It seems a reasonable argument to me, but that's not the way it's fallen out.
UAS can be used "offensively" in the same way an automobile can be used offensively. If basing a second amendment claim on "offensive use" was reasonable, then all those pesky state laws about automobiles would be unconstitutional, too.
The federal government was never supposed to have power over hobbies
They aren't regulating it because it is a hobby, and they regulate even the non-hobby aspects of UAS. They regulate it because it is flying an aircraft and takes place in the national airspace.
Trying to argue that the national airspace should be regulated on a state-by-state basis is just nonsense. Anything where you can cross fifteen states in a three hour flight needs one set of regulations. Given that determining the state boundaries requires relatively high precision navigation equipment (GPS or INS) it would be hard to know which rules you were flying under. (Yes, GPS is common, but not mandatory. Lots of aircraft still use VOR or even ded reckoning when flying. Those VOR receivers are required to be within a couple of degrees, which is one reason why those nice, clearly drawn airways are actually four miles wide. Technically, if you are deviating to one side or the other of one of those airways you could be in two different sets of regulations for the airspace, IF it were a state function. For states with irregular boundaries, you could be switching from one set of rules to another every few minutes.)
FAA is bundling fixed wing and helicopter RC models into the drone category as well.
Read FAR 1.1, the definition of aircraft: "Aircraft means a device that is used or intended to be used for flight in the air." Is a "helicopter RC model" intended to be used for flight in the air?
For the guy who tried claiming that automobiles exist above ground level and the FAA doesn't regulate them, well, are they intended to be used for flight in the air?
Hence the outrage from the folk who have been responsibly flying their fixed wing and helicopter models for years, without any need for gov't oversight.
When RC was a technical hobby that cost a lot of money and time to learn how to do, not as many people did it, and they weren't doing stupid things with their expensive toys.
Today you can buy a $500 UAS with GPS/gyro stabilization that takes no time at all to learn how to fly. Just one example. If you take your hands off the controls of the standard RC helicopter, it crashes. If you take your hands of the controls of a Phantom 3 it just... stops and hovers.
That sea change in technology means a lot of people are now playing in your hobby, and things that don't need regulation because only a few people are doing it sometimes wind up needing regulation when lots of people with no training or experience show up. E.g., if only one person ever drives down an ocean beach, the damage will be minimal, if any. If a thousand people show up to do it, they can decimate the ecology and damage the beach. Regulation in the former case is probably not necessary. In the latter case it, and enforcement, can be the only thing between the beach being there and it not.
Each aircraft should be labeled with the owner's info, so it would be easy to spoof someone else's info onto a given model.
Sure. Just like I could paint someone else's N number onto the tail of my Cessna and go buzzing a major sporting event. The law cannot stop all stupid or evil people. It can allow identification of those who are ignorant and need some education. If I wanted to be evil and avoid detection, I'd tape over my N number. But the guy who was flying banners over a local football stadium during an NCAA top level game did get caught because he was just stupid.
The likelihood of the registration info surviving ingestion into a typical turbine engine is unlikely as well, rendering the issue moot.
The typical UAS does not have a turbine engine. But as a standard practice, I put my FAA reg number on the battery, so if the LiPo catches fire when it crashes, the FAA number goes up second. Oh, wait, you are assuming that the only reason to have an FAA ident on a UAS is to catch those that wind up ingested in a 747's engine. Ha. If only.
Why would someone intent on dropping a drone into a prison place their # on the device?
Why would someone who was ignorant of airspace restrictions put their number on a drone? Because they aren't planning on breaking the law, they just did.
You are aware that laws do not stop people from being law breakers, I hope. Laws are deterrents, not prevention.
Yeah it'll help for someone who has a flyaway / failure that ends up on someones lawn, but not for someone _intent_ on doing such a thing.
Not all flights in the wrong place are the result of "flyaways". Sometimes it is just the intent to "hey, look what I can do" without thinking it through. Like people who don't think about the consequences of flying their UAS in a wildfire zone because it would be cool to get aerial photos of the conflagration.
