That the Congress has the cojones to accuse an impious relationship between the White House and the FCC, and the guts of the accusation are that the Administration stated their policy preference publicly to influence the FCC.
Yet, when the FCC doesn't do what the Senate Majority's paid henchman want it to do, they call it on the carpet, they berate it, delay it, attack it with lies, and make Wheeler pay political consequences for his actions?
I mean, which branch of our gov't is OBVIOUSLY meddling with an independent FCC?
US Law and the rules of logic are not the same thing.
US Law clearly states "innocent until proven guilty" which means the negative is assumed, and thus does not need to be proven.
Logic holds that you cannot prove a negative, because there is no evidence to prove something does not exist, or did not happen. Another way to spin it is "Absence of evidence is not evidence of absence." This is not a logical law, but rather an approximation first expressed by skeptic James Randi, who pushed the burden of proof to people who affirmed the supernatural.
More precisely, you CAN infer a negative to a fairly high degree of confidence in some situations, but you cannot fully prove it.
The reason he wrote that to you is that...ever since he was a made as a little wooden boy, when Eduardo Gomez de Pinocchio tells a lie, his penis grows.
Apparently, his father wasn't a puppet maker, but rather worked in the forestry industry and was seeking a source of cheap wood. When he's particularly knotty, then he gets a big spotted dick.
Jimminy Crickets! It's a whale of a tale.
I can keep this up all day, but imma cease and desist for now. I'm worried I'm gonna get a patent infringement call from Disney. Or trademark...or whatever, yada yada DMCA>
Your kind of thinking is that what causes unrest. You believe the natural state of information is locked up, and available for a fee. With that line of thinking, the Diary of Anne Frank is easily findable, acceptably available, and offered fairly.
But your premise is absolutely incorrect. The natural state of information is shareable, and freely passed from one human to another.
Now, through our laws, we DO agree to a temporary injunction on that natural shareability. For the sake of generating more content (by offering incentives to creators), we grant them a market-breaking monopoly on that content for a time. But, after that reasonable period of time, we expect the content to enter the public domain.
A "reasonable period of time" can be debated, but it is definitely shorter than life plus 70 years. The mechanism of incentivizing authors could easily be achieved with monopolies as short as 10 years - but I'll even concede you "life" at the extremely long side of the reasonable spectrum. But Anne Frank is dead.
In this context, the Diary is most certainly "hidden away". Removed from hundreds of free sites like WikiMedia, out of reach for billions who lack the ability or desire to pay the going price. The number of places that Diary is available is easily an order of magnitude less under Copyright than it is in Public Domain. It has been stolen from the Public Domain, and hidden to billions of people. You act like that is nothing -- like Mike is disingenuous to say it's hidden. Not even close. Mike could have gone further and said it was stolen from the people, and still been ethically correct, but unfortunately wrong in a court.
To summarize, your position is against the natural order of things, not Mike's. And yes, the Diary is now hidden. Maybe one can freely "find" it, but they can't then read it without being robbed...andfor a book, reading, not finding, is kinda the whole point.
I was at Infoseek 1999-2001. The company was based on strong search technology R&D, but de-prioritized that in a bid to become a better Portal.
Excite did the same, as well as the others mentioned by Mike. It was the Portal Wars, and Yahoo was winning.
Many of the portals thought so little of search that they actually were ecstatic to be able to outsource the trivial job of search algorithms to smaller, niche players. Many of them partnered with a small company named Google to provide search results within their branded portal. Even Infoseek, with a forte in search, outsourced some search to Google.
So, Mason, to your point, yes, everyone knew Google was doing search better...but very few that that search was important.
At the time was Google seen as a threat? Ha ha! No.
Airline argument is simply to point out that when any startup that can't afford the natural barriers to entry in a market, that's just life.
Like when many startups couldn't launch in the days before cloud hosting. There was no "crime" in that. It was expensive to set up your own hosting and datacenter, so you didn't. With Amazon Web Serivces, now many new businesses can flourish. That's awesome, but it doesn't mean there was a crime before.
