Adding to your argument, Kris Rinne, the network exec at AT&T, said that some music streaming apps use 10x the data traffic what other optimized streaming apps use, with no perceptible gain in quality or performance.
Whether you trust an AT&T exec or not is up to you, but it is not unreasonable to guess that some music services are more efficient than others.
Given that, would it not be true that if AT&T partners with one of the efficient ones, and they work together to further refine the efficiency, the end result will be optimized for minimal data traffic? And then, would it not make sense for AT&T to offer THAT service for free, since it could actually REDUCE the total load on their network, by pulling customers away from less efficient streams.
In this argument, I'm not saying it's right or wrong for AT&T to pick the winners. But I am saying that you guys are wrong to say "It makes no difference, a streaming service is a streaming service."
"I don't see the where efficiency has been prioritized by developers at all."
First, I didn't say "prioritized", I said "far more concerned". Obviously, most devs prioritize a good looking app that does something of value to users, spreads virally, and makes them $$.
Where is there evidence of my claim? I can help you with that. For example, in 2012 AT&T produced a dev tool called the ARO (resource optimizer), with the obvious intention of helping developers reduce the load on their network and customer's batteries.
The ARO was immediately used by devs, in fact worldwide, to evaluate their apps and see where they are causing unnecessary battery or data burdens. In the 2012 article linked below, you'll hear from Pandora who was an early adopter. Pandora's Tom Conrad has said that "Pandora is now able to use your data to much greater effect and with much less damaging effect on your monthly bills. "
That's just a sample of the overwhelming evidence that devs are more concerned about data than before. They've essentially gone from giving 0 shits, to giving a shit. The same can be said of users. But even if users all use their apps at peak times, they'll be using more efficient apps.
"People still use most of their data during the same peak hours."
Sure. But they are increasingly conscious of it as they do, and thus moderate their consumption. In an unbounded plan, people would behave less discriminately.
Furthermore, there are powerful secondary effects to bandwidth caps, specifically, developers are far more concerned today with building data-efficient apps then they were four years ago.
A developer who builds a "chatty" app that consumes far more data than it is worth will summarily be uninstalled and one-star rated as "uses all your data". This is not speculation or theory, this is what happened ONLY after caps were implemented. Remember how the original iPhone affected the AT&T network. Crappy network in that era, sure, but no developer had ANY economic incentive to build a data-traffic-efficient app.
Skip to today; app developers of bandwidth-intensive apps like streaming music and video continue to pursue better ways of saving data. Some good ideas, some not, but examples include:
- better codecs - Pandora randomly stops and asks you "are you still listening?" - Apps cache as much as possible of the visual templates in the original install download, so as to reduce mobile bandwidth - YouTube now doesn't pre-load the whole video, but waits until you watch some before downloading the next chunk - video resolutions are optimized to suit the device, so that we don't send 1080p to a 720p screen - Samsung's notion that video stops playing when you look away from the screen
Thus, even during peak hours, the positive impact of bandwidth caps is something I appreciate every day. If I pay more, I can get more, and I won't be crowded out by the tragedy of the commons.
At Techdirt, we often talk about "chilling effects". I LIKE the chilling effect of incentivizing developers into thinking of data traffic as something of value > 0.
The problem here is the same as the misunderstanding about the East Anglia University emails the climate change scientist sent using the term "a neat trick". The word "trick" is picked up by people outside of science in the "tricky Dick" sense, not the "solution to a math problem" sense.
Similarly, MAC spoofing is something that sounds nefarious, because of the word "spoof", but is really just a way to get some privacy, or to get services on a second device that were provisioned for your first device.
Some people just don't understand the use of jargon inside of a trade or community. These same people would think card players are cheating at Gin when they win a "trick", or that they are The Donald when they play a "Trump" card.
"Not to mention POTS is STILL better than VOIP telephone service."
