The US government took the position that Swartz had to die because he created Reddit which made him Literally Worse Than Hitler. That's a separate issue from copyright,
If you haven't been following this fracas since it first started to emerge last year, it's all to do with UEFI - a long overdue replacement for BIOS - and a feature called Secure Boot. In essence, Secure Boot stops a computer from loading an operating system that hasn't been signed by the publisher (in this case, Microsoft or an OEM), and its signature added to the computer's firmware. On an x86 Windows 8 computer, you'll be able to sign your own operating systems (custom builds for Linux, for example), or disable Secure Boot entirely. On Windows 8 ARM computers, neither of these options will be available: You'll have official builds of Windows 8, and that's it.
You're in a desert walking along in the sand when all of the sudden you look down, and you see a user, it's crawling toward you. You reach down, you flip the user over on its back. The user lays on its back, its belly baking in the hot sun, beating its legs trying to turn itself over, but it can't, not without your help. But you're not helping. Why is that?
Describe in single words, only the good things that come into your mind about your mother.
That's why some worry about how the FCC just ensured net neutrality. To enforce fairness rules, the agency will regulate network owners by scooping them up under Title II of the 1934 Telecommunications Act, a specific set of regulations that apply to phone companies. Telecoms say the rules don't match the services they provide. They don't trust the FCC's promise that it will apply only a tiny fraction of those rules and won't regulate rates and increase taxes.
"Assurances like these don't tend to last very long," warned Republican FCC Commissioner Ajit Pai. "Expect... regulation to ratchet up as time goes on."
Trump made Pai head of the FCC and he rolled back that decision. Taking things back the way the were before 2015.
Regulation is what gave Comcast its regional monopolies.
I think the answer is much simpler that people realize. It is our govts fault 100% there isnt competition here in wa state.
Cities and towns are now requiring any and all utilities and services to contract through the cities which creates monopolies. My town for example...
Brier wa, because of city contracts,
There is no choice for
Cable/internet city has Comcast contract, the city makes money off each subscribers bill. Basic cable with basic internet is 100 dollars a month.
Trash is only waste management, and they charge 100 dollars a month. The city gets a percent of each bill
Hard line telephone only Verizon, and just living in the area means that my cell phone bill has additional charges for utilities even though it utilizes a cell tower, because Verizon own the towers.
The city gets a percentage off total bill including taxes!!!
As you can see, it govt itself thats causing the problems, by first limiting competition, which keeps bills high, AND, because the city gets a bite, this also makes the bills higher because it gets passed to consumer. The real messed up part is that there are city and state taxes already included in the bill, but the city gets a percentage of the total bill including taxes, meaning they are double dipping, so even raising taxes is in the cities interest to inflate bills even more.
Net Neutrality is basically government creating monopolies and then saying 'you need us to protect you from those evil monopolies otherwise they might someday decide to charge you an extra ten bucks a month to access your favourite site'. What the government isn't doing is actually promoting competition by deregulating.
Yes, it's pushing an agenda. The agenda is to not turn control of the internet over to the corporations most likely to fuck it up.
Yeah, instead of leaving it under the control of those evil corporations, let's put it under the control of unaccountable Federal bureaucrats who claim to be following an abstract principle of Net Neutrality but actually don't.
E.g. Tom Wheeler said that T Mobile's Binge On didn't violate Net Neutrality.
And of course Trump could just appoint a head of the FCC.
Gee, it's almost like putting things under the control of unaccountable Federal bureaucrats is a bad idea or something...
The first version of WSUS was known as Software Update Services (SUS). At first, it only delivered hotfixes and patches for Microsoft operating systems. SUS ran on a Windows Server operating system and downloaded updates for the specified versions of Windows from the remote Windows Update site which was operated by Microsoft. Clients could then download updates from this internal server, rather than connecting directly to Windows Update. Support for SUS by Microsoft was originally planned to end on December 6, 2006, but based on user feedback, the date was extended to July 10, 2007.
WSUS builds on SUS by expanding the range of software it can update. The WSUS infrastructure allows automatic downloads of updates, hotfixes, service packs, device drivers and feature packs to clients in an organization from a central server(s).
Apple was run by a guy who used to park in disabled spaces for ages, so it's safe to say accessibility is not something they've traditionally been too worried about.
Apple have never really taken security seriously. Remember how when iPhones came out Apple fans claimed Apple was more secure and also that the iPhone being locked down wasn't a problem because you could jailbreak it by visiting a site with a malformed TIFF?
So, the likely tax cut is part of the multiple year trend?