"The ruling acknowledges that such models create an unlevel playing field for smaller companies who may not be able to pay to play"
I agree. But there should be nothing inherently illegal about an unlevel playing field. "Inability to pay to play" isn't inherently wrong - I can't launch an airline right now either, for lack of capital. I don't think that is unfair. It's just a question of available resources.
If all content providers are faced with the same price to enter the walled garden, and that garden is open to all, then I don't see it as anti-competitive. This applies as long as the network operator is NOT also a content provider, which would have perverse incentives.
I don't like the Facebook walled garden, and think it will harm the open web in India. But I don't see it as "wrong" unless content providers are unfairly blocked from participating.
I saw it before it's release, and stayed well away from it - but not for the reasons stated in this article, for different ones.
Though a beautiful design, and early to the "connected by wifi" thermostat camp, it has the common problem of trying to be "smart" but only going 85% of the way there.
"Smart" home devices are like speech recognition - until they are almost perfect, they suck. A thermostat that tries to predict your life will make countless mistakes. A thermostat that tries to know when you are home, but only senses presence in the hallway where your Nest is will make errors. So, yeah. It's a "smarter thermostat", but not smart enough.
OTOH, I bought three Nest connected smoke/CO alarms. Those are great. Battery lasts 8 years, gives you a monthly status report, and will alert you in advance if the battery needs a change. Funny to me that the shittier product is their marquee.
"AdBlock-Plus took to the digisphere to complain over and over that IAB had “disinvited” them to this convention. That, of course, is as much a lie as the others they routinely try to tell the world."
Um...posting a website that promotes an industry meeting, and offers an open invites people to register for the conference is not just the equivalent of "inviting" -- rather it is the definition.
Thus, cancelling their registration is also the definition of "un-inviting".
So, if that is the core of what Rothenberg sees as lies, I can only conclude that he is either a liar, or unable to use words correctly and perhaps worthy of ignoring.
Mustachio'd Miner Sam [Formerly Yosemite Sam], the rootinest, tootinest gunslinger in the West, North, Easth, and South, said in response to the story:
"Why you low-down, dirty rotten, lilly-livered, name- stealin' varmints!"
This is a Cable TV story, Not A Mobile Phone Story
AT&T's offer ensures that customers who get Unlimited Data ALSO have a paid TV subscription and thus will watch much of their content on a home TV, not the mobile phone. Also, many of the new unlimited customers will have U-Verse DSL as well. That means they'll be on Wi-Fi at home when they stream video to their phone.
The only customers who would get the most out of this (i.e. the cord and cable cutters) are the ones who are specifically NOT included in the offer. This offer is more likely to tip some customers towards an AT&T TV subscription versus a competing cable or Dish Network offer.
In the end, this offer is more about competing in the cable TV sector than the mobile phone sector.
No. Most streaming video servers will detect the throttling as a network degradation, and respond by automatically dropping the resolution and bitrate.
Thus, this is incorrect: "If little Jimmy explicitly selects 4k, the very large 4k file will still be streamed/downloaded (just at 1.5Mbps) so it will not save the family from hitting the cap."
On the post: Congress Keeps Holding Repeated, Pointless Hearings Just To Punish The FCC For Standing Up To ISPs On Net Neutrality
Isn't It Ironic. Don't Ya Think?
Yet, when the FCC doesn't do what the Senate Majority's paid henchman want it to do, they call it on the carpet, they berate it, delay it, attack it with lies, and make Wheeler pay political consequences for his actions?
I mean, which branch of our gov't is OBVIOUSLY meddling with an independent FCC?
On the post: Congress Keeps Holding Repeated, Pointless Hearings Just To Punish The FCC For Standing Up To ISPs On Net Neutrality
Re:
On the post: Full Brief From San Bernardino District Attorney Even More Insane Than Application About 'Dormant Cyber Pathogen'
Re: Re: Re: Re: Proving A Negative
US Law clearly states "innocent until proven guilty" which means the negative is assumed, and thus does not need to be proven.
Logic holds that you cannot prove a negative, because there is no evidence to prove something does not exist, or did not happen. Another way to spin it is "Absence of evidence is not evidence of absence." This is not a logical law, but rather an approximation first expressed by skeptic James Randi, who pushed the burden of proof to people who affirmed the supernatural.