As someone else pointed out, it was a $5 registration -- which you got back if you registered before a certain cutoff date -- and it doesn't record what you own or how much you fly it, it only gave you an operator's registration code.
The alternative was much more onerous. It's very hard to get an N number for a Phantom 3 -- but I know people who had to do that.
The FARAIM describes the Legal minimums for aircraft as 500 Feet Above Ground Level ( AGL ).
I think that is a bit simplistic statement. How do aircraft ever land if the legal minimum is 500 feet AGL?
Actually, there are various minima for various operations. Helicopters can go lower, and all aircraft have the ability to land legally.
The truth is, the FAA has authority to regulate airspace from the ground up. Around airports, controlled airspace goes to the ground. Some airspace is above 700', some is 1200', but some is surface up.
Arguing that the FAA has no authority to regulate below 500' is a losing argument.
He allegedly had sex with young teenagers, which is rape.
Well, at least you recognize these are just allegations. Amazingly timed, poorly supported allegations. And from several decades ago, during a time in Alabama's history where 14 was considered eligible for marriage.
This is colloquially called pedophilia,
This is colloquially called "allegations".
Also, I'm not going to call him a child rapist without proof,
No, not when you expect the allegation to be sufficient to achieve the goal, you don't have to. It did work, too.
but I can look at the evidence myself
Would that include the fabricated school yearbook?
It seems to me that he's probably guilty.
He's a witch! Burn him! He turned you into a newt!
He didn't "apparently" commit, he "allegedly" committed. And yes, if the term being used has huge negative connotations compared to the truth, using the "technically accurate" term is the right thing to do. At least, it is the honest thing to do.
If you go into a McD and ask for a "whopper", they'll happily sell you their equivalent. I've done it. They laughed, asked for money, then magically a hamburger remarkably similar to a Whopper appeared on a tray in front of me.
BTW, "special sauce" is just thousand island dressing.
Time-Warner, et. al., didn't go door to door making agreements with individual land owners in order to run cable lines across private property.
That's right. They went to the local municipality and obtained a franchise agreement allowing them access to the easements and rights of way that the government had already obtained.
They use land that was confiscated with the force of eminent domain to put up.
The implication being that Time Warner was the driving force behind the easement/rights-of-way and caused the land to be confiscated. Time Warner is a late-comer to that process.
As it is, I have to ask why the cable lines are private.
Because they belong to Time Warner or Comcast or... who are paying the municipal authority for access to the rights-of-way.
IMNSHO, if the state uses eminent domain to confiscate property "for the public good", then said property and anything built upon it should remain with the state "for the public good."
If we had to depend on "the state" building our cable and telephone systems, we'd be a country with a lot worse internet than we have now.
A FOIA request disseminates information, which might well be misleading, to one person.
A FOIA disseminates information from the source, which can be further disseminated. FOIA are often how journalists get their information. They're in the business of passing stuff on.
If the information is misleading, then the source is being misleading. Blame the source, not the way the information was released.
A published paper disseminates information that has been carefully considered to a lot of people.
Yes. Did anyone say that FOIA prevents papers from being published? I don't think so.
It's my money and I want to see the results. I don't care about the intermediate steps.
The intermediate steps are often how the results are arrived at. In fact, I'd say they are ALWAYS how the results are arrived at. What data is elided because it is an "outlier"? What assumptions went into processing that data to get to those results? That's important information, too. Science is supposed to be reproducable. If you don't know the intermediate steps, then it is very hard to reproduce the results. For example, cold fusion. And the famous "hockey stick" that nobody could reproduce because the stick depended a lot on what data was eliminated or adjusted.
A FOIA request of a research group is likely to require some actual expertise in the science that lawyers and administrators are likely not to have.
Uhhh, no. FOIA don't ask scientific questions. They ask for intermediate work products like email or memos. It doesn't take a rocket scientist to identify that something is an email about rocket science.
