What your really saying is people don't have rights to restrict their property. I would like to use your house for my parties from now on then. Once again, you don't have a right to the internet just like you don't have a right to the New York Times. This entire argument is flawed. If people want to restrict access to their pipes, then that is their shallow grave. Consumer retaliation can be strong, devastatingly so. (Just ask Time Warner)

I mean, it isn't like everyone has internet. Go up to some rural mountain areas and you can't get it during the winter at times. And I am not just talking about broadband, I am talking about the internet. Are their first amendment rights being violated? Not being able to consume a product you desire has nothing to do with rights, at all. No one owes you speech, that is something you owe yourself.

I think your heart is in the right place on this, I think your demands are completely unreasonable, and in the end, lead down a path I don't think you desire. Does the FCC create free speech on TV? Or does it take an active role in making sure things aren't said? Same with the radio, are they handing out tickets for people not being expressive enough, or expression something they don't want heard? You really, really, really, don't want governments deciding how content is delivered on the internet...you really don't.

Well my question to this is, is the bandwidth actually as advertised at all hours of the day and do they guarantee it will be available at that rate at all times in the future under the terms of the agreement?

For instance, Time Warner in my area was consistently fast at all hours of the day when I first got it....much better than the DSL I had prior. And it slowly got a little slower...a few more outages a year...more "massive outages"... plus other problems unrelated to speed like them cutting off my net connection because they can't read a street address properly so they killed my net access when they installed my neighbors "business class"...that took me 2 days of calling to straighten out and total of 5 days to fix.

So the conclusion I can draw there is, his business class plus the other subscribers signing up in my loop drastically affected my bandwidth. Yet they claim higher bandwidth offerings with "Roadrunner Boost"...and I've got that...it's almost as fast as my connection was back when I first got it maybe a little better late at night.

So their claim of higher speeds is technically true, only because they've gotten slower. And the minimum speed they offer is pretty appalling although I don't remember it off the top of my head...I think it was like 125 or 250 kbps down.

Killing off non-digital television was supposed to give more bandwidth on the line for better internet speeds and better digital programming, except you have to pay for both...and the internet speeds aren't guaranteed until you step into business class. And for them to guarantee those speeds on a loop they would have to throttle residential users on the same loop.


I am not aware of DSL being improved upon. I know they offer the Fios and what not offerings through some of the phone companies, but they are not offering in this area. And you have to research them to see if they have hidden download caps or other nasty little things in the works to stick on their network to create artificial speed bumps to their own offerings.

Beyond that you'll have to direct to me to the information you speak of.

As for cell phones, I don't use data plans on them, but my parents have a property that has cell towers located on them...and I've been able to catch a couple of the guys and ask them some questions. Even without asking them...there's a screwed up little story related to these towers.

About 10 years back they got hot and heavy about putting in towers, for 3-5 years they were renting lots of land off people and installing these towers. My dad did some work for them paving the roadways, got to know one of the head guys in charge of the project. And while my information is not going to be perfect I know a few things affected their installation and their coverage.

Many of the cities and burbs wouldn't allow them to install towers that would be consider eyesores, in some cases they decorated the towers or put something on them to mask them being a tower...maybe the city name or some kind of design. Many of the "perfect" spots for towers people would not rent the land, so they had to pick imperfect places as close as they could get. So this led to problems with the coverage areas and causes some towers to bear more burden than they should, which Im taking a stab here and saying this really affects big cities network speeds. Within the last 3 years they upgraded the tower on my parents property by installing fiber landlines to the towers, presumably to speed up their network and alleviate some of the congestion.....however....the tower on the property has 2 "boxes" (equipment rooms with racks of network gear and the like) it feeds signals into...and I believe each ring or triangle of receivers transmitters is another cell phone companies signal range...so it services at least 3 networks. Meaning all 3 of those networks shares that one fiber line they installed to the tower unless they have multiple lines in the cable to be split, not very familiar with fiber cable.

