So it's a statistical certainty that if you broadcast an emergency announcement that concludes with "exercise, exercise, exercise",
So that's why they put "exercise" repeated three times at the start of the message. Your reptilian brain should be sound asleep by the time the rest of the message arrives.
So from a systems or exercise designer's standpoint, you need to start the drill with the disclaimer.
So that's what they do.
What's more, introducing conflicting signals ("this is not a drill") is a really bad idea, because you risk triggering a higher priority behavior control system.
You want the recipient to hear the message he'd actually hear if there was an emergency. That way he's used to hearing it and his "reptilian brain" isn't going to go ape-shit panic mode when it comes through for real. He knows the message, he knows what he needs to do because he's practiced it. He also knows what the real one sounds like so when something different comes through he can identify that it is something different.
And if you have two different messages, you risk the mistake of sending the "this is a drill" version when you really needed the "this is not a drill" one.
I can guess that one take-away the state government got from this is to put the exercise disclaimer at both ends, and to train the operators to listen to the ENTIRE message.
The refractory nature of emotions is why it's so important to control things like anger,
I've just heard an exercise message that began "exercise exercise exercise." I'm so angry I'm going to forget that I heard it. What?
The kind of person who believes in "train like you fight, fight like you train", who uses the real message prefixed by a clear statement that it is an exercise so that the "worker" will not be "shocked" when hears the message for real. But the "worker" should not be shocked, this message is part of his job, and the part about not being a drill that might "shock" a casual listener occurs well after the "exercise" part. He's not "shocked" to hear "exercise", so has little reason to forget or get flustered when he hears it.
You can create reasons why you think the "exercise exercise exercise" was not heard, but if you hear the message over the same channel and blame the false alarm on "this is not a drill", then you have to explain why one was heard but the other was not.
It is not "idiot" to do it this way. It is "learning" to realize that "exercise" needs to be at the beginning and the end. It is "learning" for the "worker" to remember the first part of the message, too, and not just the last part.
Can we beat this problem to death any more than it has been? An exercise message triggered a false alarm. We learn from the process and get on with our lives. That's why we have exercises in the first place -- to test the system and learn. Just like we learned from the failed/successful national emergency notification system test a couple of years ago. And like my county learns every time they test the Everbridge telephone alert system locally.
Now Facebook is going to push local propaganda over reputable international news coverage. This is not an improvement.
You're blaming Facebook for not showing you what you want to see, and you still use facebook?
Who cares what Facebook pushes? If you care, don't get your news from Facebook. Maybe the improvement will be that more people will realize that Facebook is not a source of news?
So given how completely incompetent Facebook show themselves to be, they think they should now be in between me and my trusted news sources.....
If Facebook is in between you and your trusted news sources, it is because you have put Facebook between you and your trusted news sources. Don't go through Facebook to get there, and your problem is solved.
And direction. Each cell has two or three antennas so it is trivial to use phased array methods to get a direction. In fact, that allows both ends to use less power, conserving the phone's battery and decreasing co-site interference.
They may have been storing info about what cell tower you're linked to, but they do not try to pinpoint your location. That takes active effort.
"Effort by computer" is not really a significant limiting factor. Another word for it is "automated", and another would be "conserve resources."
Each modern cell tower does locate the user so that it can use phased array antennas to direct as little power as necessary towards him and improve reception from him. It takes no human effort, the system does it all by itself.
If the gov owned all the towers, and the standard itself, then they could do a few things - they could embed the GPS info into the cell signal back to the tower,
Owning the towers does not imply that they can force phones to send GPS data, but then, they don't need to do that to get locations with a reasonable precision.
they could try and get you to bounce a few signals from other towers to try and triangulate your position sans GPS
You do realize that your phone regularly checks for a better tower connection automatically, don't you? In other words, it tries to bounce a signal from other towers. Have you heard the term "handoff"? How do you imagine that the phone and tower system know that a handoff is beneficial and to what other tower? And even if your phone isn't sending to those towers, they can certainly listen to your signal if they want to triangulate.
Knowing my tower lets you know a circle with a radius of 20 miles or so.
