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Comment Re:fees (Score 1) 391

FCC isn't stating how anyone can operate their networks. Net neutrality is about saying that corporations cannot screw customers at will.

Oh really? I believe that Net Neutrality rules specifically tell an operator how to configure their networks. They specify that a network operator is not allowed to use certain QoS configurations. They specify that a network operator is not allowed to use certain policing/metering configurations. They specify that a network operator is not allowed to use influence the routing of traffic within their network.

The government has no business telling me how to run my network.

You must be Republican.

I am not. I am pro-choice, pro gay marriage, pro pot legalization and against religious influences on the government. But I am an expert in the field of networking.

Comment Re:fees (Score 1) 391

But, when you sell *Internet* access, you have a responsibility to provide *Internet* access

They provide internet access. The fact that it isn't fast enough for you doesn't mean they don't.

The whole point of my argument is that the FCC should not be regulating an operator's network operations, but to enable a competitive playing field so that YOU can vote with your money and take your business elsewhere. That is what the FCC should do.

Net neutrality is nothing but a bandage on a bullet wound.

Comment Re:fees (Score 3, Insightful) 391

Verizon is the only option in my town.

This is the real problem.

So-called "Net Neutrality" is a nothing but a bandage on a bullet wound, for two main reasons.

First of all, most internet users in the US of A have little choice between carriers. It's either cable, dsl or satellite. The cable market will be given to company A, and if lucky, company B for dsl. It is virtually impossible to start a new ISP under current regulations. This means that there is little to no incentive for incumbent operators to upgrade their networks.

In an ideal world, networks and subscriber access have sufficient bandwidth to accommodate all users. Yes, consumer cable/DSL will be oversubscribed a bit, but that will leave plenty of bandwidth for regular services, assuming a decent operator network. This is the real problem of the U.S. internet access market.

The second reason why I'm strongly against these regulations is that the government should keep its busy nose out of private companies' networks. If build a network, it is up to me to operate it the way I want to. If a subscriber does not like the way I operate my network, they are (should be) free to go elsewhere. Which is the part that is broken in the U.S.

So, what the FCC should really focus on is not so much the whining of Netflix regarding available ports on public peering exchanges, but to open up the broadband market to more competition. Works in Europe, works in Asia, works in Canada. Does not work in Mother Russia, for obvious reasons (in Russia, KGB^H^H^H internet connects to you).

In short, because the FCC is so defunct that they're unable to regulate a healthy competitive market, they force their big fat butt on the seat of the CEOs of current companies and tell them how to operate their networks.

Submission + - Union: Tech shuttle drivers should earn as much as the tech workers themselves.

An anonymous reader writes: As more and more bus drivers vote to unionize, some want to take it a few steps further. David Huerta, president of one of the unions, describes his wishes as follows, in the San Jose Mercury News:


Now is the opportunity for shuttle bus drivers, for food service workers, for janitors, for security officers to re-ask the question: Should I be equally as valued as the high tech workers in the high tech industry?

He did not state a specific opinion as to require a Bachelor's degree in Urban Transport, or equivalent experience, for future bus drivers.

Comment Re:Manufacturers Restrict their Products (Score 1) 168

So crabbing is irrelevant. RPM and weight are irrelevant.

No, not entirely. At some point you'll have to land the aircraft. And if the operator fails, the aircraft will land itself. Potentially on my head. Potentially with propellers spinning at 3000+ RPM. Crabbing is relevant, and so are RPM and weight.

Submission + - By Hiring Tata and Infosys, So Cal Edison Reduces Local Headcount

operator_error writes: Michael Hiltzik of The Los Angeles Times reports that Southern California Edison, the local electrical utility, has let go of 500 IT employees by outsourcing jobs to Tata and Infosys who are top users/abusers of the U.S. H1-B visa process; 400 So Cal employees were laid off and 100 'left voluntarily', many with decades of experience. As indicative of a trend this has now become, last year Minnesota-based agribusiness behemoth Cargill said it would outsource as many as 900 IT jobs to Tata.

These employees perform the crucial work of installing, maintaining and managing Edison's computer hardware and software for functions as varied as payroll and billing, dispatching and electrical load management across Edison's vast power generating and electric transmission network. The workers I interviewed are in their 50s or 60s and have spent decades serving as loyal Edison employees.

"They told us they could replace one of us with three, four, or five Indian personnel and still save money," one laid-off Edison worker told me, recounting a group meeting with supervisors last year. "They said, 'We can get four Indian guys for cheaper than the price of you.' You could hear a pin drop in the room."

They're not the sort of uniquely creative engineering aces that high-tech companies say they need H-1B visas to hire from abroad, or foreign students with master's degrees or doctorates from U.S. universities who also can be employed under the H-1B program. They're experienced systems analysts and technicians for whom these jobs have been stairways from the working class to five- or six-figure middle-class incomes. Many got their training at technical institutes or from Edison itself.

This worker and the half-dozen others I interviewed asked to remain anonymous because their severance packages forbid them to speak disparagingly about the company.

Comment Re:Manufacturers Restrict their Products (Score 1) 168

So you used it as an unrelated example of their ability to to control the device, rather than complaining about the actual problem, people who can't control their devices.

Yes. My point is that people who just go out and buy a drone without any form of training have no clue about the aerodynamics of flight, and thus are not qualified to fly an aircraft. The only difference between someone remotely piloting an aircraft and someone behind the controls of an aircraft is that if the first one fucks up, he doesn't die, but someone else may.