My point is that a 35% tax rate is grossly uncompetitive and encourages companies to structure their business to generate less profits in the US, e.g. by opening offices elsewhere. That of course leads to them paying less UK tax. 20% is more competitive.
And I'm sure England with get an apple office, but I'd bet pretty big they keep a bigger one in the EU.
Why? Once the UK leaves the EU it's unlikely the EU will put tariffs on UK exports. And even if they do the UK can put tariffs on EU exports to the UK. Since the UK buys more from the UK than it sells, and under WTO rules it is legal to use the tariffs you collect to pay your exporters' tariffs, that wouldn't matter.
And a UK Apple office wouldn't be exporting goods anyway. It'd do what the Irish Google office does. And outside the EU the UK can set taxes in its national interest, unlike Ireland which was forced to have a higher tax rate on Apple than it wanted.
And outside the EU the UK is free to sign trade agreements with non EU states. Like the US for example, which is the UK's largest export customer.
Add in the fact that the UK doesn't need to accept quotas of the migrants Merkel unilaterally admitted but instead can decide to admit the immigrants it needs and keep out those it does not and I'd say that the UK will be far better off outside the EU. Having control of taxes, tariffs, and immigration means you can decide on policies that are in your national interest not in the interests of France and Germany who basically run the EU.
Funny thing is the FCC said Binge On was fine. Despite that T Mobile scrapped it anyway and instead introduced an 'all unlimited' service, which instead throttles all video to 480p - you can upgrade from that for $25 a month. If Net Neutrality had stayed and the FCC had ruled that throttling video violated the principles even though zero rating did not, T Mobile would be in deep shit
But, as Recon Analytics' Roger Entner points out, a 6 GB plan on T-Mobile with all zero-rated streaming is a "de facto unlimited plan," and one that costs less than T-Mobile One, which starts at $70 per month. Without the $50 intro tier that got so many customers through T-Mobile's doors, Entner fears that the "entry level breaks away" for T-Mobile.
Entner said this could become even more problematic considering that Sprint just introduced its own unlimited plan that undercuts T-Mobile's plan by $20/month for two lines.
But the real potential red flag for T-Mobile One is the $25 upcharge to upgrade video quality from T-Mobile's standard 480p resolution to HD video.
With Binge On, 480p video was positioned as a more than acceptable resolution for smaller screens. Now, with T-Mobile One, 480p resolution looks more like an entry level option that can be upgraded.
"You're treating different traffic differently. If AT&T or Verizon did this, the FCC would slap them down in a heartbeat," said Entner. "I think carriers should be able to do what T-Mobile is doing. But all of them should be able to do it."
Indeed, while FCC Chairman Tom Wheeler has promised to keep a close watch on sponsored data programs from AT&T and Verizon, he's praised T-Mobile offerings like Binge On as "innovative."
But if Wheeler changes his tune in light of T-Mobile's new plan, it could be problematic for the Uncarrier.
"If the FCC says you can't force people onto 480p, [T-Mobile] is in trouble," said Entner. "Because the data usage will go through the roof."
If T-Mobile customers could suddenly access HD or even 4K video and not worry about data usage, that could result in data consumption on the network going five-fold for HD or even 12-fold for 4K.
"It would bring the network to its knees," said Entner.
The problem I see it is fat, bovine consumers demanding their videos all be in 1080p on their mobile phone where even 360p is fune and data usage be uncapped. They're the sort of people who eat themselves into a Porterhouse Blue at a 'all you can eat' buffet in order to assert their absolute right to unlimited stuff for a fixed price.
All T Mobile are doing now is making people use small plates so they don't take as much food per trip to the buffet and thus don't drive T Mobile into bankruptcy. If you had Net Neutrality the FCC might denounce small plates as being contrary to the Holy Principles Of Net Neutrality and demand that T Mobile go bust.
And yet what does Net Neutrality even mean, if selectively zero rating some providers is OK but throttling all video equally regardless of provider may not be?
Luckily for T Mobile net Neutrality was something that went away when Wheeler stopped being head of the FCC.
I used to use the T Mobile Walmart plan when I was in the US, but it seems like they've stopped it
Shame really, $30 a month for 4GB of 4G data and then unlimited 2G data was way more than I needed. It didn't have many included minutes but you could use VOIP for calls.
Maybe the humans will win out, maybe the Gillmen or the Molemen or the Centaurs or the AIs. Whatever, it's survival of the fittest.
Even if the species that wins out isn't humans and is a bit janky in the long run, they'll know enough about how they were constructed to rollback the bad changes in Version 2.0
You don't need to actually cut taxes to affect confidence - if the perception in the markets is that they will fall that's enough to cause some change in mood.
