Plugging the headset in every night. You have become a slave to your devices. Plugging in a phone or a tablet I can understand
I have absolutely refused to become a slave to my devices. I never plug anything in. When the device stops working, I go to the store and buy a new one.
Now, in reality, this is a bit of a problem because of the tube cellphone that I use to get the warmth of vacuum tubes in my audio. It will only run for five minutes on one charge. Instead of going to the store every five minutes for a new tube phone, I keep it plugged in to the USB charger. I don't need multiple charging cables because the one I had to build using 8 gauge wire (for better bass response) is hard to lose.
But you have lost the freedom to be able to use them 24 hours a day if you want,
If you have to stay up for 24 continuous hours, you have worse problems in your life than poor audio from a bluetooth headset.
Are you in the habit of quoting the entire comment you are replying to? How, umm, odd.
So, just because there are situations where the ambient noise floor is too high we shouldn't care about the situations where it's quiet?
There are very few places where "it's quiet" enough to merit significant concern for reproduction purity that you cannot use good equipment capable of achieving that. Second, "it's quiet" is not the only requirement for true purity. And, once again, my comment was not solely directed at you, so the fact that you might only use a cellphone for audio in a home theater environment is irrelevant to the general discussion.
Wow, overreact much... You took my comment that the audio quality is better out of a headphone jack and then went nuclear.
If you consider my comment to be "going nuclear", then you need to get out more. Maybe visit the Hiroshima museums.
But, of course, my response was pretty clearly not limited to just your comment, but to the entire argument going on about sound quality from cellphones. Sometimes it isn't all about you.
But some of us prefer at least a good CD like experience (which cell phones do provide),
Sorry, but CD isn't the standard of quality. Not standard CD.
whether it's walking on the street or riding a bus and bluetooth just doesn't deliver yet.
Nothing will provide "CD quality" sound when you are walking on the street or riding a bus. That's my point. That's why arguing about how to get there is a waste of time.
For resistance to develop, you have to be killing off a large percentage of the non-resistant members of the population. Otherwise there is no advantage to the genetic change that gave them resistance. Remember: "survival of the fittest".
If you are busy testing every potential pesticide against "the good bugs" to limit damage to them by banning the killer chemicals, then you are artificially removing the evolutionary pressure and they won't develop resistance.
They don't reduce the bee's range or weaken their immune systems. The problem is that the replacement chemicals don't do that because they outright kill the bees dead right then and there!
What exactly is the range of a dead bee? Isn't that a significant reduction in the range of a live one? And if the immune system is still working, how do they decompose when dead?
Have you ever been stung by a dead bee? (Bonus points to anyone who knows that reference, who asked it, and to whom.)
The idea that there is a toggle point that may be reached where not only bees but humans begin to drop dead seems to be unthinkable for many right wing types.
Because the idea of a "toggle point" is not supported by any science of any kind. What actual science says is that there are levels of "contamination" that are not harmful at all. As the level of "contamination" increases, some effects may begin to develop. It's not like at 9 ppb As in water you have no effects but you start to die when you hit 10 ppb. The old standard used to be 50 ppb and we didn't see entire cities full of people dieing when they drank water with 30 ppb. The EPA changed the limit in 2001 because there were some people showing health effects -- but not a lot of people dropping dead after drinking a glass of water.
Exposure to radiation is the same kind of thing. You might think that "no radiation is good radiation", but this isn't how the world actually works. You cannot find a place with 0 radiation, so you have to consider what levels are actually harmful. And then you have to consider that there is actually a theory that some radiation is good for us as a species. It is, after all, a source of mutations, and mutation is the driving force for evolution. Would humans exist at all in the evolutionary universe were there to be 0 radiation?
When adults talk about contaminants they use the term "LD50", which is the concentration at which there is 50% lethality. It is not a "toggle point", it is a statistical measure.
The 1/8th inch phone jack also extends th ehigh and low end of any headphone, an dthe crispness efface due to the smaller spring metal used,
This sounds like the kind of stuff you read in the ads in high-end audiophile magazines, where people will sell you 000 gauge power cords for your power amps because the big wire has a lower impedance and allows the amp to reproduce low frequencies better. Or the company that was selling a gold plated digital-certified HDMI cables for, IIRC, $400, because it guaranteed error-free digital sound and video. Or deoxygenated copper cables, or any number of other snake oils.
AptX is better than the current codecs used for Bluetooth but it doesn't give you analog quality.
This argument over audio quality from a cellphone is pretty funny. You folks are all novices. I'm a purist. I have a cellphone I built out of vacuum tubes because nothing beats the audio warmth you get from a vacuum tube amplifier. I power and charge my cellphone using a cable made from deoxygenated 8 gauge copper wires, because the oxygen in normal cables interferes with the highs and the high-current capacity of big wire can power the transient demands of good bass.
