not just anybody can "start digging" doesn't mean there is a monopoly, it just means there is a legal process to go through to get the access.
THIS is the problem with allowing ISPs to have monopolies.
I'm not sure how you'd solve that problem. Do you imagine that most home users would be able to configure an adaptive router that determines the best route for their packets and sends them to ISP A sometimes and ISP B other times? That would create havoc with routing since you're trying to change not just an address of an intermediate router, you're changing the destination address. And imagine the fun if someone actually did have service from two ISPs and they somehow became an advertised route between the two.
I suspect, however, that you're talking about a perceived monopoly on providing service to someone, not a monopoly on being the only route to a customer once they are one. Comcast doesn't have a monopoly on the internet, but once you have Comcast as an ISP then they have a monopoly on the routing. If you want to stop the latter, don't have Comcast as an ISP.
Consumers like myself who literally have no choice of ISP
Where do you live that you don't have another choice? If you're in a densely populated enough area to have Comcast, then certainly there is a telco that serves you, and probably cell.
90% of comcast customers are held hostage, they CANT GO ANYWHERE ELSE for internet.
This is what happens when you have a government sponsored and allowed monopoly.
Except that Comcast has no monopoly -- government allowed, government sponsored, or otherwise -- on the Internet. The closest to "government sponsored" you get is the franchise agreement with the local government, and that isn't a de jure monopoly. The economics make cable into a de facto monopoly, but the government didn't have anything to do with it.
If you want Internet, you have plenty of choices depending on where you live. DSL from your telco. DSL on the telco wires from someone else, broadband wireless, 3G/4G via usually more than one cell carrier. Satellite. And if you live so far out in the sticks that there are none of those options, then it is doubtful that Comcast has wired your neighborhood anyway. But 90% of Comcast customers do NOT live in places without other internet options.
There are plenty of reasons to dislike Comcast, you don't have to make things up.
The real question is, if they have the capability to know where it was really delivered, why would they not program the handhelds to make all sorts of noise when the delivery guy screws up?
I've had both UPS and FedEx actually change the customer-supplied delivery address because they... thought they knew better? The last time, the hand-written FedEx form was still on the outside of the box, but the computer-printed one said something different. They're deliberately delivering things to the wrong place. Why would the handheld scanner complain about that?
According to postal inspector rules, he gets to keep it:
UPS is not USPS. And it wasn't sent to him, it was misdelivered. Stop trusting the headlines of/. articles. They're intended to fan flames and not to inform. If a certain cable news network did the same kind of thing they'd be accused of being inept and corrupt. When/. does it, it's just fine.
But DUI(I) means "Driving Under the Influence (of Intoxicants)". ORS 813.010: "(1) A person commits the offense of driving while under the influence of intoxicants if the person drives a vehicle while..." You're not driving, you're not guilty.
Never heard of DIC. Would the mother-in-law be called "PIC" -- passenger in charge?
In Oregon, ORS 811.507 makes texting while driving is made illegal by this in paragraph 2:
(2) A person commits the offense of operating a motor vehicle while using a mobile communication device if the person, while operating a motor vehicle on a highway, uses a mobile communication device.
So, if you're not operating the vehicle, you can't be guilty of texting while driving.
with a minimum filter to prevent problems if you pour grease into your bathroom sink
Anyone who pours grease down ANY sink, much less a bathroom sink, is a moron who deserves to be thirsty and have sinks filled with standing, greasy water, and no greywater to flush toilets with.
When was that exactly? I watch a lot of history channel, and history is mostly filled with kings and generals standing BEHIND the lines of poor people with pointy sticks.
No, history is mostly filled with pawnbrokers who tell the camera "I really want this, it would look really cool in my shop and I know I can sell it for a profit" but tell the guy trying to sell it that "it will be on my shelf for a year, I'll have to get a nice frame for it, the collectors aren't buying, and can I get my buddy take a look at it?" before they make a low-ball offer.
If only history were filled with more antique book dealers or unpaid (but now part-time employee) interns. And less screen-writer fantasy about how Vikings lived.
For the slow or non-viewer, I'm referring to Rebeccah and Lili.
Why? Doesn't the car drive itself while I text?
Yea! that's the ticket, have the car stop running in response to a "STOP" text... Problem solved, except in those places where it's illegal to text and drive..
