2) Robotic vehicles would benefit from the addition of a mechanical arm with a mechanical middle finger
If you are an asshole and pull up to a truck in such a way that he cannot continue the maneuver he was trying to perform, which would have gotten him out of your way, then you deserve the finger, not the truck driver.
If a large truck is making a right turn and has moved into the left lane so he could accomplish that without running over the curb or other cars, it is an asshole who pulls up as far as he can go in the right lane to prevent the truck from completing the turn and causing a traffic jam, even if the car in the right lane technically has the right of way over the truck. Unfortunately, "asshole" is not a ticketable offense.
A human would have identified the situation and remained clear. The AI assumed it had the right of way and did not. It doesn't matter in the end if the AI did or did not have the right of way, proper defensive driving would have prevent the accident altogether. "Being right" isn't always better than "being safe".
As to the snarky comment by someone else that going a couple of hours in Las Vegas without a fender bender is better than humans can do, I'll just point out that I've driven for hundreds of hours in Las Vegas and have neither run into anyone else, nor have I had anyone run into me.
That said, let's note that, for a corporation as large as IBM, the costs of having such a design team develop is pretty minor.
The costs of replacing every print or display use of a font for IBM products or services will be astronomical, as will the enforcement of the standards for its use.
It's like when a company or school develops a new logo. It isn't just the $50,000 paid to the graphic designer to produce the logo, it's the thousands upon thousands of dollars spent on things like replacing everyone's business cards, advertising, letterhead, etc, with the new logo, and throwing out all of the stuff with the old.
A local bank changed its logo a few years ago. They were donating cases of pencils with the old logo to charity.
There's also the cost of all the media designers who need to integrate the new logo into their web pages. Our uni logo change was mandated to appear on every web page served by every web server in the uni, and many of those needed some redesign to go from what was basically a circle shaped logo to a thin rectangular one. You can't just replace the logo png file and have the page look right. And then you get to do it again in five years when the logo changes again.
If you're a high level design exec, how do you determine that a change is needed?
Ask yourself this: "have I made any impact on the company at all in the 20 years I've worked here?" And "what will the people I leave behind when I retire remember me for?" If the answer is "not a hell of a lot", then "a new corporate logo" is low hanging fruit.
I'd love to hear from the artists, industrial designers and so on about this.
A company should be more interested in hearing from potential customers. "Did the existence of 8 versions of this font remind you of the IBM logo, and more important, did it remind you of IBM when you were making your last buying decision?"
It is interesting to go to the Miriam Webster site to see the definition. They include a comment about a "new meaning" that the word picked up in the 16th century, of "sold before it was made".
First, let me say this. We won. You lost. Nana nana boo boo, stick your head in doo doo.
This is what mods call "informative"? Wow. By the way, I didn't "lose".
You are plainly wrong here. The new utility is an enterprise fund, which, in this case, has its finances separated from other city funding.
Did you bother to read your link? I did. It says that the funds in an enterprise fund are "generally" sequestered for use for that service. It does NOT say that losses experienced in that service will not be covered by other sources of money, such as the general fund. The cite you give is explicit to that. Let me quote it for your information: "In some cases, however, the governmental entity may be permitted to use funds in an enterprise fund for other purposes and to use other funds to pay costs otherwise payable from the enterprise fund." Emphasis mine. Not only will the city be permitted to cover the losses for a city service from some other fund, they will be required to do so or they will be operating at a deficit. Someone has to cover the loss, and a city internet service doesn't have a national corporate parent to do it. It's the taxpayers. The cite you used doesn't even require it to be covering a loss, the government can choose to use other funds to pay for things the enterprise fund is intended to. Like, who pays for the maintenance of a pole that the city is using to distribute internet? Is it the enterprise fund, or is it public works who normally maintains such things? Taxpayer money collected for public works could easily be used to support the internet operation. That's just one example.
In doing so, we collectively agreed
A plurality of you agreed to this. There is an old saying that is quite appropriate here: "democracy is two wolves and a sheep deciding what is for lunch". You've got forced stockholders in your ISP, ones who can have their houses taken from them for failing to pay taxes if they choose to object.
and we implicitly accept that in the unlikely event of failure we will cover the bonds or face city bankruptcy.
So you freely admit that the taxpayer is on the hook for the costs. That's an involuntary risk you're forcing on your neighbors so you can get cheap internet.
Well... Taxation is constrained by TaBOR,
Another deliberate misinterpretation of a simple concept. Tabor does not prevent a city from spending tax money on something other than the excuse they used for extracting it from the public. It requires that a city get a vote to increase a tax rate (not relevant to this at all), or to spend tax revenue "if revenues grow faster than the rate of inflation and population growth." That's also not relevant here.
Nothing in this Tabor prevents a city from repurposing an existing tax or fee. In fact, if you read past the first paragraph of your cite, you will find this fascinating amendment:,
Any retained Referendum C revenue (revenue above the allowable TABOR limit but below the Referendum C cap) is statutorily required to be spent on health care, education, firefighter and police retirement plans and strategic transportation projects.