You need to read up on the technology.
I work in search and rescue. There are cases where with one ping of a cell tower the location of a lost or hiding person has been located to within a few hundred yards. This is in rural areas where only one cell tower could hear the phone. If there are more towers and your phone has better service, you can bet you can be located to within a twenty yard radius. Not twenty miles.
Also, the city prohibits opening any new eateries.
The city has no authority to prevent a new ISP from doing business there. None at all. In fact, why would they? They'll get the business taxes from the new company. Perhaps that is why there are so many ISPs currently in operation?
So your suggestion is that people drive to the next small town fifty miles away for lunch? That seems abusive.
If you don' t like the restaurants in the town where you live, yes, the solution is to go someplace else. I doubt you live fifty miles away from the next town, but if you do, then you've chosen to live in a place with limited supply and limited choices. Next time, choose better.
I was using restaurant licenses to stand in for monopoly agreements which outright prevent competition.
I know. That's what I replied to. It is stupid to claim that a business license OF ANY KIND creates a government-granted monopoly. A business license does not grant any exclusivity, it is just a license to do business and creates a method of tracking your business for tax and other purposes. The next guy who wants a business license in the same business gets one and poof goes your government granted monopoly. It really isn't that hard, please do understand your own analogies, ok?
It is because the evil [local] government only lets one company do it,
Bullshit. Absolute and utter bullshit. Who pays you to spread these lies?
and you are either ignorant or a liar.
I can open up my phone book to the yellow pages and find half a dozen or more ISPs advertising their services. I have had two ISPs at the same time at the same house, and I know at least two more that would happily take my money to be my ISP -- even though you claim that the government allows only one of them to exist. Hmmm. Who is the ignorant liar?
ATT said I would have to wait six weeks to get it back. I don't call that service, do you?
So you're pissed about poor service. Fine. Complain to your state PUC. That's what they are there for.
Whoosh!
Whoosh your own fucking self. Your Taco Bell analogy was patently stupid, because there have been no "fast food wars" and nobody has been a sole winner. There are scads of ISPs all around you, if you'd bother to look. But it is more fun you hurl nonsense about evil government monopolies keeping you from getting what you want than to admit it is there, just not the exact way you demand that it be.
I live in a major metropolitan center and have exactly 1 choice for high speed internet.
When has the government EVER told ANYONE that they may only buy ISP service from one specific company? Never is when. This is not an example of a time.
Since cable is the only high speed internet technology that does deliver bandwidth at reasonable cost
Now you're talking about the cost, not the availability or that the government has told you that you may buy service from only one ISP. You've just answered the question implicitly -- there is no real monopoly.
and other cable providers are prohibited by state and local laws in my and many areas,
Sorry, but no. Federal law preempts state and local law on this. And cable is not the only medium for internet despite your claim to the contrary.
I'm not alone, a very large percentage of Americans are forced into one choice by the monopoly granted by the government.
Sorry, no. The government has not granted a single ISP anywhere in the US a monopoly. Period. Has not happened. Cable, as a medium for cable TV, USED to be able to get exclusive franchises, but exclusive franchises have been ILLEGAL for more that two decades now. Federal law. Telcos still have monopoly status for wired telephone service, but they are not the only ISP, and their ISP service has no government granted monopoly status and never has.
The reason you can buy from only on ISP (which I really doubt, but we'll accept for the moment) is not because the government has granted your ISP a monopoly, it is for the reason you already mentioned: cost. No company will overbuild an existing system in any medium if the costs are more than the market will bear. They can't make a profit.
Now, I suspect that there are other ISPs you could buy from, but you are unwilling to pay the cost. Just as in the example for the Colorado city that decided to compete against incumbent ISPs because there was only one option -- there were actually more than 8 options. In fact, if you are in a major metropolitan area and you think there is only one ISP for the entire city, you are just not looking hard enough, or you are creating reasons why all but one is "good enough" for you. They exist, they'll happily sell to you, but it will cost a lot more than the cable you are using now. That, sir, is not a "government granted monopoly", it is an economic one, and a
"monopoly" created by the consumer refusing to pay the costs of service is not a true monopoly.
