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Advancing our amazing bet

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131–140 of 221 posts

Re: Advancing our amazing bet

#131
post #109

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is why I read the comments first, just avoided another painful article. Do people who communicate in spin-speak start to think that way on the inside too?

Oh that's an interesting question. When I speak a different languages I switch to thinking in that language (this goes for human and computer languages). If I talk with a Russian friend, I think in Russian. When use a functional programming language I switch to thinking in functional concepts (maps, folds, list comprehension, closures). When in an OO language think about composition and so on. So when they write that…

That's absolutely fascinating, because I personally always think the same "way." Are you aware of any research on this subject?

Re: Advancing our amazing bet

#132
A model that seems to work pretty well in Europe (or at least, over here in Italy) is having utility providers (which are already used to handle infrastructure at a scale) taking care of deploying fiber everywhere to then sell access back to the ISPs (bitstream).

In this way you have an entity who is solely focused on building and managing the infrastructure, which is able to make investments that single ISPs would not be able to do (while trying to still be profitable). I have no data but I am also quite sure that those companies are receiving funds from both the Government and the EU.

Anyway, they're building the digital highways that we miss and the result for the consumers is not bad: here in Milan, as an example, multiple operators started offering 1 Gb/s FTTH connections for 20 EUR/month.

Such fees are only possible if you do not have to try to be profitable while having to absorb the hit from deploying your own infrastructure.

Re: Advancing our amazing bet

#133

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think it's actually the opposite of "regulatory capture." It's not about the incumbent getting special treatment, but making sure a new entrant doesn't get special treatment.

If the regulations only serve to protect incumbents by raising the barriers to entry, ignoring whether this is the case here, rather than the public interest, isn't it still valid to argue that this is regulatory capture? I'm genuinely curious here and not trying to be obnoxiously argumentative.

Yes, that's a literal textbook example of regulatory capture.

There are many other examples of rent-seeking. One of the most common ways of using government to eliminate competition is what is referred to as "regulatory capture." This is the case where regulators end up acting in ways that benefit the industries that they regulate. Many government agencies are generally created with the high-minded notion of protecting the public from rapacious behavior of corporations. However, these corporations can use the government agencies to protect themselves from competition, most frequently by encouraging a set of regulations that makes it very difficult for newcomers to enter an industry. They use the creation of regulations as a barrier to entry.

https://www.e-education.psu.edu/ebf200wd/node/160

Re: Advancing our amazing bet

#134
post #109

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Oh that's an interesting question. When I speak a different languages I switch to thinking in that language (this goes for human and computer languages). If I talk with a Russian friend, I think in Russian. When use a functional programming language I switch to thinking in functional concepts (maps, folds, list comprehension, closures). When in an OO language think about composition and so on. So when they write that…

That's absolutely fascinating, because I personally always think the same "way." Are you aware of any research on this subject?

I always think in the language I am currently speaking/listening to. And I'm pretty sure everyone else does.

As for programming languages, I myself haven't done functional programming, but I'd imagine if I did, I would temporarily discard any OO programming knowledge I have, while busy coding something in a functional way. Because OO concepts are mostly irrelevant in that case, so why would you be thinking about them?

Re: Advancing our amazing bet

#135

That was kinda impressively worded. Like, it took me a while to realize that what they were saying is "hey, this isn't working, we need to cut expenses. Also, I quit." So, good job framing this about investing in R&D. Any clues as to why they're actually doing this? Competition, regulation, ???

For me a quick scan and noticing the word "journey" immediately made everything clear.

Re: Advancing our amazing bet

#136
post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> every technically-inclined person in the city quickly discovered that Ethernet controllers in consumer PC's can't come close to pushing gigabit Ethernet, regardless of what's printed on the box Really? I have a chromebox (CPU is Haswell Celeron 2955U, NIC is Realtek 8168), running Windows and can hit about 950M down/833M up on dslreports speedtest when my ATT fiber is having a good day. I thought Realtek nics were…

Macs also do pretty well with stock NICs. This is well outside my area of expertise, but I think it may have been as much a chipset or bus issue as anything (e.g. other limitations presented by the motherboard), as all the issues I've observed or heard about have been with onboard NICs. Even the cheapest add-on cards performed loads better...

I guess most of the iffy onboard NICs I've had weren't 1G. But I do now recall some issues with speed on an nForce integrated nic, although it was still fast enough, much faster than 100M anyway.

Re: Advancing our amazing bet

#137
post #126

This announcement needs a little bit of translation from the marketing language it's written in: > And thanks to the hard work of everyone on the Access team, our business is solid: our subscriber base and revenue are growing quickly, and we expect that growth to continue. "We're not yet profitable." > We have refined our plan going forward to achieve these objectives. It entails us making changes to focus our busine…

> I'm sure Comcast and Time Warner and friends are all breathing a sigh of relief. Not really. I read this as "Google no longer regards wireline providers as an existential threat as everybody is on mobile." Google fiber was never about profit; it was about preventing Comcast et al. from cutting Google off from users

Right after Google announced they were pulling out of Portland, Comcast immediately raised prices and added a data cap to existing plans.

Re: Advancing our amazing bet

#138

A model that seems to work pretty well in Europe (or at least, over here in Italy) is having utility providers (which are already used to handle infrastructure at a scale) taking care of deploying fiber everywhere to then sell access back to the ISPs (bitstream). In this way you have an entity who is solely focused on building and managing the infrastructure, which is able to make investments that single ISPs would n…

We have a lot of those networks here in Sweden. The thing is though, it is much more expensive than simpler networks where you have a "group connection" to an ISP. I think its usually double the price to use a service platform fibre network, and sometimes the group connections can be had for 1/4 the price!

Although I have to say these new platforms are kind of awesome. The city I live in has a city-wide (and beyond) network where you can choose from 1-1000 Mbps service from several ISPs. And it has "local peering" which means if you send data to/from your neighbor, no matter which ISP they have, the data will only hit your local router in the basement/close by. No need to send data via the internet, or even an IX. In practice though, that performance is not much different from just sending the data on a much longer roundtrip, which makes me sad.

Re: Advancing our amazing bet

#139

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's absolutely fascinating, because I personally always think the same "way." Are you aware of any research on this subject?

I always think in the language I am currently speaking/listening to. And I'm pretty sure everyone else does. As for programming languages, I myself haven't done functional programming, but I'd imagine if I did, I would temporarily discard any OO programming knowledge I have, while busy coding something in a functional way. Because OO concepts are mostly irrelevant in that case, so why would you be thinking about them…

Discarding OO concepts is easier said than done. I'm betting that inability to discard OO concepts is the main hurdle people have while learning FP.

Re: Advancing our amazing bet

#140
post #126

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I'm sure Comcast and Time Warner and friends are all breathing a sigh of relief. Not really. I read this as "Google no longer regards wireline providers as an existential threat as everybody is on mobile." Google fiber was never about profit; it was about preventing Comcast et al. from cutting Google off from users

Right after Google announced they were pulling out of Portland, Comcast immediately raised prices and added a data cap to existing plans.

Just because google fiber had a side effect of helping consumers doesn't mean it was googles motivation.
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