If it will be legal to sleep while your car drives you where you want to go, how could it be illegal to be awake but texting while it does the same thing?
Key phrase: car drives itself. You aren't the driver anymore, any laws that limit what the driver can do won't apply to you. That means if you are really drunk and program your car to take you to the front lawn of the Whitehouse because you think it would be fun, it won't be you going to jail it will be your car. And it won't be you that the Secret Service agents will be shooting at, it will be your car. Heck, they can't charge you with a crime because you could have programmed the destination and gotten out of the car to let it go there without you in it!
No, your bigger concern will be the nutjob who gets bored while riding around in his driverless car and decides to use his cell phone jammer to keep other people from texting while riding around in their driverless cars.
In many cases, you'll find that Comcast has been granted a local monopoly by local governments. Ooops.
Then your beef is with your local government, not Comcast. Comcast works just fine without an exclusive franchise and your local government was wrong to grant one. When it comes time to renew, get your government to do what you want them to and renew non-exclusively.
Nowhere I've lived or gotten cable service from has had an exclusive franchise agreement. Nowhere I've lived has had multiple cable companies providing service. There must be something beside a government-granted monopoly that stops that kind of competition.
No you can't, it's just over 200 gallons.
Unless by some time you mean about a week. You need to drink 1/2 gallon a day alone.
By my calculations, 1/2 gallon a day means 200 gallons would last 400 days. More than a year. But, as you point out, there are other uses.
To put back some of the context, the person you replied to said: "Well if you have the choice between dying of thirst or paying $80 for a cubic yard, you'd probably pay the $80."
Teeth brushing: 1 gallon
If it takes you more than a cupful of water to brush your teeth, you are wasteful and Darwin says you will not survive. But you don't need to brush your teeth to keep from dying of thirst.
Face/leg shaving: 1 gallon
I'm not sure how this is a requirement to keep from dying of thirst. Personally, I've not shaved my legs ever, and my face has been blade-free for more than 20 years.
The rest of the uses you come up with in your list are hardly survival requirements. The only one is the 1/2 gallon a day for drinking. Even adding a 1/2 gallon for cooking means you could get by for 200 days on that 200 gallons. No, it wouldn't be pleasant, but it would keep you from dying of thirst.
My current city water bill is about $40/month. $80 for water that would last for just six months means I come out ahead on the deal.
Tons of influence, nearly untouchable by the president after being appointed, and a highly functional position unencumbered by the bulk of politics inflicted on the President.
If by "nearly untouchable" you mean "can be fired at a moment's notice at the whim of the President, is the lightning rod for every failed Presidential foreign policy position or statement, and has to step and fetch for foreign dignitaries that are better ignored", why yes, I agree completely.
Keep in mind, when you see a Secretary of State making absolutely ridiculous statements demonstrating a complete ignorance of world politics, he's doing so as Secretary of State because the President chooses not to fire him, not because he can't be fired.
We are talking about private drones and rc airplanes, not commercial aviation.
And the FAA regulates general aviation along with other commercial aviation, and has for decades, and for exactly the same reasons already covered.
We are not talking about mixing traffic, we are talking about traffic that is inherently separate.
That is patently absurd. The argument that the FAA has no authority to regulate aviation that isn't interstate in nature implies an ability to differentiate that traffic, and it is NOT INHERENTLY SEPARATE. When I go flying around the pattern I'm using the same airspace used by someone who is arriving from or going to an airport in another state. ATC has no way to differentiate between traffic that is inter and intra state. That aircraft they see departing the local airport may be staying local, or it may be going somewhere in state, or it may be going two states away. They don't know.
My point is that the case has not been made that small drone traffic infringes on national airspace or involves interstate commerce.
It uses the same airspace. You keep ignoring that point. And here's another point: licensing has to deal with the things that the licensee is authorized to do, not just with the subset of things he's actually going to do. I have federal licenses that permit me to do things I never intend on doing, so the rules have to cover those things, too.
Either the FAA is going to have to start regulating RC airplanes, which is preposterous, or they are going to have to leave drones alone.
I'm just saying the constitution grants some very specific powers to the federal government. The most relevant is that it has the power to regulate interstate commerce.
