The US digital adoption is clearly being manipulated by the cable companies, who just want to protect their obsolete monopolies....
Did you just pull that out of your ass? Do you have any evidence at all to support that claim?
I kinda doubt it, because the government sells the cable companies their monopolies in the first place; there's really nothing for the cable companies to protect. Google "cable franchise" sometime.
Even if there was an evil cable company consipiracy, why aren't you blaming the government officials who sell out? It's their job to protect the rights of citizens and do what's in the best interest of the public. If that's not what they're doing then they're at least as responsible as the cable companies.
The real problem is that the government has too much control over people.
How about "Hiding incredibly massive fees in 20 pages of legalese is fraud."? Or do you have a lawyer on retainer in case you want to buy anything?
It's only fraud if they don't tell you about it. I'm hardly a lawyer, and I read and understood my cell phone contract. Guess how many $20000 phone bills I've had?
"I was too lazy to read it before agreeing with it" isn't a valid defense.
The UK system sounds better than the US system (at least with respect to bill sizes), but I'm guessing it has fine print too. The guy I was responding to specifically blamed the problem on the "fine print" in the contract being too confusing. If people are really saying "This is too complicated, I'll just agree to it and hope things turn out 'okay'," then there's a larger problem than some family gettting a big phone bill.
In most cases, its a LACK of stronger regulation that is the problem! Many cities would love 2 cable companies and probably give them incentives!
Really? Like this case, where Verizon wanted to provide FiOS, but the city wouldn't let them? What an incentive!!
I don't think you understand the concept of an ISP franchise. In a nutshell, it's when a city says "Company X is giving us $XX million, in exchange for being the sole ISP in the city, provided they sell at least Y mbit/s with at least a certain level of availability." Yes, most governments are really that stupid.
How can you even get more strict than that?
The error I often see is that some think government is a form of corporation; it can not have any monopoly because it represents all citizens
Sigh. The error I see is that some don't know WTF they're talking about. From the dictionary:
Main Entry: monopoly
Pronunciation: \m-nä-p(-)l\
Function: noun
1 : exclusive ownership through legal privilege, command of supply, or concerted action
2 : exclusive possession or control
3 : a commodity controlled by one party
4 : one that has a monopoly
Any entity with exclusive control over something has a monopoly on that something. It doesn't matter if it's a government, private citizen, or giant mega-corporation. It has nothing to do with representation.
In my area the local governments created a NGO with a board appointed by the cities it serves and it manages the public lands in regard to communications use by private orgs. This board isn't great; however, it is generally the best thing we can do in our area. Problem is the cable and phone companies are too powerful for our 10 cities and nobody will MOVE IN to compete without massive government welfare (which the existing monopolies initially HAD.) Every legal fight is a loss for us and even if the 10 cities directly used their relatively "vast" funds it quite likely would still loose in the end (they just lobby the state when at risk.)
And you expect to regulate the problem away? What exactly do you plan on telling the ISPs? "Provide us internet service because our law, which doesn't apply to you because you don't do business here, says you have to?"
Instead of expecting somebody else to lose a bunch of money on the deal, why not get your group of ten cities to pay for the infrastructure and provide you with internet service?
Oh wow. That's ironic. An anti-capitalism whiner complaining about the ISP market.
Just to clarify, the ISP market sucks because local governments sell exclusive franchises and forbid competition. The problem is precisely the lack of competition, free markets and capitalism that you rail against in the linked to journal entry. If anybody is screwing the consumers in this case, it's the government, not the ISPs.
Spinning it as a failure of capitalism is either ignorant or just plain malicious. It's a perfect example of why too much government regulation is a bad thing.
Believe it or not, that's actually one of the reasons I don't use Firefox. That, and the related problem that it only lets one tab be visible at once. I can't, for example, view two tabs side by side or above/below each other.
Even if they fixed everything else, those two issues would keep me away.
Deputies seized a variety of items that they believed were tools of civil disobedience: a gas mask, bolt cutters, axes, slingshots, homemade "caltrops" for disabling buses, even buckets of urine.
I'm not saying it's right to raid their houses and arrest them just for having it, but I'm having a hard time coming up with legal ways to protest using buckets of urine and equipment for disabling buses.
You're a dumbass. The OP clearly said he thought it was wrong regardless of who was doing it.
He was merely pointing out that somebody is pushing an agenda. The story submitter could have just as easily linked to *both* stories about illegal arrests before both conventions. Instead, they linked to the single story and spun it as "look what Republicans are doing."