So, the short version is, never has the government told you that you can buy ISP service from only one company.
The number one place that there are issues is utility poles.
Someone should invent a wireless internet delivery system... oh wait.
One touch make ready is a regulation that allows a new players to move aside existing cables to make room for their own on the condition that they do not harm existing cables or interfere with the competitor's service.
Prove that I damaged your cable when I moved it. It was corroded and fell apart all on its own. Your installer didn't tighten that connection so it came loose when I moved the box. That wedding ring break in your hardline was there before I even started. And, of course, no incumbent would sue just because they could use it as a delaying tactic.
Letting people move other people's stuff is not a good idea. Changing the law to require faster turnaround is the correct answer.
this single BK restaurant is "the internet", or monopoly gateway to is.
Which is what makes the ad ridiculous. In real life, you would walk across the street to McD, Wendys, In and Out, Burgerville, Subway, Jimmy Johns, or any of a number of competitors. Or change ISPs, which might mean actually looking in the phone book to find one and not accepting the meme that your ISP is a monopoly.
monopolies from both cities and large multi-tenant units
Cities have been prohibited from issuing exclusive franchises for more than twenty years now. No such franchises still exist.
"Multi-tenant units" are private companies that are free to make whatever contractual agreements they wish, and since they own the place you live they get to say what modifications may be made to the building, including drilling holes for wires. That's just one reason why living in such a place sucks.
Now extend that to every phone call you make. Imagine if the only calls you could make for "free" (as part of your plan) were to individuals and businesses that are paying for the privilege of having Verizon customers call them without additional charges.
You mean like the difference between toll free 800/877/etc numbers paid for by the recipient and regular long distance paid for by the caller? Fuck, I pay a "federal access fee" to get access to long distance calling and I DON'T HAVE A LONG DISTANCE PROVIDER so I can't make long distance calls at all.
this isnt about FCC - its about local and state regs that prevent non incumbents from pulling new cable on existing poles.
And federal law pre-empts any such state or local law by requiring municipalities to issue second, third or even fourth franchises on the same basis as the first, and none of them can be exclusive. If the city lets the incumbent on a pole as part of the franchise, it has to let the newbie on the pole when it issues the franchise to them.
ISPs are at the mercy of what Comcast, AT&T, and Verizon charge them, since those guys own the pipes needed for broadband.
I'm sorry, but no ISP doing real business resells Comcast or AT&T. It's just too expensive and limiting. They get a pipe from a real backbone provider. Even the major non-cable, non-telco ISP in my town goes through a commercial provider and doesn't just resell Comcast.
The last mile in each city and town was installed over many decades with the encouragement and subsidy from local governments, waiving complicated rules and rights and way.
You have no clue what the franchise process used to be like, do you? I can tell you for a fact there was no waiving of complicated rules or rights of way. Before the states co-opted the franchise process, the cities could put whatever kinds of rules they wanted into a franchise agreement.
Even Google, with all its resources, has pretty much given up trying to compete in the local ISP market.
And that's now, where the "complicated rules and rights of way" aren't complicated anymore. Why did they give up? It cost too much.
There are plenty of small towns with only one or two restaurants in them.
If only someone would invent something that allows people in one small town to drive to another small town...
You can only purchase food from a business with a license to sell you food.
And now the stupidity where the business license is being used as proof of government-granted monopoly status for ISPs. Will this never end?
But in the middle where I live, all I can get is access from a WISP which charges me $99/mo for 250GB at 6Mbps.
You know, if some company thought it was profitable to wire your road to provide service to you, they would have. It's not because the evil government let's only one company do it, it's because NO company chooses to lose money trying to provide service to you.
We paid the telcos to build out the last mile,
So you don't even have telephone service?
What if Taco Bell wins the fast food wars, and all restaurants are Taco Bell?
Except that this is about internet service providers, so there is no "shopping elsewhere" for most people.
Except at another ISP.
There's already collusion between the ISPs to have as little differences in prices and speeds as possible.
Wait a minute. If there is only one ISP, then with what other ISP is your only ISP colluding with, and why do they need to collude to keep you from changing your service?