More precisely, you CAN infer a negative to a fairly high degree of confidence in some situations, but you cannot fully prove it.
On the post: Memphis Mayor Ushers In New Era Of Transparency By Refusing To Discuss City's Stingray Devices
Re: Hmmm....
On the post: Penis Pump Company Threatens To Report Techdirt To Interpol Because We Wrote About Its Bogus DMCA Demands
Pinocchio
Apparently, his father wasn't a puppet maker, but rather worked in the forestry industry and was seeking a source of cheap wood. When he's particularly knotty, then he gets a big spotted dick.
Jimminy Crickets! It's a whale of a tale.
I can keep this up all day, but imma cease and desist for now. I'm worried I'm gonna get a patent infringement call from Disney. Or trademark...or whatever, yada yada DMCA>
On the post: Wikimedia Takes Down Diary Of Anne Frank, Uses It To Highlight Idiocy Of DMCA Rules, Copyright Terms
Re: Re: Re:
But your premise is absolutely incorrect. The natural state of information is shareable, and freely passed from one human to another.
Now, through our laws, we DO agree to a temporary injunction on that natural shareability. For the sake of generating more content (by offering incentives to creators), we grant them a market-breaking monopoly on that content for a time. But, after that reasonable period of time, we expect the content to enter the public domain.
A "reasonable period of time" can be debated, but it is definitely shorter than life plus 70 years. The mechanism of incentivizing authors could easily be achieved with monopolies as short as 10 years - but I'll even concede you "life" at the extremely long side of the reasonable spectrum. But Anne Frank is dead.
In this context, the Diary is most certainly "hidden away". Removed from hundreds of free sites like WikiMedia, out of reach for billions who lack the ability or desire to pay the going price. The number of places that Diary is available is easily an order of magnitude less under Copyright than it is in Public Domain. It has been stolen from the Public Domain, and hidden to billions of people. You act like that is nothing -- like Mike is disingenuous to say it's hidden. Not even close. Mike could have gone further and said it was stolen from the people, and still been ethically correct, but unfortunately wrong in a court.
To summarize, your position is against the natural order of things, not Mike's. And yes, the Diary is now hidden. Maybe one can freely "find" it, but they can't then read it without being robbed...andfor a book, reading, not finding, is kinda the whole point.
On the post: UK Court Tells Online Mapping Company It's Not Illegal For Google To Also Offer Online Maps
Re: Re: Re:
"Yeah, but there's no money in search."
On the post: UK Court Tells Online Mapping Company It's Not Illegal For Google To Also Offer Online Maps
Re: Re:
Excite did the same, as well as the others mentioned by Mike. It was the Portal Wars, and Yahoo was winning.
Many of the portals thought so little of search that they actually were ecstatic to be able to outsource the trivial job of search algorithms to smaller, niche players. Many of them partnered with a small company named Google to provide search results within their branded portal. Even Infoseek, with a forte in search, outsourced some search to Google.
So, Mason, to your point, yes, everyone knew Google was doing search better...but very few that that search was important.
At the time was Google seen as a threat? Ha ha! No.
On the post: Techdirt Crowdsourcing: How Will The TSA Idiotically Respond To The Laptop Terror Bomb?
Any Laptop Larger than 3oz Not Permitted
On the post: India Bans Zero Rating As The U.S. Pays The Price For Embracing It
Re: Re:
Airline argument is simply to point out that when any startup that can't afford the natural barriers to entry in a market, that's just life.
Like when many startups couldn't launch in the days before cloud hosting. There was no "crime" in that. It was expensive to set up your own hosting and datacenter, so you didn't. With Amazon Web Serivces, now many new businesses can flourish. That's awesome, but it doesn't mean there was a crime before.
On the post: India Bans Zero Rating As The U.S. Pays The Price For Embracing It
I agree. But there should be nothing inherently illegal about an unlevel playing field. "Inability to pay to play" isn't inherently wrong - I can't launch an airline right now either, for lack of capital. I don't think that is unfair. It's just a question of available resources.