Better how? I know that POTS has better uptime reliability, but perhaps I missed some key improvements. I don't know personally, since I'm on Vonage since 2001 or so. But just to check, does POTS now offer:
- free call waiting - free call forwarding - free voicemail - voicemail sent to email as attachment - web portal management interface - call hunt - multi-device simultaneous ring - mobility of the phone number to other homes or biz - ability to access your phone line from a laptop - free nationwide long distance - free Intra-LATA long distance - free long distance to a dozen or more other countries - email or call center customer support - support of wifi phones - $12 a month pricing
Allow me to add a rant I always used to post on Techdirt back when GPS was just getting added to phones for E911, so around 2001-2004:
Phones do NOT triangulate, nor do GPSes. They triLATERATE, judging time differences of arrival of signals from various sources with known locations. A radius is then created around each of those known locations, and the intersection of the radii is the location of the object. There are NO ANGLES used in the process. RADAR uses angles.
It was a small nit, but I was still correct. So this patent then doesn't even understand the process correctly?
I worked for SK Telecom out of Korea 2001-2003. We had an app that was a buddy finder AT THAT TIME. It was a Java app on our feature phones, powered by Qualcomm's CDMA chips that had GPS integrated, because Qualcomm had bought SnapTrack in 2000 for $1B dollars.
Gee. Do you think Qualcomm or SnapTrack had ever considered any of the ideas in those patents? Of freaking course they did.
What kind of fools are approving these patents in the first place?
Mike, you wrote "get companies to pay twice by clogging certain points in the network"
I see it as a desire to get the market to pay THREE times. Netflix pays for their bandwidth and connections so they can connect to their customer, the customer pays the ISP so that they can connect to services like Netflix, and then Netflix pays again to get a reliable connection to their customer.
We at Google have responded to your request, and have listed you as both a painter, an author, and a reknown moustache trend-setter.
To complete the job, we have also re-defined "Godwin's Law" as: "In any Internet discussion, it is only a matter of time before someone feigns being a doge or a cat who mis-spells words like "i can has cheezburger".
"wonder why everyone doesn't immediately replace the stock ROM"
Cuz the OEMs lock the bootloader to prevent you, they void your warranty for doing it, you have no one to ask for support or complain to when it doesn't work, certain hardware functions and buttons may cease to work (ex: camera features), and certain ROM functions will not work on your hardware.
And hacks to swap ROMs exist for only certain phones, and usually not until some time after the phone is launched.
Aside from that, only that it takes hours for a competent geek to figure it all out and to ROM-swap. This is a first-time delay and learning curve, the second would be fast...but most of us only do the one.
They work together to develop and test the final ROM that ships. Each installs their own bloat. There are some negotiations, some give and take, some strategic forces. Google is not usually consulted, but their Android terms do apply. You, the consumer, are never consulted.
Because of this, it is very hard for updates to roll out to our phones, because it requires another round of these negotiations, and technical updates of all the customizations. So our phones get updates late, we miss some Android updates, and eventually get completely orphaned.
- uses up available memory space - is a potential vector for malicious attack - is registered as the default for a function, despite the fact that you may prefer the core Android option, or an aftermarket download - become part of your update queue, causing you to be prompted and spend time thinking "what is this", "do I want to update this", when really you just want it deleted - updates cause you data traffic
and many bloatware apps also:
- communicate, causing data traffic - uses processor time, slowing your usage - are hard coded to hardware buttons, or long-press of buttons, in a way that WON'T allow you to program the buttons to the functions YOU want. - ARE ONE OF THE REASONS OUR NON-NEXUS PHONES DON'T GET ANDROID UPDATES IMMEDIATELY, because Samsung (or other) need to re-build, re-test, re-integrate, and re-deploy their bloatware layer onto the udpated Android codebase.
Tell me, Michael, does Novi launcher protect you from ANY of the above?
Let's assume that you're correct: that the market will fix the problem. How long after the first major, publicly sensational breach, do you think the market should take to respond?