And both the House and Senate bills cut corporation tax from 35% to 20%, though Trump suggested off the cuff it might only go to 22% to finance other cuts. Still even 35% to 22% is a pretty drastic cut.
The UK rate is 20% in 2016, falling to 18% in 2020.
This measure sets the Corporation Tax main rate for each year from the financial year beginning 1 April 2017 to the financial year beginning 1 April 2020, reducing the Corporation Tax main rate by 2% by 2020.
The Corporation Tax main rate for 1 April 2016 is set at 20%. The rate for 1 April 2017 is 19% and sets it at this rate for 1 April 2018 and 1 April 2019. The rate for 1 April 2020 is set at 18%.
The EU has declared Advance Tax Rulings of the sort Apple got illegal state aid.
Of course now the UK is leaving the EU, I'm sure it will offer the equivalent of Advance Tax rulings for companies like Apple on profits they move from somewhere else to the UK. I mean, if the UK would have got 0% tax otherwise, even 1% is an improvement.
These days there is a legion of well paid climate spin doctors. Their job is to keep the debate binary: either you believe climate change is real and dangerous or you're a denier who thinks it's a hoax.
But there's a third possibility they refuse to acknowledge: that it's real but not dangerous. That's what I mean by lukewarming, and I think it is by far the most likely prognosis.
I am not claiming that carbon dioxide is not a greenhouse gas; it is.
I am not saying that its concentration in the atmosphere is not increasing; it is.
I am not saying the main cause of that increase is not the burning of fossil fuels; it is.
I am not saying the climate does not change; it does.
I am not saying that the atmosphere is not warmer today than it was 50 or 100 years ago; it is.
And I am not saying that carbon dioxide emissions are not likely to have caused some (probably more than half) of the warming since 1950.
I agree with the consensus on all these points.
I am not in any sense a "denier", that unpleasant, modern term of abuse for blasphemers against the climate dogma, though the Guardian and New Scientist never let the facts get in the way of their prejudices on such matters. I am a lukewarmer.
Incidentally, some of my scientific friends accuse me of inconsistently agreeing with the scientific consensus that genetic modification of crops is safe and beneficial, but refusing to agree with the scientific consensus that climate change is dangerous. Other people - Prince Charles, for example - do the exact opposite.
Well, my friends are wrong. I agree with the scientific consensus on GM crops not because it is a consensus but because I've looked at sufficient evidence.
And in any case, as I say, I am not disagreeing with the consensus on climate change.
There is no consensus that climate change is going to be dangerous. Even the IPCC says there is a range of possible outcomes, from harmless to catastrophic. I'm in that range: I think the top of that range is very unlikely. But the IPCC also thinks the top of its range is very unlikely.
The supposed 97% consensus, based on a hilariously bogus study by John Cook, refers only to the proposition that climate change is real and partly man-made. Nobody has ever shown anything like a consensus among scientists for the proposition that climate change is going to be dangerous.
And he points out that the models have historically overestimated the amount of warming, even according to the IPCC
The models The climate models have failed to get global warming right. As the IPCC has confirmed, for the period since 1998,
"111 of the 114 available climate-model simulations show a surface warming trend larger than the observations". [IPCC Synthesis report 2014, p 43]
That is to say there is a consensus that the models are exaggerating the rate of global warming.
The warming has so far resulted in no significant or consistent change in the frequency or intensity of storms, tornadoes, floods, droughts or winter snow cover.
As two climate scientists, Richard McNider and John Christy, have put it,
"We might forgive these modelers if their forecasts had not been so consistently and spectacularly wrong. From the beginning of climate modeling in the 1980s, these forecasts have, on average, always overstated the degree to which the Earth is warming compared with what we see in the real climate."
In 1990, the first IPCC assessment included this statement, forecasting a temperature increase of 0.3 C per decade (with an uncertainty range of 0.2 C to 0.5 C )
You said "What is coming next: you will only be allowed to connect to the Internet by rented "approved" devices provided by a handful of companies"
Did that happen before Net Neutrality to a greater extent than it does now?
The US does have a problem with competition - but that's because companies like Comcast are given a regional monopoly of high speed internet access. Net Neutrality won't fix that. It won't even stop 'zero rating', which is the thing companies like Google are worried about.
This tempest in the teacup is about mobile data plans, specifically the ability of mobile subscribers to supplement their data plan (typically ranging from 200 MB to 3 GB per month) with additional 10 GB data packages containing specific bundles of apps - messaging apps, social apps, video apps, music apps, and email and cloud apps. Each additional 10 GB data package costs EUR 6.99 per month and Meo (the mobile operator) also offers its own zero rated apps. Similar plans have been offered in Portugal since at least 2012.
