This is way too reasonable.. you must be new here :)

But I completely agree with you. I suspect 2 through 4 will eventually happen (in the next 10 years of so, not immediate), 1, not so much.

I have always like this idea.

Or to take it a little further, the local gov wires from a main switching hub/CO to all the residences in the area, then ISP's wire up to the hubs/CO's, and lease access to the residences. That similar to DSL style, but with fiber instead of copper, and the telco's do not own the last mile.

That last mile is what allows companies to hold us hostage. They can argue all they want that they paid to wire of the streets, poles and houses, but the reality is, they all received massive tax breaks and subsidies from the local and state governments to do that in the first place, and it has already paid itself off.

All of the major telco's have been scaling back their investment, especially in wireline services. Trying to dump copper, no longer building out new fiber (Verizon), and trying to convince people to switch to more profitable wireless.

They claim that Wireless is a perfectly acceptable alternative to cable/wire based broadband. Verizon used that exact claim to get out of paying New Jersey billions of dollars when they failed to meet the promise of broadband to the entire state.

At the same time, they then lobby the crap out of the regulators to explicitly exclude wireless from regulation, specifically the Net Neutrality rules.

They cannot have it both ways.

Here's the thing, if "broadband" was classified as Title II, would that not also include Wireless, which the telco's have lobbied hard to be excluded from pretty much any regulation that would protect consumers.

As for wired services, they can threaten all they want, as someone noted earlier, the scene from Blazing Saddles, threatening to shoot yourself in the head if the Feds don't leave them alone, is an empty threat. We already know they have scaled back capital expenditures. And sure, at the beginning, they might go through with their threats, but what will happen, is people will start to migrate from one crappy provider, to the next slightly less crappy provider, resulting in significant losses for the companies losing people. That will then spur the next upgrade wars, where they will have no choice but to upgrade to get customers back. It might be slow going to get to any speedy service like they have in pretty much every other country that has cheap quality broadband, but it will happen.

You do realize that the FCC has thousands of employees. And that you just called them all dipshits, over the rules created by the FCC leadership, which was appointed and installed by various politicians...

That makes you a asshole. How about you tone down on the generalizations. I'm all for throttling the FCC, but direct the anger where it is due

Shill or not, he does has a valid point (I have not looked at the other comments).
As much as I personally hate automatic updates, as I decide when I want to update shit, for the vast unwashed masses, it is not a bad idea. Too many of my friends and family (I no longer play tech support except for direct family.. aka my wife) have had machines with years of missing patches, and they wonder why their machines are up shits creek.

I on the other hand, have a windows 8.1 slate I used for my car (runs vehicle diagnostic software, not the std odb reader crap), I cannot get update 1, I get the failure many others are getting. I cannot go back to Windows 7 because too many missing drivers, and very unreliable touchscreen experience. I have tried the windows 8 drivers on 7 with no luck. So for me, I will no longer have support (I do not need technical support, I would like security updates at least).

Good thing I do not use that for anything other than car diagnostics... At least my car won't give my computer herpes :P

Not sure why you were modded flamebait. I completely agree with you. Part of responsible gun ownership is knowing how to handle, and how to react to situations. If a persons knee jerk reaction is to threaten someone with death, even if it is an empty threat, I do not believe they should be permitted to own any weapon.

I'll play devils advocate here.

Yes, I'm willing to bet the guns that were used against you were purchased legally at one point.

That said, I am not against gun ownership. However, I am for stricter controls on who can purchase weapons, especially the resale market. The 2nd Amendment says you have the right to bear arms. There is no restriction in place however on how easy or hard that should be.

They did not specify the medium in the original contract. They merely specified 45mbit as broadband.. which they weaseled out of by a technicality since LTE does support that speed... but at a cost.

You are correct, she did not go directly to the CTA..

Even worse, she jumped to Comcast 3 months after pushing for the Comcast NBC merger. Bought and paid for by your tax dollars.

This was the restriction placed on her (came from wikipedia, so take with a grain of salt.)

"While Baker may immediately lobby Congress and supervise employees who directly lobby the FCC, to comply with President Barack Obama's ethics pledge, she may not personally lobby any executive branch political appointee (including the FCC) while Obama is in office. However after two years, she may lobby non-political appointees at the FCC. Additionally she may never personally lobby anyone on the Comcast/NBC merger agreement"

The current FCC Chairman was a paid lobbyist for the Telecommunications industry before he became the FCC chair....

As long as our politicians are bought and paid for, things will never change for the better.

I mean the recent issue with Verizon and the state of NJ, NJ let them off the hook for not building out the infrastructure promised in the early 90's by a mere technicality by considering heavily capped LTE as an alternative to wiring the entire state. Then stating that they would wire areas that do not have wireless service, only if 35 or more people request it.. except they know that wireless reaches every spot in NJ where there is no VZ service, so it is a cop out, they know, the PUC knows it, and how anyone in their right mind could possibly think that this is good for consumers. This only benefits the telecoms.

This is what we have in stall for our FCC chairs of the future.. not exactly this scenario, but people that would vote in a similar vein under the pretense it is good for the consumer.

Cars are sold for a profit (regardless of how thin it is). If they want to use this business model, they would have to sell a loaded vehicle at a loss, and hope that customers would then pay for the features at a cost point to make the sale eventually profitable for the manufacturers.

Then there is the used vehicle, sure I might sign an agreement that says I will pay for whatever features I want on a rental basis, but I still bought the car, I can sell the car to anyone I want, and there is no way that the manufacturer can enforce any contract on the second owner, which means he could in theory use alternate methods of reactivating all the disabled options...

Hell, in theory, once I own the car I could just make the features work, this is not a lease, (unless they restrict the rental options to leases only), at most they could void the warranty.. who knows.

Is not the patent itself, or even patent holding companies (to some extent).

What I do have an issue with is those holding companies going after the end users. To me that is double dipping. I purchase a product that does "X" made by "Company Y". Y purchases components and licenses the technology needed to manufacture/perform X, that is the end of it, the patent holder has received his/her pound of flesh.

Going after End users is essentially asking to be paid multiple times for the same product/technology instance.

The Internet was fun while it lasted....

Well, hence my ( ) statement, yes they are operating in the US, but my response was to the poster who rattled off a list of US locations. Once the NSA became aware of a domestic issue, they are supposed to/should have notified the FBI and let the FBI do their thing. The ineptitude of the FBI is also a topic for another time.

As I said earlier, my point was strictly about jurisdiction, not about methods, and who was breaking what laws.

Where did I say that, where did I even imply that. My statement was simply about jurisdiction, not about methods.