If you are someone who uses a cellphone as an audio source while you are sitting in your home theater, then you've admitted you don't care about the sound quality and complaining that it isn't perfection is just silly. You're going to buy the components to do the job right. If you are someone who is using the cellphone like the vast majority of people, to provide distractions from having to deal with other people while you walk or ride the bus or drive in the car, then your listening environment is so full of extraneous sounds that you will never get purity in your sound.
And that's why this whole debate over sound quality is silly. Convenience, yes, argue that, but arguing that the high frequency reproduction from your bluetooth earbud while you're riding the bus is clearly inferior to a wired studio monitor analog headphone with 1/4" TRS connector is, well, wasting a lot of everyone's time.
It woudln't surprise me if FedEx/UPS had a similar program where a seller could prepackage their products and have them stored at the warehouse ready for shipping.
This would be one of the more costly shipping options. It would prevent shipping multiple items in one box, and it would certainly increase the chances of mistaken items being shipped.
Heck, I've seen Amazon used that way - I ordered something from eBay and it cam in an Amazon box from the eBay seller (brand new Amazon box, shipped from Amazon facilities).
Why would this be any surprise? Amazon has many companies that sell through them ("sold by X fulfilled by Amazon"), so why wouldn't someone who ALSO has an eBay store also use the Amazon fulfillment system he's using for his Amazon presence? A seller who has reduced his costs by outsourcing one medium's fulfillment would be loony not to use the same shipping service for his other virtual storefronts.
Congress can kill the post office, and only congress can create a post office.
Is the "power to establish a post office as an office of the state" a mandate to do so, and does it prohibit outsourcing this function? Yes, there is a law protecting the post office first class mail service, but that law could be changed. You admit, I think, that the Congress can, indeed, outsource the USPS because they can "kill the post office". Therefore, the answer to the question is "what law prevents it" is only the first class service protections.
If Congress wanted to hand over the post office to Amazon, they'd have to untangle a whole maze of shit legally to have Amazon run the post office (but not outright own it).
I see nothing prohibiting Amazon from owning "the post office", other than the law I mentioned which would only prohibit running a first class letter service. That law can be rescinded, and it would be an interesting question whether that law would stand any legal test were the USPS to be disbanded. It is effectively moot anyway, considering that all you have to do is call your mail a package and UPS or any of the other services can handle it.
I think there is nothing at all preventing Amazon from outright owning the service that would replace the USPS.
(And Congress has been trying to kill the post office for a long time, but they can't do it outright as the public wouldn't stand for it,
They wouldn't stand for it because killing it outright would be unacceptable. Replacing it, perhaps over a few years cross-over, would not be unacceptable.
Beyond that, Amazon would prefer to take advantage of the Post Office's lower rates with the "we hand it off the USPS, USPS delivers it" thing
I have no doubt that Amazon would love the complete control of vertical integration by taking over delivery, which is why they are already taking over delivery to get complete control. You can bet that any "post office" service that Amazon runs in place of USPS would have the same terms of carriage at worst, and probably much better for Amazon. And they'd still have UPS and FedEx for "we hand it off" deliveries.
Why would it be illegal, and were it currently what would stop congress from changing the law to allow privatization of the USPS? I think there would be a lot of money to be saved by doing that, because the first move would be dumping the unions.
There is repeated talk about privatizing the FAA, (a really really bad idea) so USPS certainly shouldn't be considered sacrosanct.
but the delivery person just dumps packages in the office without notifying anyone or getting a signature.
This is different than UPS or FedEx dumping packages somewhere on the property without any signature or notice exactly how? UPS, in particular, has a wonderful habit of hiding stuff and leaving no notice, so I may find it a week later, or in one case it was more than a month.
Your 2017 Subaru will (eventually) be required to carry a V2V beacon which uses GPS
By "eventually" you mean "never". Another example of impossible requirements being required before AV work well in all situations.
Stop pretending that vehicles buried in snowdrifts is a problem everywhere. It isn't.
It is a problem that you were presenting a solution for, a solution that is clearly impossible until two impossible things happen (and now three). It doesn't matter if it doesn't happen everywhere, it will happen and your solution is not.
Well, the autonomous terrain vehicles will communicate with other snow-covered vehicles,
Explain how your Ohlenhausen Smugmobile 3100 AV car will communicate with my 2017 Subaru that is parked on the side of the street covered by snow.
and it seems reasonable that regions prone to inclement weather would incorporate sensors into the roadways.
Based on quotes one and two here, I am assuming you think that AV will only be allowed on the road after all other vehicles are removed from service and every municipality has invested millions of dollars in embedded sensors for all their roads. Until that happens, both of your solutions to the problem do not exist.
Most of the insurance industry would likely move to the state that offers the most lenient regulations,
Except under ACA we have federal regulations preempting state. Tell us why insurance that meets the federal standards from a company in Mass., e.g., should not be available to someone in California.