I understand that you harbor irrational hostility towards universities,
Knock it off. If you don't understand what I've said, don't make it up. And just because you disagree isn't an excuse to make it up, either. I am not hostile, I just say it the way it is. I happen to work at one, so I get to see the inside. Ad hominem is a poor argument, so when you resort to it you show you have none.
but let's not take it out on the researchers.
You are the one who claimed they would be misleading in an FOIA response, and I am the one taking it out on them? I'm just telling you the world they work in. FOIA are handled by the university administration, not the researcher.
Broadband requires copper or fiber to each premises.
Hmmm.
Physical limitations prevent competitors, for the same reason you wouldn't have multiple electric utilities with multiple electric grids and multiple outlets in your house for each one.
You don't need "multiple electric grids", and you certainly don't need multiple electrical outlets. I already have two wires to my house. There is room on the pole for a third or fourth even. If someone says to me they have cheap, reliable, fast internet and all I need to do is buy their service, they can come wire up a third connection. It will be one jack in the house, just like my cable is one jack. Just like the telco demarc in the box on the outside wall is one jack.
Yes, one of the reasons for a lack of competitors is that it costs money to build plant. That's true no matter what. The main reason is because there simply aren't enough customers to recoup the costs of operation. If a company cannot profit, it will not bother competing. They run the numbers and walk away. Fixed costs X divided by Y potential customers is "a price higher than people want to pay". Oops. Why bother?
It has nothing to do with NN, nor is it because they cannot get a franchise.
if it costs billions plus a block-by-block, house-by-house battle for access,
It won't cost billions. And it isn't a battle for access when a customer says "come wire me up". If I say "I'll buy your service", then they get to install the connection to my house. Neither Comcast nor CenturyLink can tell them they cannot.
So wrong because you are making arguments based on what is technologically possible today
Technologically possible today is wrong?
but that is not how this situation came to be.
You are right. Many years ago cable companies were able to get exclusive franchise agreements, which automatically shut out other competitors except the telcos which had their own franchises. But in 1995 or so, federal law made it illegal for a municipality to grant an exclusive franchise to telecommunications companies. They also were explicit in saying that municipalities must grant new requests unless there was a significant reason not to. That's been the case for more than 20 years now.
They have been playing dirty for decades to eliminate the competition.
Yes, I've heard the stories about the telco "adjusting" the cable company's equipment on the pole and vice versa. That doesn't change the rules about franchising. It's just a situation that probably is already illegal and needs to be dealt with. NN doesn't fix this in any way.
We can't just press reset and make everything the way it should have been but we can start making good decisions one at a time until it is.
What I responded to was dealing with the lack of a franchise. I pointed out federal law. That's a decision already made which many people seem to be not aware of.
I see the problem. You don't understand the difference between cable TV and Internet service.
That's rich. I'm the one who keeps pointing out the difference, and the fact that NO ISP IN THE US HAS A MONOPOLY. The telco does, cable TV used to but no longer, ISPs never.
This is one place where the difference is moot. The cable TV system and the telephone system both have franchises and pay franchise fees. The laws are clear on this, also: there are no exclusive franchises, and municipalities MUST accommodate additional franchise applicants. If you want to be an ISP and want to get a franchise agreement with the local municipality, by law you can. If you want to be another cable TV provider, ditto.
The market can't fix the problem when there is no market.
And now you've actually discovered why there aren't 200 broadband ISPs in every market. There is no market for it. It's not that they couldn't exist, because clearly two or three more could fit in existing rights-of-way at least, it's because they cannot make a profit competing. Being not stupid, they choose not to compete.
It is needed because the government screwed up, and sold/leased/gave-away the right-of-ways to a single vendor in most areas.
They didn't sell or give away, they created a franchise system. That's a payment for access. There are already at least two franchised users of the rights-of-way -- cable and telco -- everywhere.
such as a 12" PVC pipe
Let's hang a 12" PVC pipe from the poles so hypothetical ISPs who decide there isn't enough of a market to compete could run the wires they won't run because they aren't competing.
Responding to FOIA requests is not doing research.
It is, however, disseminating the information to the pubic. That's usually a goal of good research.
