361–370 of 452 posts
Earlier quoted context omitted.
We need a statistical analysis of HN userids, thread topics and posting times.
Does HN expose raw data? Or must one resort to scrapping?
Official: http://blog.ycombinator.com/hacker-news-api
Unofficial: https://hn.algolia.com/api & https://github.com/karan/HackerNewsAPI
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> To me, this is proof they are still in bed with the ISPs The established players are quite often in favor of regulation, since it stifles up-and-comers who might out-compete them.
This is really the difference between a liberal and a libertarian. Liberals think that somehow the regulation will never be tainted by economic forces. Libertarians realize it is, and that the best regulation is the itchy feet of a free market where you can just choose to not do business with companies whose policies you don't like. By the time the internet is destroyed by regulation, those advocating for its complet…
There's a huge difference between "the internet" and "the internet delivery business". There is no free market in the ISP business as it hasn't been a competitive market since the days of DSL.
How is complete government regulation equivalent to a "free and open Internet"? Everyone seems to think that this will just be exactly what we have now, but with more freedom and options. I don't think this will be the case. It will open the door for any future governments to start regulating things like freedom of speech.
I guess I should just continue with the "all government regulation is good" HN circle-jerk to not get down voted.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
At any given moment it is finite, but it is always expandable, and not a consumable resource. Using more bandwidth helps push the expansion. If we had extremely high rates, and low caps, you'd never get things like video services, and bandwidth providers would never have incentive to expand the network. So the more use the better.
The same could be said for electricity, no? I should leave the lights on all the time to increase energy demand so they build more wind farms and solar plants?
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> To me, this is proof they are still in bed with the ISPs The established players are quite often in favor of regulation, since it stifles up-and-comers who might out-compete them.
This is really the difference between a liberal and a libertarian. Liberals think that somehow the regulation will never be tainted by economic forces. Libertarians realize it is, and that the best regulation is the itchy feet of a free market where you can just choose to not do business with companies whose policies you don't like. By the time the internet is destroyed by regulation, those advocating for its complet…
The idea that deregulation would suddenly allow good citizen corporations to destroy evil actors is laughable in most circumstances.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
You pay to guarantee availability. The urgency of netflix is not equivalent to a surgery. The netflix traffic is a threat to the surgery traffic. The ISP doesn't extort- the customer pays for service guarantees. This is already what happens today in MPLS vpns. Savvy technologists are going to demand guarantees that other tenants can't disrupt their service. This is in no way a mafia-like protection scam. There is a c…
Cloudflare is opt-in. In my scenario, the ISP purposely degrades the service unless you pay more. This isn't hypothetical as it has been proven they did/do to Netflix traffic. Cloudflare isn't going to DDoS every site that doesn't sign up for their service. The value of doing surgery successfully via the internet is high. Are you really that naive that you don't think ISPs will attempt to capture as much of that valu…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Your posts in this thread have had the woe-is-me scream of the right wing, but I'll give you the benefit of the doubt and assume you're not being disingenuous when you're being wrong. There aren't one or two ISPs because of regulation, there are one or two ISPs because the barries to entry are discouragingly high. It's fantastically, stupefyingly expensive to run that much cable. There's a reason we as a country have…
> There aren't one or two ISPs because of regulation, there are one or two ISPs because the barries to entry are discouragingly high Infrastructure and Internet service used to be separate businesses at one point, the barrier was created when infrastructure owners were allowed to kick the other ISPs out. I had dozens of ISP choices when I signed up for DSL in 1998.
This stinks of deregulation to me.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Good, personal income and corporate taxes have never been lower and we're long overdue for a tax hike.
No, bad. The federal government is no where near its smallest size and no one is happy with how they're executing. The last thing we need is to give them more money and power.
Something to think about.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
The cable franchise agreements are exclusive. That's why you don't see two companies offering cable service. If they weren't you other companies would compete. Regarding wireless, you don't seem to understand how the industry is structured. While it's true there are many brand names on the shelf in walmart, there are only 3 actual providers in a given metro region. Virgin, for instance, uses Sprints network, which is…
> The cable franchise agreements are exclusive. That's why you don't see two companies offering cable service. If they weren't you other companies would compete. Nope.[1] Exclusive franchise agreements are illegal under federal law since 1996. There is no competition because the business proposition sucks. The only sensible play in most places is to try and target a niche market of wealthy neighborhoods that'll pay f…
If I want build a network in Comcast territory, there are very "new" customers. I have to go through an extremely expensive build out, and convince customers to switch. Meanwhile, Comcast can undercut me on price because they have already have infrastructure paid for. They can offer $1 internet to people trying to leave until I run out of money.
So yes, you are right that providers aren't currently monopolies, but they exist in markets distorted by being monopolies in the past.
edit: note that the Comcast/Time Warner mega providers grew themselves by buying up all the small ex-monopolies across the country - they didn't build out against them.