Hello? McFly? Didn't you read the part that COUNTRIES ARE BULLIED INTO SIGNING FREE TRADE AGREEMENTS? Otherwise they get ignored ("I won't buy from you unless you sign the FTA"), or pushed into it ("remember you have a debt.... if you sign the FTA we can push it a few years forward...")
Free trade is desirable now? My, my... how much koolaid did you drink?
Free trade is only desirable to the stronger economy/ies in the bloc. For example: The Eurozone benefits the already established industrial powers (Germany) while giving no incentive for the smaller countries to set up their own factories. In a free trade agreement, Germany can now dump all of their products in a smaller country and take all of their money. Germany doesn't need to buy anything from them: they already make everything their need - so basically the smaller country is just a raw material supplier, or purely agricultural exporter. The smaller country is now doomed.
This is the real truth about free trade agreements.
So you say: then don't sign the FTA! Sure: now Germany flat out refuses to do business with you (so much for the "free market" spirit). Or they pressure you with debt you already have with them.
No. Free trade agreements are not a solution to anything. They just perpetuate the "xxxx country is an industrial power while yyyy is just a carrots producer" stereotype.
as an Argentinian: I agree with this guy. I do business transactions with my kind all year long. And they want to fuck you up every chance they get. It's just ridiculous. So, you get fucked up, and lose money. The only way to make up for it is just to fuck someone else up.
Zero interest is a "service" offered by credit cards, to their CLIENTS. A credit card client is the cardholder. The merchant? The merchant is just scum.
When you sell *any* product in fixed installments, Visa pays you the full amount 48 working hours later, and discounts the interest rate. here you can see the rates: 45% annual. That table lists the "coefficient" you should mark up: If you want to get paid $100 for an item that you want to sell in 12 payments "zero interest", you have to see the row with the 12, the value of the coefficient is 1.2571. So you multiply 100 * 1.2571 = $125.71. If you enter this amount, Visa will end up paying you $100 (minus the 3% transaction fee, the 21% VAT on that fee, 3.5% provincial tax, and 0.6% that the government collects in every non-cash transaction)
People don't know you can make a "minimum payment" (minimum payment doesn't apply if you have an installment plan: you have to pay in full every month's installments, and you can make the minimum payment in regular 1-payment operations).
I don't accept credit card for less than 2 payments, because Visa,in this case, takes 28 working days to pay me. With >2% monthly inflation (plus all of these other discounts i told you before), you can see it's not convenient for me to do it.
LOL. 12 installments ? hahahahaha only because the government stepped in and it's subsidizing them. Before "Ahora 12" you only had up to 6 "cuotas". Which talks a lot of the trust banks have.
Ubiquiti has currently two lines of "routers": EdgeMax (running a custom version of Vyatta), and AirGateway, a small WiFi Access Point (which i THINK has routing functionality. Though, Maybe it's just an AP).
On the other side, all of their AirOS devices (from NanoStation LOCO to Rocket and even AirFiber) have the possibility of routing. And IIRC, by default, these expose the web management to the public interface with user/pass ubnt/ubnt.
Yes. The way I see it, Comcast, slimebags as they are, are right. Netflix expects everyone to keep up with their unreasonable bandwidth needs at their pace, which just won't happen.
You have the USD thing backwards: You want to get USD out of the country at bank rate, but into the country at blue rate!
I don't think Porsche is the one in your example. It's BMW. Porsche is part of VW and they don't have any issues importing, since they export a lot of cars to Brazil so they meet their export-import quota. BMW *could* install any sort of factory here, and meet the quota. But they're just not interested.
BTW: bandwidth isn't really that bad. I have Arnet 30/10 (recently released service, up for 6/768k) for $20/mo, and it works at 30mbit except at 6-10pm
The problem with Latin America, actually, is the fact that no one wants to set up local servers here.