Oh yes they can. They federal money to rebuild after Hurricane Flossy, Hurricane Betsy, and Hurricane Katrina and they'll get more money this time.
Any politician with the common sense to say "Hey, rebuilding here again is a bad idea" would be demonized as wanting to move people from their homes and probably called a racist.
The Billions of dollars he is referring to are TAXES, that is why. It is my money and it keeps being my money.
First, government's money doesn't belong to you. If it did, you could use it to buy food, a TV, or whatever. At least I'm able to do that with my money. Maybe I'm missing my government bank account debt card or something.
In any case, it's irrelevant because when the government buys stuff or otherwise gives away money, that money no longer belongs to the government. So even if the government money was yours, it wouldn't be any more.
If you really think the telecos ripped you off file a lawsuit.
Sigh. What you *should* want is for your local government to stop giving your ISP an unfair advantage. Then other ISPs could start providing service if they wanted to. I don't know where you live, but the reason your broadband options suck is almost certainly the fault of your local government, and not some evil plot by the ISPs. Your local government being stupid isn't a problem for Congress. But hey, maybe you're right and there's really nothing the Internet Service Providers want more than to *not* sell you internet access.
They have been collecting Billions of dollars in fees to provide Broadband and have delivered nothing.
I want the money paid back with interest NOW!
What? They're obviously delivering the internet service you agreed to buy, otherwise you wouldn't be posting on Slashdot right now, amirite?
Oh, and by the way, once you give your money to a company in exchange for goods or services, it's not your money anymore. You don't get a say in what that money gets spent on, it belongs to the company you gave it to. Just like your employer doesn't get to tell you what you can spend your money on after they pay you.
Actually, it's worse than a monopoly because you have to pay for it no matter what. You can send your kids to a private fee-paying school here also, but you still pay taxes to fund the public schools, meaning you pay twice. A voucher system fixes that - everybody gets a set base amount to spend on education and individuals can add to that if they want to.
No, I don't think you do. There are at least two flaws in your argument.
First, you're lumping "oil companies" into one big group and acting like they all work together to keep oil prices high. It's like saying "food manufacturers can charge whatever they want because food is so important and there's no competition!" It just doesn't work that way. Shell, BP, Exxon and the rest are all competeing against each other.
You can blame OPEC, but OPEC isn't the fault of the oil companies.
Second, the problem with the oil market isn't that it's a free market. The problem is that it's not free enough. Oil companies would *love* to drill off the coast and in Alaska (i.e. produce oil), but the government won't let them.
If ANYTHING TAX FUNDED LIKE PUBLIC SCHOOL is so great, why is it that the only way you can get funding is to threaten to throw my ass in jail if I don't feel like paying for it?!?!
See how that works?
Yes, I do. And it's a good question.
If public schools are so great, why can't they compete against private schools in a voucher system? If the government run schools are so much better, they'd beat out the privately run schools and we'd end up right back where we are now, right?
Microsoft has a "monopoly" when there are half a dozen alternatives and the people here are outraged. The government has a forced monopoly on something 100x more important, and people act like it's the best thing since sliced bread. How's that work?
The government can't even run a restaurant without offering poor quality and losing millions of dollars. Why in god's name would you want to trust them with anything important?
But you're missing the point: Exxon will be collecting $67.4 billion from you and me, *irrespective* of whether they are taxed at 40% or 4%.
No they wouldn't. They could certainly try. But there are too many oil companies, and lowering taxes would lower costs for all of them. All Shell (for example) would have to do to get Exxon's customers is lower their price when Exxon doesn't. It's a little thing called "competition".
In fact, the tax represents money coming *back* to the people, and not a tax *on* the people. Lower the taxes on Exxon, and there will be less tax revenue with which to fund public profits.
LOL. That's just bullshit. Business taxes don't go back to the people. They, like all other taxes, are wasted on government bullshit like welfare, social security, the "war on terror" and "Homeland Security".
So, I don't see a problem, besides greed, for US ISPs to deploy faster broadband networks. If the Brazilians did that here in Brazil, baby-Bells should be able to do the same back in the USA...
The problem isn't greed. The problem is that most city governments sell exclusive franchises to ISPs, giving the ISP a local monopoly in exchange for providing access to everybody in town. Since no other ISPs can offer internet service in that market, there's no need to spend money upgrading or lowering prices to compete. They upgrade when (if) the franchise says they have to upgrade.
How would buying a screaming fast computer for work make my job any more profitable?
Who said it would? There's diminishing returns on processor speed, memory, and number of machines, but it's still a capital investment just like any other tool. How profitable would your job be without the computer? If the answer is less than with the computer it's a capital investment.