So, if the fees and taxes from providing internet service go up more than the limit, it CANNOT BE SPENT ON THE INTERNET SERVICE. It must be spent on other things.
But the point here is that you can choose to use other broadband providers, and if you do so you won't have to pay any of the fees charged by the Ft. Collins municipal internet.
What a disingenuous statement. Nobody said that non-participants have to pay the "fees charged" by the city internet. The issue is that they have to pay the TAXES that back the service and cover the costs that the fees don't. They've already had to pay the taxes that went into the $20 million DORA grant funding. They'll have to pay the ta
Comcast starts with good connections to each house, and so internet service is not that difficult.
"Internet service" on the level that Comcast operates (national) is much much more than just a wire to the house. It is a complete network infrastructure, including hardware to piggyback a network service on top of a cable television service.
Having a city infrastructure (which will typically build connections to each house) is going to cost a lot of money.
Yep. But it cost Comcast a lot of money, and on an ongoing basis, to build and maintain its internet service, too.
Cable TV at least used to make money, which is why cable companies went to all that bother to get the franchises.
Cable TV still makes money or Comcast wouldn't be doing it. No company can operate at a loss. Undercutting the existing ISPs by selectively removing costs that the incumbent cannot is why competition from a government is unfair. A city doesn't have to make a profit, for example. It can operate at a loss forever. It has free access to the city rights-of-way. It has city employees to perform maintenance. Comcast is not so lucky. That's just a few cost differences.
Forcing someone to bundle a profitable service in with another service that uses most of the same equipment doesn't sound particularly onerous.
Until you realize that the costs of bundling are not going to be one of the city's costs of operation. Comcast has to pass on the cost of the cable TV service when it bills the sub; the city has no cost associated with cable TV so it can charge a lot less.
Isn't the issue that Comcast does not provide the service at a price that people want to pay? They do broadband, they just don't do it at the price the people who want free internet want to pay. Anything that factors into the higher price, like city-regulated services that Comcast must provide but the city does not, are relevant.
As long as it's Comcast or DSL, Comcast doesn't have to be very good to be the best choice.
So why is there nobody else coming in to eat Comcast's lunch? Why has no smart entrepreneur come into town selling just internet service for a lot less than Comcast? They could certainly make a profit given Comcast's prices and embedded costs, and by avoiding a lot of the costs that Comcast has. For example, a city-sized ISP doesn't have to maintain a long-distance backbone of their own, they can peer with a commercial backbone locally.
But nobody, in all those Colorado cities, has done that. That should be a good clue that there is no profit to be made by running an ISP there. (In my city there are other options, so there is evidence it can be done.)
Before some potty-mouthed AC starts spewing profanity about "monopoly" etc, keep in mind that Comcast, as an ISP, is not a monopoly of either kind. It is neither a "government-granted monopoly" nor an economic one. There are competitors. There just aren't many, and some of the larger competitors cost more. But crying that Comcast is a monopoly in a discussion of internet service is just wrong. The fact that there is competition shows that it can be done at a profit; the fact that some competitors charge more shows that the costs aren't as low as people want to pretend.
If the city internet is competitive, people have more of a choice.
By "competitive" you mean "operates at a lower cost by not having to provide anything but internet service, can benefit from cost-savings by using existing city facilities and personnel, can do so with any losses covered by the taxpayers, and isn't regulated like their competitors so they can have a lower cost, so they can undercut any competition".
What choice will they have when the non-profit, taxpayer-backed internet-only service reduces the number of subscribers for the incumbent ISPs to the point they cannot make a profit? Comcas
What the article does not mention, is that DORA has already allotted $20 million in grants for community/government broadband in CO.
Assuming you mean "Department of Regulatory Agencies" and not "Dora the Explorer", you're saying that there's already $20 million in taxpayer money going to build these systems. And yet, we are told, the taxpayers won't be paying to build or operate these systems, it will all be done with user fees. I'm confused. Or maybe not.
Users of competing broadband providers will not be taxed in any way to subsidize the city's program.
What happens when the fees don't cover the costs? And who is paying to install the infrastructure before there are any fees being collected to pay for it?
Taxpayers are always on the hook for city services. If any service doesn't collect enough fees to cover costs, taxpayers have to fill in the deficit.
[private communication from city manager's office]
Politicians are scum who lie every time they speak, unless they say something we like. Then they are speaking gospel truth. If you listen carefully to what he said, you will note that it does NOT say that the only source of money to pay for the system is this "enterprise fund". He said that the only thing the enterprise fund monies CAN pay for is "the specific purpose". If there aren't enough "enterprise fund" monies to cover the costs, the general fund is the next stop.
You've also forgotten, what is true today is not necessarily true tomorrow. Our Fair City has set up lots of "funds" that are intended for a special purpose, only to wind up with a change later that puts the money into the general fund for general spending, or even better, to change the "special purpose" that the fees are spent on. ("Temporary road use fee on the water bill to pay for repair of two sections of road the contractor screwed up" has morphed into "permanent general road repair fund so we can spend the general fund money on something else", for one example.)
