Probably because by clicking that button you're proving that a human exists at the end of the email address. And because you were silly enough to click it, you're probably exploitable in other interesting ways, too.
Exactly so. Unsubscribe from one, and two or three others show up from different sources within a few days.
Since I never subscribed to these in the first place, I'm never going to unsubscribe. I'm going to mark them spam.
Sorry Google, but I'm not playing along. I'm going to stuff your spam filters (which work very well thank you) full of these UCE mailings whether or not they contain unsubscribe options. Punish every on of them and force them to stop adding people to mailing lists without a request to do so.
This is simply wrong headed. I can't believe google doesn't understand how these guys work. Why would they want to enable this kind of practice to continue?
On my company email, I've got very effective Spamassisin filters for these types of things, and I mercilessly categorize them as spam. I expect nothing less from gmail.
Brake-by-wire technology is still under development by some automobile and automotive parts manufacturers industry worldwide and has not been widely commercialized yet. This is mainly due to the safety-critical nature of brake products. So far, Mercedes-Benz (Sensotronic) and Toyota (Electronically Controlled Brake) already use almost fully brake-by-wire systems, on the Mercedes-Benz E-class and SL models and on Toyota's Estima.
Brakes systems sold in the US for passenger vehicles always have physical or hydraulic linkages in addition to any purely electrical system. This is because US DOT regulations in 49 CFR 571.105 require the brakes still perform with ANY failure in the electrical system, (cut wires, dead battery short circuit, dead computer, etc), and even has requirements for performance with a totally depleted battery (see at S6.2.6A in above). The easiest way to meet these criteria is to add a physical pedal actuated hydraulic brake linkage.
This. You can't learn faster with faster Internet.
Although you can damn well learn slower, as you spend less time learning and more time watching all that porn you download on your blazing fast Google fiber.
In what car?! All modern mainstream vehicles still use a master cylinder in tandem with a booster and ABS. Even if you lose all engine power, should still be able to apply the brakes. Although it will require more force to push the pedal down, it should still be doable to bring the car to a complete safe stop.
If only the throttle was also required to have a physical linkage!
Unfortunately, once we abandoned the carburetor, there isn't much to link the throttle pedal to any more, and we are stuck with using it pretty like as a mouse. A physical pedal up fuel valve to reduce fuel availability to a level sufficient only to idle the engine might return some measure of physical control. Currently most manufacturers have the computer cut throttle when the brake is pressed, even if the gas is also pressed. (Toyota did not have this during their problem years and added it later). This has the side effect of teaching those idiots who drive an automatic with the left foot riding the brake not to do so. Unfortunately, this functionality is programmed into the same computer, (saving $37), and if that computer has entered stack overflow, it won't help.
But the interesting thing here is that Barr found a situation that (he claims) could in fact cause the engine to receive full throttle, when DOT and NASA could find no such problem and blamed it all on the driver confusing the pedals.
Even if the brakes would have stopped the car (eventually), after applying them fairly firmly for a while (for some values of "while") the car can experience rather sever brake fade. Anyone driving in the mountains has probably experienced this.
Without brake fade, Car and Driver found that from 100mph and up, the braking distance increased three fold, enough to convince the driver that the car was never going to stop. If this occurred after a long downhill, (hot brakes and plenty of fade) and the driver wasn't fully committed to hard panic braking, it seems plausible that a stuck accelerator pedal, or stack overflow, or floor mats, could extend braking distances enough to be deadly. When tested afterwards, the brakes would have appeared to be working again.
If you disallow all of these possibilities you are forced to assume that anyone reporting any unintended acceleration is a total idiot, which, given small the number of events, isn't completely out of the question, but the fact that almost all of these idiots tend to be driving a Toyota is suspicious. After all, idiocy does not usually manifest itself by a predilection toward a certain brand of car.
I agree about the end-point router being probably the best place to apply traffic prioritization (if such is required). Doesn't mean it would work though.