I heard this discussion on a talk program last week, and the person trying to defend state limits tried using the excuse that insurance from other states would probably not provide coverage for the providers in our state. I.e., the Mass. insurance would not have a provider network that included doctors in California. Well, then, don't buy that insurance, dummy. You wouldn't buy health insurance without knowing what doctors you could use, would you? Well, yes, a dummy would.
Considering that there is insurance in my own state that doesn't cover all providers and there are at least three "networks" available, you already have to figure out who is "in network" and "out of network" to buy in-state insurance; this is no different were out of state insurance allowed.
Interstate trucking would be the least dangerous type of self-driving vehicle usage.
Since interstate truck drivers are already heavily regulated for safety, probably also one of the lowest returns on investment based on safety concerns. But also one of the the highest potentials for damage when the AV fails. Interstate triple-bottom freight haulers going wacko on the interstate highways could take out a lot of humans and infrastructure.
Trucking AV would be a windfall for shipping companies, with no clear guarantee that shipping rates would reflect the savings.
I have yet to hear how we expect the US to enforce this law, or why we can make laws concerning what foreign nationals can do while solely within the borders of foreign countries. Shanghai Bill points to the First Amendment as a reason that all campaign finance laws are unconstitutional, so I will point out, besides being an unconstitutional limit on free speech, it is a law created to control someone who has no representation within our system of government. We fought a war over taxation like that, so why wouldn't we fight a war if someone tried to create laws over our citizens? If we wouldn't accept it, why should any other country?
Now, if it were a law prohibiting US corporations from accepting money to carry such ads, that's a different thing. But the law itself does not make the campaign or anyone involved legally responsible for ads ("electioneering communication") purchased by foreign nationals, only for money accepted as a donation to their campaign.
But no, the fact that some Russians bought some ads in 2016 doesn't turn it into a crisis.
People didn't stop flying because terrorists blew up airplanes.
I don't know what planet you live on, but here on Earth, yes, indeed, people did stop flying because of 9/11. Not all of them, but a large number -- significant enough that it had a major impact on airline service levels.
Terrorists won't even try to blow up the Hyperloop.
They'd be a great target. Why wouldn't they? The first Hyperloop system will get a lot of press, and blowing it up would get a lot more.
There are much easier, better targets.
Terrorists don't look just for easy targets. They look for targets with an impact on the most people, or to make a statement.
Get your shorts all twisted up worrying about something else.
Get a clue on reality and understand that someone can point out that a certain thing will be a target without having their "shorts all twisted up", or needing your insults to correct that situation.
A very simplistic view of what damage would be done.
Hyperloop capsules only hold 10 or 20 people... fewer than a city bus. Not a very attractive target.
And how many people will the next capsule to depart from the station be holding, if the news that the capsule ahead of theirs was blown up by a terrorist? Will those 20 people think "gosh, how terrible, but it won't happen to me..."? Or will they say "I don't really need to travel today, not by Hyperloop"? And the people following them, and then the next capsule... and as the news propagates to other Hyperloop terminals and passengers...
The effect a terrorist seeks is not just how many people will be killed, but how many people will be impacted. They still put bombs on city buses in the Middle East even if that kills only a few people. The final effect they want is not just to kill those specific people, but to make people afraid to ride the bus. The bombs outside police stations in Iraq are not meant just to kill a few people outside police stations, but to make people fear going to a police station.
With that logic terrorists could easily blow high speed trains passing by at 330km/h.
"High speed trains" differ from "low speed trains" in one primary aspect: how fast they go. They are still trains, they are still commonplace objects (other than the speed). When you look at one at the station you cannot tell if the train will be high speed or low, and even trains that are streamlined and designed to be high speed may be limited to slow speeds due to the track.
Basically as with railway.
Destroying a high-tech, new, multi-billion dollar Hyperloop would have much more psychological impact, and thus more attraction to a terrorist. They are, after all, not always seeking the easiest targets, but those that will have an impact.
The TSA wouldn't care about a hyperloop being expensive and supposedly a high target. The TSA would see it as a chance to expand their power and influence.
For whatever reason the TSA has, it won't necessarily be them who demands the introduction of security checkpoints at Hyperloop terminals. That's what I was saying.
There would be fights inside the TSA about where to place hyperloops
I don't think I've ever heard of a fight within TSA over the placement of an airport, so I doubt they'd have much influence over the placement of Hyperloop terminals.
The use-case for 99.9999% of consumers is to compare ISPs.
Citation required. Since I doubt that 99.9999% of consumers have two ISPs with the same service from both, your claim seems to be outside the norm, and thus requires support. While I have access to several ISPs services, none of them are the same quality or level, so comparing any one of them against another would be useless. I.e., a speed test I do on my phone compared to my home cable internet would be meaningless, as would a comparison of my home cable to my business cable service (ignoring for the sake of argument that I can't switch cable providers even if the comparison was valid.)