In the absence of unreasonable regulatory hurdles from incumbent ISPs, new fiber providers kick the living crap out of the incumbents cost-wise and service-wise,
Quite right. A city operated ISP without those regulatory hurdles will always win over a cable system that has to follow the franchise contract. A city "company" that has to provide only ISP services can certainly operate more cheaply than a cable system that the city mandates must provide ISP, cable, and other services. (That's what is meant by "cherry-picking". The city picks the services it wants to provide; the cable company has a contract with the city to do all of them.) That's why the city should not be competing.
That makes it by far the best approach to rolling out fiber, in the absence of laws preventing it.
Comcast in this area rolled out fiber a long time ago. Not because of city competition, but because the franchise required it. No other competitor to Comcast in this area has a requirement to install a specific kind of medium.
The city certainly isn't going to require itself to pay the costs of installing a complete fiber cable television plant, but it has required Comcast to do that. If you can regulate costs onto the other guy, it sure make it easier to sell the same product cheaper.
The Citizens United verdict made bribery a perfectly legal item, as money is considered free speech.
The CU decision reiterated what was existing law. That law said that corporations have the right to free speech, because corporations are made up of people who have the right to free speech. Money is not "free speech", but money is necessary for effective speech.
The taxpayers should not be paying for Internet access.
Yep. And the government should not be in direct competition with companies that they regulate, especially when the government is cherry-picking the services it provides.
The city and their stockholders, I mean residents, are happy to make 1% or less profit.
The city is happy to operate at a loss. The "stockholders" who want cheap internet are happy to let the other stockholders who don't cover the loses. It's an involuntary stockholder relationship.
What private company is going to be happy with that?
If ANY private company could operate at a profit, they'd be trying. One cost that a private company doesn't have is the public employee pension system, so they should be able to profit if the city can break even.
But, of course, the city will just regulate the competitor so it cannot make a profit, either. That's the issue. It's easy to compete and win against a company that you get to regulate. You set the rules for both operators, and your rules just happen to be less stringent than the competitor's -- guess who goes out of business.
You're suggesting bribery, but I think a lot of state legislators are/were simply motivated by the religious belief
They were perhaps more motivated by the logic that allowing cities to cherry-pick broadband service and compete against the same company that they regulate to be unfair. The city has created a contractual agreement with Comcast or other cable service to provide a list of services to the city residents, but will not have the same rules or requirements for the service they provide. They will also not have the costs or the losses, since any losses will be taxpayer reimbursed.
It's not like there's a monopoly on ISPs to start with. Never has been. If there's no competition with the cable company as an ISP it is because nobody thinks it would be profitable. Yet, the cities think they can provide cheaper service. If that were true, where is the competition? If the city thinks they can do it, why isn't anyone else even trying?
This is like say "hay, you have been shot, hold this rolled up shirt over the wound to stem the bleeding while we get you to hospital"
No, it's like say [sic] "hey, you've been shot, here's a cute plastic Furby to make you feel better about being shot, even though you'll probably bleed out before we get to the hospital." Your analogy fails because every scientist involved acknowledges that the "Paris Accord" will have only a placebo effect on global climate because it is filled with feel-good statements without any real commitments to do anything. It's not going to act as a pressure dressing to stop the increase in heat or carbon dioxide.
And, of course, admitting that the Paris Accord isn't a solution isn't saying that nothing will ever be done. So your analogy fails on that point, too.
Does anyone believe that a single policy will stop global climate change?
Does anyone believe that the colloquial English phrase "a solution to" always means "a complete and final, irrevocable, perfect solution to..."? When something solves nothing, it is quite sufficient to dismiss it by saying that it is not a solution to whatever.
No process was required, because no commitment was made.
A commitment to abide by the "accord" was made.
The most common way is when the president signs a treaty which he has the authority to carry out, without involvement of Congress. This is called a "Sole Executive Treaty".
US Constitution, Article II, Section 2, paragraph 2:
2: He shall have Power, by and with the Advice and Consent of the Senate, to make Treaties, provided two thirds of the Senators present concur;
Treaties require the consent of the Senate with a two-thirds approval. This "Sole Executive Treaty" you speak of is not constitutional.
He didn't have to go to Congress because the accord doesn't have any binding commitments.
Then the broohaahaa over the US "backing out" of this accord is moot, since there were no binding commitments to begin with. We didn't have to do nothing, so saying we ain't gonna do nothing is... well, seems like a rational statement to me. And all the states who are saying "we're going to abide by an agreement that doesn't require us to do anything" is pretty meaningless. I think the term is "virtue signaling."
He's rejecting it because of what it is not. It is NOT a solution to global climate change. His predecessor is irrelevant, although it is convenient that he tried implementing a treaty commitment without going through the constitutional process required.
You were wondering why the US, which was the absolute leader in science and technology until not that long ago, is falling behind in technology and why insane ideas like flat earth,
Yeah! Mod this UP! All the ignorance is because people cannot go to Sci-Hub and read all the science stuff they're pirating on behalf of the fundamentalist and non-science people! Yeah! That's it!.