For example, Netflix released their service here. Did they put a Netflix CDN box in every street corner like they did in the US? Of course not. They're just saturating the already busy international pipes.
MaxCDN, one of the most well known CDN services, do they have servers in Latin America? From what I see: No, they don't. We rely on US servers. At least that's what I noticed when using the Bootstrap3 CDN, which uses MaxCDN: it was faster for me to serve the library from my own host than using the CDN.
Now, other big players have set up servers. Many years ago Youtube set up a local server for Cablevision users in Buenos Aires (serving all of Argentina). Youtube is the only streaming service that works fine.
Amazon has local servers. My business website is hosted on EC2 in Brazil and it's VERY FAST. It's less than 60ms away so it feels really snappy.
Facebook has shown zero interest in serving users here. They have gladly set up offices everywhere to SELL ADS, but they haven't bothered to set up any datacenters here. And, of all services, facebook DEFINITELY SHOULD set up a datacenter here. Facebook isn't bandwidth hungry, but it definitely needs low latency to be responsive.
And this is something that bothers me, honestly. I'm all for net neutrality, but this is really an abuse of net neutrality. Netflix is investing ZERO for providing service here. They charge the same amount as they charge in the US, but their service is lacking. They don't bother serving content locally and just saturate the pipes ISPs here can barely afford. My ISP has to pay more to serve a few Netflix users and this is reflected in my bill.
So, answering to your points: A) Maybe Argentina has problems, but I have a friend in Colombia who's also complaining about the HORRIBLE performance on Facebook. B) That's an issue the US Embassies around Latin America should fix. Push for legislation around this issue (since US embassies do this all the time, they might as well force stupid ISPs here to behave). C) This doesn't make sense. Of course there's more demand from LATAM to the world, since everyone's servers are outside. If big companies (Google, Facebook and some of the larger CDNs) placed their servers here, it would be a completely different story. I've run tests on smaller ISPs and found that 80% of traffic, by volume, is Youtube. If Google sets up local caching all over these countries the pipes "get unclogged" really fast.
In fact: facebook is now exploiting "social search". People like, no, LOVE to ASK people things. I constantly see in my FB feed: "Does anyone know where I can buy X?" Something you could ask google and get an instant answer, they love to get a stupid string of "smartass" answers and "you should ask at this place around the corner from bobby's house"
I get the joke, but: I have a business page on facebook. I have a comic book store. The only way for me to reach my customers is through facebook (via paid ads). I can't just go all indie and "fuck facebook, i don't use that shit". Nowadays for a scaringly high number of people, facebook IS the internet. They barely know other sites, and don't bother googling. Hell, people don't even care about email anymore.
Facebook is "convenient": everything they want to know about everyone they know is there, and they can also message. What more do they want?
Great minds discuss ideas; average minds discuss events; small minds discuss people. --Eleanor Roosevelt
And what benefit do I, as a Latin American, get from this? None. Zero. See submarine cable map to understand the implications for us (FAR higher latency: several SECONDS; and STILL GOING THROUGH US NETWORKS TO EUROPE).
Also it FUCKS user experience. Facebook is pulling the same retard move. I'm in Latin America. There are NO fiber links between Latin America and Europe, let alone Ireland. All my traffic is relayed to the US. What used to be a 200ms hop with a fat multi-Gbps link, is now over 1000ms with a much, MUCH smaller link.
Facebook has become unusable. Load times are now in excess of 30 seconds. Packet loss seems awful. Images don't load, the page is botched from missing CSS bits.
The NSA is still spying on me, but now I get a dial-up experience thanks to this crap.
As a fellow argentinian I can confirm I've never heard of this bullshit before. There was an a(dve)rticle on Infobae the other day with the same phrasing.