These data packages are a clear win for mobile subscribers, especially pre-paid subscribers who tend to be at a lower income level than post-paid subscribers. They allow consumers to customize their plan beyond their mobile broadband subscription, enabling them to consume data in ways that are better attuned to their preferences. Without access to these data packages, consuming an additional 10 GB of data would cost each user an additional EUR 26 per month and require her to enter into a two year contract.
Even the reliably left wing Snopes pointed out that comparing Meo's Smart Net to cable where you need to choose a subset of channels is bullshit
Except Portugal does practice net neutrality, and the graphic doesn't accurately depict what Portugal's internet looks like overall.
The European Union's Body of European Regulators for Electronic Communications (BEREC) established net neutrality guidelines in 2015. Portugal is a member of the European Union, so its internet providers must comply.
The service promoted in the MEO graphic, "Smart Net," is essentially a menu of add-ons to the company's standard mobile data service plan. Contrary to the way it's been presented, it doesn't limit users' access to particular apps or sites. Rather, it lays out prepackaged options via which MEO customers can add extra gigabytes of data usage to their mobile phone plans (similar to Vodafone's "Passes" offerings).
And of course there are other plans than Smart Net and other telcos than Meo in Portugal, just like when T Mobile launched Binge On, you had other choices of telco. And other plans.
Actually in most places other than the US you've typically got a choice of ISPs for your fixed internet connection. E.g. you can choose between multiple DSL providers in the UK. And, if you live in a city probably cable and fibre ones too.
US regulations stifle competition, and those are the regulations you should worry about. Not that your mobile company offers you a deal where it costs EUR 6.99 to get 10GB to a subset of websites instead of EUR 26 for a neutral 10 GB.
All it means is that if you spend all your time on Facebook and Youtube, you can get 10GB of data to those for EUR 6.99 instead of having to pay EUR 26.
Of course Google and Facebook hate this because they think the ISPs will charge them to be zero rated. But who cares? Google and Facebook suck just as ba
If the EU forces countries like Ireland to charge more tax, and Trump cuts corporate taxes in the US while bullying companies to invest, there's an argument that companies like Apple might decide to move some cash back. E.g. this sort of deal
But even in this context, Apple backing a big manufacturing plant could be a significant political win for Trump. Foxconn's display plant could create 30,000 to 50,000 jobs in the US, The Wall Street Journal reported.
Apple has 80,000 US-based employees.
Where could Foxconn build factories in the US? It depends on which states give Foxconn the best incentives. Pennsylvania seems to be in the lead for either a "molding facility" or the display plant. A trade official from Pennsylvania was at Foxconn's holiday party, Nikkei reported.
"I have to tell other states to hurry up or we'll go ahead and sign with Pennsylvania," Gou said.
Tim Cook could virtue signal about how he's creating US jobs. Apple and Foxconn would get given an Ireland like tax deal by the state and federal government.
Purists will say this is rather unorthodox economics - basically Trump bulled Cook into doing it and arranged for tax breaks. Still that's the way business works, why shouldn't government?
Slashdot Mirror
I'm not sure they've really thought this through.
The US government took the position that Swartz had to die because he created Reddit which made him Literally Worse Than Hitler. That's a separate issue from copyright,
Furthermore if x86 dies, there will now be room for both a new bios/firmware/boot environment as well as new cross-platform operating systems.
The way things are going that would be UEFI. Which is, you know, mostly locked down on non Intel platforms. Especially ARM ones -
https://www.extremetech.com/co...
If you haven't been following this fracas since it first started to emerge last year, it's all to do with UEFI - a long overdue replacement for BIOS - and a feature called Secure Boot. In essence, Secure Boot stops a computer from loading an operating system that hasn't been signed by the publisher (in this case, Microsoft or an OEM), and its signature added to the computer's firmware. On an x86 Windows 8 computer, you'll be able to sign your own operating systems (custom builds for Linux, for example), or disable Secure Boot entirely. On Windows 8 ARM computers, neither of these options will be available: You'll have official builds of Windows 8, and that's it.
You're in a desert walking along in the sand when all of the sudden you look down, and you see a user, it's crawling toward you. You reach down, you flip the user over on its back. The user lays on its back, its belly baking in the hot sun, beating its legs trying to turn itself over, but it can't, not without your help. But you're not helping. Why is that?
Describe in single words, only the good things that come into your mind about your mother.
with apologies to
http://www.allthetests.com/qui...
