Certainly if the brightest minds in Silicon Valley just focus their magic abilities we can rid this fair land from the scourge of pi.
Brilliant! We could solve all kinds of problems just by banning them. Chinese air pollution? Banned. Rising sea-level? Banned. Poor folks? Banned. Illegal Drugs? Double banned! Morons in positions of authority? Whoops, never-mind that one.
We have an accord! Sure, I'd love it if we ran the infrastructure like we do public roads. Unfortunately few local governments had the foresight to build municipal networks before big-telecom came through. I just assume a large number of people will have an issue with any level of government seizing infrastructure assets towards that end. If you can figure out a way to make it happen I'm all ears.
Proposing we regulate or unbundle that last mile of connection is my compromise saying "okay we won't just take all your stuff, but you can't run it any old way you want". Though I'm worried neither will happen and we'll eventually have to physically replace every cable with public utility.
Actually, I'm much less comfortable imagining a government NOT run by the citizens it governs. I do think there's such a thing as over-regulation or market situations which are harmed by regulation.
But it is not in areas with a single ISP; which I describe as a Natural Monopoly (I keep capitalizing it for a reason) in contrast to a Legal Monopoly. By definition these markets are not Free Markets and consumers do not have a choice. It's a prevalent failure of the Free Market which is commonly addressed by government regulation for the benefit of its people.
I'm not advocating the FCC set rates for ISP companies, but that rules be enacted that allow competing service providers access to customers. Much like how you'd choose an ISP back in the days of dial-up and the traffic would flow over the phone company's infrastructure.
Regulation seems to just create monopolies because the government gets to pick winners and losers then.
I disagree with the causation here, in my opinion regulation acknowledges when monopoly exists and seeks to keep it from harming consumers. There already is a winner, and he's keeping any competition from entering the market. This is important in cases where breaking a monopoly up isn't feasible. ISP regulation is broken, so think about how this works in other Natural Monopoly utility industries like water or power.
Zero rating enables anti-competitive behavior, allowing them to raise competitors' prices. This wouldn't be necessary with actual competition, but it seems more likely than local-loop unbundling in the meantime.
What's wrong with knowing that you get a gallon of gas when you pay for a gallon of gas? Or electricity, or water... If no one is making sure their metering is correct, posted prices mean nothing.
Yes, the FCC isn't going to do everything we need done alone.
This was caused by the transition of television providers into communications companies. They fought as hard as possible to avoid being classified as common carriers like other telecommunications providers, so as to avoid the thought that they might be forced to carry competitors' traffic.
Trouble is that the Free Market fails in situations where Natural Monopolies arise. Splitting a big company into smaller companies won't make installing duplicate infrastructure cheaper. We need to let many companies use the same infrastructure, which requires regulation. Remember when you couldn't choose a long distance telephone provider?
I don't think we're going to stop them from price gouging or setting broadband caps if they want to. We should respond by:
1) Killing zero-rating (You want to limit usage and effect a price hike? Fine but everything counts.) 2) Regulating usage metering (So it's, you know, accurate.) 3) Making them advertise the ACTUAL cost of their services (no more "we'd like to charge you more" fees) 4) Busting open local-loop unbundling (We don't need more competition in infrastructure, just in service and pricing.
Also remember this is Nest, not Google. Sure you might expect them to foster a similar culture but they don't have the same resources or expendable capital as the Alphabet mothership.
Absolutely, I'm not saying the Revolv owners shouldn't be pissed. I'm saying you should know when something you buy is completely dependent on outside resources; especially when it's run by a small start up that may not be around in another year.
I'm a Panono backer, still waiting on my hardware 27 months later. Yes it sucks that it's taken that long, but I'm most concerned that photo processing is cloud-only. That's a major fail-point in the system. But I knew I was buying into an unknown, that's on me. All these people saying not to buy things that connect to the Internet are missing the real lesson here, which is to know what features of your purchases are services and which are independent functions. This isn't new.
There's FAQs on the Nest site about what happens when you lose connection. Spoiler: the thermostat is still a thermostat, and the Protect is still a mesh networked smoke and carbon monoxide alarm, but the drop-cam is dead. My Amazon Echo will be dead in the water one day, but my chrome-casts will still work. The traffic updates in my car will fold with Sirius but my maps and routing will still work. I could go on.