Once people get a little bit of education and the ability to enjoy leisure time, they funnily enough stop having kids
Are you joking? People in "educated" countries don't "stop having kids" because they're educated. They stop having kids because they're "focusing on their careers". If there is no "career" to focus on, what keeps you from having kids? People in rich countries don't have kids because they're TOO BUSY WORKING. People in poor countries have lots of kids because THEY'RE UNEMPLOYED (or underemployed) and guess what? the only fun thing they can afford is fucking their wife.
bullshit. I'm sure it's possible to create a modulation and encoding system that can "partially recover" a stream. if you have good signal, you get "HD quality", but with lower rates you start degrading. Unrelated, but like Wi-Fi does. 300mbit on clear view of the AP, down to 1mbit if you're unlucky.
Another thing about digital is spectral efficiency: how many bits per unit of transmission you can send. For TV with ISDB-T you can send 3 SD channels in the same space as ONE analog channel. This means, in the case of digital radio, you could use really redundant transmission. Maybe FEC with 3x the data. (FEC TLDR: it converts N packets to N + M, you only need to recover any N of those (N+M) packets, in any order, to fully recover your original data).
If you go into HAM land, they have all sorts of modulation schemes. Olivia MFSK for example, is able to receive data 10dB UNDER THE NOISE FLOOR. Olivia is able to recover information so degraded your ears can't even tell it's there. To you, it's all static.
I don't know how DAB works, but considering it was developed in the early 90s, it probably sucks. It doesn't mean "all digital sucks".
Oh and btw: ISDB-T, for example, is able to give you an excellent HD image in a situation where you'd be getting a blurry, noisy, ghosty image if you were to use analog.
Did I say "we're poor because US and EU oppress us"? No, I did not.
I didn't say we were any good. I stated something else: Argentina is never in a fair trade field. That has nothing to do with corruption. Even if Argentina straightened itself, the US and EU would still find some technicality of why they can't buy our goods or services.
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Hello? McFly?
Didn't you read the part that COUNTRIES ARE BULLIED INTO SIGNING FREE TRADE AGREEMENTS?
Otherwise they get ignored ("I won't buy from you unless you sign the FTA"), or pushed into it ("remember you have a debt.... if you sign the FTA we can push it a few years forward...")
US corporate tax is 35% ...
Free trade is desirable now? My, my... how much koolaid did you drink?
Free trade is only desirable to the stronger economy/ies in the bloc. For example: The Eurozone benefits the already established industrial powers (Germany) while giving no incentive for the smaller countries to set up their own factories. In a free trade agreement, Germany can now dump all of their products in a smaller country and take all of their money. Germany doesn't need to buy anything from them: they already make everything their need - so basically the smaller country is just a raw material supplier, or purely agricultural exporter. The smaller country is now doomed.
This is the real truth about free trade agreements.
So you say: then don't sign the FTA! Sure: now Germany flat out refuses to do business with you (so much for the "free market" spirit). Or they pressure you with debt you already have with them.
No. Free trade agreements are not a solution to anything. They just perpetuate the "xxxx country is an industrial power while yyyy is just a carrots producer" stereotype.
This. It was the first thing that came to mind.
as an Argentinian: I agree with this guy. I do business transactions with my kind all year long. And they want to fuck you up every chance they get. It's just ridiculous. So, you get fucked up, and lose money. The only way to make up for it is just to fuck someone else up.
The K is strong with this one.
"Among its best moments"? Then why can't i buy more than 2 (two) things from ebay a year?
Zero interest is a "service" offered by credit cards, to their CLIENTS. A credit card client is the cardholder. The merchant? The merchant is just scum.
When you sell *any* product in fixed installments, Visa pays you the full amount 48 working hours later, and discounts the interest rate. here you can see the rates: 45% annual. That table lists the "coefficient" you should mark up:
If you want to get paid $100 for an item that you want to sell in 12 payments "zero interest", you have to see the row with the 12, the value of the coefficient is 1.2571. So you multiply 100 * 1.2571 = $125.71. If you enter this amount, Visa will end up paying you $100 (minus the 3% transaction fee, the 21% VAT on that fee, 3.5% provincial tax, and 0.6% that the government collects in every non-cash transaction)
People don't know you can make a "minimum payment" (minimum payment doesn't apply if you have an installment plan: you have to pay in full every month's installments, and you can make the minimum payment in regular 1-payment operations).