If FOIA requests take up a significant amount of research time and effort, somebody's wasting my tax money, and it isn't the researchers.
That's right, it is the lawyers and administrators who take a cut off the top of any research grant. They're getting their 40% rake, they might as well be doing something productive, like helping let the information out. Otherwise they'd be wasting the money providing safe rooms when any controversial speaker comes to campus, or debating ad nauseum if someone whose name is on a building did bad stuff 150 years ago and is honoring him for his direct contributions to the university actually threatening harm to the current students who are scared of everything.
An academic lab doesn't really have manpower to spare,
No, but the University that they are part of does.
Every grant that comes to a lab at a University has "overhead" taken out, at least in the US. For us, it's 40%. That money goes to pay the administration, infrastructure, etc. That includes lawyers.
Yes, that means that every purchase of something that costs $1000 actually costs us, the grant recipient, $1400, as $1000 goes to the vendor and $400 goes to the bean counters.
Only when something goes over $5000 and becomes "equipment" does the overhead go away. It is a skill to get that server system up over $5000 by just a few dollars, as the vendor is trying to get the price down so you'll buy from them. A $5100 server costs $5100. A $4900 server costs $6860. That extra $1960 goes to pay the auditor who pours over the books looking for people who add accessories or parts to a server order to bring the cost over $5000.
so it does make sense to not pledge a lot of $1 donations and make few $5 and $10 donations.
That defeats the purpose of the system. The purpose is not to make a total donation worth what you think all of the content producers are worth in total, it is to reward individual content producers for what you believe is worth something.
It's ridiculous to tell 10 people that you value their product, and as a reward for that value you've donated $10 to one of them and nothing to the rest.
It's so people don't need to give their credit cards numbers to a dozen people...
Not so much that, but helping solve the two problems of producers needing to process donations themselves, and making it easier for donors to donate on a regular basis. It's the automatic recurring donation meme that is important, not just the "giving credit card numbers".
It's also not news that most people don't make minimum wage through this system. It wasn't intended to do that, and the product being donated to in most cases doesn't warrant it. The only podcast I know that uses it, Uncontrolled Airspace, is done by guys who are promoting themselves and their other projects and because they like doing it. They have paying jobs. They want to make it easier for listeners to defray their costs, not earn minimum wage. I have no idea if they are successful users of the system or not.
One of my biggest fears with the talk of Basic Income, is the rise of terrible artists and musicians.
Which is highlighted by the "self published" content available from Amazon. Someone I know told me he had a book on Amazon that way. When I went to look at it I found the most awful prose, and the worst case of comma-itis I've ever seen in my life. No, really, it was, like, a comma, maybe two, every one, maybe two, words, or phrases, you know?
Paying people to be awful artists is a big downside to UBI. Good artists can be successful without it. Bad artists will flourish because of it.
Geez, who wouldn't want will Ferrell personally answering "What's the best way to spread Christmas cheer?"
Me.
Google and Alexa are particularly bad at humor, and Will Ferrell is worse than either. Combine Google and Will Ferrell and you might need hospitalization after hearing the result.
Get motion capture of their faces making a battery of sounds, along with their voice making a battery of sounds.
Couple that with enhanced text to speech logic
Wasn't that the premise behind 'Max Headroom' -- the use of CGI actors replacing real humans? It was the basis for some sci-fi universe.
This way you get it from the horses.... errmmm... the celebrity's mouth, not second- or third-hand.
"Ok google, what is spice-vdagent?"
"Hi, this is Seth McFarland. Thanks for asking your excellent question. Spice vee-dee agent is a demon that... and remember to watch 'The Orville' on Fox Thursdays at 9, 8 central."
How is that not second-hand?
If I aks google a question about a celebrity, I expect an answer about the celebrity, not a celebrity video.
Slashdot Mirror
It seems a reasonable argument to me, but that's not the way it's fallen out.
UAS can be used "offensively" in the same way an automobile can be used offensively. If basing a second amendment claim on "offensive use" was reasonable, then all those pesky state laws about automobiles would be unconstitutional, too.