Now, this is certainly not the only reason. But a good display of what's wrong here.
No, it's not any of the reason, and it displays nothing but the concept that "anything I want must be handed to me". You can't go to the library, or send an email to the author of an article to ask for a copy, that's too hard.
When you cite a work in a paper, you cite where it was published, not how you got your copy. E.g., if you take the legal route and ask an author for a preprint, you don't cite it is "[Fnordly, A.S.] Personal communication.", you cite the journal it appeared in.
You don't have to be a subscriber to "Analytical Chemistry" to cite papers that appear in it. You don't even have to have a copy of the paper in your possession.
Congress gets big campaign contributions from the publishers so there is no realistic option for those who want to access research they already largely payed for via taxes.
Ahh, them sneaky federal agencies, putting Open Access requirements into their grants, bypassing that evil Congress bought and paid for by the publishers. What a corrupt system.
Unless you come with a realistic alternative you cant criticize sci-hub.
Yeah, we can criticize activities that are based on the theory that "information wants to be free (as in beer)" and "I have a right to whatever I want, even if I have to take it illegally." Given the real other ways of getting papers for free, I'd say it's realistic.
Do you know what grad students do to get their degree? Cheat. They use abstracts and hope nobody notices or they go to places like above and get the information they need illegally.
Or you just ask the author and he provides a preprint. We have boxes of those stuffed on shelves here, all awaiting a simple request. And now they are electronic and don't take up any shelf space. With Open Access, you don't even need to ask, you go to the Open Access repository.
The problem has only become worse as journals increase their rates,
And the number of "free" electronic journals increases daily. I usually get three or four requests a week to send some e-journal a paper or three.
It's as if the only people that post on higher-education articles either have their hand in the pot or are uneducated themselves.
Or they know the expense of doing journals right and know about the legal ways of getting copies of articles for free.
"In Active concert or participation with defendant" --- does not include merely routing packets that might somehow be associated with the defendant.
Despite all the panic and FUD being spread by previous comments, I was hoping I would see someone who actually read what was in the summary. Yes, those "in active concert or participation" are required to stop.
That's not Comcast, unless Comcast is selling services to Sci-Hub. That excludes any ISP, unless ditto. ISPs are, for the vast majority, not involved in this injunction. They don't have to block nuthin. Sci-Hubs ISP is. They know they're selling services to Sci-Hub, or ought to know it.
Search engines are an interesting question. Does scraping the content of a website mean you are "in active concert" with them? Does providing links to them as the result of a search? I'd say "no" and "yes".
ISPs have no way of knowing what domain names SciHub engages in unlawful access, etc,
You were doing so well, and then snipped this out of context. We've already figured out that ISPs aren't required to do anything because they aren't "in active concert with", therefore, it doesn't matter if they can or cannot know what domain names Sci-Hub uses. The sentence is long, I know, but at the very beginning it says who the rest of the sentence applies to.
thus there is no way to implement the order.
Who cares? They don't have to do anything.
As for the people who are unhappy that "people in the US" will have to pay for access to ACSs products while the rest of the world doesn't, why is it free? Is it because Sci-Hub has been found to be breaching copyright law by providing free access to ACS paid content? Would you be making the same complaint if an international trucking company that stole truckloads of Apple watches and was handing them out for free around the world, was then caught and put out of operation in the US? After all, people in the US would be required to pay for Apple watches while people in the rest of the world can still get them for free.
The point being, the only reason that people in the rest of the world are getting stuff for free is because someone is breaking the law to give it to them. The law was enforced in the US, so in the US you can't get it for free anymore.
Also, UPS and FedEx both let you specific delivery instructions or have things held.
When UPS hid two packages behind a locked screen door they did not let me specify delivery instructions or offer to hold anything. They simply pried open a locked screen door to hide the first package, and then hid the second package in the same place a month later. The second package was a replacement for the first one, which I had reported as lost because I would never assume UPS would pry open a locked door to hide anything.
It was only because both packages didn't quite fit and I noticed the screen door ajar that I found both.
So how do I tell UPS to hold a package that they've already delivered/hidden? I have no information about it, so do I just call up every day and say "if you have anything for address X, please hold it?"
USPS will also hold any package you request.
USPS puts a notice in my mailbox that they've tried to deliver a package, and that they'll try to deliver it again the next day. That means I can call the next day to tell them to hold it, go home and find the "second notice", and then pick it up on day three. Really efficient system. BUT, better than hiding it someplace with no notice of delivery at all.
Reread your subject, which I quoted in my reply to highlight it. You made an imperative statement -- a command -- and that authorizes them. You now assume responsibility.
Slashdot Mirror
2) Robotic vehicles would benefit from the addition of a mechanical arm with a mechanical middle finger
If you are an asshole and pull up to a truck in such a way that he cannot continue the maneuver he was trying to perform, which would have gotten him out of your way, then you deserve the finger, not the truck driver.