If you think the ICC is a "very specific power", well, I can't fix that problem. If you want to discount the existing interstate commerce nature of commercial aviation, I can't fix that problem either. And if you want to ignore all the issues that make different regulations for inter and intra state operations a complete and horrible mess, I can't fix that.
We've been doing a lot of ignoring the constitution lately, and I don't think it's been working out very well for us.
I think the existing federal regulatory system for aviation fits very well in the constitutional framework and has done very well for us. I'm a pilot. I use it. Do you have any experience in using the system or are you just an observer with opinions?
The 10th amendment clearly states that powers not granted to the federal government are reserved for the states or the people. Maybe the solution lies therein?
So you truly have ignored everything I've said about the difficulty of trying to regulate a national airspace at the state level. I can't fix that, I can only write off the wasted time.
No. Based on that logic, it would not be breaking any federal laws which are supposed to be restricted by the constitution.
No. Based on that logic, since there are no state laws prohibiting it, it would be perfectly fine to jump into an airplane and start flying around the local airport without any license at all.
Here's a good starting point for a demonstration of your legal philosophy. Take an airplane from someplace in SoCal and fly into LAX. Land on whichever runway you want. Taxi around for awhile, then pick a runway and depart. Ignore the FAA ATC controllers because we all know they have no authority to control anything but interstate aviation and you are clearly and obviously inTRAstate. There are no state controllers at LAX so there's nobody who has authority to tell you to stop. The Center controllers who will be watching you on their radars are all FAA ATC controllers, so they, too, have no authority to tell you you can't fly around what they mistakenly believe is their airspace.
And if you want a real thrill, get down to about 500' AGL and fly around downtown LA. The view will be spectacular. Get lower and you can actually look UP at people in the high rise buildings as you zip by. Those F15s or F16s that come up on your wingtips are FEDERAL aircraft and obviously have no authority to intercept you, so ignore them.
As a pilot, I am perfectly happy to have NATIONAL regulations concerning flight activities because it means I don't have to memorize fifty (or more) different sets of rules for what I can and cannot do in an airplane, or what OTHER people can and cannot do. Not so much because I want to limit their fun, but because I would really not want to find out that the neighboring state has no rules regarding flight in IMC (in the clouds, e.g.) and one of their pilots has wandered into my state where I'm flying in the clouds legally and expect ATC to provide separation services. And I even would not want to be flying into an airport in some other state and find out the hard way that the state rules there for airspace allow people to fly fifty pound drones in the approach corridor to that airport and that one is doing so while I'm using it.
You gave reasons why they should, many of them valid and reasonable, but you did not say what gave them the power.
You're right. Nowhere in the constitution did the founders of the US write the words "Congress shall have authority to regulate national airspace". We should ignore the fact that when the Constitution was written there was no concept of "airspace" or "aviation" to be regulated. We should ignore the fact that a large part of aviation is interstate and was driven explicitely for the purposes of interstate commerce (carrying the mail). We should forget that early barnstormers who brought "local" aviation to the local masses traveled from state to state while doing so -- even Orville and Wilbur traveled from Ohio to North Carolina to test their flier. We should ignore the fact that mixing regulated interstate aviation with unregulated local aviation would be a disaster (for the many reasons I've already given). Yes, let's ignore "equal protection" and the inherent interstate nature of much of aviation and difficulty in isolating inter from intra state aviation, and the fact that both inter and intra state aviation use the exact same airspace.
Prove to me that the FAA really has no authority, and that you yourself believe your claim. Go buy yourself an airplane and start flying from your local airport -- but don't bow to the fascist federal aviation pigs and bother getting a license. You don't need one because clearly the FAA has no authority to regulate your totally intrastate activity, and your state has no regulations on the matter! If you don't happen to live in a state with a Class B airport move to one that does (but don't FLY there) and start flying in the controlled airspace surrounding that airport without a transponder or communicating with the ATC facility that controls it. I'd suggest, just to make sure you get the biggest bang for your buck (so to speak) you select Illinois (Orchard Airport, now called O'Hare), Georgia (Atlanta), or maybe California (takes your pick between LAX and SFO). When the fascists at the FAA start enforcement action based on your complete lack of regard for federal aviation regulations, take them to SCOTUS and argue that they have no authority to put their jackboots on your throat.