Getting the other end of that connection to play along is problematic. Just because you set priority on a particular traffic type, doesn't mean they will do the same. Do-able if you control both sides, but since most traffic is downloads (to the end user), the most you can do is prioritize your ACKs. The arriving traffic is going to be prioritized by the originating end, and every Tom, Dick and Harry running a router between the two end points.
TCP works fine for voice.
I use a lot of SIP connections because I collaborate with people overseas, and SIP is easy to set up, (clients for every platform), and free accounts are easy to come by. (Why should I pay a Telco when a sip connection from here to Argentina is totally free, crystal clear, and drop dead simple?)
Some of the best services, free or paid, offer TCP connections, and they are astoundingly stable, clear, and high quality. Given a choice I always use a TCP connection. UDP will suffer noticeable drop outs, occasionally making it unusable while the same endpoints can switch to a provider that supports TCP and it is rock solid..
This old saw that TCP does not work for voice is simply false, and always has been false. Voice is not that demanding. (It really isn't, the bandwidth needs are not that great), And with newer codecs, bandwidth needs are further reduced, while quality never gets as bad as dial-up.
Really, you should try it out some time with a long distance friend. Go for a client and a provider that offers TCP SIP connections, set your client to ONLY use TCP, and you will forget all this nonsense that voice can't use TCP.
This might work if you tell them that your car will be in a fixed location throughout the day. But I'm not sure that civilian GPS is sensitive enough to tell the driver where your car is when it's in a parking lot with 500 other cars.
This is exactly what I was thinking.
On the other hand, presumably GPS 15-to-50 foot radius is close enough, in a large parking lot, because there are only 5 to 10 cars withing that circle. Street parked cars would have even fewer cars in that area. The Package service drives up, presses the button and watches for which trunk opens, (checks the license plate) and drops off / picks up the package.
As for coordination, that's where it gets messy. As you say, cars move, and the car would have to provide its location, to some service. TFA says "The system is based on the functionality offered in the Volvo On Call telematics." (something like OnStar). You need a dataplan for your car. And I can't imagine delivery is going to chase your car. You better be in that parking lot when they dispatch the truck, (which is usually at the crack of dawn). If your car is home when they pack deliver trucks it may not be there when the truck arrives.
When you order, or schedule a pickup, the system would have to obtain a likely location at the estimated time of delivery, a whole day ahead. Either the delivery company would have to query the system ahead of time, or by you giving approximate locations ahead of time.
This sound like it might work in older dense cities where everybody parks on the street or in company parking lots. Not so much if you have covered parking garages at either location.
TCP will re-transmit dropped packets, but this means by definition that some will arrive out of order.
True, there is no way to assure that the packets travel over every hop in lockstep, with non getting lost. But you are conflating problems of the physical layer with problems at the application layer.
TCP's handling of re-transmits is entirely unseen by the application.
Any needed re-ordering is handled by the TCP stack, way down there on the Transport layer.and any competent TCP Stack will handle this for you without the need of excessive buffering. You will never know it happened.
The algorithms employed for assuring proper order delivery by the transport layer of the TCP stack have steadily evolved over the years. There are some summaries of the various methods that have been tried. The interesting thing about this is that out-of-order detection and re-ordering methods can and have evolved separately from the upper layers over time, as they requiring only an agreement on the control packets involved (ACCs). As a result some routers use totally different detection and re-ordering strategies than others.
As an applications programmer, you never have to worry about the order or missing data. It will be there or the link has failed.
I see what you are saying, but you are arguing AGAINST the net neutrality side. (And that's fine, not all aspects of net neutrality work in the favor of all end-users.)
But voice typically goes by UDP, although lately, SIP protocol is starting to gravitating to TCP PRECISELY to combat the drop out problem. (UDP is designed to drop packets, TCP is designed to make sure none are dropped and all arrive in the proper order). Part of the voice problem, (if there exists any real problem in this area) is the wrong choice of technology.
I'm still not convince that allowing the network operators to favor some packets over others is the correct way to go. Their interests will never match our interests. If you are going to do that sort of stuff there has to be a consensus, one set not by each carrier to feather their own nest. And this prioritizing is REALLY only an issue if you are trying to scrimp on band width.