If you can prove this collusion, then you have a good case for antitrust action. But you have to prove it, and there has to be someone to collude with.
They need a 15 second after shot where it pans out to people trying to shop elsewhere and the assistant on thier phone tells them that this is the only place they are legally allowed to buy fast food from.
When has the government EVER told ANYONE that they may only buy ISP service from one specific company? Never is when.
I don't expect to use random apps to read books. I expect book reader apps to read books. Angry Birds apps will not read books.
I know what the intent of that was. There will be DRM to limit the book to Kobo devices and apps, with perhaps their own bastardized format in place of epub or pdf, just like Amazon has their own format/DRM for Kindle.
If this takes off, I expect it will not be long before there is a Calibre plugin to deal with it. But, as I've been a Kobo customer in the past without a happy ending, I doubt I'll be looking for the plugin or care.
I'm sure they'd really like the bundling model to extend to internet access.
The bundling model already extends to internet access. I don't know of a cable TV company that also sells internet services that does NOT have a discount price for getting both cable TV and internet. And my telephone company has a bundled price for voice and internet services.
and in some areas it would take six times as long to drive as to walk, cycle or catch a underground train. your point?
His point was that using public transportation CAN BE an inappropriate or useless option, not that it ALWAYS is. Your response pretends he said the latter. Pointing out that public trans CAN BE appropriate doesn't prove that there are no times when it CAN BE inappropriate.
and that is only due to underinvestment in public transportation,
Do you realize how much it would cost to invest in public transport in some parts of the US? No, I guess you do not. You think the problem is that too many people own cars without understanding why they do. If only there were infinite money to provide public transport nobody would ever need a car, right? And running public transport in those parts of the country would not be a bigger source of carbon dioxide than simply allowing the people to drive themselves, right?
You can't bring about a societal shift without force if you can't even educate your people.
It takes more than you telling everyone how they ought to do things, i.e. "educate them", for there to be a change. The change has to be reasonable and something that can be accomplished. Changing an entire culture from animal-based to growing crops is not as simple as everyone being educated about how much better it is. That's likely because for them it wouldn't be better.
If you measure my intake and outgo of carbon dioxide for the entirety of my life, my production of carbon dioxide will ALWAYS be much more than my intake. For my entire life. That is not "the short term". That's 100%.
The carbon you consume was carbon dioxide very recently.
It was not carbon dioxide when I ingested it, and I am the one converting it from sequestered carbon to carbon dioxide. To stop that from happening requires one of two things.
The only way to stop that process is to stop eating or stop breathing.
Utter bollocks. You stop eating and stop breathing, and you'll be CO2 again within a year,
That may be, maybe not. It is irrelevant. In any case, it will not be my fault, and I can do nothing about it. However, I can do something about this dangerous carbon dioxide I am currently emitting, and my solution, despite your pronouncement that it is "utter bollocks", is absolute fact. You deny the obvious truth.
No, because fossil-fuels, which is what this is all really about.
Yeah, right. The money was spent to study how much carbon dioxide comes from a breakfast sandwich because this is all about fossil fuels. Do you eat a fossil fuel breakfast sandwich? No, you don't.
This is "all about" the contribution of humans to the CO2 issue, and that makes the context of this discussion not the global carbon cycle, but human actions that impact the carbon cycle. Like "eating a sandwich". In that context, there are two ways to stop the problem, both of which I listed.
I eat veal. Six months is a lot shorter than five years.
Completely irrelevant.
Not when the claim I responded to dealt with a time involved in the "carbon cycle"; specifically the lifetime of the cow. A factor of ten is called "an order of magnitude", and getting things right to better than an order of magnitude is usually considered relevant.
Is presumed knowledge knowledge not a form of ignorance?
No. But it doesn't matter.
I think you've made it clear which yours is, however.
When a climate zealot cannot win by using facts, start insults. I believe the next step is for you to pronounce that the science has been settled and there can be no discussion.
Slashdot Mirror
So it's a statistical certainty that if you broadcast an emergency announcement that concludes with "exercise, exercise, exercise",
So that's why they put "exercise" repeated three times at the start of the message. Your reptilian brain should be sound asleep by the time the rest of the message arrives.