I don't accept credit card for less than 2 payments, because Visa ,in this case, takes 28 working days to pay me. With >2% monthly inflation (plus all of these other discounts i told you before), you can see it's not convenient for me to do it.
LOL. 12 installments ? hahahahaha only because the government stepped in and it's subsidizing them. Before "Ahora 12" you only had up to 6 "cuotas". Which talks a lot of the trust banks have.
Which ones?
Ubiquiti has currently two lines of "routers": EdgeMax (running a custom version of Vyatta), and AirGateway, a small WiFi Access Point (which i THINK has routing functionality. Though, Maybe it's just an AP).
On the other side, all of their AirOS devices (from NanoStation LOCO to Rocket and even AirFiber) have the possibility of routing. And IIRC, by default, these expose the web management to the public interface with user/pass ubnt/ubnt.
Yes. The way I see it, Comcast, slimebags as they are, are right. Netflix expects everyone to keep up with their unreasonable bandwidth needs at their pace, which just won't happen.
You have the USD thing backwards: You want to get USD out of the country at bank rate, but into the country at blue rate!
I don't think Porsche is the one in your example. It's BMW. Porsche is part of VW and they don't have any issues importing, since they export a lot of cars to Brazil so they meet their export-import quota. BMW *could* install any sort of factory here, and meet the quota. But they're just not interested.
BTW: bandwidth isn't really that bad. I have Arnet 30/10 (recently released service, up for 6/768k) for $20/mo, and it works at 30mbit except at 6-10pm
The problem with Latin America, actually, is the fact that no one wants to set up local servers here.
For example, Netflix released their service here. Did they put a Netflix CDN box in every street corner like they did in the US? Of course not. They're just saturating the already busy international pipes.
MaxCDN, one of the most well known CDN services, do they have servers in Latin America? From what I see: No, they don't. We rely on US servers. At least that's what I noticed when using the Bootstrap3 CDN, which uses MaxCDN: it was faster for me to serve the library from my own host than using the CDN.
Now, other big players have set up servers. Many years ago Youtube set up a local server for Cablevision users in Buenos Aires (serving all of Argentina). Youtube is the only streaming service that works fine.
Amazon has local servers. My business website is hosted on EC2 in Brazil and it's VERY FAST. It's less than 60ms away so it feels really snappy.
Facebook has shown zero interest in serving users here. They have gladly set up offices everywhere to SELL ADS, but they haven't bothered to set up any datacenters here. And, of all services, facebook DEFINITELY SHOULD set up a datacenter here. Facebook isn't bandwidth hungry, but it definitely needs low latency to be responsive.
And this is something that bothers me, honestly. I'm all for net neutrality, but this is really an abuse of net neutrality. Netflix is investing ZERO for providing service here. They charge the same amount as they charge in the US, but their service is lacking. They don't bother serving content locally and just saturate the pipes ISPs here can barely afford. My ISP has to pay more to serve a few Netflix users and this is reflected in my bill.
So, answering to your points:
A) Maybe Argentina has problems, but I have a friend in Colombia who's also complaining about the HORRIBLE performance on Facebook.
B) That's an issue the US Embassies around Latin America should fix. Push for legislation around this issue (since US embassies do this all the time, they might as well force stupid ISPs here to behave).
C) This doesn't make sense. Of course there's more demand from LATAM to the world, since everyone's servers are outside. If big companies (Google, Facebook and some of the larger CDNs) placed their servers here, it would be a completely different story. I've run tests on smaller ISPs and found that 80% of traffic, by volume, is Youtube. If Google sets up local caching all over these countries the pipes "get unclogged" really fast.
