You need to tie the monopoly up, no. I don't expect new companies to suddenly spring out of the ground and immediately offer service. A bank isn't going to give a loan to do such a thing. But, existing companies could easily expand their networks into the regions of others. All it takes is one cable company to start offering service in another cable company's area and everyone else is going to follow suit. There will be chaos. Prices will drop to try to keep out competition, some cable companies will go out of business. But hey, if the end result is that your cable bill is lower and some of the bigger slow-moving companies that haven't done anything new in 10 years get wiped out and split up, how is that a bad thing?
You have to strengthen the competition, again no. This is survival of the fittest. The government doesn't need to get involved. The idea is to lower prices and improve service, not spend taxpayer money to artificially lower prices and improve service. That does nothing. As soon as government support ends, prices will pop back up and you'll have done nothing. If you really want to do anything, provide incentives for companies to expand their networks, by say, giving tax breaks on new lines for a limited time. But remember, you'd be doing the same thing for every company, since you're not just encouraging Company A to move into Company B's territory, but also encouraging Company B and C to move into Company A's.
But really, the best thing you can do right now for bandwidth speed is to drop the franchising process. Verizon will expand their fiber network a lot faster, and it will put serious pressure on Comcast, Time Warner, Cablevision, and the like to either drop their prices dramatically or boost their speed (Cablevision has already boosted their speed recently). CableLabs will roll out DOCSIS 3.0 a heck of a lot faster when its member companies are screaming for faster speeds to compete. My area saw cable speeds increase almost fourfold as a result of DSL pressure only a few years ago, but now DSL is the low-price low-speed ISP, and they really aren't competing with each other anymore. We need another major speed war and some direct competition over TV service. And hopefully AT&T and some other cable companies will enter the fray. But this won't happen with more laws and restrictions.
There are a lot of cable comapnies out there, plus AT&T and Verizon are both now offering video services. The problem is that each one is restricted for the most part to set regions, and there are lots of hurdles to jump in order to expand your network. You say that competition can only exist if regulation forces it, but it's regulation that's preventing it. There is no competition. Franchising law needs major reform. We don't need more rules.
The real real problem with franchising is that it's takes 6 months to a year and who knows how much money to negotiate each one. And they have to be negotiated with every single municipality. Franchising is slowing up or stopping other companies from coming into an area. If it wasn't for franchising, I most definitely could vote for better service. I would of course be talking about voting with my wallet, spending money on the company that provides what I want at the price I want.
As for contracts wtih apartment buildings, such is life. The choice for the occupant is that nobody says you have to live in that apartment. The owner of the building can make whatever contract they want that provides them with the service they want (the service that will attract and keep tenants) at the price they want.
Any corporation falsifying their books and commiting securities fraud (and insider trading) should get what's coming to them. But what's Enron have to do with this?
I can see the tv ads now "our ISP doesn't slow down VoIP provider X, so switch to our internet tubes today!"
Provided there are options, things will be just fine. The trick is to make sure the consumer has options. Right now the government has all kinds of barriers to make sure that the only option you have is the one they have given monopoly rights to. That's your problem.
The "big corpos" can also afford to sue the ISPs into the ground if they try to extort them, and customers getting degraded service can jump to another ISP. That is, if deregulation happens, allowing actual competition.
It's really quite simple. If you let congress get involved in the internet, then everybody is going to be lobbying congress 100x more than they are now. Things will turn against the public's interest pretty quickly. And quite frankly, I don't trust the government to get it right to begin with. Any net neutrality legislation will be poorly-worded, include all kinds of pork, and ultimately takes attention away from more important issues.
As my previous posts should indicate, I'm very much in favor of cutting down on the regulation. We need to stop the government-created monopolies first, and everything else will follow. If you have a choice of 6 different MSOs for all your telecom needs, there are some very strong market forces against doing anything the customer won't like.
Market pressure will keep the MSOs honest, like in any free market. The problem is that with over-regulation being what it is already, we don't have a free market. How many cable providers are in your area? It's not enough to just throw out these net neutrality efforts, but we also need less restrictions on competition. We'd all have a lot more/cheaper bandwidth if it wasn't for franchising laws.
Laws for the sake of laws seems to be all that congress is capable of these days. There are far too many important issues that are being ignored because a few celebrities are making videos and people are listening to FUD on all sides of the issue. I want my government to do something useful, and let the market sort things out.
Seriously, we need to end this madness. I want my congressman to debate real issues, subjects that (hopefully) he knows about. People screaming for net neutrality are completely ignoring the historically proven facts of economics. We do not want people like Ted Stevens running our internet.