Cuz, I'm thinking, it your assertion is correct, the market would have responded by now. There has been breach after breach, as long as there has been a www. Somehow, the market hasn't fixed the problem.
Your libertarian utopia would require perfect information for the market to function perfectly. Consumers would have to know exactly what kind of security each vendor offered, and UNDERSTAND that technology, and understand the risk profile it presents. Consumers would have to have that information each time they buy something like bedsheets from either Target.com or Walmart.com. Sound reasonable to you?
On the post: Music Freedom Or Holding Consumers Hostage? Letting ISPs Pick Winners And Losers Is A Problem
Re: Re: Re:
Whether you trust an AT&T exec or not is up to you, but it is not unreasonable to guess that some music services are more efficient than others.
Given that, would it not be true that if AT&T partners with one of the efficient ones, and they work together to further refine the efficiency, the end result will be optimized for minimal data traffic? And then, would it not make sense for AT&T to offer THAT service for free, since it could actually REDUCE the total load on their network, by pulling customers away from less efficient streams.
In this argument, I'm not saying it's right or wrong for AT&T to pick the winners. But I am saying that you guys are wrong to say "It makes no difference, a streaming service is a streaming service."
On the post: Music Freedom Or Holding Consumers Hostage? Letting ISPs Pick Winners And Losers Is A Problem
Re: Re: Re: Re: Re:
First, I didn't say "prioritized", I said "far more concerned". Obviously, most devs prioritize a good looking app that does something of value to users, spreads virally, and makes them $$.
Where is there evidence of my claim? I can help you with that. For example, in 2012 AT&T produced a dev tool called the ARO (resource optimizer), with the obvious intention of helping developers reduce the load on their network and customer's batteries.
The ARO was immediately used by devs, in fact worldwide, to evaluate their apps and see where they are causing unnecessary battery or data burdens. In the 2012 article linked below, you'll hear from Pandora who was an early adopter. Pandora's Tom Conrad has said that "Pandora is now able to use your data to much greater effect and with much less damaging effect on your monthly bills. "
http://www.fiercedeveloper.com/story/pandora-zynga-build-network-efficient-apps-through-atts-aro-and -9-tips-deve/2012-08-14
That's just a sample of the overwhelming evidence that devs are more concerned about data than before. They've essentially gone from giving 0 shits, to giving a shit. The same can be said of users. But even if users all use their apps at peak times, they'll be using more efficient apps.
http://www-03.ibm.com/press/us/en/pressrelease/41206.wss
On the post: Music Freedom Or Holding Consumers Hostage? Letting ISPs Pick Winners And Losers Is A Problem
Re: Re:
Sure. But they are increasingly conscious of it as they do, and thus moderate their consumption. In an unbounded plan, people would behave less discriminately.
Furthermore, there are powerful secondary effects to bandwidth caps, specifically, developers are far more concerned today with building data-efficient apps then they were four years ago.
A developer who builds a "chatty" app that consumes far more data than it is worth will summarily be uninstalled and one-star rated as "uses all your data". This is not speculation or theory, this is what happened ONLY after caps were implemented. Remember how the original iPhone affected the AT&T network. Crappy network in that era, sure, but no developer had ANY economic incentive to build a data-traffic-efficient app.
Skip to today; app developers of bandwidth-intensive apps like streaming music and video continue to pursue better ways of saving data. Some good ideas, some not, but examples include:
- better codecs
- Pandora randomly stops and asks you "are you still listening?"
- Apps cache as much as possible of the visual templates in the original install download, so as to reduce mobile bandwidth
- YouTube now doesn't pre-load the whole video, but waits until you watch some before downloading the next chunk
- video resolutions are optimized to suit the device, so that we don't send 1080p to a 720p screen
- Samsung's notion that video stops playing when you look away from the screen
Thus, even during peak hours, the positive impact of bandwidth caps is something I appreciate every day. If I pay more, I can get more, and I won't be crowded out by the tragedy of the commons.