Pretty much everyone accepts that federal preemption of state regulatory authority on aviation and airspace issues is a good thing, but hey, maybe you'll convince them they are wrong. I mean, were your argument valid, I'm POSITIVE someone would have tried using it before. Pilots get dinged for violating FARs for local flights and at least one of them would have gotten off the hook (and then all of them would do it), were it true.
This discussion is stupid. The FAA regulates the airspace and users of same under consent and guidance of the Congress, President, and US courts, and arguing that they don't have the authority because you want to fly your toy airplanes in that airspace without regulation or consideration for other users is a waste of everyone's time.
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I concur in theory. However, in practice, how would that work?
Simple. A federal law that presidential ballots cannot begin to be counted until the last poll closes.
The twatterblagoversetubes would have some sort of "wisdom of the crowd" tweetpost exit-poll-like mashup
The whatever you call it will always have exit polls and hypotheses and guesses and try to make themselves look like the best news source. But exit polls carry much less weight in the process than actual poll results.
(though that is a fairly new development),
Hardly. I had internet access long before cable internet became a reality. Not through the educational institution, but as a private user.
I don't know what you call "a vibrant market", so I can't comment on that. It seems pretty active, however.
As I recall, the Bush camp wanted one recount method, and the Gore camp wanted a different one, and under the rules they each proposed, the other side would have won.
You recall wrong. Bush wanted the recount that was already completed to stand, which would allow the Secretary of State to certify the result in time for the Electoral College, and Gore wanted another recount that would have pushed the result back so Florida's votes wouldn't have counted at all, no matter who won another recount. That's what most people missed. If the electors cannot vote when the Electoral College meets, it doesn't matter who won the state, the votes don't matter. Gore knew that, and he knew he'd win if Florida's electors couldn't vote.
That's what the Supreme Court case was about -- whether the Florida legislature had the authority to define the election process or the courts could change it. The US and Florida constitutions both gave the legislature the responsibility, and the legislature had a process in place for counting and recounting and certifying the results. Gore wanted that changed after the polls had closed, just like he got the counting process changed to include "dimpled chads" in a system that said "poke a hole in a piece of paper" and his voters couldn't manage to do that simple task. A "poke a hole" system that both Republican AND Democrat election officials had approved prior to the actual election.
Yes, every single one. Don't forget that Gore tried to goose the results by having only Dem heavy counties recounted rather than the entire state.
And his people were in court trying to get already counted Republican heavy areas thrown out. They challenged the absentees from the military because many military votes went via APO/FPO and lacked postmarks, and in one county they challenged all the Republican absentees because the Republican precinct captain was smart enough to write the voter's id number on the absentee request and the Democrat wasn't.
Many voters left lines while voting was open once Florida was called for Gore. IF that hadn't have happened, the recount wouldn't have been close at all.
That, too. That's why there should be NO reporting of results until ALL the ballots have been cast. If that means that east coast voters don't know who won until after Hawaii's polls close, that's just too damn bad.
Yes, normal (i.e. practically occurring and recurring) peak volumes.
No, peak is not normal. That's why they call it peak and not normal.
But on the other hand, if you sell "up to 16Mbps" to your customers, and then your network or your peerings limit them to a lower speed, you need to upgrade.
So you're a small ISP and have 1000 customers, all of whom you've sold 16Mbps service to. That's a sum of 16Gbps if my math is right. But that's only if they ALL put the same, maximum demand on the system at the same time. You can be a socially responsible scrupulously honest business person and try to find a 16Gbps upstream connection and pay the money for it, charging your customers a premium for never hitting a bottleneck on your network, or you can keep the costs to your customers lower by getting a connection that is maxed out 5% of the time. Or 10%.
Should it matter if that 5% is at the same time every day? Well, how much is it worth spending to have a network that is mostly idle for half the day and maybe half capacity for another 45%, to solve the 100% capacity for 5% of the time problem? Would your customers want to pay what it would cost? I suspect not, based on the claims here that Comcast is the only ISP because it is the only cheap fast ISP available, not because it truly is the only ISP available. People seem to care about prices a lot.
They did in the very recent past. I'm not sure if they still have this, but in many areas, they had franchise agreements that allowed only one cable or telcom providers in an area for upwards of 10 years.
In none of the cities I've been in for the last thirty years has there been an exclusive franchise agreement. If you know of one I can see online, point me to it. Any city that made such an agreement was a fool, and if any of them did then the problem isn't the cable company it was the local government that did the stupid thing.