The Internet was unregulated up to 2015 when the FCC said it would regulate it under Title II of the 1934 Telecommunications Act
http://money.cnn.com/2015/02/2...
That's why some worry about how the FCC just ensured net neutrality. To enforce fairness rules, the agency will regulate network owners by scooping them up under Title II of the 1934 Telecommunications Act, a specific set of regulations that apply to phone companies. Telecoms say the rules don't match the services they provide. They don't trust the FCC's promise that it will apply only a tiny fraction of those rules and won't regulate rates and increase taxes.
"Assurances like these don't tend to last very long," warned Republican FCC Commissioner Ajit Pai. "Expect ... regulation to ratchet up as time goes on."
Trump made Pai head of the FCC and he rolled back that decision. Taking things back the way the were before 2015.
Regulation is what gave Comcast its regional monopolies.
https://www.quora.com/Why-are-...
I think the answer is much simpler that people realize. It is our govts fault 100% there isnt competition here in wa state.
Cities and towns are now requiring any and all utilities and services to contract through the cities which creates monopolies. My town for example ...
Brier wa, because of city contracts,
There is no choice for
Cable/internet city has Comcast contract, the city makes money off each subscribers bill. Basic cable with basic internet is 100 dollars a month.
Trash is only waste management, and they charge 100 dollars a month. The city gets a percent of each bill
Hard line telephone only Verizon, and just living in the area means that my cell phone bill has additional charges for utilities even though it utilizes a cell tower, because Verizon own the towers.
The city gets a percentage off total bill including taxes!!!
As you can see, it govt itself thats causing the problems, by first limiting competition, which keeps bills high, AND, because the city gets a bite, this also makes the bills higher because it gets passed to consumer. The real messed up part is that there are city and state taxes already included in the bill, but the city gets a percentage of the total bill including taxes, meaning they are double dipping, so even raising taxes is in the cities interest to inflate bills even more.
Net Neutrality is basically government creating monopolies and then saying 'you need us to protect you from those evil monopolies otherwise they might someday decide to charge you an extra ten bucks a month to access your favourite site'. What the government isn't doing is actually promoting competition by deregulating.
We need to do something about all these Russians coming here and posting non ASCII characters.
Yes, it's pushing an agenda. The agenda is to not turn control of the internet over to the corporations most likely to fuck it up.
Yeah, instead of leaving it under the control of those evil corporations, let's put it under the control of unaccountable Federal bureaucrats who claim to be following an abstract principle of Net Neutrality but actually don't.
E.g. Tom Wheeler said that T Mobile's Binge On didn't violate Net Neutrality.
And of course Trump could just appoint a head of the FCC.
Gee, it's almost like putting things under the control of unaccountable Federal bureaucrats is a bad idea or something...
You're supposed to run this -
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
The first version of WSUS was known as Software Update Services (SUS). At first, it only delivered hotfixes and patches for Microsoft operating systems. SUS ran on a Windows Server operating system and downloaded updates for the specified versions of Windows from the remote Windows Update site which was operated by Microsoft. Clients could then download updates from this internal server, rather than connecting directly to Windows Update. Support for SUS by Microsoft was originally planned to end on December 6, 2006, but based on user feedback, the date was extended to July 10, 2007.
WSUS builds on SUS by expanding the range of software it can update. The WSUS infrastructure allows automatic downloads of updates, hotfixes, service packs, device drivers and feature packs to clients in an organization from a central server(s).
Come and work at Porter's. We'll have another couple of vacancies by the end of the night the way things are going.
That's how it works at Porter's, my exclusive steak restaurant. Also the 'steak' is actually made from incorrigible employees.
Monopoly money also has very low transaction costs of zero monopoly dollars. Additionally one monopoly dollar is worth zero actual dollars.
Slashdot isn't 'social media'. It's more like 'antisocial media'.
Mailinator needs a .edu domain.
My main laptop is a Mid 2012 Macbook Pro these days. I like it and would have upgraded it if it weren't for soldered Ram and SSD in the newer models.
Apple was run by a guy who used to park in disabled spaces for ages, so it's safe to say accessibility is not something they've traditionally been too worried about.
https://www.cultofmac.com/2613...
Apple have never really taken security seriously. Remember how when iPhones came out Apple fans claimed Apple was more secure and also that the iPhone being locked down wasn't a problem because you could jailbreak it by visiting a site with a malformed TIFF?
This was in 2007, five years after Microsoft's focus on security initiative.
So, the likely tax cut is part of the multiple year trend?