I think the horrified look of the alien in the Sci-Fi logo next to the story sums this up pretty well. Not that Matt Damon probably couldn't play a good Kirk, just that they're actually making a prequel movie like this to begin with. They really need to wait 5-10 years, and then start a new TV series in the 24th or 25th century. Just tack 50 years onto the end of the Voyager series, and go with that. Heck, go back to the Delta Quadrant with a new super-duper engine. In fact, send two ships (two crews for double the story possibilites) and have them go re-explore that region of space together. I think there were enough interesting possibilities there that could refreshen the franchise. But the important thing is to wait for 5-10 years.
I happened to have liked Enterprise. It wasn't the best of the series, but it was decent, and had some good episodes. Where they went wrong was trying to win over the DS9 folks who liked long many-episode storylines, who weren't interested in the series to begin with. The Expanse and the Temporal Cold War were interesting, but I'd have preferred they keep it more light-hearted like the "where no dog has gone before" type jokes on that planet with the toxic pollen, and the Ferengi episode. Archer should not have been made out to be some sort of Kirk-like hero, he should have been an explorer, first and foremost. If they really wanted a dark episode, they should have done more like the mirror universe episode, so that it ties back into some of the other series, and not just make up stuff like the Xindi.
That said, I agree they should take a break. When I heard about this new movie, it upset me. I'd rather watch Battlestar Galactica or Firefly re-runs then see another Star Trek, at least for a while. In 5-10 years, they can bring back Star Trek in the 24th or 25th century, and it'll probably do a lot better.
It's not like Apple's making this thing. And there's only so many speaker/docks that these 3rd party manufacturers can make before they go a bit nutty and come up with concepts like this.
Nothing terribly exciting about it after the 3rd or 4th time. And there wasn't all that much science to be gained by additional landings. Now there's a new audience, and presumably better experiments that could be done. But, the whole point of landing on the Moon now would be to test technology that will be used to land on Mars.
Oops! I meant thermoset, not thermoform. I was thinking "not thermoplastic", and typed the wrong thing. Anyway, thanks for adding some detail.
But seriously, who would want to recycle a bridge anyway?
The delivery system is invalidated if the thing completely fails to spread itself on its own, and if you manually download the thing yourself you still have to click through two warnings and enter an administrator password.
Ah good, the ol' War on Science myth. Just because a handful of prominent individuals don't seem to understand science doesn't mean that the country has rejected it. The reason we've been so slow at getting back to the Moon was because people stopped watching the Apollo landings and there were other more pressing concerns in the Cold War. Throw in a little Space Shuttle and ISS, and you have yourself bogged down in Earth orbit for a while. We've made tremendous advancements in the science of space since the moon landings- take a look at Hubble, the Mars robots, and lot of probes sent far out into the solar system. Sure, humans haven't been getting out there, but we'll get back to the Moon, and beyond, now that the shuttle fleet is getting close to retirement.
I lost about a thousand emails (I had read most of them, thankfully, only really lost-lost about 20-30, many non-critical) a few months ago because back-ups also failed. I guess that's what I get for doing webmail instead of downloading to an actual client. Oh well, wasn't really my fault. And to be honest I'm not sure I trust the report about back-ups failing. I suspect they didn't have any. At least now I'm back to using a client, where I can do my own back-ups locally.
I agree with you, but since I enjoy pointing out logical inconsistancies oh so much, I just have to point out the "News For Nerds, Stuff That Matters" tag on the front page. But anyway, even though people like to point out that things are old stories, at least they usually include a link that has more information on the subject. I don't really mind that they decided to "waste" their time, it's their time, after all. They're mostly harmless, and sometimes add a little extra to the discussion.
Who's great idea was it to have all red screenshots? It sort of ruins the point of having screenshots if you can't really look at them. Let's actually see what we're supposed to be looking at slash regretting the demise of. Ow-my-eyes dept. is definitely appropriate.
I assume that one would pave over the plasitc bridge with concrete, just as they do with most metal bridges, so any car fires would simply be burning on top of concrete anyway.
Great, so we found a linux worm. Now somebody try to find one for OS X. I'll wait.
Oh, and the Oompa Loompa trojan doesn't count, since it required user input just to get the thing on the Mac, much less run it, and it didn't actually do anything (and if it had, it would have only affected Bonjour-connected computers, but somebody didn't code it right). In any case, not a worm.
People are screaming that because of this, Mac OS X is not secure, but I beg to differ. One model of computer hardware has a bad driver, that's all. It'll be fixed, much sooner than most other OSes, and nobody will remember this in a month. And yet years later, we still remember the ILOVEYOUs and whatnot. If anything, we forget about windows exploits because they all sort of run together.
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You need to abolish exclusivity rights, agreed.