Now the weird thing here is...Verizon did the majority of the tower installs I'm familiar with..as soon as they finished all of the towers were taken over by a company called "American Tower". They service the towers, you call them when you see a problem... I called them once about their air conditioner unit running all the time (it has 2 and one was running morning noon and night every time I got close enough to hear it). Two or three months later I thought I'd check to see if they fixed it, I could hear it running as I approached it...and when I got to where I could see it..it was frozen solid. This was in the Fall a year or two back, like 50 degrees or so outside with Winter coming. So they obviously don't pay very close attention to their equipment. AC failing in the summer means their shit cooks, and engineer said stuff in there is easily 100 grand worth of equipment.

So what I gather is, Verizon sold the towers, and rents from them....and now the other carriers rent from them. American Tower is in charge of maintaining the property and the building, but probably not the equipment since I see the various company engineers show up from time to time. They also provide power generators, there's a diesel powered unit that sits near these buildings and turns on from time to time.

I was also told the height of a tower limits it's usefulness. The tall towers can host more companies various signals versus the short towers. So For some reason they put in a bunch of short towers but they have limited utility and are just as ugly as the tall ones...so I dunno why in the hell they did that.


But for them to offer less congestion and higher speeds in high population areas they need more towers so they can break the area up in smaller coverage areas to limit the number of devices hitting any one tower. I have not see them put in a new tower since American Tower took over. I have seen them remove tower locations, probably due to cost of operation/replacement being high due to people hitting them with vehicles or breaking in.

In my opinion, cell phone pricing is a little better than it was but I am not happy with how Verizon handles their plans. For instance, if you want just a voice plan..no data no text. Your phone selection is terrible, I mean basic basic phones...most generally being flip phones with poor external screens and OK internal screens. If you want a better phone, you have to buy a text or data plan. Because if you buy specific types of phones, Verizon assumes you will be using that phone for what they specify that phone is. Take the EnV line of phones, I hate texting, but I like having the keyboard for typing in contacts and just general moderate to heavy usage it's easier to use than a flip phone keying in alternative. If I wanted that phone, I need a texting plan. If you get into smart phones you need a data plan...you can't activate one on your account without the plan. I don't know if the phones need the data plan to even function or not, but texting phones don't need texting plans to function...that's Verizon's plan offerings to maximize their earnings.

And texting in general is cheaper to the phone company than any voice call will ever be. Except texting is almost universally in ADDITION to voice packages....yet texting costs them very little in transfer costs compared to transmitting voice.

I hope some company out there is actually trying to implement new technologies and improve transfer speeds and push down prices. But if they are, they are taking their sweet time doing so...because if it was a big push...the other companies would have to react to that. Right now the only thing I see them all doing is trying to push through contract changes, shutting down government implement ISPs, and influencing laws that help keep us in the stone age.


>> ^deathcow:

> Everything except their networks seems to increase in size and capability, which is an odd thing.
All the ISP's I'm aware of have RADICALLY increased bandwidth and package offerings. It's called survival.

Comment hidden because you are ignoring dag. (show it anyway)

Then I guess I don't understand how you could think it's statist or akin to creationism? This isn't doctrine- this is the free-wheelin', unfettered supply and demand that you free-marketeers love. It also has no heart. Ask the kids working in Nike sweatshops. The invisible hand doesn't care if they get an education.

In reply to this comment by blankfist:
I knew which invisible hand you meant.

In reply to this comment by dag:
Dude. I'm talking about THE invisible hand.
In reply to this comment by blankfist:
And that is where you and I disagree. Competition ensures we care for each other. You mentioned Time-Warner as if it's the 'Going Galt' example of free markets, but I'd dare argue that if you're incorporated you're no longer part of the free market but instead part of the collusive crony market.

Only statists think of societies in terms of having a guiding hand, much like Creationists think history of life had one. There's no invisible hand. Only people.

In reply to this comment by dag:
Not evil, no. Just driven by a voracious invisible hand that cares not for me and thee.

I knew which invisible hand you meant.

In reply to this comment by dag:
Dude. I'm talking about THE invisible hand.
In reply to this comment by blankfist:
And that is where you and I disagree. Competition ensures we care for each other. You mentioned Time-Warner as if it's the 'Going Galt' example of free markets, but I'd dare argue that if you're incorporated you're no longer part of the free market but instead part of the collusive crony market.