So from a systems or exercise designer's standpoint, you need to start the drill with the disclaimer.
So that's what they do.
What's more, introducing conflicting signals ("this is not a drill") is a really bad idea, because you risk triggering a higher priority behavior control system.
You want the recipient to hear the message he'd actually hear if there was an emergency. That way he's used to hearing it and his "reptilian brain" isn't going to go ape-shit panic mode when it comes through for real. He knows the message, he knows what he needs to do because he's practiced it. He also knows what the real one sounds like so when something different comes through he can identify that it is something different.
And if you have two different messages, you risk the mistake of sending the "this is a drill" version when you really needed the "this is not a drill" one.
I can guess that one take-away the state government got from this is to put the exercise disclaimer at both ends, and to train the operators to listen to the ENTIRE message.
The refractory nature of emotions is why it's so important to control things like anger,
I've just heard an exercise message that began "exercise exercise exercise." I'm so angry I'm going to forget that I heard it. What?
What kind of idiot devised that system?
The kind of person who believes in "train like you fight, fight like you train", who uses the real message prefixed by a clear statement that it is an exercise so that the "worker" will not be "shocked" when hears the message for real. But the "worker" should not be shocked, this message is part of his job, and the part about not being a drill that might "shock" a casual listener occurs well after the "exercise" part. He's not "shocked" to hear "exercise", so has little reason to forget or get flustered when he hears it.
You can create reasons why you think the "exercise exercise exercise" was not heard, but if you hear the message over the same channel and blame the false alarm on "this is not a drill", then you have to explain why one was heard but the other was not.
It is not "idiot" to do it this way. It is "learning" to realize that "exercise" needs to be at the beginning and the end. It is "learning" for the "worker" to remember the first part of the message, too, and not just the last part.
Can we beat this problem to death any more than it has been? An exercise message triggered a false alarm. We learn from the process and get on with our lives. That's why we have exercises in the first place -- to test the system and learn. Just like we learned from the failed/successful national emergency notification system test a couple of years ago. And like my county learns every time they test the Everbridge telephone alert system locally.
Hence I said "if".
Now Facebook is going to push local propaganda over reputable international news coverage. This is not an improvement.
You're blaming Facebook for not showing you what you want to see, and you still use facebook?
Who cares what Facebook pushes? If you care, don't get your news from Facebook. Maybe the improvement will be that more people will realize that Facebook is not a source of news?
So given how completely incompetent Facebook show themselves to be, they think they should now be in between me and my trusted news sources.....
If Facebook is in between you and your trusted news sources, it is because you have put Facebook between you and your trusted news sources. Don't go through Facebook to get there, and your problem is solved.
There's a signal strength too.
And direction. Each cell has two or three antennas so it is trivial to use phased array methods to get a direction. In fact, that allows both ends to use less power, conserving the phone's battery and decreasing co-site interference.
They may have been storing info about what cell tower you're linked to, but they do not try to pinpoint your location. That takes active effort.
"Effort by computer" is not really a significant limiting factor. Another word for it is "automated", and another would be "conserve resources."
Each modern cell tower does locate the user so that it can use phased array antennas to direct as little power as necessary towards him and improve reception from him. It takes no human effort, the system does it all by itself.
If the gov owned all the towers, and the standard itself, then they could do a few things - they could embed the GPS info into the cell signal back to the tower,
Owning the towers does not imply that they can force phones to send GPS data, but then, they don't need to do that to get locations with a reasonable precision.
they could try and get you to bounce a few signals from other towers to try and triangulate your position sans GPS
You do realize that your phone regularly checks for a better tower connection automatically, don't you? In other words, it tries to bounce a signal from other towers. Have you heard the term "handoff"? How do you imagine that the phone and tower system know that a handoff is beneficial and to what other tower? And even if your phone isn't sending to those towers, they can certainly listen to your signal if they want to triangulate.
Knowing my tower lets you know a circle with a radius of 20 miles or so.
You need to read up on the technology.