In the absence of a consensus, everything running with equal priority seems to be the only logical route. Voice dropping out: Consider a thinner codec. Consider TCP. Consider yelling down to the basement and having your son shut down his porn feed for 20 minutes. Consider a bigger pipe. Consider switching to a better provider.
Because even if you build a consensus to prioritize some traffic types, people will just go out and encapsulate their preferred inside of the consensus priority class. (Gamers will embed their packets into VOIP packets or something). By maintaining a level playing field you avoid the packet wars.
So now you are going to make it so that any pipe the ISP has, if it becomes saturated with data, they are legally required to upgrade it to a larger pipe?
No? Because that is how netflix is being "throttled" today. They just don't have a large enough pipe to them to satisfy all the requests.
Wait, there is evidence that Netflix is SELECTIVELY throttled today, not that available bandwidth is exhausted.
In other words, when everybody jumps on Netflix in the evening, Gaming, YouTube, and just plain surfing should be dreadfully slow. Yet that does not appear to be the case for most people. Netflix is affected, but the spam and chock-full-of-ads pages load as fast as ever.
So your premise is wrong, which means your conclusion can't be supported.
HOWEVER, still, you make a good point, because when Netflix is not selectively throttled, the effect of everybody wanting one to five high bandwidth streams into every home could have a devastating effect on all parts of the network. Especially the last mile.
Even when Netflix (and similar) servers are located on the ISP's local head-ends, moving all TV viewing to IP traffic will swamp the last mile. It is dramatically more traffic than the same amount of programming traveling by digital cable, because every single user is a separate stream starting at separate times. (Please don't anyone pop up and say Multicast. It doesn't work that way and won't help).
So you are left with the same problem, of potentially saturated bandwidth as everybody moves to IP-TV. And forcing cable plant upgrades to fiber everywhere is probably the only way around this. But the FCC probably doesn't have the authority to do that, and the natural Monopoly enjoyed by cable plants probably isn't going to make it easy for competition to come in.
If this is so great, explain "total prohibition of throttling". Most networks are oversubscribed, and that's OK since most users use a small portion of their allowed bandwidth. One way or another, there will be throttling.
Capacity limitation is distinct from throttling. Not sizing their total bandwidth capabilities to meet peak demand is not the same thing as throttling, Everything is impacted when capacity is reached, rather than selectively throttling specific traffic.
I'm quite aware of the difference between legislative and executive.
I suspect Obama is too. I further suspect he, unlike you, has heard of the judiciary.
He has no business saying the executive branch will continue to exercise the full authority granted by Congress, when the Judicial Branch just stripped the executive of that very authority.
It's like you didn't even read what he said, or just assume he *means* the opposite of what he says..
Its like YOU didn't read what he said.
He said nothing, he promised nothing.
Instead he delivered PURE 100% Obama speak for "Yeah I hear you, now STFU and stop raining on my parade."
The FCC is an independent agency. Chairman Wheeler has publicly pledged to use the full authority granted by Congress to maintain a robust, free and open Internet — a principle that this White House vigorously supports.'
He sort of fails to notice the Courts just took away all of that Congressionally Granted Power.
So lets see, out of your local government taxes, you want to:
Pay present market rate so seize all phone lines, Tear down all those phone lines that you just paid for, Re-install Fiber in their place over the entire town.
I bet you want this all for free too. No increase in taxes. And anytime yesterday would be fine. Want Unicorns on that?
Well yes, I agree that might be what the thinking is, but I that would require this "journalist" organization to have accepted into their private club any one with a computer and access to documents. This seems unlikely, except in the contest of screaming press freedom.
Manning was a soldier, and he was not a journalist. Im not sure even journalist would welcome him in their ranks for the simple act of betrayal of his oath as a soldier.
Its interesting, people are reporting that many small towns have 2 or 3 providers of cable. If anything the economics would make more sense in cities for two or three providers. So there must be some non-logistical factor holding back these companies.