Only statists think of societies in terms of having a guiding hand, much like Creationists think history of life had one. There's no invisible hand. Only people.

In reply to this comment by dag:
Not evil, no. Just driven by a voracious invisible hand that cares not for me and thee.

Comment hidden because you are ignoring dag. (show it anyway)

Dude. I'm talking about THE invisible hand.
In reply to this comment by blankfist:
And that is where you and I disagree. Competition ensures we care for each other. You mentioned Time-Warner as if it's the 'Going Galt' example of free markets, but I'd dare argue that if you're incorporated you're no longer part of the free market but instead part of the collusive crony market.

Only statists think of societies in terms of having a guiding hand, much like Creationists think history of life had one. There's no invisible hand. Only people.

In reply to this comment by dag:
Not evil, no. Just driven by a voracious invisible hand that cares not for me and thee.

And that is where you and I disagree. Competition ensures we care for each other. You mentioned Time-Warner as if it's the 'Going Galt' example of free markets, but I'd dare argue that if you're incorporated you're no longer part of the free market but instead part of the collusive crony market.

Only statists think of societies in terms of having a guiding hand, much like Creationists think history of life had one. There's no invisible hand. Only people.

In reply to this comment by dag:
Not evil, no. Just driven by a voracious invisible hand that cares not for me and thee.

Comment hidden because you are ignoring dag. (show it anyway)

Not evil, no. Just driven by a voracious invisible hand that cares not for me and thee.

In reply to this comment by blankfist:
Haha. Rural businesses are evil. They kill people for the lulz.

In reply to this comment by dag:
Thanks for the link. I think the most important part of the article is this:

Imagine an actual for profit fire company. Would they really do this? Would they really turn down a higher fee and risk the bad press of being the compnay that sat there while a familty home burned?

My answer to that is, yes - probably, they would. Because a rural area only has the population density to support a single private fire department. It's them or nothing. And letting the house burn down sends a heck of a message to other potential subscribers.

With a defacto monopoly on a service for the common good, a private business will do whatever increases subscribers and profits the most.

Where Time-Warner is the only broadband provider, they will raise prices to the sweet spot, just under where people will actually drop their subscription - and fight tooth and nail against anything that undermines their monopoly.

The same mindless devotion to profit would apply to a privatized fire department. Keep your money-grubbing corporations out of my community services please! This includes things like fastfood companies sponsoring my kids text books.

some things, BlankFist, are just not solved by a free-market. I hope someday you'll moderate your political views to the shades of gray that represent a non-black-and-white reality.

In reply to this comment by blankfist:
You asked a while back, and I feel this guy did a decent job of answering it.

http://theemptiness.info/2010/10/burning-down-the-house/

Haha. Rural businesses are evil. They kill people for the lulz.

In reply to this comment by dag:
Thanks for the link. I think the most important part of the article is this:

Imagine an actual for profit fire company. Would they really do this? Would they really turn down a higher fee and risk the bad press of being the compnay that sat there while a familty home burned?

My answer to that is, yes - probably, they would. Because a rural area only has the population density to support a single private fire department. It's them or nothing. And letting the house burn down sends a heck of a message to other potential subscribers.

With a defacto monopoly on a service for the common good, a private business will do whatever increases subscribers and profits the most.

Where Time-Warner is the only broadband provider, they will raise prices to the sweet spot, just under where people will actually drop their subscription - and fight tooth and nail against anything that undermines their monopoly.

The same mindless devotion to profit would apply to a privatized fire department. Keep your money-grubbing corporations out of my community services please! This includes things like fastfood companies sponsoring my kids text books.

some things, BlankFist, are just not solved by a free-market. I hope someday you'll moderate your political views to the shades of gray that represent a non-black-and-white reality.

In reply to this comment by blankfist:
You asked a while back, and I feel this guy did a decent job of answering it.

http://theemptiness.info/2010/10/burning-down-the-house/

Comment hidden because you are ignoring dag. (show it anyway)

Thanks for the link. I think the most important part of the article is this:

Imagine an actual for profit fire company. Would they really do this? Would they really turn down a higher fee and risk the bad press of being the compnay that sat there while a familty home burned?