That doesn't mean that I agree with the FAA's proposal to have people earn a real pilot's certificate. Some instruction like this would probably be sufficient. But at least something.

Submission + - Secrecy around police surveillance equipment proves a case's undoing (washingtonpost.com)

schwit1 writes: The case against Tadrae McKenzie looked like an easy win for prosecutors. He and two buddies robbed a small-time pot dealer of $130 worth of weed using BB guns. Under Florida law, that was robbery with a deadly weapon, with a sentence of at least four years in prison.

But before trial, his defense team detected investigators' use of a secret surveillance tool, one that raises significant privacy concerns. In an unprecedented move, a state judge ordered the police to show the device — a cell-tower simulator sometimes called a StingRay — to the attorneys.

Rather than show the equipment, the state offered McKenzie a plea bargain.

Today, 20-year-old McKenzie is serving six months' probation after pleading guilty to a second-degree misdemeanor. He got, as one civil liberties advocate said, the deal of the century.

Comment Re:googling on iPad (Score 1) 237

When I search on my iPad and go to a site, more and more of them have their own apps. Why in the World would I install an app to look at their content?

CrappySite App requires the following permissions:

- your address
- all your friends addresses
- all information in your contact book
- the name and SSN of all your children
- all your credit card details
- the date you last went to the dentist

Get it?

Comment Re:Manufacturers Restrict their Products (Score 1) 168

How does crabbing for a landing affect their ability to fly above you? Or is this just an unrelated skill you are demanding as an example? If they are at 100'+ over your property and headed past (not circling), their complete ignorance of aerodynamics will have no effect on you.

Very simple, they will not be able to properly control the vehicle. And let me give you an example.

I recently bought a small quadcopter with a camera (Hubsan x4). I flew it around my neighborhood a bit and one of my neighbors liked it and bought one as well. He crashed it on the first day, simply because he could not understand that the wind was blowing his precious helicopter away and he had to adjust for the wind direction. His lack of a basic understanding of aerodynamics and the forces of nature in flight, made it impossible for him to control the aircraft.

Comment Re:Manufacturers Restrict their Products (Score 0) 168

With many drones disabling the GPS receiver is either [a] difficult or [b] strongly ill-advised (as it's used to make station-keeping in a breeze much easier and automatic as opposed to a constant fight against air current).

You don't know yet, but your comment is much more to the point than one might think.

One of the biggest issues that the FAA now faces is that hordes of untrained "pilots", people flying a larger-than-toy aircraft remotely, without having a basic understanding of the aerodynamics. What if the flight crew of your JFK-SFO flight solely relied on GPS to maintain control of the aircraft? I'm sure you would not be happy. Well, neither am I, with a 6 pound piece of metal with propellers spinning at 3000+ RPM right above my head, controlled by someone who doesn't have the single clue of how to crab for a cross-wind landing.

This is one of the reasons why the FAA is considering to mandate actual pilot certificates before handing out a License to Drone.

Comment Re:Its starts with terror and kidding porn (Score 2) 176

The ISP gets to bill the government. This means it costs them money to fuck with the net. This sets up a reason for them to not to want to block something. This could help limit grey area cases where the government might decide its not worth their time. I trust money and lazy over the good intentions of the government any day.

No, because the same slippery slope will include a law including a "maximum" amount the ISP can bill, followed by subsequent decreases of that amount.

We've seen that in order EU countries when it came to lawful intercept. They started out as being billable against reguler engineering hours (a technician had to go in the system, poke around etc), and in the end they said "we're paying EUR 5 per tap and that's it.". Under the threat of weapons of course.

Comment Re: should be illegal (Score 3, Interesting) 175

They seen a company had the same name (he didn't have a website) and bought it. They said because it had a popular "key word", which is the loop hole they use to get away with it. This way they can say its not their intentions even though it is. Then they used a shell company to send him emails to try to get his company to buy it where they "the register" is not connected. No other company on all of the inernet is named the same as his (very unique name) which makes it 100% clear they targeted them.

I have something similar happen to me, when I started the trademark process for a company that I founded. Within a week after filing, I was contacted by several "representatives" for obscure TLDs primarily in Asia, who informed me that someone had tried to register $companyname.asia and other TLDs. Being the rightful owner, I was allowed to supersede that registration. For a fee, of course. The initial mail was:

Dear Sir,

We are the department of Asian Domain Registration Service in China. I have something to confirm with you. We formally received an application on April 11, 2014 that a company which self-styled "Paest Investment Co. Ltd". were applying to register some Asian countries top-level domain names.

Now we are handling this registration, and after our initial checking, we found the name were similar to your company's, so we need to check with you whether your company has authorized that company to register these names. If you authorized this, we will finish the registration at once. If you did not authorize, please let us know within 7 workdays, so that we will handle this issue better.

Comment Re:Half way there (Score 1) 119

easy solution, stop filing taxes. The government gets all that information anyway.

Not true. First of all, you may have accounts outside of the country, which you will need to report. Second, you may have rental income that is not automatically reported. And those are only the first two things I thought of when I read your post.

Oh, and those are Federal only. An example of state taxes that are not automatically reported is the use tax that you have to pay if your state uses it, like California does.

The IRS also doesn't necessarily need to know about your deductions, unless you want your doctor to inform the IRS every time you visit the office, and perhaps you'd like your kid's preschool to inform the IRS that you prefer the Catholic Baptist Imams Kiddie Academy instead of your local preschool. And let's not forget deductions like home office or certain business expenses.

I'm pretty sure that in order to have everything go automagically, the entire tax system would need to be overhauled.

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