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Get a cable modem, go to jail (1999)

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Re: Get a cable modem, go to jail (1999)

#351

Post by agloe_dreams »

throw0101c wrote: post #316
Cyphase wrote: post #184

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Whatever else you think on these topics, government-enforced utility monopolies aren't the free market.

> Whatever else you think on these topics, government-enforced utility monopolies aren't the free market. They tried non-monopoly power and wireline phone markets in their early history and they didn't work. A lot of times a company would go bankrupt, but their wires would be on the poles and would degrade to the point of falling apart and dangling, which would then make contact with a live wire and folks would get e…

In fairness, this would be in the times before common usage. Also, this totally happens in the current state too as major companies buy the little guys up and then do little to actually care for the lines.

Re: Get a cable modem, go to jail (1999)

#352

Post by xattt »

neoCrimeLabs wrote: post #24

"26 April 1999: I've been "slashdotted". " [1] Wow, that brings back memories! I remember reading this article when it was posted to Slashdot because I had /just/ ordered @Home service. Instead I went with DSL service with the phone company (forgetting the Ma' Bell branch at the time). The service never worked, it took 30 days of calling support, going through the script to get past Tier 1 (remove software, install s…

The comments on the article are a nice time capsule that show how little perspectives have changed.

Re: Get a cable modem, go to jail (1999)

#353

Post by zxexz »

pmarreck wrote: post #336
midasuni wrote: post #257

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Oh another “The US is big” post. The EU has 30% more people There are 60 times as many privately owned guns in the EU as there are in Montana. There are 5 time as many guns in the US, but 20 times as many murders. There is a cultural problem in the US with firearms.

> There are 60 times as many privately owned guns in the EU as there are in Montana. > There are 5 time as many guns in the US, but 20 times as many murders. gonna need a fact-check on these claims, please, because initial googling reveals these are, at the very least, false or misleading I live in the Northeast US and very few people have guns here. Incidentally, even if it is difficult to purchase a gun, it's trivi…

Depends where in the Northeast you are! Half the people in Vermont own a gun, New Hampshire and Maine aren’t much different. NY/RI/MA/CT/NJ have relatively low gun ownership rates, for sure.

Re: Get a cable modem, go to jail (1999)

#354

Post by brazzy »

hoseja wrote: post #195
wkat4242 wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The amount of incidents involving firearms is astonishing. I'm glad I live in Europe where literally nobody has guns except police and heavy criminals that only really use them to shoot their rivals. I thought most people in the US were proud of their firearm handling professionalism which of course includes not brandishing, threatening or murdering people. I'm really a bit surprised to hear this. I did a similar job…

I'm glad to live in Europe where people have lots of guns but basically never threaten others with them because they are generally decent folk.

There's plenty of non-decent folk in Europe as well. I think the main difference is that it's much less common to fetishize guns, make them part of your everyday life, and belive that you need them to defend your life. Because that belief is the first step towards shooting a guy who disconnects your cable TV because you didn't pay your bills.

Re: Get a cable modem, go to jail (1999)

#355

Post by rsynnott »

bombcar wrote: post #324
sneed-oil wrote: post #186

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I'm glad I live in Europe where literally nobody has guns except police and heavy criminals I live in the EU and that's not true, I know multiple people who own guns and go to the shooting range every other weekend

People vastly underestimate the number of privately held firearms in Europe, and how “easy” it is to obtain one. It’s not an insurmountable obstacle, and depending on the country can range from “California difficulty” to “basically an NFA stamp” but they’re out there. Often they are not “the scary black rifle” type, but they’re still firearms. Then again, in the USA you can buy a Gatling gun and you rarely hear issue…

This is very country-dependent; in some they're actually quite common, in some they're extremely heavily restricted. In Ireland, say, you will require a legitimate reason to have one (essentially the only legitimate reasons are sports shooting, hunting, and certain farming activities), training, secure storage inspected and signed off on by the police, and permission from the police. In practice, it's so onerous that most people doing sports shooting would use a gun owned by the club. Automatic rifles are completely illegal to own, as are nearly all pistols (except for use by the military and by specialist police; ordinary police don't have firearms). Tasers etc are also effectively illegal to own (there being no legitimate sports/hunting/farming applications).

Oddly, crossbows are also restricted, though may be licensed as above; as I understand it this is due to a legislative error which no-one has gotten around to fixing.

Re: Get a cable modem, go to jail (1999)

#356

Post by rsynnott »

CalRobert wrote: post #156
wkat4242 wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The amount of incidents involving firearms is astonishing. I'm glad I live in Europe where literally nobody has guns except police and heavy criminals that only really use them to shoot their rivals. I thought most people in the US were proud of their firearm handling professionalism which of course includes not brandishing, threatening or murdering people. I'm really a bit surprised to hear this. I did a similar job…

When I lived in rural Ireland most of the farmers had a shotgun or rifle.

Worth noting that these are virtually the only people in Ireland who _do_ have firearms; the licensing for other use cases is pretty onerous.