My point is that a 35% tax rate is grossly uncompetitive and encourages companies to structure their business to generate less profits in the US, e.g. by opening offices elsewhere. That of course leads to them paying less UK tax. 20% is more competitive.
And I'm sure England with get an apple office, but I'd bet pretty big they keep a bigger one in the EU.
Why? Once the UK leaves the EU it's unlikely the EU will put tariffs on UK exports. And even if they do the UK can put tariffs on EU exports to the UK. Since the UK buys more from the UK than it sells, and under WTO rules it is legal to use the tariffs you collect to pay your exporters' tariffs, that wouldn't matter.
And a UK Apple office wouldn't be exporting goods anyway. It'd do what the Irish Google office does. And outside the EU the UK can set taxes in its national interest, unlike Ireland which was forced to have a higher tax rate on Apple than it wanted.
And outside the EU the UK is free to sign trade agreements with non EU states. Like the US for example, which is the UK's largest export customer.
Add in the fact that the UK doesn't need to accept quotas of the migrants Merkel unilaterally admitted but instead can decide to admit the immigrants it needs and keep out those it does not and I'd say that the UK will be far better off outside the EU. Having control of taxes, tariffs, and immigration means you can decide on policies that are in your national interest not in the interests of France and Germany who basically run the EU.
I dunno man. I watched the John Legere video and he seems very trustworthy to me and not at all a slimy, coked up sales twat
https://www.youtube.com/watch?...
Funny thing is the FCC said Binge On was fine. Despite that T Mobile scrapped it anyway and instead introduced an 'all unlimited' service, which instead throttles all video to 480p - you can upgrade from that for $25 a month. If Net Neutrality had stayed and the FCC had ruled that throttling video violated the principles even though zero rating did not, T Mobile would be in deep shit
https://www.fiercewireless.com...
But, as Recon Analytics' Roger Entner points out, a 6 GB plan on T-Mobile with all zero-rated streaming is a "de facto unlimited plan," and one that costs less than T-Mobile One, which starts at $70 per month. Without the $50 intro tier that got so many customers through T-Mobile's doors, Entner fears that the "entry level breaks away" for T-Mobile.
Entner said this could become even more problematic considering that Sprint just introduced its own unlimited plan that undercuts T-Mobile's plan by $20/month for two lines.
But the real potential red flag for T-Mobile One is the $25 upcharge to upgrade video quality from T-Mobile's standard 480p resolution to HD video.
With Binge On, 480p video was positioned as a more than acceptable resolution for smaller screens. Now, with T-Mobile One, 480p resolution looks more like an entry level option that can be upgraded.
"You're treating different traffic differently. If AT&T or Verizon did this, the FCC would slap them down in a heartbeat," said Entner. "I think carriers should be able to do what T-Mobile is doing. But all of them should be able to do it."
Indeed, while FCC Chairman Tom Wheeler has promised to keep a close watch on sponsored data programs from AT&T and Verizon, he's praised T-Mobile offerings like Binge On as "innovative."
But if Wheeler changes his tune in light of T-Mobile's new plan, it could be problematic for the Uncarrier.
"If the FCC says you can't force people onto 480p, [T-Mobile] is in trouble," said Entner. "Because the data usage will go through the roof."
If T-Mobile customers could suddenly access HD or even 4K video and not worry about data usage, that could result in data consumption on the network going five-fold for HD or even 12-fold for 4K.
"It would bring the network to its knees," said Entner.
The problem I see it is fat, bovine consumers demanding their videos all be in 1080p on their mobile phone where even 360p is fune and data usage be uncapped. They're the sort of people who eat themselves into a Porterhouse Blue at a 'all you can eat' buffet in order to assert their absolute right to unlimited stuff for a fixed price.
All T Mobile are doing now is making people use small plates so they don't take as much food per trip to the buffet and thus don't drive T Mobile into bankruptcy. If you had Net Neutrality the FCC might denounce small plates as being contrary to the Holy Principles Of Net Neutrality and demand that T Mobile go bust.
And yet what does Net Neutrality even mean, if selectively zero rating some providers is OK but throttling all video equally regardless of provider may not be?
Luckily for T Mobile net Neutrality was something that went away when Wheeler stopped being head of the FCC.
I used to use the T Mobile Walmart plan when I was in the US, but it seems like they've stopped it
http://www.businessinsider.com...
Shame really, $30 a month for 4GB of 4G data and then unlimited 2G data was way more than I needed. It didn't have many included minutes but you could use VOIP for calls.
Maybe the humans will win out, maybe the Gillmen or the Molemen or the Centaurs or the AIs. Whatever, it's survival of the fittest.