Doing that may be an easy solution, but Nest bought these guys for their cloud based service integration chops; i.e. the code that makes revolv go. Giving that code away might not be feasible, but allowing customers to flash new firmware would be a nice send off before the servers go dark. That said, it seems like they're trying to stop bleeding money so it may not be any more feasible.
Yes, "bricking" is overly harsh. They're no longer supporting a device which was previously sold by a company they acquired.
It's like when a video game discontinues multi-player support, surely the single player mode should still work, but the features that require servers are gone. Well what if, as in this case, the game is online only?
Sure, it sucks but when you live on the bleeding edge you've got to have the possibility of failure in the back of your mind.
I agree, the writing was on the wall. I've found multiple articles from the 2014 acquisition that said Nest was interested in the developers not in the hub product. They immediately stopped selling it and froze account creation. That sucks if you just plunked down for one, but not unheard of.
And yes, it sounds like these customers had no idea how the product worked. Seems like they would have had an Internet outage or read some troubleshooting docs to see that the brains are entirely cloud based.
Go ahead and take a gander at their website. There's no way they're advertising prices that are $30 higher than if you let them spy on you. You probably need an advanced degree in B.S. to interpret what they are advertising, but I don't see anything about a tracking credit.
Re: Shoot first, ask questions only if it makes it to court
Yup, exactly this. If your precious song is too good for the Internet then fine, it's gone.
However I would be much more likely to go along with "notice and stay down" if one of the possible outcomes was loss of copyright. Whoops, that notice wasn't filed in good faith. Your intellectual property now belongs to the Public.
My mind went the other way, they'll have to use these exploits like they did the stingrays with similar "just drop the case if someone might find out" NDA pacts. That's the way 0-day exploits work; if you want to keep using them you can't tell anyone about them. Unfortunately for them that's not the way our judicial system works.
No, not at all. I'm apparently the only one on the Internet who has a problem with everyone calling this practice "throttling." It's a misnomer, and it lead exactly to this resultant attack from the Bit-Delivery Industry. They would love nothing more than to further conflate the distinction between content providers, who choose what to send, and content deliverers, who choose how to send it.
"effectively throttling itself"
This is the only concession I've seen in the coverage; not just calling it outright throttling. Maybe it's confusing because Netflix and other large providers' engineered response to bandwidth throttling is the resolution reduction we're talking about. But just because the end result is similar doesn't mean we can or should call them the same thing.
On the post: US Attorney Suggests Solution To Open Source Encryption: Ban Importation Of Open Source Encryption
Re:
Brilliant! We could solve all kinds of problems just by banning them.
Chinese air pollution? Banned.
Rising sea-level? Banned.
Poor folks? Banned.
Illegal Drugs? Double banned!
Morons in positions of authority? Whoops, never-mind that one.
On the post: Wireless Industry Survey: Everybody Really Loves Zero Rating
Yes?
See! They said we should raise prices on the other websites!
On the post: As ISPs Push Harder On Usage Caps, House Pushes Bill Preventing The FCC From Doing Anything About It
Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Eating My Popcorn
Proposing we regulate or unbundle that last mile of connection is my compromise saying "okay we won't just take all your stuff, but you can't run it any old way you want". Though I'm worried neither will happen and we'll eventually have to physically replace every cable with public utility.
On the post: As ISPs Push Harder On Usage Caps, House Pushes Bill Preventing The FCC From Doing Anything About It
Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Eating My Popcorn
But it is not in areas with a single ISP; which I describe as a Natural Monopoly (I keep capitalizing it for a reason) in contrast to a Legal Monopoly. By definition these markets are not Free Markets and consumers do not have a choice. It's a prevalent failure of the Free Market which is commonly addressed by government regulation for the benefit of its people.
I'm not advocating the FCC set rates for ISP companies, but that rules be enacted that allow competing service providers access to customers. Much like how you'd choose an ISP back in the days of dial-up and the traffic would flow over the phone company's infrastructure.