Not in having both at once, but to see if a switch is worth it between different providers.
You can't compare two things if you don't have two things to compare. How can I test ISP B to see if it is worth switching to ISP B unless I already have ISP B to test with? You might try claiming that I can do it from my friend's house, but that is his service from ISP B, not mine. He may have 100Mbps service and I have 30Mbps -- the comparison will be useless because B will always look faster than mine, and I may wind up switching to a service that is actually slower.
You are right that the the system can be gamed, that is exactly the problem everyone else is pointing out here.
And I haven't denied it. I'm pointing out that there are valid and reasonable technical reasons for an ISP to rely on speed test servers that are on their own network and not on servers elsewhere, whether or not they are "gaming the system". In fact, "gaming the system" is one very good reason why they SHOULD ignore outside servers. If you believe that YOUR ISP is gaming you, then why would you accept a speed test run on ISP B's network?
If you use your ISPs speed test server and both your and your ISPs measurement shows that your connection is operating at or above the specified speed, you have corroborated evidence you are getting what you paid for. While the ISP can fudge the number on their end, you are making the same measurement. If you aren't getting what you paid for, then at a minimum your measurement from their server will show that.
IF you use a speed server on someone else's network and it and your own measurement shows a data rate below advertised, then you have learned nothing about your connection. The server could be seeing a connection from a Comcast IP address and deliberately sending slowly, and both the server and your measurement will detect that. But it isn't the fault of your connection, it's the remote server. Calling your ISP to complain about your connection based on that data would be wasting everyone's time. Yours included.
The only useful result from the latter test would be if both the server and your measurement show you are getting rated speeds. In that case you aren't calling your ISP, so it doesn't matter what server they want data from.
When ISP's force their customers to try and use their own in-house test to validate their they are basically pissing on their own clients as rightfully no one trust their in house tests to be honest.
But you will trust someone else. And you won't make your own measurement, or you don't trust your own measurement.
The solution is to use some 3rd party trusted appraiser.
You've missed the point entirely. If that 3rd party uses a server that isn't on the ISPs network, then there are too many places outside the control of the ISP where the speed can be limited. It can be gaming on the part of the other network operator, or it can be simple network congestion or a normally slower network path.
What I will agree is that as long as the 3rd party server is on the ISPs network where that ISP is solely responsible for service to both the server and you, THEN it should be valid for testing. And I've always said that the server nee
That is what they ISP calls it in their advertising material - they call it Internet speed.
I have never seen an advertisement for "internet speed". I've seen ads for the speed of your connection to the ISP. Can you provide a link to one?
You said that the only speed that matters is your connection to the private network provided by the ISP.
No, actually, I did not make such a blanket statement. What I actually said is that if you are talking about whether your home internet service is providing the bandwidth that the ISP is selling you, THEN the only speed that matters is the speed on the connection that your ISP is selling you.
In your contrived example, the speed of the connection would be 56k since that is the connection from you to the ISP. Putting a gigabit LAN router on the local end of a dial-up modem doesn't change that.
In that case, that would gigabit, not dial-up speed.
You can't be that technically ignorant, so I have to assume you are misstating the situation for a reason. No, putting a gigabit LAN on your end of a dial-up modem doesn't change the service you are paying for into gigabit.
You said that any private network provided by the ISP is "The Internet."
No, I didn't say that, either. Are you sure you are replying to the person you think you are?
So let's assume they're picking some private speed test server in Korea, and not something like Ookla's Speedtest.net that has endpoints literally everywhere around the country.
I'll point out that the discussion has been about the "suspicious" nature of an ISP using a speed test server on their own network, so there is no assumption about Korea. Why should we make such an assumption, and how would it make the measurement any more accurate to do that than to use a server on the same network?
I'm assuming you mean they have physical servers co-located in many ISPs networks when you talk about their numerous "endpoints", since every speed test connection has two endpoints. One of those endpoints is always on the network connection being tested, and thus are "literally everywhere on the planet", not just "around the country". If that's what you mean, then of course an ISP should accept that data since they've explicitly vetted it and it is on their own network. But nobody has said "ookla" until now, and the discussion has been about speed test servers located on other people's networks, not the ISPs.
I want a useful measure of how fast my internet connection is.
Your connection to the Internet is through that line from you to the ISP. That's the bandwidth YOU pay for. That's the service you need to test if your connection speed is in question.
As I said, I don't care how fast my connection to my ISP is, because I don't pay them so I can get a connection to their network.
That is EXACTLY what you are paying them for. Access to the rest of the internet depends on having that connection to their network. They do not advertise, nor are you paying them for, a specific bandwidth gateway to other people's networks. (Yes, if you talk to Level3 or one of the other major backbone providers you might talk details like that, but not when you talk to Comcast Home or CenturyLink, and those are the kinds of ISPs we're talking about here. If you are talking details like that, they will be spelled out in the contract you sign for service and you damn well better be reading that contract.)