But you clipped the statement I made before it ended and changed the meaning significantly. I said they had no monopoly "on the internet". They did not have one, they do not have one, and nobody in the future will ever grant them one. Whether or not they have an exclusive franchise for cable in an area, they do not have a monopoly on the kinds of services that are carried on that cable. There are too many other internet providers for Comcast to get that kind of franchise agreement anywhere, and franchise agreements do not cover that to begin with.
Even without franchise agreements, around here, that have city ordinances that were voted on by the people
Wow. You have people who micromanage the local utilities to that level? How is this idiocy Comcast's fault? How is "government by the people" a bad thing?
The problem with being a fixed line ISP, is you also need to get property rights for both public and private property.
It's called an easement and the city or local government has already managed that. That's what the franchise agreement deals with. That's how the cable or telco or power company gets transit rights. For the drops, the customer has to grant access if they want service. This is not a new or unsolved problem, and it doesn't create a monopoly.
What's happening is that last-mile providers are selling internet bandwidth that they in turn haven't bought from their upstream providers.
This has been true from the early days of even just the simple telephone system. Capacity costs money, and providers build enough capacity to handle normal volumes.
Back when telephones were "spin the crank and ask Mabel to connect you", the capacity limits were "one Mabel" and "one patchboard". You want Mabel to do something for you, but she may be busy with someone else. Too many people want to talk to each other, you run out of patch cords. And if more than one or two people wanted to talk "long distance", well, the one or two trunk lines put a limit on that, too. But most of the time, one Mabel was enough. The telco could hire another one, but most of the time she'd be doing her knitting instead of having to work.
That was solved by dial phones, right? Except the local office only had a certain number of dialtone generators, so you could sometimes, in peak usage periods, pick up your phone and not get a dialtone for 30 seconds or so. And there were still a limited number of trunks. It used to be fun to try to make calls on Mother's Day -- one of the busiest days of the telephone year -- and see how the system failed. Sometimes you'd get random connections.
So we've got the same thing now. It's obvious when there's a major event that the cell system is designed for normal loads and not "every possible load". Our networks are the same. Those who don't know history are doomed to repeat it, or to think they're seeing something that has never happened before.
The cost of bandwidth is determined by peak loads,
Nobody builds to peak loads because none of the customers want to pay what that would cost. A company that builds its systems for peak loads would have unused bandwidth most of the time, but someone has to pay for it.
The only real place for debate is to what level below peak do they build. If you think regulation would help here, then be prepared to pay for it in increased rates with no real increase in levels of service.
Meh, just because you like your Comcast-sponsored assfucking does not mean everyone else does.
Meh, just because you see a statement that Comcast is not a monopoly doesn't mean it is loved. And thanks for expressing your opinion in a civil manner.
Let's break down your alternatives, shall we? None of what you mentioned happen to actually be broadband.
So, as I expected, the complaint is not that there is no other source of internet, it is there is no other source of internet that is as fast as you want it to be for a price that you want to pay. Sorry, that's not what "monopoly" means.
Sure you have other options, none of them really all that good.
So you admit that the monopoly on the internet is a fiction. Thanks.
Well, it's a Government monopoly with no oversight.
It's not a monopoly, and there is government oversight. At least my city was smart enough not to grant an exclusive franchise, and they do have a staff member that deals with franchise issues. We're on a first-name basis, I've called him about the shenanigans of a certain non-monopoly cable company so many times.
Because practically speaking, you can't just let any yahoo with a garden trowel and some fiberoptic cables just start digging around everywhere, it's a freaking nightmare to do that.
That's why you have franchise agreements that grant access to the rights of way for a fee. The fact that not just anybody can "start digging" doesn't mean there is a monopoly, it just means there is a legal process to go through to get the access.
THIS is the problem with allowing ISPs to have monopolies.
I'm not sure how you'd solve that problem. Do you imagine that most home users would be able to configure an adaptive router that determines the best route for their packets and sends them to ISP A sometimes and ISP B other times? That would create havoc with routing since you're trying to change not just an address of an intermediate router, you're changing the destination address. And imagine the fun if someone actually did have service from two ISPs and they somehow became an advertised route between the two.