The federal government was never supposed to have power over hobbies
They aren't regulating it because it is a hobby, and they regulate even the non-hobby aspects of UAS. They regulate it because it is flying an aircraft and takes place in the national airspace.
Trying to argue that the national airspace should be regulated on a state-by-state basis is just nonsense. Anything where you can cross fifteen states in a three hour flight needs one set of regulations. Given that determining the state boundaries requires relatively high precision navigation equipment (GPS or INS) it would be hard to know which rules you were flying under. (Yes, GPS is common, but not mandatory. Lots of aircraft still use VOR or even ded reckoning when flying. Those VOR receivers are required to be within a couple of degrees, which is one reason why those nice, clearly drawn airways are actually four miles wide. Technically, if you are deviating to one side or the other of one of those airways you could be in two different sets of regulations for the airspace, IF it were a state function. For states with irregular boundaries, you could be switching from one set of rules to another every few minutes.)
Fine, but why is permission needed to have a drone?
It's not. Next strawman?
FAA is bundling fixed wing and helicopter RC models into the drone category as well.
Read FAR 1.1, the definition of aircraft: "Aircraft means a device that is used or intended to be used for flight in the air." Is a "helicopter RC model" intended to be used for flight in the air?
For the guy who tried claiming that automobiles exist above ground level and the FAA doesn't regulate them, well, are they intended to be used for flight in the air?
Hence the outrage from the folk who have been responsibly flying their fixed wing and helicopter models for years, without any need for gov't oversight.
When RC was a technical hobby that cost a lot of money and time to learn how to do, not as many people did it, and they weren't doing stupid things with their expensive toys.
Today you can buy a $500 UAS with GPS/gyro stabilization that takes no time at all to learn how to fly. Just one example. If you take your hands off the controls of the standard RC helicopter, it crashes. If you take your hands of the controls of a Phantom 3 it just ... stops and hovers.
That sea change in technology means a lot of people are now playing in your hobby, and things that don't need regulation because only a few people are doing it sometimes wind up needing regulation when lots of people with no training or experience show up. E.g., if only one person ever drives down an ocean beach, the damage will be minimal, if any. If a thousand people show up to do it, they can decimate the ecology and damage the beach. Regulation in the former case is probably not necessary. In the latter case it, and enforcement, can be the only thing between the beach being there and it not.
Each aircraft should be labeled with the owner's info, so it would be easy to spoof someone else's info onto a given model.
Sure. Just like I could paint someone else's N number onto the tail of my Cessna and go buzzing a major sporting event. The law cannot stop all stupid or evil people. It can allow identification of those who are ignorant and need some education. If I wanted to be evil and avoid detection, I'd tape over my N number. But the guy who was flying banners over a local football stadium during an NCAA top level game did get caught because he was just stupid.
The likelihood of the registration info surviving ingestion into a typical turbine engine is unlikely as well, rendering the issue moot.
The typical UAS does not have a turbine engine. But as a standard practice, I put my FAA reg number on the battery, so if the LiPo catches fire when it crashes, the FAA number goes up second. Oh, wait, you are assuming that the only reason to have an FAA ident on a UAS is to catch those that wind up ingested in a 747's engine. Ha. If only.
Why would someone intent on dropping a drone into a prison place their # on the device?
Why would someone who was ignorant of airspace restrictions put their number on a drone? Because they aren't planning on breaking the law, they just did.
You are aware that laws do not stop people from being law breakers, I hope. Laws are deterrents, not prevention.
Yeah it'll help for someone who has a flyaway / failure that ends up on someones lawn, but not for someone _intent_ on doing such a thing.
Not all flights in the wrong place are the result of "flyaways". Sometimes it is just the intent to "hey, look what I can do" without thinking it through. Like people who don't think about the consequences of flying their UAS in a wildfire zone because it would be cool to get aerial photos of the conflagration.
As someone else pointed out, it was a $5 registration -- which you got back if you registered before a certain cutoff date -- and it doesn't record what you own or how much you fly it, it only gave you an operator's registration code.