My answer to that is, yes - probably, they would. Because a rural area only has the population density to support a single private fire department. It's them or nothing. And letting the house burn down sends a heck of a message to other potential subscribers.

With a defacto monopoly on a service for the common good, a private business will do whatever increases subscribers and profits the most.

Where Time-Warner is the only broadband provider, they will raise prices to the sweet spot, just under where people will actually drop their subscription - and fight tooth and nail against anything that undermines their monopoly.

The same mindless devotion to profit would apply to a privatized fire department. Keep your money-grubbing corporations out of my community services please! This includes things like fastfood companies sponsoring my kids text books.

some things, BlankFist, are just not solved by a free-market. I hope someday you'll moderate your political views to the shades of gray that represent a non-black-and-white reality.

In reply to this comment by blankfist:
You asked a while back, and I feel this guy did a decent job of answering it.

http://theemptiness.info/2010/10/burning-down-the-house/

Although the percentile number does show a bit of bias from different companies, the number count of the donation clearly makes News Corp stand out the most

>> ^NetRunner:

News Corp (owner of Fox): $1,074,700 to Republicans, $105,500 to Democrats
(91% to Republicans)
GE (owner of NBC/MSNBC): $410,100 to Republicans, $688,900 to Democrats
(37% to Republicans)
Viacom (owner of CBS/Comedy Central): $64,000 to Republicans, $108,700 to Democrats
(37% to Republicans)
Disney (owner of ABC): $95,000 to Republicans, $110,500 to Democrats
(46% to Republicans)
Time Warner (owner of CNN): $41,500 to Republicans, $70,500 to Democrats
(37% to Republicans)

>> ^Mashiki:

What are you talking about? The parent companies of NBC, CBS and ABC all do the same thing. The only difference is they're happily lying to your face about it.


Bzzt. Completely wrong. First, this is all a matter of public record, both on the part of Fox, and the parent companies of the other three major networks.

Second, there's a big difference on the partisan split (and total amount) of money being spent. According to CNN, we're looking at numbers like this:

News Corp (owner of Fox): $1,074,700 to Republicans, $105,500 to Democrats
(91% to Republicans)

GE (owner of NBC/MSNBC): $410,100 to Republicans, $688,900 to Democrats
(37% to Republicans)

Viacom (owner of CBS/Comedy Central): $64,000 to Republicans, $108,700 to Democrats
(37% to Republicans)

Disney (owner of ABC): $95,000 to Republicans, $110,500 to Democrats
(46% to Republicans)

Time Warner (owner of CNN): $41,500 to Republicans, $70,500 to Democrats
(37% to Republicans)

But wait, you're saying, doesn't this go to show there's a liberal bias in all other forms of media? No, not really. It's pretty normal for companies to tilt their spending to the party in power, especially when they hold the White House, and large majorities in both chambers of Congress.

You can identify partisan organizations by the way they always lean toward one party, regardless of their level of control over congress, or merely by the naked one-sided nature of the tilt (like 91%!). In the case of News Corp, you have both.

Oh, and a final point about the quantity of contributions. I'd note that while GE's total donation amount is comparable to News Corp's, GE isn't just a media organization, it's also a major manufacturer, and a defense contractor. If you compare them to just the pure media companies, you see that News Corp donated nearly ten times as much just to the Republican party as the next largest media company's total spending on campaign contributions.

Okay, reason is just plain wrong about net neutrality. For one, we have net neutrality in effect now by FCC fiat. That's why you don't "have many cases of it happening" now -- the FCC is cracking down on companies who violate it (like Time Warner throttling bittorrent).

The proposed legislation wouldn't create a situation where the FCC just calls it as it sees it, that's the reality as it exists today without guiding law placing limits on it.

The FCC itself, being subjected to "political forces" realizes that they can't just willy-nilly make decisions based on who bribes them, they know they need to set out an objective set of standards, and follow them.

In case you care, here are the four principles the FCC laid out as what they mean by network neutrality. They are:

• To encourage broadband deployment and preserve and promote the open and interconnected nature of the public Internet, consumers are entitled to access the lawful Internet content of their choice.
  