On the post: As ISPs Push Harder On Usage Caps, House Pushes Bill Preventing The FCC From Doing Anything About It
Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Eating My Popcorn
On the post: As ISPs Push Harder On Usage Caps, House Pushes Bill Preventing The FCC From Doing Anything About It
Re: Re: Pick your battles
What's wrong with knowing that you get a gallon of gas when you pay for a gallon of gas? Or electricity, or water... If no one is making sure their metering is correct, posted prices mean nothing.
Yes, the FCC isn't going to do everything we need done alone.
This was caused by the transition of television providers into communications companies. They fought as hard as possible to avoid being classified as common carriers like other telecommunications providers, so as to avoid the thought that they might be forced to carry competitors' traffic.
On the post: As ISPs Push Harder On Usage Caps, House Pushes Bill Preventing The FCC From Doing Anything About It
Re: Re: Re: Eating My Popcorn
On the post: As ISPs Push Harder On Usage Caps, House Pushes Bill Preventing The FCC From Doing Anything About It
Pick your battles
1) Killing zero-rating (You want to limit usage and effect a price hike? Fine but everything counts.)
2) Regulating usage metering (So it's, you know, accurate.)
3) Making them advertise the ACTUAL cost of their services (no more "we'd like to charge you more" fees)
4) Busting open local-loop unbundling (We don't need more competition in infrastructure, just in service and pricing.
On the post: You Don't Actually Own What You Buy Volume 2,203: Google Bricking Revolv Smart Home Hardware
Re: Re: Can someone else take over the servers?
On the post: You Don't Actually Own What You Buy Volume 2,203: Google Bricking Revolv Smart Home Hardware
Re: Re: Re: Re: Re:
I'm a Panono backer, still waiting on my hardware 27 months later. Yes it sucks that it's taken that long, but I'm most concerned that photo processing is cloud-only. That's a major fail-point in the system. But I knew I was buying into an unknown, that's on me. All these people saying not to buy things that connect to the Internet are missing the real lesson here, which is to know what features of your purchases are services and which are independent functions. This isn't new.
There's FAQs on the Nest site about what happens when you lose connection. Spoiler: the thermostat is still a thermostat, and the Protect is still a mesh networked smoke and carbon monoxide alarm, but the drop-cam is dead. My Amazon Echo will be dead in the water one day, but my chrome-casts will still work. The traffic updates in my car will fold with Sirius but my maps and routing will still work. I could go on.
On the post: You Don't Actually Own What You Buy Volume 2,203: Google Bricking Revolv Smart Home Hardware
Re: Here's an idea
On the post: You Don't Actually Own What You Buy Volume 2,203: Google Bricking Revolv Smart Home Hardware
Re: Re: Re:
It's like when a video game discontinues multi-player support, surely the single player mode should still work, but the features that require servers are gone. Well what if, as in this case, the game is online only?
Sure, it sucks but when you live on the bleeding edge you've got to have the possibility of failure in the back of your mind.
On the post: You Don't Actually Own What You Buy Volume 2,203: Google Bricking Revolv Smart Home Hardware
Re: Re:
And yes, it sounds like these customers had no idea how the product worked. Seems like they would have had an Internet outage or read some troubleshooting docs to see that the brains are entirely cloud based.
On the post: AT&T Tries To Claim That Charging Users More For Privacy Is A 'Discount'
Re: Just to be picky
On the post: DOJ Reopens Asset Forfeiture Sharing Program After Temporary, Budget-Related Shutdown
Re:
On the post: RIAA: How Dare The Internet Use The DMCA That We Wrote To Build Useful Services!
Re: Shoot first, ask questions only if it makes it to court
However I would be much more likely to go along with "notice and stay down" if one of the possible outcomes was loss of copyright. Whoops, that notice wasn't filed in good faith. Your intellectual property now belongs to the Public.
On the post: FBI Won't Tell Apple How It Got Into iPhone... But Is Apparently Eager To Help Others Break Into iPhones
Re:
On the post: The Cable Industry Wants Netflix Investigated... For Throttling Itself
Re: Re: That isn't why this is happening
On the post: The Cable Industry Wants Netflix Investigated... For Throttling Itself
Re: Re: How long has this been going on?
On the post: DOJ To Court: We Got Into The iPhone, So Please Drop Our Demand To Force Apple To Help Us... This Time
Re: Re:
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