Re: Get a cable modem, go to jail (1999)

#357

Post by solidsnack9000 »

Aloha wrote: post #323
avidiax wrote: post #212

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> "Registered to a different person" -- for the most part, guns are not registered in the USA. Was this in a state or city with a registry for AR-15s? Handguns are registered to a tiny degree. The NICS checks records may be kept only on paper, and are kept by the gun dealer until they close business. Then the BATFE or a related govt. office gets them. By order of congress, this office is not allowed to computerize.

Cash person to person transfers are either still currently legal, or were currently legal until very recently.

Gifts and other private transfers, including occasional cash transfers, are still legal in most states and will be legal for the foreseeable future.

However, some states have banned private transfers of handguns or of all guns. This means, in practice, that people must perform the transfer through licensed dealers.

It is illegal in the United States to be in the firearms business without a license. It is legal for private people to transfer firearms to one another without filling out a 4473. So on the one hand, we have the business of selling guns and filling out 4473s and maintaining records according to the ATF's rules, and the majority of transfers of guns take place according to these rules; and on the other, we have people who give a gun to their son or daughter as a birthday present, or sell a few guns they no longer use. In the middle, we have a grey area -- people who sell a few guns every year, &c. Occasionally, people in the grey area get caught; and it's not a good place to be in; so people who occasionally sell guns but have no interest in being in the firearms business will actually transfer through a licensed dealer (the seller transfers to the dealer, who then transfers to the buyer, charging a nominal fee). For example, when people sell guns on GunBroker.com, they almost always intermediate the transaction through a licensed dealer.

This is what people are talking about when they say "universal background checks" and "the gun show loophole". Now, "the gun show loophole" seems like a completely ridiculous idea. I do not see how progressives can believe it exists; and I do not see how this could possibly occur with any frequency. The ATF knows where the gun shows are. Maybe progressives think the ATF is not going to the gun shows looking for people selling guns without a license? I don't think anyone who knows anything about selling guns believes for one moment that the best place to sell guns illegally is a place, like a gun show, that is literally crawling with cops from agencies at all levels of government (not only to keep an eye on things but also as customers).

Re: Get a cable modem, go to jail (1999)

#358

Post by krisoft »

ifdefdebug wrote: post #298

What strikes me most is the level of anxiousness people in the US develop when faced with frivolous/absurd charges. This guy is working so hard - hours and hours - trying to convince Comcast to get their shit right and install a video trap! Here where I live, you would just lough out loud, lean back and continue watching TV. Because you know it would take a judge exactly 1 minute to consider two facts - 1) you had a…

> This guy is working so hard - hours and hours - trying to convince Comcast to get their shit right and install a video trap!

Yeah, I wouldn't care about that.

> I live, you would just lough out loud, lean back and continue watching TV.

Here where I live I wouldn't even connect a TV unless I have paid for the service. I wouldn't know if they forgot to install a video trap.

> it would take a judge exactly 1 minute to consider two facts - 1) you had a contract for that cable and 2) installing a video trap is not your job

Yeah well. But what if Comcast brings in "evidence" that they have installed a video trap? Maybe their guy documented installing one but forgot to actually do it. Or maybe he installed it on the wrong line. Now you are not laughing because on paper it seems like you have opened up the box and removed the video trap.

Re: Get a cable modem, go to jail (1999)

#359

Post by AlgorithmicTime »

pmarreck wrote: post #336
midasuni wrote: post #257

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Oh another “The US is big” post. The EU has 30% more people There are 60 times as many privately owned guns in the EU as there are in Montana. There are 5 time as many guns in the US, but 20 times as many murders. There is a cultural problem in the US with firearms.

> There are 60 times as many privately owned guns in the EU as there are in Montana. > There are 5 time as many guns in the US, but 20 times as many murders. gonna need a fact-check on these claims, please, because initial googling reveals these are, at the very least, false or misleading I live in the Northeast US and very few people have guns here. Incidentally, even if it is difficult to purchase a gun, it's trivi…

[dead]

Re: Get a cable modem, go to jail (1999)

#360

Post by rsynnott »

fullspectrumdev wrote: post #302
CalRobert wrote: post #267

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Actually, they had brand new broadband! My area was in a "rural fibre zone" and while I was there the local houses (including mine) went from satellite-only or tethering (which could be OK, sometimes, barely) or 1 Mbit DSL to 1Gbps fibre. It was pretty awesome.

Man, I do wonder how they decide which rural areas get fiber, do they throw darts at a map?

So the theory is that they'll roll it out to 569,000 premises which are considered unlikely to be connected to fibre via the commercial providers; it's fairly extensive. In principle, it should go virtually everywhere that the commercial providers don't. We'll see how it works out in practice, of course. They're at about 150k premises 'passed' (ie they can be connected on demand); of these 45k are actually connected.

EDIT: Actually, from context they may be talking about a prior rollout. But the idea's the same.

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