• To encourage broadband deployment and preserve and promote the open and interconnected nature of the public Internet, consumers are entitled to run applications and use services of their choice, subject to the needs of law enforcement.
  
• To encourage broadband deployment and preserve and promote the open and interconnected nature of the public Internet, consumers are entitled to connect their choice of legal devices that do not harm the network.
  
• To encourage broadband deployment and preserve and promote the open and interconnected nature of the public Internet, consumers are entitled to competition among network providers, application and service providers, and content providers.
  

The big grey area not covered by this today is bandwidth shaping (aka QoS), which providers could use to limit bandwidth to content they wanted to discourage the use of (the content of their competitors, say). For example, if a company owns a TV network and an ISP, they could very easily choose to limit the bandwidth their ISP customers get to any competing TV network's internet content.

The best arguments against Net Neutraily are largely technical ones, raising the concern that the legislation may hamper the ability of ISPs to use QoS to enhance customer experience. Personally, I don't see why that's an argument against it, just an argument that the QoS schemes need to be subjected to FCC oversight to ensure they aren't being used as some sort of anti-competitive business practice.

Or you can just make shit up about how net neutrality is going to pull the plug on grandma make us have to go back to dial-up internet access.

Ok fanboys and girls aside, highdileeho's post got me to thinking that perhaps we should all take a bit of time like our pal eric827364982374, and go through the sift and do a bit of house-cleaning-

For some of you, who tend to post in a linear fashion from some of the major news organizations, and lack the spark of creativity that sets us apart from the beasts and foul, and who have a particular world view that is parroted by most of those who have been spoon-fed the sheit from television for so long that your limbic system is so much Rupert Maddock's bitch.....

(by the way, we should boycott the following top 20 list of Infotainment Fucks)
1. Time Warner Inc.
2. Walt Disney Company
3. Viacom Inc.
4. News Corporation
5. CBS Corporation
6. Cox Enterprises
7. NBC Universal
8. Gannett Company, Inc.
9. Clear Channel Communications Inc.
10. Advance Publications, Inc.
11. Tribune Company
12. McGraw-Hill Companies
13. Hearst Corporation
14. Washington Post Company
15. The New York Times Company
16. E.W. Scripps Co.
17. McClatchy Company
18. Thomson Corporation
19. Freedom Communications, Inc.
20. A&E Television Networks

....you who fancy Kieth Overmanned'S deaditorials might want to check your viddies.....I got tired of "deading" after 3 pages of THIRTY-THREE FUCKING PAGES OF FUCKING KIETH FUCKING OLBERMANN VIDDIES!!!
AAAAAAAAAAAARRRRRRRRRRRRRRGGGGGGGGGGGHHHHHHH!!!!

Yeah dag, poncy fanvid crapola, is clogging up your site!!

>> ^EndAll:
Wow..
State-run media, defending its glorious leader.
Don't watch that! Remember Sarah Palin? She's worse!


Um, state-run? CNN is a wholly owned subsidiary of Time Warner, which is a publicly traded corporation headed by Chairman and CEO Jeffrey L. Bewkes. The government holds no stake in CNN unless they have shares in Time Warner. To my knowledge, they do not.

I'm not saying that the video isn't a travesty of news. It is, but let's not conflate things that aren't related.

The thing is, to get 50 megabits in Japan costs the equivalent of only $30 a month.

$30 a month in DSL from my provider (a middleman provider between Verizon and I that charges maybe $5 a month extra for unlimited bandwidth + more) gives you a 1 megabit connection!

$25 a month for a 1 megabit connection is bullshit. It's utter garbage.

I live in a city in California between Santa Barbara and LA where Verizon and Time Warner Cable have both rolled out fiber. But the cost for FIOS is ridiculous, and gets you only 5 megabits to start.

TWC offers a 10 megabit line for $40-some a month, but is interested in metered bandwidth. That's unacceptable, and I refuse to support it.

The low end broadband speeds haven't changed in 10 years or so. There shouldn't even be a .766 megabit option available at all.

I understand that there's an infrastructure problem with doing this, and that these companies need to recover their losses. Thus, they want to keep shitty DSL and whatever speed $30 solutions available.

But someday the low end options need to be upgraded. 5 megabits should cost $20 a month.