Much of the claim of two or three different cable providers is out of ignorance.
Most of the time, these are simply bulk purchase providers that ride on existing cable plants through some special bulk buy. There really ends up being only one cable plant.
Just like there are Virtual Mobile Network Operators that provide cell service cheaper than AT&T or Verizon, when in reality they are simply reselling AT&T or Verizon accounts which the purchase in bulk. They don't have any tower or any plant of their own.
Some cities may have been forward looking enough to require infrastructure access by competitors, but in most of the country this is simply not the case.
Pulling another cable through the underground conduit is not trivial when that underground conduit belongs to Comcast, or someone else. It only applies to City owned conduit, and even then, disruption of existing services is a big risk. Its not trivial. If you think it is, you've never done it.
Franchise or not, monopolies are different, and the city is not able to give blanket authority to trench in new cable across everyone's yard and driveway. Also Franchises to do things like cable and telephone are often by their very nature a franchise to a monopoly. Just because someone else shows up with paper work doesn't mean they get a piece of they pie.
Cable is a natural monopoly. Competition really doesn't work in this type of business.
What we really need is for cable high-speed internet service to be declared a "Common carrier", so they are required to not discriminate against NetFlix, etc.
Or pry the last mile out of the fingers of cable companies and put it in the hands of Local government, like streets, water, sewer. That way the local rate-payers and tax payers can allow multiple content and internet providers, and maintain their own fiber/cable plant.
I'm pretty sure built up areas will have multiple providers.
Guess again. The VAST Majority of the US has exactly 1.5 choices. 1) Cable/fiber owned by Comcast or competitors..5) Horribly inadequate and often unavailable DSL lines.
Even where there are multiple cable plants in a city, the overlap of their ares is virtually non-existent.
The more built up the area, the less chance of any real choice except in the downtown business core.
Force them to divest themselves of TV content providers, Networks, Studios, etc.
It may still not be enough. They have phone packages too. Does that mean they get to *block* VOIP, SIP, and other internet phone services? (And when I say block I also mean use speeds or pricing to force it off the internet side of Comcast).
Well, in a lot of places they have competition from fiber, and places where they *don't* are places where building out a competitive network is unprofitable. Relinquishing the monopoly on cable would be no big deal.
In vastly more places there is exactly ONE cable plant in the ground. There is no competition. Further, most municipalities will not allow building out competitive networks, simply because the disruption is so great. These plants went in when the neighborhood was built, and no late comers will be allowed.
Of course they don't compete. Cable companies have government-sanctioned monopolies.
I'd say give them a choice. You can merge if you relinquish your monopoly.
Then we'll see what's most important to them.
Agreed.
Your suggestion is being echoed in other sources. Some stories coming out of even the Media Loving mainstream press suggest that Comcast will be given a choice of divesting itself of content providers in exchange for allowing them to enlarge their cable plant.
But, interestingly, Others suggest Comcast must allow an open cable plant model, and allow other content providers onto their cable plant with competitive prices, and equal service levels. (For a fee obviously, but one that is regulated). Must-Carry (usually local) channels haven't proved a burden to cable companies (much as they like to bitch about them), so there is already precedent for this.
For once, the press seems universally negative on the idea of this merger, and that in itself is somewhat suspect, because I haven't seen get in lockstep agreement with anything that turned out good for the country in a long long time.
Facilities that are de-facto government sanctioned monopolies are universally regulated, even when the ownership is totally in private hands. That is the price you pay for a monopoly. If you have to move to a different neighborhood or town to get a choice, that's not a choice at all. There is no need for this type of setup in a digital world.
Slashdot Mirror
I've been having bad luck on that part
Probably because by clicking that button you're proving that a human exists at the end of the email address. And because you were silly enough to click it, you're probably exploitable in other interesting ways, too.
Exactly so. Unsubscribe from one, and two or three others show up from different sources within a few days.
Since I never subscribed to these in the first place, I'm never going to unsubscribe. I'm going to mark them spam.