Second, I, and I'm sure I'm not alone on this, would rather write a program to solve sudoku than actually play sudoku. Some people love sudoku; I found it boring. Now writing software to solve a puzzle, that's interesting.
The problem with socialism is that you're trusting other people (i.e. the government) to do what's best for you. I don't even trust government employees to be competent, much less trust them with my own well being. If you want to trust the government with your life and future, wonderful. It's when you force everybody else to trust their lives to the government that I have a problem.
I compare this to the last place I lived, which was decidedly "free market" oriented, where I constantly had bums begging for change
Socialism replaces "bums" with "the government" and "begging for change" with "taking my money and threatening me with jail".
had to pay for every doctor visit,
So you actually had to pay for a valuable service? What is this world coming to?
and had to constantly listen to the bitching and whining of people around me about how crappy life was.
Sounds like an easier solution would be hanging around with people who aren't so miserable.
Slashdot Mirror
Did you just pull that out of your ass? Do you have any evidence at all to support that claim?
I kinda doubt it, because the government sells the cable companies their monopolies in the first place; there's really nothing for the cable companies to protect. Google "cable franchise" sometime.
Even if there was an evil cable company consipiracy, why aren't you blaming the government officials who sell out? It's their job to protect the rights of citizens and do what's in the best interest of the public. If that's not what they're doing then they're at least as responsible as the cable companies.
The real problem is that the government has too much control over people.
If $5.3 billion is "such a small amount of money" for you, maybe you should build the ships yourself.
It's only fraud if they don't tell you about it. I'm hardly a lawyer, and I read and understood my cell phone contract. Guess how many $20000 phone bills I've had?
"I was too lazy to read it before agreeing with it" isn't a valid defense.
The UK system sounds better than the US system (at least with respect to bill sizes), but I'm guessing it has fine print too. The guy I was responding to specifically blamed the problem on the "fine print" in the contract being too confusing. If people are really saying "This is too complicated, I'll just agree to it and hope things turn out 'okay'," then there's a larger problem than some family gettting a big phone bill.
I just want to clarify. You're saying the people should tell AT&T, "Sorry we can't pay the bill, we're too stupid to read the contract we agreed to."
That's more or less what you're getting at, right?
Really? Like this case, where Verizon wanted to provide FiOS, but the city wouldn't let them? What an incentive!!
I don't think you understand the concept of an ISP franchise. In a nutshell, it's when a city says "Company X is giving us $XX million, in exchange for being the sole ISP in the city, provided they sell at least Y mbit/s with at least a certain level of availability." Yes, most governments are really that stupid.
How can you even get more strict than that?
Sigh. The error I see is that some don't know WTF they're talking about. From the dictionary:
Any entity with exclusive control over something has a monopoly on that something. It doesn't matter if it's a government, private citizen, or giant mega-corporation. It has nothing to do with representation.
And you expect to regulate the problem away? What exactly do you plan on telling the ISPs? "Provide us internet service because our law, which doesn't apply to you because you don't do business here, says you have to?"
Instead of expecting somebody else to lose a bunch of money on the deal, why not get your group of ten cities to pay for the infrastructure and provide you with internet service?
Oh wow. That's ironic. An anti-capitalism whiner complaining about the ISP market.
Just to clarify, the ISP market sucks because local governments sell exclusive franchises and forbid competition. The problem is precisely the lack of competition, free markets and capitalism that you rail against in the linked to journal entry. If anybody is screwing the consumers in this case, it's the government, not the ISPs.
Spinning it as a failure of capitalism is either ignorant or just plain malicious. It's a perfect example of why too much government regulation is a bad thing.
Well, you *can*, but you'll still look like a moron by anybody who has a clue.
Not that it matters. Top speed when you run out of gas is zero anyway.
What are you talking about?
The only limit on the number of web browsers is the limited number of people with the interest and skills to create new ones.
Believe it or not, that's actually one of the reasons I don't use Firefox. That, and the related problem that it only lets one tab be visible at once. I can't, for example, view two tabs side by side or above/below each other.
Even if they fixed everything else, those two issues would keep me away.
From TFA:
I'm not saying it's right to raid their houses and arrest them just for having it, but I'm having a hard time coming up with legal ways to protest using buckets of urine and equipment for disabling buses.
You're a dumbass. The OP clearly said he thought it was wrong regardless of who was doing it.
He was merely pointing out that somebody is pushing an agenda. The story submitter could have just as easily linked to *both* stories about illegal arrests before both conventions. Instead, they linked to the single story and spun it as "look what Republicans are doing."