But let's remember the context here. Someone said that his ISP was not accepting speed test data from arbitrary outside sources when he was calling them about the internet connection to his home. That is specifically an issue of his connection to the ISP. While it might be nice to know how fast you can get data from Lower Elbonia servers, it is irrelevant when determining if the connection to your home is providing the service you are paying for.
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Plugging the headset in every night. You have become a slave to your devices. Plugging in a phone or a tablet I can understand
I have absolutely refused to become a slave to my devices. I never plug anything in. When the device stops working, I go to the store and buy a new one.
Now, in reality, this is a bit of a problem because of the tube cellphone that I use to get the warmth of vacuum tubes in my audio. It will only run for five minutes on one charge. Instead of going to the store every five minutes for a new tube phone, I keep it plugged in to the USB charger. I don't need multiple charging cables because the one I had to build using 8 gauge wire (for better bass response) is hard to lose.
But you have lost the freedom to be able to use them 24 hours a day if you want,
If you have to stay up for 24 continuous hours, you have worse problems in your life than poor audio from a bluetooth headset.
So, just because there are situations where the ambient noise floor is too high we shouldn't care about the situations where it's quiet?
There are very few places where "it's quiet" enough to merit significant concern for reproduction purity that you cannot use good equipment capable of achieving that. Second, "it's quiet" is not the only requirement for true purity. And, once again, my comment was not solely directed at you, so the fact that you might only use a cellphone for audio in a home theater environment is irrelevant to the general discussion.
Wow, overreact much... You took my comment that the audio quality is better out of a headphone jack and then went nuclear.
If you consider my comment to be "going nuclear", then you need to get out more. Maybe visit the Hiroshima museums. But, of course, my response was pretty clearly not limited to just your comment, but to the entire argument going on about sound quality from cellphones. Sometimes it isn't all about you.
But some of us prefer at least a good CD like experience (which cell phones do provide),
Sorry, but CD isn't the standard of quality. Not standard CD.
whether it's walking on the street or riding a bus and bluetooth just doesn't deliver yet.
Nothing will provide "CD quality" sound when you are walking on the street or riding a bus. That's my point. That's why arguing about how to get there is a waste of time.
If you are busy testing every potential pesticide against "the good bugs" to limit damage to them by banning the killer chemicals, then you are artificially removing the evolutionary pressure and they won't develop resistance.
They don't reduce the bee's range or weaken their immune systems. The problem is that the replacement chemicals don't do that because they outright kill the bees dead right then and there!
What exactly is the range of a dead bee? Isn't that a significant reduction in the range of a live one? And if the immune system is still working, how do they decompose when dead?
Have you ever been stung by a dead bee? (Bonus points to anyone who knows that reference, who asked it, and to whom.)
The idea that there is a toggle point that may be reached where not only bees but humans begin to drop dead seems to be unthinkable for many right wing types.
Because the idea of a "toggle point" is not supported by any science of any kind. What actual science says is that there are levels of "contamination" that are not harmful at all. As the level of "contamination" increases, some effects may begin to develop. It's not like at 9 ppb As in water you have no effects but you start to die when you hit 10 ppb. The old standard used to be 50 ppb and we didn't see entire cities full of people dieing when they drank water with 30 ppb. The EPA changed the limit in 2001 because there were some people showing health effects -- but not a lot of people dropping dead after drinking a glass of water.
Exposure to radiation is the same kind of thing. You might think that "no radiation is good radiation", but this isn't how the world actually works. You cannot find a place with 0 radiation, so you have to consider what levels are actually harmful. And then you have to consider that there is actually a theory that some radiation is good for us as a species. It is, after all, a source of mutations, and mutation is the driving force for evolution. Would humans exist at all in the evolutionary universe were there to be 0 radiation?
When adults talk about contaminants they use the term "LD50", which is the concentration at which there is 50% lethality. It is not a "toggle point", it is a statistical measure.
The 1/8th inch phone jack also extends th ehigh and low end of any headphone, an dthe crispness efface due to the smaller spring metal used,
This sounds like the kind of stuff you read in the ads in high-end audiophile magazines, where people will sell you 000 gauge power cords for your power amps because the big wire has a lower impedance and allows the amp to reproduce low frequencies better. Or the company that was selling a gold plated digital-certified HDMI cables for, IIRC, $400, because it guaranteed error-free digital sound and video. Or deoxygenated copper cables, or any number of other snake oils.
AptX is better than the current codecs used for Bluetooth but it doesn't give you analog quality.
This argument over audio quality from a cellphone is pretty funny. You folks are all novices. I'm a purist. I have a cellphone I built out of vacuum tubes because nothing beats the audio warmth you get from a vacuum tube amplifier. I power and charge my cellphone using a cable made from deoxygenated 8 gauge copper wires, because the oxygen in normal cables interferes with the highs and the high-current capacity of big wire can power the transient demands of good bass.