I suspect, however, that you're talking about a perceived monopoly on providing service to someone, not a monopoly on being the only route to a customer once they are one. Comcast doesn't have a monopoly on the internet, but once you have Comcast as an ISP then they have a monopoly on the routing. If you want to stop the latter, don't have Comcast as an ISP.
Consumers like myself who literally have no choice of ISP
Where do you live that you don't have another choice? If you're in a densely populated enough area to have Comcast, then certainly there is a telco that serves you, and probably cell.
90% of comcast customers are held hostage, they CANT GO ANYWHERE ELSE for internet. This is what happens when you have a government sponsored and allowed monopoly.
Except that Comcast has no monopoly -- government allowed, government sponsored, or otherwise -- on the Internet. The closest to "government sponsored" you get is the franchise agreement with the local government, and that isn't a de jure monopoly. The economics make cable into a de facto monopoly, but the government didn't have anything to do with it.
If you want Internet, you have plenty of choices depending on where you live. DSL from your telco. DSL on the telco wires from someone else, broadband wireless, 3G/4G via usually more than one cell carrier. Satellite. And if you live so far out in the sticks that there are none of those options, then it is doubtful that Comcast has wired your neighborhood anyway. But 90% of Comcast customers do NOT live in places without other internet options.
There are plenty of reasons to dislike Comcast, you don't have to make things up.
The real question is, if they have the capability to know where it was really delivered, why would they not program the handhelds to make all sorts of noise when the delivery guy screws up?
I've had both UPS and FedEx actually change the customer-supplied delivery address because they ... thought they knew better? The last time, the hand-written FedEx form was still on the outside of the box, but the computer-printed one said something different. They're deliberately delivering things to the wrong place. Why would the handheld scanner complain about that?
According to postal inspector rules, he gets to keep it:
UPS is not USPS. And it wasn't sent to him, it was misdelivered. Stop trusting the headlines of /. articles. They're intended to fan flames and not to inform. If a certain cable news network did the same kind of thing they'd be accused of being inept and corrupt. When /. does it, it's just fine.
what you say may be true of Comcast in your area, but certainly isn't of telephone companies.
Ummm, I was replying pretty specifically to what you said about Comcast and its government monopoly.
That's why "DIC" means "drunk in charge".
But DUI(I) means "Driving Under the Influence (of Intoxicants)". ORS 813.010: "(1) A person commits the offense of driving while under the influence of intoxicants if the person drives a vehicle while ..." You're not driving, you're not guilty.
Never heard of DIC. Would the mother-in-law be called "PIC" -- passenger in charge?
In Oregon, ORS 811.507 makes texting while driving is made illegal by this in paragraph 2:
So, if you're not operating the vehicle, you can't be guilty of texting while driving.
with a minimum filter to prevent problems if you pour grease into your bathroom sink
Anyone who pours grease down ANY sink, much less a bathroom sink, is a moron who deserves to be thirsty and have sinks filled with standing, greasy water, and no greywater to flush toilets with.
When was that exactly? I watch a lot of history channel, and history is mostly filled with kings and generals standing BEHIND the lines of poor people with pointy sticks.
No, history is mostly filled with pawnbrokers who tell the camera "I really want this, it would look really cool in my shop and I know I can sell it for a profit" but tell the guy trying to sell it that "it will be on my shelf for a year, I'll have to get a nice frame for it, the collectors aren't buying, and can I get my buddy take a look at it?" before they make a low-ball offer.
If only history were filled with more antique book dealers or unpaid (but now part-time employee) interns. And less screen-writer fantasy about how Vikings lived.
For the slow or non-viewer, I'm referring to Rebeccah and Lili.
Why? Doesn't the car drive itself while I text? Yea! that's the ticket, have the car stop running in response to a "STOP" text... Problem solved, except in those places where it's illegal to text and drive..
If it will be legal to sleep while your car drives you where you want to go, how could it be illegal to be awake but texting while it does the same thing?
Key phrase: car drives itself. You aren't the driver anymore, any laws that limit what the driver can do won't apply to you. That means if you are really drunk and program your car to take you to the front lawn of the Whitehouse because you think it would be fun, it won't be you going to jail it will be your car. And it won't be you that the Secret Service agents will be shooting at, it will be your car. Heck, they can't charge you with a crime because you could have programmed the destination and gotten out of the car to let it go there without you in it!