If all content providers are faced with the same price to enter the walled garden, and that garden is open to all, then I don't see it as anti-competitive. This applies as long as the network operator is NOT also a content provider, which would have perverse incentives.
I don't like the Facebook walled garden, and think it will harm the open web in India. But I don't see it as "wrong" unless content providers are unfairly blocked from participating.
Contrast that to this, which I do see as wrong:
https://www.techdirt.com/blog/netneutrality/articles/20160205/12564833535/verizon-gives-net-ne utrality-giant-middle-finger-exempts-own-video-service-wireless-usage-caps.shtml
On the post: Nest Thermostat Goes From 'Internet Of Things' Darling To Cautionary Tale
I've Always Hated Nest (Thermostat)
Though a beautiful design, and early to the "connected by wifi" thermostat camp, it has the common problem of trying to be "smart" but only going 85% of the way there.
"Smart" home devices are like speech recognition - until they are almost perfect, they suck. A thermostat that tries to predict your life will make countless mistakes. A thermostat that tries to know when you are home, but only senses presence in the hallway where your Nest is will make errors. So, yeah. It's a "smarter thermostat", but not smart enough.
OTOH, I bought three Nest connected smoke/CO alarms. Those are great. Battery lasts 8 years, gives you a monthly status report, and will alert you in advance if the battery needs a change. Funny to me that the shittier product is their marquee.
On the post: If You Use An Adblocker You Hate Free Speech, Says Internet Ads Guy
Inviting and Disinviting
Um...posting a website that promotes an industry meeting, and offers an open invites people to register for the conference is not just the equivalent of "inviting" -- rather it is the definition.
Thus, cancelling their registration is also the definition of "un-inviting".
So, if that is the core of what Rothenberg sees as lies, I can only conclude that he is either a liar, or unable to use words correctly and perhaps worthy of ignoring.
On the post: Netflix Pretends It Will Crackdown On VPNs Just Days After Admitting It's Futile To Do So
Re: Re: Re:
So, they can [somewhat credibly] claim that in a year, it'll offer no revenue because everyone already watched it.
On the post: Yosemite Changing The Names Of Popular Park Landmarks Following The Most Ridiculous Trademark Dispute Ever
New Looney Tunes Character Speaks out
"Why you low-down, dirty rotten, lilly-livered, name- stealin' varmints!"
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=THWCH2Nwsss
On the post: AT&T Is Happy To Remove Wireless Broadband Caps, But Only If You Sign Up For Its TV Services
This is a Cable TV story, Not A Mobile Phone Story
The only customers who would get the most out of this (i.e. the cord and cable cutters) are the ones who are specifically NOT included in the offer. This offer is more likely to tip some customers towards an AT&T TV subscription versus a competing cable or Dish Network offer.
In the end, this offer is more about competing in the cable TV sector than the mobile phone sector.
On the post: Do The 'Smart Cities' Of Tomorrow Really Want Fraud-Plagued, NSA Pal AT&T As A Partner?
Finish Him!
...which they will subsequently buy, and integrate into their network.
Not disagreeing with what you wrote, I just "finished that for you."
On the post: ACLU, EFF Join Fight To Suppress Evidence Illegally Obtained With A Cell Tower Spoofer
Re: the real problem here is...
Unfortunately, my friend, that train has sailed.
On the post: T-Mobile Doubles Down On Its Blatant Lies, Says Claims It's Throttling Are 'Bullshit' And That I'm A 'Jerk'
Re:
And why is it a web page, and not a setting in the phone menu?
And why do some report not seeing it, or it's greyed out?
It's as simple as a disclaimer buried in the Terms of Service.. As in: hard to find, hard to understand, and not publicized or clearly disclosed.
On the post: T-Mobile Doubles Down On Its Blatant Lies, Says Claims It's Throttling Are 'Bullshit' And That I'm A 'Jerk'
Re: Re: Re: To Legere, Throttling IS Optimization
Thus, this is incorrect:
"If little Jimmy explicitly selects 4k, the very large 4k file will still be streamed/downloaded (just at 1.5Mbps) so it will not save the family from hitting the cap."
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