Sorry Google, but I'm not playing along. I'm going to stuff your spam filters (which work very well thank you) full of these UCE mailings whether or not they contain unsubscribe options. Punish every on of them and force them to stop adding people to mailing lists without a request to do so.
This is simply wrong headed. I can't believe google doesn't understand how these guys work. Why would they want to enable this kind of practice to continue?
On my company email, I've got very effective Spamassisin filters for these types of things, and I mercilessly categorize them as spam. I expect nothing less from gmail.
No, not many (if any) were hybrid Toyotas.
And Brakes still function.
There have only been a very few Brake by wire vehicles, and all of them have had some physical linkage as backup.
Brake-by-wire technology is still under development by some automobile and automotive parts manufacturers industry worldwide and has not been widely commercialized yet. This is mainly due to the safety-critical nature of brake products. So far, Mercedes-Benz (Sensotronic) and Toyota (Electronically Controlled Brake) already use almost fully brake-by-wire systems, on the Mercedes-Benz E-class and SL models and on Toyota's Estima.
Brakes systems sold in the US for passenger vehicles always have physical or hydraulic linkages in addition to any purely electrical system.
This is because US DOT regulations in 49 CFR 571.105 require the brakes still perform with ANY failure in the electrical system, (cut wires, dead battery short circuit, dead computer, etc), and even has requirements for performance with a totally depleted battery (see at S6.2.6A in above). The easiest way to meet these criteria is to add a physical pedal actuated hydraulic brake linkage.
This.
You can't learn faster with faster Internet.
Although you can damn well learn slower, as you spend less time learning and more time watching all that porn you download on your blazing fast Google fiber.
In what car?! All modern mainstream vehicles still use a master cylinder in tandem with a booster and ABS. Even if you lose all engine power, should still be able to apply the brakes. Although it will require more force to push the pedal down, it should still be doable to bring the car to a complete safe stop.
If only the throttle was also required to have a physical linkage!
Unfortunately, once we abandoned the carburetor, there isn't much to link the throttle pedal to any more, and we are stuck with using it pretty like as a mouse. A physical pedal up fuel valve to reduce fuel availability to a level sufficient only to idle the engine might return some measure of physical control. Currently most manufacturers have the computer cut throttle when the brake is pressed, even if the gas is also pressed. (Toyota did not have this during their problem years and added it later). This has the side effect of teaching those idiots who drive an automatic with the left foot riding the brake not to do so. Unfortunately, this functionality is programmed into the same computer, (saving $37), and if that computer has entered stack overflow, it won't help.
But the interesting thing here is that Barr found a situation that (he claims) could in fact cause the engine to receive full throttle, when DOT and NASA could find no such problem and blamed it all on the driver confusing the pedals.
Even if the brakes would have stopped the car (eventually), after applying them fairly firmly for a while (for some values of "while") the car can experience rather sever brake fade. Anyone driving in the mountains has probably experienced this.
Without brake fade, Car and Driver found that from 100mph and up, the braking distance increased three fold, enough to convince the driver that the car was never going to stop. If this occurred after a long downhill, (hot brakes and plenty of fade) and the driver wasn't fully committed to hard panic braking, it seems plausible that a stuck accelerator pedal, or stack overflow, or floor mats, could extend braking distances enough to be deadly. When tested afterwards, the brakes would have appeared to be working again.
If you disallow all of these possibilities you are forced to assume that anyone reporting any unintended acceleration is a total idiot, which, given small the number of events, isn't completely out of the question, but the fact that almost all of these idiots tend to be driving a Toyota is suspicious.
After all, idiocy does not usually manifest itself by a predilection toward a certain brand of car.
There are other such sites as well...
http://www.crowdsourcing.org/n...
http://www.patexia.com/contest...
I agree about the end-point router being probably the best place to apply traffic prioritization (if such is required). Doesn't mean it would work though.