You need to tie the monopoly up, no. I don't expect new companies to suddenly spring out of the ground and immediately offer service. A bank isn't going to give a loan to do such a thing. But, existing companies could easily expand their networks into the regions of others. All it takes is one cable company to start offering service in another cable company's area and everyone else is going to follow suit. There will be chaos. Prices will drop to try to keep out competition, some cable companies will go out of business. But hey, if the end result is that your cable bill is lower and some of the bigger slow-moving companies that haven't done anything new in 10 years get wiped out and split up, how is that a bad thing?
You have to strengthen the competition, again no. This is survival of the fittest. The government doesn't need to get involved. The idea is to lower prices and improve service, not spend taxpayer money to artificially lower prices and improve service. That does nothing. As soon as government support ends, prices will pop back up and you'll have done nothing. If you really want to do anything, provide incentives for companies to expand their networks, by say, giving tax breaks on new lines for a limited time. But remember, you'd be doing the same thing for every company, since you're not just encouraging Company A to move into Company B's territory, but also encouraging Company B and C to move into Company A's.
But really, the best thing you can do right now for bandwidth speed is to drop the franchising process. Verizon will expand their fiber network a lot faster, and it will put serious pressure on Comcast, Time Warner, Cablevision, and the like to either drop their prices dramatically or boost their speed (Cablevision has already boosted their speed recently). CableLabs will roll out DOCSIS 3.0 a heck of a lot faster when its member companies are screaming for faster speeds to compete. My area saw cable speeds increase almost fourfold as a result of DSL pressure only a few years ago, but now DSL is the low-price low-speed ISP, and they really aren't competing with each other anymore. We need another major speed war and some direct competition over TV service. And hopefully AT&T and some other cable companies will enter the fray. But this won't happen with more laws and restrictions.
There are a lot of cable comapnies out there, plus AT&T and Verizon are both now offering video services. The problem is that each one is restricted for the most part to set regions, and there are lots of hurdles to jump in order to expand your network. You say that competition can only exist if regulation forces it, but it's regulation that's preventing it. There is no competition. Franchising law needs major reform. We don't need more rules.
The real real problem with franchising is that it's takes 6 months to a year and who knows how much money to negotiate each one. And they have to be negotiated with every single municipality. Franchising is slowing up or stopping other companies from coming into an area. If it wasn't for franchising, I most definitely could vote for better service. I would of course be talking about voting with my wallet, spending money on the company that provides what I want at the price I want.
As for contracts wtih apartment buildings, such is life. The choice for the occupant is that nobody says you have to live in that apartment. The owner of the building can make whatever contract they want that provides them with the service they want (the service that will attract and keep tenants) at the price they want.
Any corporation falsifying their books and commiting securities fraud (and insider trading) should get what's coming to them. But what's Enron have to do with this?
I can see the tv ads now "our ISP doesn't slow down VoIP provider X, so switch to our internet tubes today!"
Provided there are options, things will be just fine. The trick is to make sure the consumer has options. Right now the government has all kinds of barriers to make sure that the only option you have is the one they have given monopoly rights to. That's your problem.
The "big corpos" can also afford to sue the ISPs into the ground if they try to extort them, and customers getting degraded service can jump to another ISP. That is, if deregulation happens, allowing actual competition.
It's really quite simple. If you let congress get involved in the internet, then everybody is going to be lobbying congress 100x more than they are now. Things will turn against the public's interest pretty quickly. And quite frankly, I don't trust the government to get it right to begin with. Any net neutrality legislation will be poorly-worded, include all kinds of pork, and ultimately takes attention away from more important issues.
As my previous posts should indicate, I'm very much in favor of cutting down on the regulation. We need to stop the government-created monopolies first, and everything else will follow. If you have a choice of 6 different MSOs for all your telecom needs, there are some very strong market forces against doing anything the customer won't like.
I have to say, that's the most creative joke I've seen about this whole thing yet. Somebody mod this guy up!
Market pressure will keep the MSOs honest, like in any free market. The problem is that with over-regulation being what it is already, we don't have a free market. How many cable providers are in your area? It's not enough to just throw out these net neutrality efforts, but we also need less restrictions on competition. We'd all have a lot more/cheaper bandwidth if it wasn't for franchising laws.
Laws for the sake of laws seems to be all that congress is capable of these days. There are far too many important issues that are being ignored because a few celebrities are making videos and people are listening to FUD on all sides of the issue. I want my government to do something useful, and let the market sort things out.
Somebody please think of the tubes!
Seriously, we need to end this madness. I want my congressman to debate real issues, subjects that (hopefully) he knows about. People screaming for net neutrality are completely ignoring the historically proven facts of economics. We do not want people like Ted Stevens running our internet.