I work in search and rescue. There are cases where with one ping of a cell tower the location of a lost or hiding person has been located to within a few hundred yards. This is in rural areas where only one cell tower could hear the phone. If there are more towers and your phone has better service, you can bet you can be located to within a twenty yard radius. Not twenty miles.
Also, the city prohibits opening any new eateries.
The city has no authority to prevent a new ISP from doing business there. None at all. In fact, why would they? They'll get the business taxes from the new company. Perhaps that is why there are so many ISPs currently in operation?
So your suggestion is that people drive to the next small town fifty miles away for lunch? That seems abusive.
If you don' t like the restaurants in the town where you live, yes, the solution is to go someplace else. I doubt you live fifty miles away from the next town, but if you do, then you've chosen to live in a place with limited supply and limited choices. Next time, choose better.
I was using restaurant licenses to stand in for monopoly agreements which outright prevent competition.
I know. That's what I replied to. It is stupid to claim that a business license OF ANY KIND creates a government-granted monopoly. A business license does not grant any exclusivity, it is just a license to do business and creates a method of tracking your business for tax and other purposes. The next guy who wants a business license in the same business gets one and poof goes your government granted monopoly. It really isn't that hard, please do understand your own analogies, ok?
It is because the evil [local] government only lets one company do it,
Bullshit. Absolute and utter bullshit. Who pays you to spread these lies?
and you are either ignorant or a liar.
I can open up my phone book to the yellow pages and find half a dozen or more ISPs advertising their services. I have had two ISPs at the same time at the same house, and I know at least two more that would happily take my money to be my ISP -- even though you claim that the government allows only one of them to exist. Hmmm. Who is the ignorant liar?
ATT said I would have to wait six weeks to get it back. I don't call that service, do you?
So you're pissed about poor service. Fine. Complain to your state PUC. That's what they are there for.
Whoosh!
Whoosh your own fucking self. Your Taco Bell analogy was patently stupid, because there have been no "fast food wars" and nobody has been a sole winner. There are scads of ISPs all around you, if you'd bother to look. But it is more fun you hurl nonsense about evil government monopolies keeping you from getting what you want than to admit it is there, just not the exact way you demand that it be.
I live in a major metropolitan center and have exactly 1 choice for high speed internet.
When has the government EVER told ANYONE that they may only buy ISP service from one specific company? Never is when. This is not an example of a time.
Since cable is the only high speed internet technology that does deliver bandwidth at reasonable cost
Now you're talking about the cost, not the availability or that the government has told you that you may buy service from only one ISP. You've just answered the question implicitly -- there is no real monopoly.
and other cable providers are prohibited by state and local laws in my and many areas,
Sorry, but no. Federal law preempts state and local law on this. And cable is not the only medium for internet despite your claim to the contrary.
I'm not alone, a very large percentage of Americans are forced into one choice by the monopoly granted by the government.
Sorry, no. The government has not granted a single ISP anywhere in the US a monopoly. Period. Has not happened. Cable, as a medium for cable TV, USED to be able to get exclusive franchises, but exclusive franchises have been ILLEGAL for more that two decades now. Federal law. Telcos still have monopoly status for wired telephone service, but they are not the only ISP, and their ISP service has no government granted monopoly status and never has.
The reason you can buy from only on ISP (which I really doubt, but we'll accept for the moment) is not because the government has granted your ISP a monopoly, it is for the reason you already mentioned: cost. No company will overbuild an existing system in any medium if the costs are more than the market will bear. They can't make a profit.
Now, I suspect that there are other ISPs you could buy from, but you are unwilling to pay the cost. Just as in the example for the Colorado city that decided to compete against incumbent ISPs because there was only one option -- there were actually more than 8 options. In fact, if you are in a major metropolitan area and you think there is only one ISP for the entire city, you are just not looking hard enough, or you are creating reasons why all but one is "good enough" for you. They exist, they'll happily sell to you, but it will cost a lot more than the cable you are using now. That, sir, is not a "government granted monopoly", it is an economic one, and a "monopoly" created by the consumer refusing to pay the costs of service is not a true monopoly.
So, the short version is, never has the government told you that you can buy ISP service from only one company.