At Techdirt, we often talk about "chilling effects". I LIKE the chilling effect of incentivizing developers into thinking of data traffic as something of value > 0.
On the post: When Aaron Swartz Spoofed His MAC Address, It Proved He Was A Criminal; When Apple Does It, It's Good For Everyone
A Neat Trick
Similarly, MAC spoofing is something that sounds nefarious, because of the word "spoof", but is really just a way to get some privacy, or to get services on a second device that were provisioned for your first device.
Some people just don't understand the use of jargon inside of a trade or community. These same people would think card players are cheating at Gin when they win a "trick", or that they are The Donald when they play a "Trump" card.
On the post: Bogus Broadband Astroturf Organizations Always Have Names Pretending They Represent The Consumers They're Working To Screw Over
Re: Re: Re:
Better how? I know that POTS has better uptime reliability, but perhaps I missed some key improvements. I don't know personally, since I'm on Vonage since 2001 or so. But just to check, does POTS now offer:
- free call waiting
- free call forwarding
- free voicemail
- voicemail sent to email as attachment
- web portal management interface
- call hunt
- multi-device simultaneous ring
- mobility of the phone number to other homes or biz
- ability to access your phone line from a laptop
- free nationwide long distance
- free Intra-LATA long distance
- free long distance to a dozen or more other countries
- email or call center customer support
- support of wifi phones
- $12 a month pricing
Cuz then it WOULD be totally better than my VOIP.
On the post: Harmless High School Prank That Occurred Completely Off Campus Turned Over To School Police Officer
Re: Re: Re: Re: I'm a Christian
"I'm a pretty conservative Christian and I see the humor in it"
"it" is misinterpreted from 'the joke letter' to 'being a cons xtian':
"you see the humor in being a conservative Christian"
There you all go. I'm pretty sure it's funnier once it's explained, right?
On the post: Harmless High School Prank That Occurred Completely Off Campus Turned Over To School Police Officer
WTF? No LOLs
Come on, people, step up. This story is all teed up for commenters. It's like one of those "caption this picture" contests.
On the post: Patent Troll Apparently Didn't Appreciate Being Called A Piece Of Shit, Sues Over Basic Location Functionality
Re: Re: Re: Re: Triangulation
http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20080604/2231291314.shtml#c281
On the post: Patent Troll Apparently Didn't Appreciate Being Called A Piece Of Shit, Sues Over Basic Location Functionality
Re: Re: Re: Triangulation
Phones do NOT triangulate, nor do GPSes. They triLATERATE, judging time differences of arrival of signals from various sources with known locations. A radius is then created around each of those known locations, and the intersection of the radii is the location of the object. There are NO ANGLES used in the process. RADAR uses angles.
It was a small nit, but I was still correct. So this patent then doesn't even understand the process correctly?
On the post: Patent Troll Apparently Didn't Appreciate Being Called A Piece Of Shit, Sues Over Basic Location Functionality
Saw it before the patent was granted
Gee. Do you think Qualcomm or SnapTrack had ever considered any of the ideas in those patents? Of freaking course they did.
What kind of fools are approving these patents in the first place?
On the post: Google Fiber: You Know How Comcast Is Making Netflix Pay Extra? We Don't Do That Kind Of Crap
Pay Three Times
I see it as a desire to get the market to pay THREE times. Netflix pays for their bandwidth and connections so they can connect to their customer, the customer pays the ISP so that they can connect to services like Netflix, and then Netflix pays again to get a reliable connection to their customer.
On the post: Pedophile, Embarrassed Politician And Disliked Doctor Kick Off Attempts To Delete Their Histories From Google
Re:
We at Google have responded to your request, and have listed you as both a painter, an author, and a reknown moustache trend-setter.
To complete the job, we have also re-defined "Godwin's Law" as:
"In any Internet discussion, it is only a matter of time before someone feigns being a doge or a cat who mis-spells words like "i can has cheezburger".