If you are someone who uses a cellphone as an audio source while you are sitting in your home theater, then you've admitted you don't care about the sound quality and complaining that it isn't perfection is just silly. You're going to buy the components to do the job right. If you are someone who is using the cellphone like the vast majority of people, to provide distractions from having to deal with other people while you walk or ride the bus or drive in the car, then your listening environment is so full of extraneous sounds that you will never get purity in your sound.
And that's why this whole debate over sound quality is silly. Convenience, yes, argue that, but arguing that the high frequency reproduction from your bluetooth earbud while you're riding the bus is clearly inferior to a wired studio monitor analog headphone with 1/4" TRS connector is, well, wasting a lot of everyone's time.
It woudln't surprise me if FedEx/UPS had a similar program where a seller could prepackage their products and have them stored at the warehouse ready for shipping.
This would be one of the more costly shipping options. It would prevent shipping multiple items in one box, and it would certainly increase the chances of mistaken items being shipped.
Heck, I've seen Amazon used that way - I ordered something from eBay and it cam in an Amazon box from the eBay seller (brand new Amazon box, shipped from Amazon facilities).
Why would this be any surprise? Amazon has many companies that sell through them ("sold by X fulfilled by Amazon"), so why wouldn't someone who ALSO has an eBay store also use the Amazon fulfillment system he's using for his Amazon presence? A seller who has reduced his costs by outsourcing one medium's fulfillment would be loony not to use the same shipping service for his other virtual storefronts.
Congress can kill the post office, and only congress can create a post office.
Is the "power to establish a post office as an office of the state" a mandate to do so, and does it prohibit outsourcing this function? Yes, there is a law protecting the post office first class mail service, but that law could be changed. You admit, I think, that the Congress can, indeed, outsource the USPS because they can "kill the post office". Therefore, the answer to the question is "what law prevents it" is only the first class service protections.
If Congress wanted to hand over the post office to Amazon, they'd have to untangle a whole maze of shit legally to have Amazon run the post office (but not outright own it).
I see nothing prohibiting Amazon from owning "the post office", other than the law I mentioned which would only prohibit running a first class letter service. That law can be rescinded, and it would be an interesting question whether that law would stand any legal test were the USPS to be disbanded. It is effectively moot anyway, considering that all you have to do is call your mail a package and UPS or any of the other services can handle it.
I think there is nothing at all preventing Amazon from outright owning the service that would replace the USPS.
(And Congress has been trying to kill the post office for a long time, but they can't do it outright as the public wouldn't stand for it,
They wouldn't stand for it because killing it outright would be unacceptable. Replacing it, perhaps over a few years cross-over, would not be unacceptable.
Beyond that, Amazon would prefer to take advantage of the Post Office's lower rates with the "we hand it off the USPS, USPS delivers it" thing
I have no doubt that Amazon would love the complete control of vertical integration by taking over delivery, which is why they are already taking over delivery to get complete control. You can bet that any "post office" service that Amazon runs in place of USPS would have the same terms of carriage at worst, and probably much better for Amazon. And they'd still have UPS and FedEx for "we hand it off" deliveries.
There is repeated talk about privatizing the FAA, (a really really bad idea) so USPS certainly shouldn't be considered sacrosanct.
but the delivery person just dumps packages in the office without notifying anyone or getting a signature.
This is different than UPS or FedEx dumping packages somewhere on the property without any signature or notice exactly how? UPS, in particular, has a wonderful habit of hiding stuff and leaving no notice, so I may find it a week later, or in one case it was more than a month.
Your 2017 Subaru will (eventually) be required to carry a V2V beacon which uses GPS
By "eventually" you mean "never". Another example of impossible requirements being required before AV work well in all situations.
Stop pretending that vehicles buried in snowdrifts is a problem everywhere. It isn't.
It is a problem that you were presenting a solution for, a solution that is clearly impossible until two impossible things happen (and now three). It doesn't matter if it doesn't happen everywhere, it will happen and your solution is not.
Bet we won't see any legislation like that, though.
Because it is not mandatory to have insurance to drive a car. To use it on the public roads, perhaps.
Well, the autonomous terrain vehicles will communicate with other snow-covered vehicles,
Explain how your Ohlenhausen Smugmobile 3100 AV car will communicate with my 2017 Subaru that is parked on the side of the street covered by snow.
and it seems reasonable that regions prone to inclement weather would incorporate sensors into the roadways.
Based on quotes one and two here, I am assuming you think that AV will only be allowed on the road after all other vehicles are removed from service and every municipality has invested millions of dollars in embedded sensors for all their roads. Until that happens, both of your solutions to the problem do not exist.
Most of the insurance industry would likely move to the state that offers the most lenient regulations,
Except under ACA we have federal regulations preempting state. Tell us why insurance that meets the federal standards from a company in Mass., e.g., should not be available to someone in California.