If a large truck is making a right turn and has moved into the left lane so he could accomplish that without running over the curb or other cars, it is an asshole who pulls up as far as he can go in the right lane to prevent the truck from completing the turn and causing a traffic jam, even if the car in the right lane technically has the right of way over the truck. Unfortunately, "asshole" is not a ticketable offense.
A human would have identified the situation and remained clear. The AI assumed it had the right of way and did not. It doesn't matter in the end if the AI did or did not have the right of way, proper defensive driving would have prevent the accident altogether. "Being right" isn't always better than "being safe".
As to the snarky comment by someone else that going a couple of hours in Las Vegas without a fender bender is better than humans can do, I'll just point out that I've driven for hundreds of hours in Las Vegas and have neither run into anyone else, nor have I had anyone run into me.
That said, let's note that, for a corporation as large as IBM, the costs of having such a design team develop is pretty minor.
The costs of replacing every print or display use of a font for IBM products or services will be astronomical, as will the enforcement of the standards for its use.
It's like when a company or school develops a new logo. It isn't just the $50,000 paid to the graphic designer to produce the logo, it's the thousands upon thousands of dollars spent on things like replacing everyone's business cards, advertising, letterhead, etc, with the new logo, and throwing out all of the stuff with the old. A local bank changed its logo a few years ago. They were donating cases of pencils with the old logo to charity.
There's also the cost of all the media designers who need to integrate the new logo into their web pages. Our uni logo change was mandated to appear on every web page served by every web server in the uni, and many of those needed some redesign to go from what was basically a circle shaped logo to a thin rectangular one. You can't just replace the logo png file and have the page look right. And then you get to do it again in five years when the logo changes again.
If you're a high level design exec, how do you determine that a change is needed?
Ask yourself this: "have I made any impact on the company at all in the 20 years I've worked here?" And "what will the people I leave behind when I retire remember me for?" If the answer is "not a hell of a lot", then "a new corporate logo" is low hanging fruit.
I'd love to hear from the artists, industrial designers and so on about this.
A company should be more interested in hearing from potential customers. "Did the existence of 8 versions of this font remind you of the IBM logo, and more important, did it remind you of IBM when you were making your last buying decision?"
bespoke just means "custom tailored"
It is interesting to go to the Miriam Webster site to see the definition. They include a comment about a "new meaning" that the word picked up in the 16th century, of "sold before it was made".
As in "vaporware".
First, let me say this. We won. You lost. Nana nana boo boo, stick your head in doo doo.
This is what mods call "informative"? Wow. By the way, I didn't "lose".
You are plainly wrong here. The new utility is an enterprise fund, which, in this case, has its finances separated from other city funding.
Did you bother to read your link? I did. It says that the funds in an enterprise fund are "generally" sequestered for use for that service. It does NOT say that losses experienced in that service will not be covered by other sources of money, such as the general fund. The cite you give is explicit to that. Let me quote it for your information: "In some cases, however, the governmental entity may be permitted to use funds in an enterprise fund for other purposes and to use other funds to pay costs otherwise payable from the enterprise fund." Emphasis mine. Not only will the city be permitted to cover the losses for a city service from some other fund, they will be required to do so or they will be operating at a deficit. Someone has to cover the loss, and a city internet service doesn't have a national corporate parent to do it. It's the taxpayers. The cite you used doesn't even require it to be covering a loss, the government can choose to use other funds to pay for things the enterprise fund is intended to. Like, who pays for the maintenance of a pole that the city is using to distribute internet? Is it the enterprise fund, or is it public works who normally maintains such things? Taxpayer money collected for public works could easily be used to support the internet operation. That's just one example.
In doing so, we collectively agreed
A plurality of you agreed to this. There is an old saying that is quite appropriate here: "democracy is two wolves and a sheep deciding what is for lunch". You've got forced stockholders in your ISP, ones who can have their houses taken from them for failing to pay taxes if they choose to object.
and we implicitly accept that in the unlikely event of failure we will cover the bonds or face city bankruptcy.
So you freely admit that the taxpayer is on the hook for the costs. That's an involuntary risk you're forcing on your neighbors so you can get cheap internet.
Well... Taxation is constrained by TaBOR,
Another deliberate misinterpretation of a simple concept. Tabor does not prevent a city from spending tax money on something other than the excuse they used for extracting it from the public. It requires that a city get a vote to increase a tax rate (not relevant to this at all), or to spend tax revenue "if revenues grow faster than the rate of inflation and population growth." That's also not relevant here.
Nothing in this Tabor prevents a city from repurposing an existing tax or fee. In fact, if you read past the first paragraph of your cite, you will find this fascinating amendment:,
Any retained Referendum C revenue (revenue above the allowable TABOR limit but below the Referendum C cap) is statutorily required to be spent on health care, education, firefighter and police retirement plans and strategic transportation projects.
So, if the fees and taxes from providing internet service go up more than the limit, it CANNOT BE SPENT ON THE INTERNET SERVICE. It must be spent on other things.
But the point here is that you can choose to use other broadband providers, and if you do so you won't have to pay any of the fees charged by the Ft. Collins municipal internet.