In fact: facebook is now exploiting "social search". People like, no, LOVE to ASK people things. I constantly see in my FB feed: "Does anyone know where I can buy X?" Something you could ask google and get an instant answer, they love to get a stupid string of "smartass" answers and "you should ask at this place around the corner from bobby's house"
I get the joke, but: I have a business page on facebook. I have a comic book store. The only way for me to reach my customers is through facebook (via paid ads). I can't just go all indie and "fuck facebook, i don't use that shit".
Nowadays for a scaringly high number of people, facebook IS the internet. They barely know other sites, and don't bother googling. Hell, people don't even care about email anymore.
Facebook is "convenient": everything they want to know about everyone they know is there, and they can also message. What more do they want?
And what benefit do I, as a Latin American, get from this?
None. Zero. See submarine cable map to understand the implications for us (FAR higher latency: several SECONDS; and STILL GOING THROUGH US NETWORKS TO EUROPE).
Also it FUCKS user experience.
Facebook is pulling the same retard move. I'm in Latin America. There are NO fiber links between Latin America and Europe, let alone Ireland. All my traffic is relayed to the US. What used to be a 200ms hop with a fat multi-Gbps link, is now over 1000ms with a much, MUCH smaller link.
Facebook has become unusable. Load times are now in excess of 30 seconds. Packet loss seems awful. Images don't load, the page is botched from missing CSS bits.
The NSA is still spying on me, but now I get a dial-up experience thanks to this crap.
don't congresspeople in the US have parliamentary immunity?
As a fellow argentinian I can confirm I've never heard of this bullshit before. There was an a(dve)rticle on Infobae the other day with the same phrasing.
When MercadoPago accepts BTC we can talk.
Are you joking? People in "educated" countries don't "stop having kids" because they're educated. They stop having kids because they're "focusing on their careers". If there is no "career" to focus on, what keeps you from having kids?
People in rich countries don't have kids because they're TOO BUSY WORKING.
People in poor countries have lots of kids because THEY'RE UNEMPLOYED (or underemployed) and guess what? the only fun thing they can afford is fucking their wife.
How about you try local crops?
I almost never respond to AC. but I'll make an exception:
YOU'RE NOT GOD. DON'T PLAY GOD.
bullshit. I'm sure it's possible to create a modulation and encoding system that can "partially recover" a stream. if you have good signal, you get "HD quality", but with lower rates you start degrading. Unrelated, but like Wi-Fi does. 300mbit on clear view of the AP, down to 1mbit if you're unlucky.
Another thing about digital is spectral efficiency: how many bits per unit of transmission you can send. For TV with ISDB-T you can send 3 SD channels in the same space as ONE analog channel. This means, in the case of digital radio, you could use really redundant transmission. Maybe FEC with 3x the data. (FEC TLDR: it converts N packets to N + M, you only need to recover any N of those (N+M) packets, in any order, to fully recover your original data).
If you go into HAM land, they have all sorts of modulation schemes. Olivia MFSK for example, is able to receive data 10dB UNDER THE NOISE FLOOR. Olivia is able to recover information so degraded your ears can't even tell it's there. To you, it's all static.
I don't know how DAB works, but considering it was developed in the early 90s, it probably sucks. It doesn't mean "all digital sucks".
Oh and btw: ISDB-T, for example, is able to give you an excellent HD image in a situation where you'd be getting a blurry, noisy, ghosty image if you were to use analog.
it's been always like that, since the Walkman era.
You're probably talking to an american: Their laws and ways should apply EVERYWHERE. If they're not, people are dumb and inferior.
Did I say "we're poor because US and EU oppress us"? No, I did not.
I didn't say we were any good. I stated something else: Argentina is never in a fair trade field. That has nothing to do with corruption. Even if Argentina straightened itself, the US and EU would still find some technicality of why they can't buy our goods or services.