The alternative was much more onerous. It's very hard to get an N number for a Phantom 3 -- but I know people who had to do that.
The FARAIM describes the Legal minimums for aircraft as 500 Feet Above Ground Level ( AGL ) .
I think that is a bit simplistic statement. How do aircraft ever land if the legal minimum is 500 feet AGL?
Actually, there are various minima for various operations. Helicopters can go lower, and all aircraft have the ability to land legally.
The truth is, the FAA has authority to regulate airspace from the ground up. Around airports, controlled airspace goes to the ground. Some airspace is above 700', some is 1200', but some is surface up.
Arguing that the FAA has no authority to regulate below 500' is a losing argument.
He allegedly had sex with young teenagers, which is rape.
Well, at least you recognize these are just allegations. Amazingly timed, poorly supported allegations. And from several decades ago, during a time in Alabama's history where 14 was considered eligible for marriage.
This is colloquially called pedophilia,
This is colloquially called "allegations".
Also, I'm not going to call him a child rapist without proof,
No, not when you expect the allegation to be sufficient to achieve the goal, you don't have to. It did work, too.
but I can look at the evidence myself
Would that include the fabricated school yearbook?
It seems to me that he's probably guilty.
He's a witch! Burn him! He turned you into a newt!
So, he apparently committed certain heinous acts,
He didn't "apparently" commit, he "allegedly" committed. And yes, if the term being used has huge negative connotations compared to the truth, using the "technically accurate" term is the right thing to do. At least, it is the honest thing to do.
McDonald's doesn't sell the Whopper.
If you go into a McD and ask for a "whopper", they'll happily sell you their equivalent. I've done it. They laughed, asked for money, then magically a hamburger remarkably similar to a Whopper appeared on a tray in front of me.
BTW, "special sauce" is just thousand island dressing.
Time-Warner, et. al., didn't go door to door making agreements with individual land owners in order to run cable lines across private property.
That's right. They went to the local municipality and obtained a franchise agreement allowing them access to the easements and rights of way that the government had already obtained.
They use land that was confiscated with the force of eminent domain to put up.
The implication being that Time Warner was the driving force behind the easement/rights-of-way and caused the land to be confiscated. Time Warner is a late-comer to that process.
As it is, I have to ask why the cable lines are private.
Because they belong to Time Warner or Comcast or ... who are paying the municipal authority for access to the rights-of-way.
IMNSHO, if the state uses eminent domain to confiscate property "for the public good", then said property and anything built upon it should remain with the state "for the public good."
If we had to depend on "the state" building our cable and telephone systems, we'd be a country with a lot worse internet than we have now.
A FOIA request disseminates information, which might well be misleading, to one person.
A FOIA disseminates information from the source, which can be further disseminated. FOIA are often how journalists get their information. They're in the business of passing stuff on.
If the information is misleading, then the source is being misleading. Blame the source, not the way the information was released.
A published paper disseminates information that has been carefully considered to a lot of people.
Yes. Did anyone say that FOIA prevents papers from being published? I don't think so.
It's my money and I want to see the results. I don't care about the intermediate steps.
The intermediate steps are often how the results are arrived at. In fact, I'd say they are ALWAYS how the results are arrived at. What data is elided because it is an "outlier"? What assumptions went into processing that data to get to those results? That's important information, too. Science is supposed to be reproducable. If you don't know the intermediate steps, then it is very hard to reproduce the results. For example, cold fusion. And the famous "hockey stick" that nobody could reproduce because the stick depended a lot on what data was eliminated or adjusted.
A FOIA request of a research group is likely to require some actual expertise in the science that lawyers and administrators are likely not to have.
Uhhh, no. FOIA don't ask scientific questions. They ask for intermediate work products like email or memos. It doesn't take a rocket scientist to identify that something is an email about rocket science.
I understand that you harbor irrational hostility towards universities,
Knock it off. If you don't understand what I've said, don't make it up. And just because you disagree isn't an excuse to make it up, either. I am not hostile, I just say it the way it is. I happen to work at one, so I get to see the inside. Ad hominem is a poor argument, so when you resort to it you show you have none.
but let's not take it out on the researchers.