What a disingenuous statement. Nobody said that non-participants have to pay the "fees charged" by the city internet. The issue is that they have to pay the TAXES that back the service and cover the costs that the fees don't. They've already had to pay the taxes that went into the $20 million DORA grant funding. They'll have to pay the ta
Comcast starts with good connections to each house, and so internet service is not that difficult.
"Internet service" on the level that Comcast operates (national) is much much more than just a wire to the house. It is a complete network infrastructure, including hardware to piggyback a network service on top of a cable television service.
Having a city infrastructure (which will typically build connections to each house) is going to cost a lot of money.
Yep. But it cost Comcast a lot of money, and on an ongoing basis, to build and maintain its internet service, too.
Cable TV at least used to make money, which is why cable companies went to all that bother to get the franchises.
Cable TV still makes money or Comcast wouldn't be doing it. No company can operate at a loss. Undercutting the existing ISPs by selectively removing costs that the incumbent cannot is why competition from a government is unfair. A city doesn't have to make a profit, for example. It can operate at a loss forever. It has free access to the city rights-of-way. It has city employees to perform maintenance. Comcast is not so lucky. That's just a few cost differences.
Forcing someone to bundle a profitable service in with another service that uses most of the same equipment doesn't sound particularly onerous.
Until you realize that the costs of bundling are not going to be one of the city's costs of operation. Comcast has to pass on the cost of the cable TV service when it bills the sub; the city has no cost associated with cable TV so it can charge a lot less.
Isn't the issue that Comcast does not provide the service at a price that people want to pay? They do broadband, they just don't do it at the price the people who want free internet want to pay. Anything that factors into the higher price, like city-regulated services that Comcast must provide but the city does not, are relevant.
As long as it's Comcast or DSL, Comcast doesn't have to be very good to be the best choice.
So why is there nobody else coming in to eat Comcast's lunch? Why has no smart entrepreneur come into town selling just internet service for a lot less than Comcast? They could certainly make a profit given Comcast's prices and embedded costs, and by avoiding a lot of the costs that Comcast has. For example, a city-sized ISP doesn't have to maintain a long-distance backbone of their own, they can peer with a commercial backbone locally.
But nobody, in all those Colorado cities, has done that. That should be a good clue that there is no profit to be made by running an ISP there. (In my city there are other options, so there is evidence it can be done.)
Before some potty-mouthed AC starts spewing profanity about "monopoly" etc, keep in mind that Comcast, as an ISP, is not a monopoly of either kind. It is neither a "government-granted monopoly" nor an economic one. There are competitors. There just aren't many, and some of the larger competitors cost more. But crying that Comcast is a monopoly in a discussion of internet service is just wrong. The fact that there is competition shows that it can be done at a profit; the fact that some competitors charge more shows that the costs aren't as low as people want to pretend.
If the city internet is competitive, people have more of a choice.
By "competitive" you mean "operates at a lower cost by not having to provide anything but internet service, can benefit from cost-savings by using existing city facilities and personnel, can do so with any losses covered by the taxpayers, and isn't regulated like their competitors so they can have a lower cost, so they can undercut any competition".
What choice will they have when the non-profit, taxpayer-backed internet-only service reduces the number of subscribers for the incumbent ISPs to the point they cannot make a profit? Comcas
What the article does not mention, is that DORA has already allotted $20 million in grants for community/government broadband in CO.
Assuming you mean "Department of Regulatory Agencies" and not "Dora the Explorer", you're saying that there's already $20 million in taxpayer money going to build these systems. And yet, we are told, the taxpayers won't be paying to build or operate these systems, it will all be done with user fees. I'm confused. Or maybe not.
Users of competing broadband providers will not be taxed in any way to subsidize the city's program.
What happens when the fees don't cover the costs? And who is paying to install the infrastructure before there are any fees being collected to pay for it?
Taxpayers are always on the hook for city services. If any service doesn't collect enough fees to cover costs, taxpayers have to fill in the deficit.
[private communication from city manager's office]
Politicians are scum who lie every time they speak, unless they say something we like. Then they are speaking gospel truth. If you listen carefully to what he said, you will note that it does NOT say that the only source of money to pay for the system is this "enterprise fund". He said that the only thing the enterprise fund monies CAN pay for is "the specific purpose". If there aren't enough "enterprise fund" monies to cover the costs, the general fund is the next stop.
You've also forgotten, what is true today is not necessarily true tomorrow. Our Fair City has set up lots of "funds" that are intended for a special purpose, only to wind up with a change later that puts the money into the general fund for general spending, or even better, to change the "special purpose" that the fees are spent on. ("Temporary road use fee on the water bill to pay for repair of two sections of road the contractor screwed up" has morphed into "permanent general road repair fund so we can spend the general fund money on something else", for one example.)