The number one place that there are issues is utility poles.
Someone should invent a wireless internet delivery system ... oh wait.
One touch make ready is a regulation that allows a new players to move aside existing cables to make room for their own on the condition that they do not harm existing cables or interfere with the competitor's service.
Prove that I damaged your cable when I moved it. It was corroded and fell apart all on its own. Your installer didn't tighten that connection so it came loose when I moved the box. That wedding ring break in your hardline was there before I even started. And, of course, no incumbent would sue just because they could use it as a delaying tactic.
Letting people move other people's stuff is not a good idea. Changing the law to require faster turnaround is the correct answer.
this single BK restaurant is "the internet", or monopoly gateway to is.
Which is what makes the ad ridiculous. In real life, you would walk across the street to McD, Wendys, In and Out, Burgerville, Subway, Jimmy Johns, or any of a number of competitors. Or change ISPs, which might mean actually looking in the phone book to find one and not accepting the meme that your ISP is a monopoly.
monopolies from both cities and large multi-tenant units
Cities have been prohibited from issuing exclusive franchises for more than twenty years now. No such franchises still exist.
"Multi-tenant units" are private companies that are free to make whatever contractual agreements they wish, and since they own the place you live they get to say what modifications may be made to the building, including drilling holes for wires. That's just one reason why living in such a place sucks.
Now extend that to every phone call you make. Imagine if the only calls you could make for "free" (as part of your plan) were to individuals and businesses that are paying for the privilege of having Verizon customers call them without additional charges.
You mean like the difference between toll free 800/877/etc numbers paid for by the recipient and regular long distance paid for by the caller? Fuck, I pay a "federal access fee" to get access to long distance calling and I DON'T HAVE A LONG DISTANCE PROVIDER so I can't make long distance calls at all.
this isnt about FCC - its about local and state regs that prevent non incumbents from pulling new cable on existing poles.
And federal law pre-empts any such state or local law by requiring municipalities to issue second, third or even fourth franchises on the same basis as the first, and none of them can be exclusive. If the city lets the incumbent on a pole as part of the franchise, it has to let the newbie on the pole when it issues the franchise to them.
ISPs are at the mercy of what Comcast, AT&T, and Verizon charge them, since those guys own the pipes needed for broadband.
I'm sorry, but no ISP doing real business resells Comcast or AT&T. It's just too expensive and limiting. They get a pipe from a real backbone provider. Even the major non-cable, non-telco ISP in my town goes through a commercial provider and doesn't just resell Comcast.
The last mile in each city and town was installed over many decades with the encouragement and subsidy from local governments, waiving complicated rules and rights and way.
You have no clue what the franchise process used to be like, do you? I can tell you for a fact there was no waiving of complicated rules or rights of way. Before the states co-opted the franchise process, the cities could put whatever kinds of rules they wanted into a franchise agreement.
Even Google, with all its resources, has pretty much given up trying to compete in the local ISP market.
And that's now, where the "complicated rules and rights of way" aren't complicated anymore. Why did they give up? It cost too much.
There are plenty of small towns with only one or two restaurants in them.
If only someone would invent something that allows people in one small town to drive to another small town...
You can only purchase food from a business with a license to sell you food.
And now the stupidity where the business license is being used as proof of government-granted monopoly status for ISPs. Will this never end?
But in the middle where I live, all I can get is access from a WISP which charges me $99/mo for 250GB at 6Mbps.
You know, if some company thought it was profitable to wire your road to provide service to you, they would have. It's not because the evil government let's only one company do it, it's because NO company chooses to lose money trying to provide service to you.
We paid the telcos to build out the last mile,
So you don't even have telephone service?
What if Taco Bell wins the fast food wars, and all restaurants are Taco Bell?
They haven't, and they aren't.
Except that this is about internet service providers, so there is no "shopping elsewhere" for most people.
Except at another ISP.
There's already collusion between the ISPs to have as little differences in prices and speeds as possible.
Wait a minute. If there is only one ISP, then with what other ISP is your only ISP colluding with, and why do they need to collude to keep you from changing your service?