You are the one who claimed they would be misleading in an FOIA response, and I am the one taking it out on them? I'm just telling you the world they work in. FOIA are handled by the university administration, not the researcher.
Broadband requires copper or fiber to each premises.
Hmmm.
Physical limitations prevent competitors, for the same reason you wouldn't have multiple electric utilities with multiple electric grids and multiple outlets in your house for each one.
You don't need "multiple electric grids", and you certainly don't need multiple electrical outlets. I already have two wires to my house. There is room on the pole for a third or fourth even. If someone says to me they have cheap, reliable, fast internet and all I need to do is buy their service, they can come wire up a third connection. It will be one jack in the house, just like my cable is one jack. Just like the telco demarc in the box on the outside wall is one jack.
Yes, one of the reasons for a lack of competitors is that it costs money to build plant. That's true no matter what. The main reason is because there simply aren't enough customers to recoup the costs of operation. If a company cannot profit, it will not bother competing. They run the numbers and walk away. Fixed costs X divided by Y potential customers is "a price higher than people want to pay". Oops. Why bother?
It has nothing to do with NN, nor is it because they cannot get a franchise.
if it costs billions plus a block-by-block, house-by-house battle for access,
It won't cost billions. And it isn't a battle for access when a customer says "come wire me up". If I say "I'll buy your service", then they get to install the connection to my house. Neither Comcast nor CenturyLink can tell them they cannot.
So wrong because you are making arguments based on what is technologically possible today
Technologically possible today is wrong?
but that is not how this situation came to be.
You are right. Many years ago cable companies were able to get exclusive franchise agreements, which automatically shut out other competitors except the telcos which had their own franchises. But in 1995 or so, federal law made it illegal for a municipality to grant an exclusive franchise to telecommunications companies. They also were explicit in saying that municipalities must grant new requests unless there was a significant reason not to. That's been the case for more than 20 years now.
They have been playing dirty for decades to eliminate the competition.
Yes, I've heard the stories about the telco "adjusting" the cable company's equipment on the pole and vice versa. That doesn't change the rules about franchising. It's just a situation that probably is already illegal and needs to be dealt with. NN doesn't fix this in any way.
We can't just press reset and make everything the way it should have been but we can start making good decisions one at a time until it is.
What I responded to was dealing with the lack of a franchise. I pointed out federal law. That's a decision already made which many people seem to be not aware of.
I see the problem. You don't understand the difference between cable TV and Internet service.
That's rich. I'm the one who keeps pointing out the difference, and the fact that NO ISP IN THE US HAS A MONOPOLY. The telco does, cable TV used to but no longer, ISPs never.
This is one place where the difference is moot. The cable TV system and the telephone system both have franchises and pay franchise fees. The laws are clear on this, also: there are no exclusive franchises, and municipalities MUST accommodate additional franchise applicants. If you want to be an ISP and want to get a franchise agreement with the local municipality, by law you can. If you want to be another cable TV provider, ditto.
I don't have a legal right-of-way to do that.
Two words: franchise agreement. Then you do.
The market can't fix the problem when there is no market.
And now you've actually discovered why there aren't 200 broadband ISPs in every market. There is no market for it. It's not that they couldn't exist, because clearly two or three more could fit in existing rights-of-way at least, it's because they cannot make a profit competing. Being not stupid, they choose not to compete.
It is needed because the government screwed up, and sold/leased/gave-away the right-of-ways to a single vendor in most areas.
They didn't sell or give away, they created a franchise system. That's a payment for access. There are already at least two franchised users of the rights-of-way -- cable and telco -- everywhere.
such as a 12" PVC pipe
Let's hang a 12" PVC pipe from the poles so hypothetical ISPs who decide there isn't enough of a market to compete could run the wires they won't run because they aren't competing.
It doesn't take wire to be an ISP. Just sayin'.
every local municipality and private landowner whose property their wires pass through should feel free to demand access payment,
They already do. It's called a "franchise fee".
free rights of way exist
No, they don't.