Getting the other end of that connection to play along is problematic. Just because you set priority on a particular traffic type, doesn't mean they will do the same. Do-able if you control both sides, but since most traffic is downloads (to the end user), the most you can do is prioritize your ACKs. The arriving traffic is going to be prioritized by the originating end, and every Tom, Dick and Harry running a router between the two end points.
TCP works fine for voice.
I use a lot of SIP connections because I collaborate with people overseas, and SIP is easy to set up, (clients for every platform), and free accounts are easy to come by. (Why should I pay a Telco when a sip connection from here to Argentina is totally free, crystal clear, and drop dead simple?)
Some of the best services, free or paid, offer TCP connections, and they are astoundingly stable, clear, and high quality.
Given a choice I always use a TCP connection. UDP will suffer noticeable drop outs, occasionally making it unusable while the same endpoints can switch to a provider that supports TCP and it is rock solid..
This old saw that TCP does not work for voice is simply false, and always has been false. Voice is not that demanding. (It really isn't, the bandwidth needs are not that great), And with newer codecs, bandwidth needs are further reduced, while quality never gets as bad as dial-up.
Really, you should try it out some time with a long distance friend. Go for a client and a provider that offers TCP SIP connections, set your client to ONLY use TCP, and you will forget all this nonsense that voice can't use TCP.
This might work if you tell them that your car will be in a fixed location throughout the day. But I'm not sure that civilian GPS is sensitive enough to tell the driver where your car is when it's in a parking lot with 500 other cars.
This is exactly what I was thinking.
On the other hand, presumably GPS 15-to-50 foot radius is close enough, in a large parking lot, because there are only 5 to 10 cars withing that circle. Street parked cars would have even fewer cars in that area. The Package service drives up, presses the button and watches for which trunk opens, (checks the license plate) and drops off / picks up the package.
As for coordination, that's where it gets messy. As you say, cars move, and the car would have to provide its location, to some service. TFA says "The system is based on the functionality offered in the Volvo On Call telematics." (something like OnStar). You need a dataplan for your car. And I can't imagine delivery is going to chase your car. You better be in that parking lot when they dispatch the truck, (which is usually at the crack of dawn). If your car is home when they pack deliver trucks it may not be there when the truck arrives.
When you order, or schedule a pickup, the system would have to obtain a likely location at the estimated time of delivery, a whole day ahead. Either the delivery company would have to query the system ahead of time, or by you giving approximate locations ahead of time.
This sound like it might work in older dense cities where everybody parks on the street or in company parking lots. Not so much if you have covered parking garages at either location.
TCP will re-transmit dropped packets, but this means by definition that some will arrive out of order.
True, there is no way to assure that the packets travel over every hop in lockstep, with non getting lost. But you are conflating problems of the physical layer with problems at the application layer.
TCP's handling of re-transmits is entirely unseen by the application.
Any needed re-ordering is handled by the TCP stack, way down there on the Transport layer.and any competent TCP Stack will handle this for you without the need of excessive buffering. You will never know it happened.
The algorithms employed for assuring proper order delivery by the transport layer of the TCP stack have steadily evolved over the years. There are some summaries of the various methods that have been tried. The interesting thing about this is that out-of-order detection and re-ordering methods can and have evolved separately from the upper layers over time, as they requiring only an agreement on the control packets involved (ACCs). As a result some routers use totally different detection and re-ordering strategies than others.
As an applications programmer, you never have to worry about the order or missing data. It will be there or the link has failed.
I see what you are saying, but you are arguing AGAINST the net neutrality side.
(And that's fine, not all aspects of net neutrality work in the favor of all end-users.)
But voice typically goes by UDP, although lately, SIP protocol is starting to gravitating to TCP PRECISELY to combat the drop out problem. (UDP is designed to drop packets, TCP is designed to make sure none are dropped and all arrive in the proper order).
Part of the voice problem, (if there exists any real problem in this area) is the wrong choice of technology.
I'm still not convince that allowing the network operators to favor some packets over others is the correct way to go. Their interests will never match our interests. If you are going to do that sort of stuff there has to be a consensus, one set not by each carrier to feather their own nest. And this prioritizing is REALLY only an issue if you are trying to scrimp on band width.