Even if the species that wins out isn't humans and is a bit janky in the long run, they'll know enough about how they were constructed to rollback the bad changes in Version 2.0
http://dailycaller.com/2016/06...
It's passed the House and Senate, albeit in slightly different forms
http://www.businessinsider.com...
You don't need to actually cut taxes to affect confidence - if the perception in the markets is that they will fall that's enough to cause some change in mood.
And both the House and Senate bills cut corporation tax from 35% to 20%, though Trump suggested off the cuff it might only go to 22% to finance other cuts. Still even 35% to 22% is a pretty drastic cut.
The UK rate is 20% in 2016, falling to 18% in 2020.
https://www.gov.uk/government/...
This measure sets the Corporation Tax main rate for each year from the financial year beginning 1 April 2017 to the financial year beginning 1 April 2020, reducing the Corporation Tax main rate by 2% by 2020.
The Corporation Tax main rate for 1 April 2016 is set at 20%. The rate for 1 April 2017 is 19% and sets it at this rate for 1 April 2018 and 1 April 2019. The rate for 1 April 2020 is set at 18%.
Ireland is 12.5%
https://www.idaireland.com/inv...
But that's for trading income. Other rates apply for non trading, financial services, and manufacturing
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
The EU has declared Advance Tax Rulings of the sort Apple got illegal state aid.
Of course now the UK is leaving the EU, I'm sure it will offer the equivalent of Advance Tax rulings for companies like Apple on profits they move from somewhere else to the UK. I mean, if the UK would have got 0% tax otherwise, even 1% is an improvement.
The settled science is that we're putting carbon dioxide into the air by burning fossil fuels, and that this is warming things up.
Which Matt Ridley and most 'skeptics' agree on
https://www.thegwpf.org/matt-r...
These days there is a legion of well paid climate spin doctors. Their job is to keep the debate binary: either you believe climate change is real and dangerous or you're a denier who thinks it's a hoax.
But there's a third possibility they refuse to acknowledge: that it's real but not dangerous. That's what I mean by lukewarming, and I think it is by far the most likely prognosis.
I am not claiming that carbon dioxide is not a greenhouse gas; it is.
I am not saying that its concentration in the atmosphere is not increasing; it is.
I am not saying the main cause of that increase is not the burning of fossil fuels; it is.
I am not saying the climate does not change; it does.
I am not saying that the atmosphere is not warmer today than it was 50 or 100 years ago; it is.
And I am not saying that carbon dioxide emissions are not likely to have caused some (probably more than half) of the warming since 1950.
I agree with the consensus on all these points.
I am not in any sense a "denier", that unpleasant, modern term of abuse for blasphemers against the climate dogma, though the Guardian and New Scientist never let the facts get in the way of their prejudices on such matters. I am a lukewarmer.
Incidentally, some of my scientific friends accuse me of inconsistently agreeing with the scientific consensus that genetic modification of crops is safe and beneficial, but refusing to agree with the scientific consensus that climate change is dangerous. Other people - Prince Charles, for example - do the exact opposite.
Well, my friends are wrong. I agree with the scientific consensus on GM crops not because it is a consensus but because I've looked at sufficient evidence.
And in any case, as I say, I am not disagreeing with the consensus on climate change.
There is no consensus that climate change is going to be dangerous. Even the IPCC says there is a range of possible outcomes, from harmless to catastrophic. I'm in that range: I think the top of that range is very unlikely. But the IPCC also thinks the top of its range is very unlikely.
The supposed 97% consensus, based on a hilariously bogus study by John Cook, refers only to the proposition that climate change is real and partly man-made. Nobody has ever shown anything like a consensus among scientists for the proposition that climate change is going to be dangerous.
And he points out that the models have historically overestimated the amount of warming, even according to the IPCC
The models
The climate models have failed to get global warming right. As the IPCC has confirmed, for the period since 1998,
"111 of the 114 available climate-model simulations show a surface warming trend larger than the observations". [IPCC Synthesis report 2014, p 43]
That is to say there is a consensus that the models are exaggerating the rate of global warming.
The warming has so far resulted in no significant or consistent change in the frequency or intensity of storms, tornadoes, floods, droughts or winter snow cover.
As two climate scientists, Richard McNider and John Christy, have put it,
"We might forgive these modelers if their forecasts had not been so consistently and spectacularly wrong. From the beginning of climate modeling in the 1980s, these forecasts have, on average, always overstated the degree to which the Earth is warming compared with what we see in the real climate."