Responding to FOIA requests is not doing research.
It is, however, disseminating the information to the pubic. That's usually a goal of good research.
If FOIA requests take up a significant amount of research time and effort, somebody's wasting my tax money, and it isn't the researchers.
That's right, it is the lawyers and administrators who take a cut off the top of any research grant. They're getting their 40% rake, they might as well be doing something productive, like helping let the information out. Otherwise they'd be wasting the money providing safe rooms when any controversial speaker comes to campus, or debating ad nauseum if someone whose name is on a building did bad stuff 150 years ago and is honoring him for his direct contributions to the university actually threatening harm to the current students who are scared of everything.
An academic lab doesn't really have manpower to spare,
No, but the University that they are part of does.
Every grant that comes to a lab at a University has "overhead" taken out, at least in the US. For us, it's 40%. That money goes to pay the administration, infrastructure, etc. That includes lawyers.
Yes, that means that every purchase of something that costs $1000 actually costs us, the grant recipient, $1400, as $1000 goes to the vendor and $400 goes to the bean counters.
Only when something goes over $5000 and becomes "equipment" does the overhead go away. It is a skill to get that server system up over $5000 by just a few dollars, as the vendor is trying to get the price down so you'll buy from them. A $5100 server costs $5100. A $4900 server costs $6860. That extra $1960 goes to pay the auditor who pours over the books looking for people who add accessories or parts to a server order to bring the cost over $5000.
[ must... resist... C# Major jokes... (programming or otherwise) ... ]
He wasn't that good a student, it was D Minor. But passing.
so it does make sense to not pledge a lot of $1 donations and make few $5 and $10 donations.
That defeats the purpose of the system. The purpose is not to make a total donation worth what you think all of the content producers are worth in total, it is to reward individual content producers for what you believe is worth something.
It's ridiculous to tell 10 people that you value their product, and as a reward for that value you've donated $10 to one of them and nothing to the rest.
It's so people don't need to give their credit cards numbers to a dozen people...
Not so much that, but helping solve the two problems of producers needing to process donations themselves, and making it easier for donors to donate on a regular basis. It's the automatic recurring donation meme that is important, not just the "giving credit card numbers".
It's also not news that most people don't make minimum wage through this system. It wasn't intended to do that, and the product being donated to in most cases doesn't warrant it. The only podcast I know that uses it, Uncontrolled Airspace, is done by guys who are promoting themselves and their other projects and because they like doing it. They have paying jobs. They want to make it easier for listeners to defray their costs, not earn minimum wage. I have no idea if they are successful users of the system or not.
One of my biggest fears with the talk of Basic Income, is the rise of terrible artists and musicians.
Which is highlighted by the "self published" content available from Amazon. Someone I know told me he had a book on Amazon that way. When I went to look at it I found the most awful prose, and the worst case of comma-itis I've ever seen in my life. No, really, it was, like, a comma, maybe two, every one, maybe two, words, or phrases, you know?
Paying people to be awful artists is a big downside to UBI. Good artists can be successful without it. Bad artists will flourish because of it.
Geez, who wouldn't want will Ferrell personally answering "What's the best way to spread Christmas cheer?"
Me.
Google and Alexa are particularly bad at humor, and Will Ferrell is worse than either. Combine Google and Will Ferrell and you might need hospitalization after hearing the result.
Get motion capture of their faces making a battery of sounds, along with their voice making a battery of sounds. Couple that with enhanced text to speech logic
Wasn't that the premise behind 'Max Headroom' -- the use of CGI actors replacing real humans? It was the basis for some sci-fi universe.
This way you get it from the horses.... errmmm... the celebrity's mouth, not second- or third-hand.
"Ok google, what is spice-vdagent?"
"Hi, this is Seth McFarland. Thanks for asking your excellent question. Spice vee-dee agent is a demon that ... and remember to watch 'The Orville' on Fox Thursdays at 9, 8 central."
How is that not second-hand?
If I aks google a question about a celebrity, I expect an answer about the celebrity, not a celebrity video.