No, your bigger concern will be the nutjob who gets bored while riding around in his driverless car and decides to use his cell phone jammer to keep other people from texting while riding around in their driverless cars.
In many cases, you'll find that Comcast has been granted a local monopoly by local governments. Ooops.
Then your beef is with your local government, not Comcast. Comcast works just fine without an exclusive franchise and your local government was wrong to grant one. When it comes time to renew, get your government to do what you want them to and renew non-exclusively.
Nowhere I've lived or gotten cable service from has had an exclusive franchise agreement. Nowhere I've lived has had multiple cable companies providing service. There must be something beside a government-granted monopoly that stops that kind of competition.
No you can't, it's just over 200 gallons. Unless by some time you mean about a week. You need to drink 1/2 gallon a day alone.
By my calculations, 1/2 gallon a day means 200 gallons would last 400 days. More than a year. But, as you point out, there are other uses.
To put back some of the context, the person you replied to said: "Well if you have the choice between dying of thirst or paying $80 for a cubic yard, you'd probably pay the $80."
Teeth brushing: 1 gallon
If it takes you more than a cupful of water to brush your teeth, you are wasteful and Darwin says you will not survive. But you don't need to brush your teeth to keep from dying of thirst.
Face/leg shaving: 1 gallon
I'm not sure how this is a requirement to keep from dying of thirst. Personally, I've not shaved my legs ever, and my face has been blade-free for more than 20 years.
The rest of the uses you come up with in your list are hardly survival requirements. The only one is the 1/2 gallon a day for drinking. Even adding a 1/2 gallon for cooking means you could get by for 200 days on that 200 gallons. No, it wouldn't be pleasant, but it would keep you from dying of thirst.
My current city water bill is about $40/month. $80 for water that would last for just six months means I come out ahead on the deal.
Tons of influence, nearly untouchable by the president after being appointed, and a highly functional position unencumbered by the bulk of politics inflicted on the President.
If by "nearly untouchable" you mean "can be fired at a moment's notice at the whim of the President, is the lightning rod for every failed Presidential foreign policy position or statement, and has to step and fetch for foreign dignitaries that are better ignored", why yes, I agree completely.
Keep in mind, when you see a Secretary of State making absolutely ridiculous statements demonstrating a complete ignorance of world politics, he's doing so as Secretary of State because the President chooses not to fire him, not because he can't be fired.
We are talking about private drones and rc airplanes, not commercial aviation.
And the FAA regulates general aviation along with other commercial aviation, and has for decades, and for exactly the same reasons already covered.
We are not talking about mixing traffic, we are talking about traffic that is inherently separate.
That is patently absurd. The argument that the FAA has no authority to regulate aviation that isn't interstate in nature implies an ability to differentiate that traffic, and it is NOT INHERENTLY SEPARATE. When I go flying around the pattern I'm using the same airspace used by someone who is arriving from or going to an airport in another state. ATC has no way to differentiate between traffic that is inter and intra state. That aircraft they see departing the local airport may be staying local, or it may be going somewhere in state, or it may be going two states away. They don't know.
My point is that the case has not been made that small drone traffic infringes on national airspace or involves interstate commerce.
It uses the same airspace. You keep ignoring that point. And here's another point: licensing has to deal with the things that the licensee is authorized to do, not just with the subset of things he's actually going to do. I have federal licenses that permit me to do things I never intend on doing, so the rules have to cover those things, too.
Either the FAA is going to have to start regulating RC airplanes, which is preposterous, or they are going to have to leave drones alone.
And who is creating straw men?
I'm just saying the constitution grants some very specific powers to the federal government. The most relevant is that it has the power to regulate interstate commerce.
If you think the ICC is a "very specific power", well, I can't fix that problem. If you want to discount the existing interstate commerce nature of commercial aviation, I can't fix that problem either. And if you want to ignore all the issues that make different regulations for inter and intra state operations a complete and horrible mess, I can't fix that.
We've been doing a lot of ignoring the constitution lately, and I don't think it's been working out very well for us.
I think the existing federal regulatory system for aviation fits very well in the constitutional framework and has done very well for us. I'm a pilot. I use it. Do you have any experience in using the system or are you just an observer with opinions?