In 1990, the first IPCC assessment included this statement, forecasting a temperature increase of 0.3 C per decade (with an uncertainty range of 0.2 C to 0.5 C )
In fact in
You said "What is coming next: you will only be allowed to connect to the Internet by rented "approved" devices provided by a handful of companies"
Did that happen before Net Neutrality to a greater extent than it does now?
The US does have a problem with competition - but that's because companies like Comcast are given a regional monopoly of high speed internet access. Net Neutrality won't fix that. It won't even stop 'zero rating', which is the thing companies like Google are worried about.
T-Mobile Binge On doesnâ(TM)t violate Net neutrality rules, says FCC chairman
Zero rating is what that Portuguese mobile operator Meo did, and that also didn't violate EU net neutrality laws
https://truthonthemarket.com/2...
This tempest in the teacup is about mobile data plans, specifically the ability of mobile subscribers to supplement their data plan (typically ranging from 200 MB to 3 GB per month) with additional 10 GB data packages containing specific bundles of apps - messaging apps, social apps, video apps, music apps, and email and cloud apps. Each additional 10 GB data package costs EUR 6.99 per month and Meo (the mobile operator) also offers its own zero rated apps. Similar plans have been offered in Portugal since at least 2012.
These data packages are a clear win for mobile subscribers, especially pre-paid subscribers who tend to be at a lower income level than post-paid subscribers. They allow consumers to customize their plan beyond their mobile broadband subscription, enabling them to consume data in ways that are better attuned to their preferences. Without access to these data packages, consuming an additional 10 GB of data would cost each user an additional EUR 26 per month and require her to enter into a two year contract.
Even the reliably left wing Snopes pointed out that comparing Meo's Smart Net to cable where you need to choose a subset of channels is bullshit
https://www.snopes.com/portuga...
Except Portugal does practice net neutrality, and the graphic doesn't accurately depict what Portugal's internet looks like overall.
The European Union's Body of European Regulators for Electronic Communications (BEREC) established net neutrality guidelines in 2015. Portugal is a member of the European Union, so its internet providers must comply.
The service promoted in the MEO graphic, "Smart Net," is essentially a menu of add-ons to the company's standard mobile data service plan. Contrary to the way it's been presented, it doesn't limit users' access to particular apps or sites. Rather, it lays out prepackaged options via which MEO customers can add extra gigabytes of data usage to their mobile phone plans (similar to Vodafone's "Passes" offerings).
And of course there are other plans than Smart Net and other telcos than Meo in Portugal, just like when T Mobile launched Binge On, you had other choices of telco. And other plans.
Actually in most places other than the US you've typically got a choice of ISPs for your fixed internet connection. E.g. you can choose between multiple DSL providers in the UK. And, if you live in a city probably cable and fibre ones too.
US regulations stifle competition, and those are the regulations you should worry about. Not that your mobile company offers you a deal where it costs EUR 6.99 to get 10GB to a subset of websites instead of EUR 26 for a neutral 10 GB.
All it means is that if you spend all your time on Facebook and Youtube, you can get 10GB of data to those for EUR 6.99 instead of having to pay EUR 26.
Of course Google and Facebook hate this because they think the ISPs will charge them to be zero rated. But who cares? Google and Facebook suck just as ba
Trump's got very little done legislatively except for the corporation tax cut. More regulations have been repealed than have been passed
http://www.washingtonexaminer....
Which demonstrates that if you do little except cut taxes and deregulate, the US economy will tend to pick up speed.
And look at Apple. They've just paid Ireland what the EU demanded they pay, even though Ireland didn't want it
http://www.zdnet.com/google-am...
If the EU forces countries like Ireland to charge more tax, and Trump cuts corporate taxes in the US while bullying companies to invest, there's an argument that companies like Apple might decide to move some cash back. E.g. this sort of deal
http://www.businessinsider.com...
But even in this context, Apple backing a big manufacturing plant could be a significant political win for Trump. Foxconn's display plant could create 30,000 to 50,000 jobs in the US, The Wall Street Journal reported.
Apple has 80,000 US-based employees.
Where could Foxconn build factories in the US? It depends on which states give Foxconn the best incentives. Pennsylvania seems to be in the lead for either a "molding facility" or the display plant. A trade official from Pennsylvania was at Foxconn's holiday party, Nikkei reported.
"I have to tell other states to hurry up or we'll go ahead and sign with Pennsylvania," Gou said.
Tim Cook could virtue signal about how he's creating US jobs. Apple and Foxconn would get given an Ireland like tax deal by the state and federal government.
Purists will say this is rather unorthodox economics - basically Trump bulled Cook into doing it and arranged for tax breaks. Still that's the way business works, why shouldn't government?
Did that happen before Net Neutrality?