On the post: DOJ Says Americans Have No 4th Amendment Protections At All When They Communicate With Foreigners
Curious About Edge Case
1) Do we have legal expectation of privacy for this call?
and
2) How will they argue to twist logic to remove that right?
On the post: The Stupidity Of Installing Bloatware That No One Uses... And Everyone Hates
Re: Re: Re: Just a clarification
Cuz the OEMs lock the bootloader to prevent you, they void your warranty for doing it, you have no one to ask for support or complain to when it doesn't work, certain hardware functions and buttons may cease to work (ex: camera features), and certain ROM functions will not work on your hardware.
And hacks to swap ROMs exist for only certain phones, and usually not until some time after the phone is launched.
Aside from that, only that it takes hours for a competent geek to figure it all out and to ROM-swap. This is a first-time delay and learning curve, the second would be fast...but most of us only do the one.
Other than that, it's pretty straightforward.
On the post: The Stupidity Of Installing Bloatware That No One Uses... And Everyone Hates
Re: Just a clarification
They work together to develop and test the final ROM that ships. Each installs their own bloat. There are some negotiations, some give and take, some strategic forces. Google is not usually consulted, but their Android terms do apply. You, the consumer, are never consulted.
Because of this, it is very hard for updates to roll out to our phones, because it requires another round of these negotiations, and technical updates of all the customizations. So our phones get updates late, we miss some Android updates, and eventually get completely orphaned.
On the post: The Stupidity Of Installing Bloatware That No One Uses... And Everyone Hates
Re: not analogous to PC bloatware
- uses up available memory space
- is a potential vector for malicious attack
- is registered as the default for a function, despite the fact that you may prefer the core Android option, or an aftermarket download
- become part of your update queue, causing you to be prompted and spend time thinking "what is this", "do I want to update this", when really you just want it deleted
- updates cause you data traffic
and many bloatware apps also:
- communicate, causing data traffic
- uses processor time, slowing your usage
- are hard coded to hardware buttons, or long-press of buttons, in a way that WON'T allow you to program the buttons to the functions YOU want.
- ARE ONE OF THE REASONS OUR NON-NEXUS PHONES DON'T GET ANDROID UPDATES IMMEDIATELY, because Samsung (or other) need to re-build, re-test, re-integrate, and re-deploy their bloatware layer onto the udpated Android codebase.
Tell me, Michael, does Novi launcher protect you from ANY of the above?
Painting over a cancer does not cure the cancer.
On the post: James Clapper Bans Intelligence Community From Basically Any Interaction With Nearly Anyone With A Social Media Account
Cut Both Ways?
http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20140416/11424226934/travesty-supreme-court-senate-deny-scotu sblog-press-pass.shtml
On the post: US Government Is Paying To Undermine Internet Security, Not To Fix It
Re:
Let's assume that you're correct: that the market will fix the problem. How long after the first major, publicly sensational breach, do you think the market should take to respond?
Cuz, I'm thinking, it your assertion is correct, the market would have responded by now. There has been breach after breach, as long as there has been a www. Somehow, the market hasn't fixed the problem.
Your libertarian utopia would require perfect information for the market to function perfectly. Consumers would have to know exactly what kind of security each vendor offered, and UNDERSTAND that technology, and understand the risk profile it presents. Consumers would have to have that information each time they buy something like bedsheets from either Target.com or Walmart.com. Sound reasonable to you?
On the post: General Mills Says If You 'Like' Cheerios On Facebook, You Can No Longer Sue
Reminds Me of the HumanCentiPad Apple ToS Episode of SouthPark
"By clicking Agree, you are also acknowledging that Apple may sew your mouth to the butthole of another user..."
"Hmmm...I'm going to click on...decline."
On the post: Do Nature's Publishers Even Read Their Own Articles About Open Access?
Naturally
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