In the absence of a consensus, everything running with equal priority seems to be the only logical route. Voice dropping out: Consider a thinner codec. Consider TCP. Consider yelling down to the basement and having your son shut down his porn feed for 20 minutes. Consider a bigger pipe. Consider switching to a better provider.
Because even if you build a consensus to prioritize some traffic types, people will just go out and encapsulate their preferred inside of the consensus priority class. (Gamers will embed their packets into VOIP packets or something). By maintaining a level playing field you avoid the packet wars.
So now you are going to make it so that any pipe the ISP has, if it becomes saturated with data, they are legally required to upgrade it to a larger pipe?
No? Because that is how netflix is being "throttled" today. They just don't have a large enough pipe to them to satisfy all the requests.
Wait, there is evidence that Netflix is SELECTIVELY throttled today, not that available bandwidth is exhausted.
In other words, when everybody jumps on Netflix in the evening, Gaming, YouTube, and just plain surfing should be dreadfully slow. Yet that does not appear to be the case for most people. Netflix is affected, but the spam and chock-full-of-ads pages load as fast as ever.
So your premise is wrong, which means your conclusion can't be supported.
HOWEVER, still, you make a good point, because when Netflix is not selectively throttled, the effect of everybody wanting one to five high bandwidth streams into every home could have a devastating effect on all parts of the network. Especially the last mile.
Even when Netflix (and similar) servers are located on the ISP's local head-ends, moving all TV viewing to IP traffic will swamp the last mile. It is dramatically more traffic than the same amount of programming traveling by digital cable, because every single user is a separate stream starting at separate times.
(Please don't anyone pop up and say Multicast. It doesn't work that way and won't help).
So you are left with the same problem, of potentially saturated bandwidth as everybody moves to IP-TV. And forcing cable plant upgrades to fiber everywhere is probably the only way around this. But the FCC probably doesn't have the authority to do that, and the natural Monopoly enjoyed by cable plants probably isn't going to make it easy for competition to come in.
If this is so great, explain "total prohibition of throttling". Most networks are oversubscribed, and that's OK since most users use a small portion of their allowed bandwidth. One way or another, there will be throttling.
Capacity limitation is distinct from throttling. Not sizing their total bandwidth capabilities to meet peak demand is not the same thing as throttling,
Everything is impacted when capacity is reached, rather than selectively throttling specific traffic.
You can't lump them into the same boat.
I'm quite aware of the difference between legislative and executive.
I suspect Obama is too. I further suspect he, unlike you, has heard of the judiciary.
He has no business saying the executive branch will continue to exercise the full authority granted by Congress, when the Judicial Branch just stripped the executive of that very authority.
It's like you didn't even read what he said, or just assume he *means* the opposite of what he says..
Its like YOU didn't read what he said.
He said nothing, he promised nothing.
Instead he delivered PURE 100% Obama speak for "Yeah I hear you, now STFU and stop raining on my parade."
The FCC is an independent agency. Chairman Wheeler has publicly pledged to use the full authority granted by Congress to maintain a robust, free and open Internet — a principle that this White House vigorously supports.'
He sort of fails to notice the Courts just took away all of that Congressionally Granted Power.
So lets see, out of your local government taxes, you want to:
Pay present market rate so seize all phone lines,
Tear down all those phone lines that you just paid for,
Re-install Fiber in their place over the entire town.
I bet you want this all for free too. No increase in taxes.
And anytime yesterday would be fine.
Want Unicorns on that?
Its in Alpha test.
Try again.
And here's a lowly Chevy getting the sane treatment.
http://msn.foxsports.com/nasca...
Same disease it turns out.
Well yes, I agree that might be what the thinking is, but I that would require this "journalist" organization to have accepted into their private club any one with a computer and access to documents. This seems unlikely, except in the contest of screaming press freedom.
Manning was a soldier, and he was not a journalist. Im not sure even journalist would welcome him in their ranks for the simple act of betrayal of his oath as a soldier.