Oh yes they can. They federal money to rebuild after Hurricane Flossy, Hurricane Betsy, and Hurricane Katrina and they'll get more money this time.
Any politician with the common sense to say "Hey, rebuilding here again is a bad idea" would be demonized as wanting to move people from their homes and probably called a racist.
First, government's money doesn't belong to you. If it did, you could use it to buy food, a TV, or whatever. At least I'm able to do that with my money. Maybe I'm missing my government bank account debt card or something.
In any case, it's irrelevant because when the government buys stuff or otherwise gives away money, that money no longer belongs to the government. So even if the government money was yours, it wouldn't be any more.
If you really think the telecos ripped you off file a lawsuit.
Sigh. What you *should* want is for your local government to stop giving your ISP an unfair advantage. Then other ISPs could start providing service if they wanted to. I don't know where you live, but the reason your broadband options suck is almost certainly the fault of your local government, and not some evil plot by the ISPs. Your local government being stupid isn't a problem for Congress. But hey, maybe you're right and there's really nothing the Internet Service Providers want more than to *not* sell you internet access.
What? They're obviously delivering the internet service you agreed to buy, otherwise you wouldn't be posting on Slashdot right now, amirite?
Oh, and by the way, once you give your money to a company in exchange for goods or services, it's not your money anymore. You don't get a say in what that money gets spent on, it belongs to the company you gave it to. Just like your employer doesn't get to tell you what you can spend your money on after they pay you.
How does this bullshit get modded "Insightful"?
Actually, it's worse than a monopoly because you have to pay for it no matter what. You can send your kids to a private fee-paying school here also, but you still pay taxes to fund the public schools, meaning you pay twice. A voucher system fixes that - everybody gets a set base amount to spend on education and individuals can add to that if they want to.
No, I don't think you do. There are at least two flaws in your argument.
First, you're lumping "oil companies" into one big group and acting like they all work together to keep oil prices high. It's like saying "food manufacturers can charge whatever they want because food is so important and there's no competition!" It just doesn't work that way. Shell, BP, Exxon and the rest are all competeing against each other.
You can blame OPEC, but OPEC isn't the fault of the oil companies.
Second, the problem with the oil market isn't that it's a free market. The problem is that it's not free enough. Oil companies would *love* to drill off the coast and in Alaska (i.e. produce oil), but the government won't let them.
Yes, I do. And it's a good question.
If public schools are so great, why can't they compete against private schools in a voucher system? If the government run schools are so much better, they'd beat out the privately run schools and we'd end up right back where we are now, right?
Microsoft has a "monopoly" when there are half a dozen alternatives and the people here are outraged. The government has a forced monopoly on something 100x more important, and people act like it's the best thing since sliced bread. How's that work?
The government can't even run a restaurant without offering poor quality and losing millions of dollars. Why in god's name would you want to trust them with anything important?
No they wouldn't. They could certainly try. But there are too many oil companies, and lowering taxes would lower costs for all of them. All Shell (for example) would have to do to get Exxon's customers is lower their price when Exxon doesn't. It's a little thing called "competition".
LOL. That's just bullshit. Business taxes don't go back to the people. They, like all other taxes, are wasted on government bullshit like welfare, social security, the "war on terror" and "Homeland Security".
The problem isn't greed. The problem is that most city governments sell exclusive franchises to ISPs, giving the ISP a local monopoly in exchange for providing access to everybody in town. Since no other ISPs can offer internet service in that market, there's no need to spend money upgrading or lowering prices to compete. They upgrade when (if) the franchise says they have to upgrade.
Who said it would? There's diminishing returns on processor speed, memory, and number of machines, but it's still a capital investment just like any other tool. How profitable would your job be without the computer? If the answer is less than with the computer it's a capital investment.
First, it's not "cheat codes".
Second, I, and I'm sure I'm not alone on this, would rather write a program to solve sudoku than actually play sudoku. Some people love sudoku; I found it boring. Now writing software to solve a puzzle, that's interesting.
The problem with socialism is that you're trusting other people (i.e. the government) to do what's best for you. I don't even trust government employees to be competent, much less trust them with my own well being. If you want to trust the government with your life and future, wonderful. It's when you force everybody else to trust their lives to the government that I have a problem.
Socialism replaces "bums" with "the government" and "begging for change" with "taking my money and threatening me with jail".
So you actually had to pay for a valuable service? What is this world coming to?
Sounds like an easier solution would be hanging around with people who aren't so miserable.