I heard this discussion on a talk program last week, and the person trying to defend state limits tried using the excuse that insurance from other states would probably not provide coverage for the providers in our state. I.e., the Mass. insurance would not have a provider network that included doctors in California. Well, then, don't buy that insurance, dummy. You wouldn't buy health insurance without knowing what doctors you could use, would you? Well, yes, a dummy would.
Considering that there is insurance in my own state that doesn't cover all providers and there are at least three "networks" available, you already have to figure out who is "in network" and "out of network" to buy in-state insurance; this is no different were out of state insurance allowed.
Interstate trucking would be the least dangerous type of self-driving vehicle usage.
Since interstate truck drivers are already heavily regulated for safety, probably also one of the lowest returns on investment based on safety concerns. But also one of the the highest potentials for damage when the AV fails. Interstate triple-bottom freight haulers going wacko on the interstate highways could take out a lot of humans and infrastructure.
Trucking AV would be a windfall for shipping companies, with no clear guarantee that shipping rates would reflect the savings.
Now, if it were a law prohibiting US corporations from accepting money to carry such ads, that's a different thing. But the law itself does not make the campaign or anyone involved legally responsible for ads ("electioneering communication") purchased by foreign nationals, only for money accepted as a donation to their campaign.
But no, the fact that some Russians bought some ads in 2016 doesn't turn it into a crisis.
People didn't stop flying because terrorists blew up airplanes.
I don't know what planet you live on, but here on Earth, yes, indeed, people did stop flying because of 9/11. Not all of them, but a large number -- significant enough that it had a major impact on airline service levels.
Terrorists won't even try to blow up the Hyperloop.
They'd be a great target. Why wouldn't they? The first Hyperloop system will get a lot of press, and blowing it up would get a lot more.
There are much easier, better targets.
Terrorists don't look just for easy targets. They look for targets with an impact on the most people, or to make a statement.
Get your shorts all twisted up worrying about something else.
Get a clue on reality and understand that someone can point out that a certain thing will be a target without having their "shorts all twisted up", or needing your insults to correct that situation.
Just patch the hole and start it up again.
A very simplistic view of what damage would be done.
Hyperloop capsules only hold 10 or 20 people... fewer than a city bus. Not a very attractive target.
And how many people will the next capsule to depart from the station be holding, if the news that the capsule ahead of theirs was blown up by a terrorist? Will those 20 people think "gosh, how terrible, but it won't happen to me..."? Or will they say "I don't really need to travel today, not by Hyperloop"? And the people following them, and then the next capsule ... and as the news propagates to other Hyperloop terminals and passengers ...
The effect a terrorist seeks is not just how many people will be killed, but how many people will be impacted. They still put bombs on city buses in the Middle East even if that kills only a few people. The final effect they want is not just to kill those specific people, but to make people afraid to ride the bus. The bombs outside police stations in Iraq are not meant just to kill a few people outside police stations, but to make people fear going to a police station.
With that logic terrorists could easily blow high speed trains passing by at 330km/h.
"High speed trains" differ from "low speed trains" in one primary aspect: how fast they go. They are still trains, they are still commonplace objects (other than the speed). When you look at one at the station you cannot tell if the train will be high speed or low, and even trains that are streamlined and designed to be high speed may be limited to slow speeds due to the track.
Basically as with railway.
Destroying a high-tech, new, multi-billion dollar Hyperloop would have much more psychological impact, and thus more attraction to a terrorist. They are, after all, not always seeking the easiest targets, but those that will have an impact.
The TSA wouldn't care about a hyperloop being expensive and supposedly a high target. The TSA would see it as a chance to expand their power and influence.
For whatever reason the TSA has, it won't necessarily be them who demands the introduction of security checkpoints at Hyperloop terminals. That's what I was saying.
There would be fights inside the TSA about where to place hyperloops
I don't think I've ever heard of a fight within TSA over the placement of an airport, so I doubt they'd have much influence over the placement of Hyperloop terminals.
The use-case for 99.9999% of consumers is to compare ISPs.
Citation required. Since I doubt that 99.9999% of consumers have two ISPs with the same service from both, your claim seems to be outside the norm, and thus requires support. While I have access to several ISPs services, none of them are the same quality or level, so comparing any one of them against another would be useless. I.e., a speed test I do on my phone compared to my home cable internet would be meaningless, as would a comparison of my home cable to my business cable service (ignoring for the sake of argument that I can't switch cable providers even if the comparison was valid.)
Not in having both at once, but to see if a switch is worth it between different providers.
You can't compare two things if you don't have two things to compare. How can I test ISP B to see if it is worth switching to ISP B unless I already have ISP B to test with? You might try claiming that I can do it from my friend's house, but that is his service from ISP B, not mine. He may have 100Mbps service and I have 30Mbps -- the comparison will be useless because B will always look faster than mine, and I may wind up switching to a service that is actually slower.