In the absence of unreasonable regulatory hurdles from incumbent ISPs, new fiber providers kick the living crap out of the incumbents cost-wise and service-wise,
Quite right. A city operated ISP without those regulatory hurdles will always win over a cable system that has to follow the franchise contract. A city "company" that has to provide only ISP services can certainly operate more cheaply than a cable system that the city mandates must provide ISP, cable, and other services. (That's what is meant by "cherry-picking". The city picks the services it wants to provide; the cable company has a contract with the city to do all of them.) That's why the city should not be competing.
That makes it by far the best approach to rolling out fiber, in the absence of laws preventing it.
Comcast in this area rolled out fiber a long time ago. Not because of city competition, but because the franchise required it. No other competitor to Comcast in this area has a requirement to install a specific kind of medium.
The city certainly isn't going to require itself to pay the costs of installing a complete fiber cable television plant, but it has required Comcast to do that. If you can regulate costs onto the other guy, it sure make it easier to sell the same product cheaper.
The Citizens United verdict made bribery a perfectly legal item, as money is considered free speech.
The CU decision reiterated what was existing law. That law said that corporations have the right to free speech, because corporations are made up of people who have the right to free speech. Money is not "free speech", but money is necessary for effective speech.
The taxpayers should not be paying for Internet access.
Yep. And the government should not be in direct competition with companies that they regulate, especially when the government is cherry-picking the services it provides.
The city and their stockholders, I mean residents, are happy to make 1% or less profit.
The city is happy to operate at a loss. The "stockholders" who want cheap internet are happy to let the other stockholders who don't cover the loses. It's an involuntary stockholder relationship.
What private company is going to be happy with that?
If ANY private company could operate at a profit, they'd be trying. One cost that a private company doesn't have is the public employee pension system, so they should be able to profit if the city can break even.
But, of course, the city will just regulate the competitor so it cannot make a profit, either. That's the issue. It's easy to compete and win against a company that you get to regulate. You set the rules for both operators, and your rules just happen to be less stringent than the competitor's -- guess who goes out of business.
You're suggesting bribery, but I think a lot of state legislators are/were simply motivated by the religious belief
They were perhaps more motivated by the logic that allowing cities to cherry-pick broadband service and compete against the same company that they regulate to be unfair. The city has created a contractual agreement with Comcast or other cable service to provide a list of services to the city residents, but will not have the same rules or requirements for the service they provide. They will also not have the costs or the losses, since any losses will be taxpayer reimbursed.
It's not like there's a monopoly on ISPs to start with. Never has been. If there's no competition with the cable company as an ISP it is because nobody thinks it would be profitable. Yet, the cities think they can provide cheaper service. If that were true, where is the competition? If the city thinks they can do it, why isn't anyone else even trying?
This is like say "hay, you have been shot, hold this rolled up shirt over the wound to stem the bleeding while we get you to hospital"
No, it's like say [sic] "hey, you've been shot, here's a cute plastic Furby to make you feel better about being shot, even though you'll probably bleed out before we get to the hospital." Your analogy fails because every scientist involved acknowledges that the "Paris Accord" will have only a placebo effect on global climate because it is filled with feel-good statements without any real commitments to do anything. It's not going to act as a pressure dressing to stop the increase in heat or carbon dioxide.
And, of course, admitting that the Paris Accord isn't a solution isn't saying that nothing will ever be done. So your analogy fails on that point, too.
Does anyone believe that a single policy will stop global climate change?
Does anyone believe that the colloquial English phrase "a solution to" always means "a complete and final, irrevocable, perfect solution to ..."? When something solves nothing, it is quite sufficient to dismiss it by saying that it is not a solution to whatever.
No process was required, because no commitment was made.
A commitment to abide by the "accord" was made.
The most common way is when the president signs a treaty which he has the authority to carry out, without involvement of Congress. This is called a "Sole Executive Treaty".
US Constitution, Article II, Section 2, paragraph 2:
2: He shall have Power, by and with the Advice and Consent of the Senate, to make Treaties, provided two thirds of the Senators present concur;
Treaties require the consent of the Senate with a two-thirds approval. This "Sole Executive Treaty" you speak of is not constitutional.
He didn't have to go to Congress because the accord doesn't have any binding commitments.
Then the broohaahaa over the US "backing out" of this accord is moot, since there were no binding commitments to begin with. We didn't have to do nothing, so saying we ain't gonna do nothing is ... well, seems like a rational statement to me. And all the states who are saying "we're going to abide by an agreement that doesn't require us to do anything" is pretty meaningless. I think the term is "virtue signaling."
I do not want to spoil the party but president can only ask parliament to repeal an act of law.
What is "parliament"? Why would whatever that is listen to the US President?
He's rejecting it because of what it is not. It is NOT a solution to global climate change. His predecessor is irrelevant, although it is convenient that he tried implementing a treaty commitment without going through the constitutional process required.
When you can vote for whom ever you like, but the corporations end up with all the say,
When did the corporations vote? Which election? How is being able to pay for ads having "all the say"?
Trump proves that with enough money even a sexual predator can be president.
I think Bill Clinton beat him to that title.
You were wondering why the US, which was the absolute leader in science and technology until not that long ago, is falling behind in technology and why insane ideas like flat earth,
Yeah! Mod this UP! All the ignorance is because people cannot go to Sci-Hub and read all the science stuff they're pirating on behalf of the fundamentalist and non-science people! Yeah! That's it!.