If you can prove this collusion, then you have a good case for antitrust action. But you have to prove it, and there has to be someone to collude with.
They need a 15 second after shot where it pans out to people trying to shop elsewhere and the assistant on thier phone tells them that this is the only place they are legally allowed to buy fast food from.
When has the government EVER told ANYONE that they may only buy ISP service from one specific company? Never is when.
I know what the intent of that was. There will be DRM to limit the book to Kobo devices and apps, with perhaps their own bastardized format in place of epub or pdf, just like Amazon has their own format/DRM for Kindle.
If this takes off, I expect it will not be long before there is a Calibre plugin to deal with it. But, as I've been a Kobo customer in the past without a happy ending, I doubt I'll be looking for the plugin or care.
I'm sure they'd really like the bundling model to extend to internet access.
The bundling model already extends to internet access. I don't know of a cable TV company that also sells internet services that does NOT have a discount price for getting both cable TV and internet. And my telephone company has a bundled price for voice and internet services.
and in some areas it would take six times as long to drive as to walk, cycle or catch a underground train. your point?
His point was that using public transportation CAN BE an inappropriate or useless option, not that it ALWAYS is. Your response pretends he said the latter. Pointing out that public trans CAN BE appropriate doesn't prove that there are no times when it CAN BE inappropriate.
and that is only due to underinvestment in public transportation,
Do you realize how much it would cost to invest in public transport in some parts of the US? No, I guess you do not. You think the problem is that too many people own cars without understanding why they do. If only there were infinite money to provide public transport nobody would ever need a car, right? And running public transport in those parts of the country would not be a bigger source of carbon dioxide than simply allowing the people to drive themselves, right?
You can't bring about a societal shift without force if you can't even educate your people.
It takes more than you telling everyone how they ought to do things, i.e. "educate them", for there to be a change. The change has to be reasonable and something that can be accomplished. Changing an entire culture from animal-based to growing crops is not as simple as everyone being educated about how much better it is. That's likely because for them it wouldn't be better.
Only in the short term.
If you measure my intake and outgo of carbon dioxide for the entirety of my life, my production of carbon dioxide will ALWAYS be much more than my intake. For my entire life. That is not "the short term". That's 100%.
The carbon you consume was carbon dioxide very recently.
It was not carbon dioxide when I ingested it, and I am the one converting it from sequestered carbon to carbon dioxide. To stop that from happening requires one of two things.
The only way to stop that process is to stop eating or stop breathing.
Utter bollocks. You stop eating and stop breathing, and you'll be CO2 again within a year,
That may be, maybe not. It is irrelevant. In any case, it will not be my fault, and I can do nothing about it. However, I can do something about this dangerous carbon dioxide I am currently emitting, and my solution, despite your pronouncement that it is "utter bollocks", is absolute fact. You deny the obvious truth.
No, because fossil-fuels, which is what this is all really about.
Yeah, right. The money was spent to study how much carbon dioxide comes from a breakfast sandwich because this is all about fossil fuels. Do you eat a fossil fuel breakfast sandwich? No, you don't.
This is "all about" the contribution of humans to the CO2 issue, and that makes the context of this discussion not the global carbon cycle, but human actions that impact the carbon cycle. Like "eating a sandwich". In that context, there are two ways to stop the problem, both of which I listed.
I eat veal. Six months is a lot shorter than five years.
Completely irrelevant.
Not when the claim I responded to dealt with a time involved in the "carbon cycle"; specifically the lifetime of the cow. A factor of ten is called "an order of magnitude", and getting things right to better than an order of magnitude is usually considered relevant.
Is presumed knowledge knowledge not a form of ignorance?
No. But it doesn't matter.
I think you've made it clear which yours is, however.
When a climate zealot cannot win by using facts, start insults. I believe the next step is for you to pronounce that the science has been settled and there can be no discussion.
If oregon is rising faster than the sea over human time frames, they have a whole different problem.
Gosh, I thought that was what I said. The Cascadia Subduction Zone Earthquake is supposed to happen any time now.
Fast geologic upheaval like that is an excellent indicator of an impending earthquake.
Really? I did not know that. Who could have imagined such a thing?