I think the horrified look of the alien in the Sci-Fi logo next to the story sums this up pretty well. Not that Matt Damon probably couldn't play a good Kirk, just that they're actually making a prequel movie like this to begin with. They really need to wait 5-10 years, and then start a new TV series in the 24th or 25th century. Just tack 50 years onto the end of the Voyager series, and go with that. Heck, go back to the Delta Quadrant with a new super-duper engine. In fact, send two ships (two crews for double the story possibilites) and have them go re-explore that region of space together. I think there were enough interesting possibilities there that could refreshen the franchise. But the important thing is to wait for 5-10 years.
I happened to have liked Enterprise. It wasn't the best of the series, but it was decent, and had some good episodes. Where they went wrong was trying to win over the DS9 folks who liked long many-episode storylines, who weren't interested in the series to begin with. The Expanse and the Temporal Cold War were interesting, but I'd have preferred they keep it more light-hearted like the "where no dog has gone before" type jokes on that planet with the toxic pollen, and the Ferengi episode. Archer should not have been made out to be some sort of Kirk-like hero, he should have been an explorer, first and foremost. If they really wanted a dark episode, they should have done more like the mirror universe episode, so that it ties back into some of the other series, and not just make up stuff like the Xindi.
That said, I agree they should take a break. When I heard about this new movie, it upset me. I'd rather watch Battlestar Galactica or Firefly re-runs then see another Star Trek, at least for a while. In 5-10 years, they can bring back Star Trek in the 24th or 25th century, and it'll probably do a lot better.
It's not like Apple's making this thing. And there's only so many speaker/docks that these 3rd party manufacturers can make before they go a bit nutty and come up with concepts like this.
Nothing terribly exciting about it after the 3rd or 4th time. And there wasn't all that much science to be gained by additional landings. Now there's a new audience, and presumably better experiments that could be done. But, the whole point of landing on the Moon now would be to test technology that will be used to land on Mars.
Well there you go then, I guess smugness is still safe!
Oops! I meant thermoset, not thermoform. I was thinking "not thermoplastic", and typed the wrong thing. Anyway, thanks for adding some detail. But seriously, who would want to recycle a bridge anyway?
The delivery system is invalidated if the thing completely fails to spread itself on its own, and if you manually download the thing yourself you still have to click through two warnings and enter an administrator password.
Ah good, the ol' War on Science myth. Just because a handful of prominent individuals don't seem to understand science doesn't mean that the country has rejected it. The reason we've been so slow at getting back to the Moon was because people stopped watching the Apollo landings and there were other more pressing concerns in the Cold War. Throw in a little Space Shuttle and ISS, and you have yourself bogged down in Earth orbit for a while. We've made tremendous advancements in the science of space since the moon landings- take a look at Hubble, the Mars robots, and lot of probes sent far out into the solar system. Sure, humans haven't been getting out there, but we'll get back to the Moon, and beyond, now that the shuttle fleet is getting close to retirement.
Is it Jacks-a or Ja-za? I'm sure in Japanese it's different, but how are English-speakers supposed to say it?
I lost about a thousand emails (I had read most of them, thankfully, only really lost-lost about 20-30, many non-critical) a few months ago because back-ups also failed. I guess that's what I get for doing webmail instead of downloading to an actual client. Oh well, wasn't really my fault. And to be honest I'm not sure I trust the report about back-ups failing. I suspect they didn't have any. At least now I'm back to using a client, where I can do my own back-ups locally.
I agree with you, but since I enjoy pointing out logical inconsistancies oh so much, I just have to point out the "News For Nerds, Stuff That Matters" tag on the front page. But anyway, even though people like to point out that things are old stories, at least they usually include a link that has more information on the subject. I don't really mind that they decided to "waste" their time, it's their time, after all. They're mostly harmless, and sometimes add a little extra to the discussion.
Who's great idea was it to have all red screenshots? It sort of ruins the point of having screenshots if you can't really look at them. Let's actually see what we're supposed to be looking at slash regretting the demise of. Ow-my-eyes dept. is definitely appropriate.
I assume that one would pave over the plasitc bridge with concrete, just as they do with most metal bridges, so any car fires would simply be burning on top of concrete anyway.
Great, so we found a linux worm. Now somebody try to find one for OS X. I'll wait.
Oh, and the Oompa Loompa trojan doesn't count, since it required user input just to get the thing on the Mac, much less run it, and it didn't actually do anything (and if it had, it would have only affected Bonjour-connected computers, but somebody didn't code it right). In any case, not a worm.
People are screaming that because of this, Mac OS X is not secure, but I beg to differ. One model of computer hardware has a bad driver, that's all. It'll be fixed, much sooner than most other OSes, and nobody will remember this in a month. And yet years later, we still remember the ILOVEYOUs and whatnot. If anything, we forget about windows exploits because they all sort of run together.