Now, this is certainly not the only reason. But a good display of what's wrong here.
No, it's not any of the reason, and it displays nothing but the concept that "anything I want must be handed to me". You can't go to the library, or send an email to the author of an article to ask for a copy, that's too hard.
Works Cited page is going to look awesome. Retrieved dd-mon-yyyy from https://scihub22266oqcxt.onion...
When you cite a work in a paper, you cite where it was published, not how you got your copy. E.g., if you take the legal route and ask an author for a preprint, you don't cite it is "[Fnordly, A.S.] Personal communication.", you cite the journal it appeared in.
You don't have to be a subscriber to "Analytical Chemistry" to cite papers that appear in it. You don't even have to have a copy of the paper in your possession.
Congress gets big campaign contributions from the publishers so there is no realistic option for those who want to access research they already largely payed for via taxes.
Ahh, them sneaky federal agencies, putting Open Access requirements into their grants, bypassing that evil Congress bought and paid for by the publishers. What a corrupt system.
Unless you come with a realistic alternative you cant criticize sci-hub.
Yeah, we can criticize activities that are based on the theory that "information wants to be free (as in beer)" and "I have a right to whatever I want, even if I have to take it illegally." Given the real other ways of getting papers for free, I'd say it's realistic.
Do you know what grad students do to get their degree? Cheat. They use abstracts and hope nobody notices or they go to places like above and get the information they need illegally.
Or you just ask the author and he provides a preprint. We have boxes of those stuffed on shelves here, all awaiting a simple request. And now they are electronic and don't take up any shelf space. With Open Access, you don't even need to ask, you go to the Open Access repository.
The problem has only become worse as journals increase their rates,
And the number of "free" electronic journals increases daily. I usually get three or four requests a week to send some e-journal a paper or three.
It's as if the only people that post on higher-education articles either have their hand in the pot or are uneducated themselves.
Or they know the expense of doing journals right and know about the legal ways of getting copies of articles for free.
"In Active concert or participation with defendant" --- does not include merely routing packets that might somehow be associated with the defendant.
Despite all the panic and FUD being spread by previous comments, I was hoping I would see someone who actually read what was in the summary. Yes, those "in active concert or participation" are required to stop.
That's not Comcast, unless Comcast is selling services to Sci-Hub. That excludes any ISP, unless ditto. ISPs are, for the vast majority, not involved in this injunction. They don't have to block nuthin. Sci-Hubs ISP is. They know they're selling services to Sci-Hub, or ought to know it.
Search engines are an interesting question. Does scraping the content of a website mean you are "in active concert" with them? Does providing links to them as the result of a search? I'd say "no" and "yes".
ISPs have no way of knowing what domain names SciHub engages in unlawful access, etc,
You were doing so well, and then snipped this out of context. We've already figured out that ISPs aren't required to do anything because they aren't "in active concert with", therefore, it doesn't matter if they can or cannot know what domain names Sci-Hub uses. The sentence is long, I know, but at the very beginning it says who the rest of the sentence applies to.
thus there is no way to implement the order.
Who cares? They don't have to do anything.
As for the people who are unhappy that "people in the US" will have to pay for access to ACSs products while the rest of the world doesn't, why is it free? Is it because Sci-Hub has been found to be breaching copyright law by providing free access to ACS paid content? Would you be making the same complaint if an international trucking company that stole truckloads of Apple watches and was handing them out for free around the world, was then caught and put out of operation in the US? After all, people in the US would be required to pay for Apple watches while people in the rest of the world can still get them for free.
The point being, the only reason that people in the rest of the world are getting stuff for free is because someone is breaking the law to give it to them. The law was enforced in the US, so in the US you can't get it for free anymore.
Also, UPS and FedEx both let you specific delivery instructions or have things held.
When UPS hid two packages behind a locked screen door they did not let me specify delivery instructions or offer to hold anything. They simply pried open a locked screen door to hide the first package, and then hid the second package in the same place a month later. The second package was a replacement for the first one, which I had reported as lost because I would never assume UPS would pry open a locked door to hide anything.
It was only because both packages didn't quite fit and I noticed the screen door ajar that I found both.
So how do I tell UPS to hold a package that they've already delivered/hidden? I have no information about it, so do I just call up every day and say "if you have anything for address X, please hold it?"
USPS will also hold any package you request.
USPS puts a notice in my mailbox that they've tried to deliver a package, and that they'll try to deliver it again the next day. That means I can call the next day to tell them to hold it, go home and find the "second notice", and then pick it up on day three. Really efficient system. BUT, better than hiding it someplace with no notice of delivery at all.
Like some one wants people to grow up and be triggered into hyperactivity by certain cues from screaming colors and sounds.
Fruity Oaty Bars, anyone?
No, that's my point. I didn't.
Reread your subject, which I quoted in my reply to highlight it. You made an imperative statement -- a command -- and that authorizes them. You now assume responsibility.