You are right that the the system can be gamed, that is exactly the problem everyone else is pointing out here.
And I haven't denied it. I'm pointing out that there are valid and reasonable technical reasons for an ISP to rely on speed test servers that are on their own network and not on servers elsewhere, whether or not they are "gaming the system". In fact, "gaming the system" is one very good reason why they SHOULD ignore outside servers. If you believe that YOUR ISP is gaming you, then why would you accept a speed test run on ISP B's network?
If you use your ISPs speed test server and both your and your ISPs measurement shows that your connection is operating at or above the specified speed, you have corroborated evidence you are getting what you paid for. While the ISP can fudge the number on their end, you are making the same measurement. If you aren't getting what you paid for, then at a minimum your measurement from their server will show that.
IF you use a speed server on someone else's network and it and your own measurement shows a data rate below advertised, then you have learned nothing about your connection. The server could be seeing a connection from a Comcast IP address and deliberately sending slowly, and both the server and your measurement will detect that. But it isn't the fault of your connection, it's the remote server. Calling your ISP to complain about your connection based on that data would be wasting everyone's time. Yours included.
The only useful result from the latter test would be if both the server and your measurement show you are getting rated speeds. In that case you aren't calling your ISP, so it doesn't matter what server they want data from.
When ISP's force their customers to try and use their own in-house test to validate their they are basically pissing on their own clients as rightfully no one trust their in house tests to be honest.
But you will trust someone else. And you won't make your own measurement, or you don't trust your own measurement.
The solution is to use some 3rd party trusted appraiser.
You've missed the point entirely. If that 3rd party uses a server that isn't on the ISPs network, then there are too many places outside the control of the ISP where the speed can be limited. It can be gaming on the part of the other network operator, or it can be simple network congestion or a normally slower network path.
What I will agree is that as long as the 3rd party server is on the ISPs network where that ISP is solely responsible for service to both the server and you, THEN it should be valid for testing. And I've always said that the server nee
That is what they ISP calls it in their advertising material - they call it Internet speed.
I have never seen an advertisement for "internet speed". I've seen ads for the speed of your connection to the ISP. Can you provide a link to one?
You said that the only speed that matters is your connection to the private network provided by the ISP.
No, actually, I did not make such a blanket statement. What I actually said is that if you are talking about whether your home internet service is providing the bandwidth that the ISP is selling you, THEN the only speed that matters is the speed on the connection that your ISP is selling you.
In your contrived example, the speed of the connection would be 56k since that is the connection from you to the ISP. Putting a gigabit LAN router on the local end of a dial-up modem doesn't change that.
In that case, that would gigabit, not dial-up speed.
You can't be that technically ignorant, so I have to assume you are misstating the situation for a reason. No, putting a gigabit LAN on your end of a dial-up modem doesn't change the service you are paying for into gigabit.
You said that any private network provided by the ISP is "The Internet."
No, I didn't say that, either. Are you sure you are replying to the person you think you are?
So let's assume they're picking some private speed test server in Korea, and not something like Ookla's Speedtest.net that has endpoints literally everywhere around the country.
I'll point out that the discussion has been about the "suspicious" nature of an ISP using a speed test server on their own network, so there is no assumption about Korea. Why should we make such an assumption, and how would it make the measurement any more accurate to do that than to use a server on the same network?
I'm assuming you mean they have physical servers co-located in many ISPs networks when you talk about their numerous "endpoints", since every speed test connection has two endpoints. One of those endpoints is always on the network connection being tested, and thus are "literally everywhere on the planet", not just "around the country". If that's what you mean, then of course an ISP should accept that data since they've explicitly vetted it and it is on their own network. But nobody has said "ookla" until now, and the discussion has been about speed test servers located on other people's networks, not the ISPs.
I want a useful measure of how fast my internet connection is.
Your connection to the Internet is through that line from you to the ISP. That's the bandwidth YOU pay for. That's the service you need to test if your connection speed is in question.
As I said, I don't care how fast my connection to my ISP is, because I don't pay them so I can get a connection to their network.
That is EXACTLY what you are paying them for. Access to the rest of the internet depends on having that connection to their network. They do not advertise, nor are you paying them for, a specific bandwidth gateway to other people's networks. (Yes, if you talk to Level3 or one of the other major backbone providers you might talk details like that, but not when you talk to Comcast Home or CenturyLink, and those are the kinds of ISPs we're talking about here. If you are talking details like that, they will be spelled out in the contract you sign for service and you damn well better be reading that contract.)
But let's remember the context here. Someone said that his ISP was not accepting speed test data from arbitrary outside sources when he was calling them about the internet connection to his home. That is specifically an issue of his connection to the ISP. While it might be nice to know how fast you can get data from Lower Elbonia servers, it is irrelevant when determining if the connection to your home is providing the service you are paying for.