181–190 of 286 posts
In six months FCC Chairman Tom Wheeler will be a VP at NBC Universal/Comcast. Not a bribe; just coincidence.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tom_Wheeler_(FCC) "Tom Wheeler is the current Chairman of the FCC.[1] Prior to working at the FCC, Wheeler worked as a venture capitalist and lobbyist for the cable and wireless industry." Wow. This looks especially bad for consumers.
Here comes the proverbial "Consumer Choice": Which primary Internet package would you like: Google Plus, Microsoft Office with XBox Live, Facebook, or Yahoo? Do you need any specialty cloud services: Amazon, Dropbox, Spotify? Would you like full access to uncertified internet sites for an additional $15/mo?
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> Well it is a little premature to cry doom before these guidelines are even adopted. It might not be before they are adopted, but it is before they are proposed and, particularly, before the news stories based on inside leaks are even consistent about what the rules are in the area of concern. EDIT: Not sure why the downvotes, but as I point out in another comment on the thread (with links to sourcs), there are at l…
I don't really get the downvotes either, although it took me two readings of your comment to understand what you were saying. FWIW, here's what the FCC has actually published so far: http://www.fcc.gov/document/statement-fcc-chairman-tom-wheel... Unfortunately it doesn't actually say much.
A user went haywire and downvoted a whole bunch of comments. We've corrected the damage, although users had already corrected much of it.
All: when you notice substantive, civil comments that are unfairly faded out, please give them a corrective upvote. This is a longstanding community practice. It usually only takes one or two corrective votes to get a good comment back to par, so every user can make a significant difference.
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There should be laws against this sort of stuff. Like you can't work for a company in a related domain for 5 years before and after taking the government job. As it is, it just leads to too much corruption.
The flip side is that you won't want someone in said position that doesn't know anything about the industry. Do you want a luddite making technology policy, for example. Not that I'm all for regulatory capture or anything.
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Shouldn't it be exactly the opposite? Mobile is hugely bandwidth-limited, but you can get a 128GB SD card for ~$75 these days. The real reason for streaming is that most people don't know in advance what they want to watch, and with TV/movies, generally only watch something once.
> The real reason for streaming is that most people don't know in advance what they want to watch, and with TV/movies, generally only watch something once. I don't know if this is really true. How do you find out about something you want to watch? You see a commercial for it, or somebody tells you about it, etc. If all you had to do was pull your phone out of your pocket and click a button that says "download this wh…
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Yes. It'll be like looking back on the long https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_defunct_automobile_man... -- the early 20th century was a hotbed of innovation and technical progress, being carried out by hundreds of independent groups on a small scale. Then, the industry consolidated around a few gigantic players, and technical innovation ground to a halt for decades.
This is one of my principal reasons for being a singularity-skeptic. While runaway technological innovation might be possible, I think it's likely that economics and politics will stop it. Physics won't stop Moore's law. Industry consolidation, slowing innovation, and a lack of demand will. I would not be terribly surprised if we never see computers more than 2X as fast/powerful as today's, since without correspondin…
There is still a higher end driver in the server space, though, as virtualization progresses... How many virtual machines can you fit into one box?
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The system should work like jury duty - much like in ancient greece where they had a system of lots (based on black + white balls) - you get chosen then have to do your best for your alloted time.
Combine this with a TTL of 10 years for all laws. Hopefully, keeping theft, rape, and murder from going legal preoccupy all of lawmakers' time.
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Oh, c'mon, that's just an excuse. In fact, it's the same excuse people use to avoid entrepreneurship. Money helps you run a campaign, just like it helps you run a business. But sometimes the scrappy, bootstrapped startup still beats the big entrenched enterprise. That's why we're on HN, right?
Kind of ironic that you're making this statement on this thread. The Net was indeed supposed to democratize the world, including, presumably, politics. A candidate would then be able to run a bootstrapped, grassroots campaign. But, that didn't happen, and for reasons very similar to the subject: entrenched interests use their money to continue advancing their own agenda through the media, other corporate gatekeepers,…
Why don't you ask Linda McMahon how much it costs to buy a Senate seat? Not only did she spend tens of millions, she lost to a guy who is still paying back his student loans.
There's nothing stopping a candidate today from using the Net to spread their political message and, as odious as the alleged FCC changes are, they won't really change that.
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Stop electing the politicians who appoint cronies?
A) Of course, how do you know they'll do so until you elect them? B) Many politicians who get into office are quite busy, so they tend to trust the people they actually talk to, which are often the people at campaign fundraisers. Cronies may just be people who, conveniently, are always at fundraisers, hence are familiar to politicians. I don't think that's proper, obviously, but easy explanations rarely capture the c…