Its interesting, people are reporting that many small towns have 2 or 3 providers of cable. If anything the economics would make more sense in cities for two or three providers. So there must be some non-logistical factor holding back these companies.
Much of the claim of two or three different cable providers is out of ignorance.
Most of the time, these are simply bulk purchase providers that ride on existing cable plants through some special bulk buy.
There really ends up being only one cable plant.
Just like there are Virtual Mobile Network Operators that provide cell service cheaper than AT&T or Verizon, when in reality they are simply reselling AT&T or Verizon accounts which the purchase in bulk. They don't have any tower or any plant of their own.
Some cities may have been forward looking enough to require infrastructure access by competitors, but in most of the country this is simply not the case.
Pulling another cable through the underground conduit is not trivial when that underground conduit belongs to Comcast, or someone else. It only applies to City owned conduit, and even then, disruption of existing services is a big risk. Its not trivial. If you think it is, you've never done it.
Franchise or not, monopolies are different, and the city is not able to give blanket authority to trench in new cable across everyone's yard and driveway. Also Franchises to do things like cable and telephone are often by their very nature a franchise to a monopoly. Just because someone else shows up with paper work doesn't mean they get a piece of they pie.
Cable is a natural monopoly. Competition really doesn't work in this type of business.
What we really need is for cable high-speed internet service to be declared a "Common carrier", so they are required to not discriminate against NetFlix, etc.
Or pry the last mile out of the fingers of cable companies and put it in the hands of Local government, like streets, water, sewer.
That way the local rate-payers and tax payers can allow multiple content and internet providers, and maintain their own fiber/cable plant.
Natural monopolies require special treatment.
I'm pretty sure built up areas will have multiple providers.
Guess again. The VAST Majority of the US has exactly 1.5 choices. .5) Horribly inadequate and often unavailable DSL lines.
1) Cable/fiber owned by Comcast or competitors.
Even where there are multiple cable plants in a city, the overlap of their ares is virtually non-existent.
The more built up the area, the less chance of any real choice except in the downtown business core.
Enron had nothing to do with this situation, and its problems stemmed from inventive accounting, not anything to do with monopoly.
Exactly.
Force them to divest themselves of TV content providers, Networks, Studios, etc.
It may still not be enough. They have phone packages too. Does that mean they get to *block* VOIP, SIP, and other internet phone services?
(And when I say block I also mean use speeds or pricing to force it off the internet side of Comcast).
Well, in a lot of places they have competition from fiber, and places where they *don't* are places where building out a competitive network is unprofitable. Relinquishing the monopoly on cable would be no big deal.
In vastly more places there is exactly ONE cable plant in the ground. There is no competition.
Further, most municipalities will not allow building out competitive networks, simply because the disruption is so great.
These plants went in when the neighborhood was built, and no late comers will be allowed.
Of course they don't compete. Cable companies have government-sanctioned monopolies.
I'd say give them a choice. You can merge if you relinquish your monopoly.
Then we'll see what's most important to them.
Agreed.
Your suggestion is being echoed in other sources. Some stories coming out of even the Media Loving mainstream press suggest
that Comcast will be given a choice of divesting itself of content providers in exchange for allowing them to enlarge their cable plant.
But, interestingly, Others suggest Comcast must allow an open cable plant model, and allow other content providers onto their cable plant with competitive prices, and equal service levels. (For a fee obviously, but one that is regulated). Must-Carry (usually local) channels haven't proved a burden to cable companies (much as they like to bitch about them), so there is already precedent for this.
For once, the press seems universally negative on the idea of this merger, and that in itself is somewhat suspect, because I haven't seen get in lockstep agreement with anything that turned out good for the country in a long long time.
Facilities that are de-facto government sanctioned monopolies are universally regulated, even when the ownership is totally in private hands. That is the price you pay for a monopoly. If you have to move to a different neighborhood or town to get a choice, that's not a choice at all. There is no need for this type of setup in a digital world.