The 10th amendment clearly states that powers not granted to the federal government are reserved for the states or the people. Maybe the solution lies therein?
So you truly have ignored everything I've said about the difficulty of trying to regulate a national airspace at the state level. I can't fix that, I can only write off the wasted time.
No. Based on that logic, it would not be breaking any federal laws which are supposed to be restricted by the constitution.
No. Based on that logic, since there are no state laws prohibiting it, it would be perfectly fine to jump into an airplane and start flying around the local airport without any license at all.
Here's a good starting point for a demonstration of your legal philosophy. Take an airplane from someplace in SoCal and fly into LAX. Land on whichever runway you want. Taxi around for awhile, then pick a runway and depart. Ignore the FAA ATC controllers because we all know they have no authority to control anything but interstate aviation and you are clearly and obviously inTRAstate. There are no state controllers at LAX so there's nobody who has authority to tell you to stop. The Center controllers who will be watching you on their radars are all FAA ATC controllers, so they, too, have no authority to tell you you can't fly around what they mistakenly believe is their airspace.
And if you want a real thrill, get down to about 500' AGL and fly around downtown LA. The view will be spectacular. Get lower and you can actually look UP at people in the high rise buildings as you zip by. Those F15s or F16s that come up on your wingtips are FEDERAL aircraft and obviously have no authority to intercept you, so ignore them.
As a pilot, I am perfectly happy to have NATIONAL regulations concerning flight activities because it means I don't have to memorize fifty (or more) different sets of rules for what I can and cannot do in an airplane, or what OTHER people can and cannot do. Not so much because I want to limit their fun, but because I would really not want to find out that the neighboring state has no rules regarding flight in IMC (in the clouds, e.g.) and one of their pilots has wandered into my state where I'm flying in the clouds legally and expect ATC to provide separation services. And I even would not want to be flying into an airport in some other state and find out the hard way that the state rules there for airspace allow people to fly fifty pound drones in the approach corridor to that airport and that one is doing so while I'm using it.
You gave reasons why they should, many of them valid and reasonable, but you did not say what gave them the power.
You're right. Nowhere in the constitution did the founders of the US write the words "Congress shall have authority to regulate national airspace". We should ignore the fact that when the Constitution was written there was no concept of "airspace" or "aviation" to be regulated. We should ignore the fact that a large part of aviation is interstate and was driven explicitely for the purposes of interstate commerce (carrying the mail). We should forget that early barnstormers who brought "local" aviation to the local masses traveled from state to state while doing so -- even Orville and Wilbur traveled from Ohio to North Carolina to test their flier. We should ignore the fact that mixing regulated interstate aviation with unregulated local aviation would be a disaster (for the many reasons I've already given). Yes, let's ignore "equal protection" and the inherent interstate nature of much of aviation and difficulty in isolating inter from intra state aviation, and the fact that both inter and intra state aviation use the exact same airspace.
Prove to me that the FAA really has no authority, and that you yourself believe your claim. Go buy yourself an airplane and start flying from your local airport -- but don't bow to the fascist federal aviation pigs and bother getting a license. You don't need one because clearly the FAA has no authority to regulate your totally intrastate activity, and your state has no regulations on the matter! If you don't happen to live in a state with a Class B airport move to one that does (but don't FLY there) and start flying in the controlled airspace surrounding that airport without a transponder or communicating with the ATC facility that controls it. I'd suggest, just to make sure you get the biggest bang for your buck (so to speak) you select Illinois (Orchard Airport, now called O'Hare), Georgia (Atlanta), or maybe California (takes your pick between LAX and SFO). When the fascists at the FAA start enforcement action based on your complete lack of regard for federal aviation regulations, take them to SCOTUS and argue that they have no authority to put their jackboots on your throat.
Pretty much everyone accepts that federal preemption of state regulatory authority on aviation and airspace issues is a good thing, but hey, maybe you'll convince them they are wrong. I mean, were your argument valid, I'm POSITIVE someone would have tried using it before. Pilots get dinged for violating FARs for local flights and at least one of them would have gotten off the hook (and then all of them would do it), were it true.
This discussion is stupid. The FAA regulates the airspace and users of same under consent and guidance of the Congress, President, and US courts, and arguing that they don't have the authority because you want to fly your toy airplanes in that airspace without regulation or consideration for other users is a waste of everyone's time.