Comment Re:Republican gain a majority? (Score 1) 401
Perhaps you shoudnt be blowing this particular horn. The people in office certainly know better.
Interesting - according to this here [nolo.com], employers have to give you time off to vote.
Time off is personal time.
The OP seems to be complaining that they arent getting paid to vote. Apparently being paid to vote isnt a big flashing red alarm.
and none of the candidates who lost to "none of the above" may run for that office in the next election for it.
How about: if none of the above wins, then none of the candidates that lost to none of the above may ever hold any public office ever again.
If you live in a Democratic-leaning precinct and you're in a union
Sure, because unions are based on the premise of free association instead of government enforced mandate.
Do you think that I have a choice to be in the union that I am in? You clearly think that. I'll keep this in mind if you ever try to defend unions, that this guy doesnt even know the first thing about how unions work. Not even the first thing.
And who do you think tells the politicians what to do?
For the most part, the middle class.
The middle class benefits from both the taxation of the rich and the taxation on the poor. This isn't because the middle class isnt calling most of the shots. They call most of the shots.
If you make the middle class angry then you will not survive reelection. The politicians vilify both the rich and the poor because thats the tune that satisfies their middle class electorate.
As the OP asked, why shouldn't licensees return unused spectrum to the actual owners
If the choice was to keep the license for the spectrum and pretend to need it, or magnanimously give up the license for no benefit, they would do the first not the second.
I dont understand why you willingly and intentionally refuse to understand this.
What do you do though when they've legislated that cars not bought in the state or that are on some blacklist can't get registered?
You start shooting politicians until the problem is solved.
No. This is basic economics - when you make a product, you don't charge the consumer what it costs + x%, you charge what the market will bear. The primary control on the price of an item is the amount that the consumer is willing to pay for it.
Amazing how the anonymous simpletons neglect to deal with actual business economics but instead want to focus on some simplistic price model (that doesnt even include the basics
The idea that Apple would not in any way change its business practices if its profit margins change is laughably ludicrous. Only someone looking to justify their position with horseshit would ever believe otherwise. Picking theories first and then searched for shallow justifications is not rational. Stop doing it.
I don't want it either, primarily because it ends up with poor people paying a higher percentage of their income in tax. You can make adjustments for necessities, like food and gas, but that tends to make it so the middle class is paying the highest percentage of their income in tax.
You seem to be missing the point that corporate taxes are already the exact "regressive" you are worried about. Businesses pass their expenses, such as taxes, along to their customers even when their customers are poor.
There are several differences. For instance those in the know can pretend that corporate taxes are not regressive taxes that effect poor people the most, while shallow slogan-chanting ignorant sheep have no clue that corporate taxes are regressive taxes that effect poor people the most.
End all indirect taxes, including corporate taxes.
So if an ISP becomes a teir one or tier 2 provider up stream that gives them the right to bottle neck their customers and create toll roads that would never have been there?
If you dont like it, set up your own transit network and see how swell it is to increase your transit networks capacity in order to meet the needs of another transit networks profits.
I'm sure you are OK with being my networks transit bitch while I dominate the market with the lowest prices that I can offer because I get settlement free peering with a complete morons transit network.
They DID request it and they DID want it
On the internet, you cannot tell. You seem to be missing this key fact. If you make the receiver pay instead of the sender, I will set up a network tomorrow and send shit towards your network all day and night, and then when you refuse to pay the bill I send you I will file a lawsuit and send notice to your credit agencies. While you are busy deciding if its worth fighting me in court or not, I'll be speaking to the press telling them what a deadbeat you are for not paying your bandwidth bill.
Whats that? The way you imagine things requires honest actors? Yeah.. thats the point... thats why its not set up that way. its set up to that the sender pays so that it doesnt matter if they are honest or not.
That is NOT how it has worked for decades. Sure there have been paid agreements, UPSTREAM, but not with ISPs, whose customers generate ALL the traffic.
ISP's have traditionally purchased transit. The idea that ISP's have commonly gotten settlement free peering is laughable because it is quite uncommon for an ISP to do any peering at all. The ISP's that do have peering agreements are tier 2 or tier 1, and there are only a few dozen of those each in the entire world. These so called ISP's are transit networks that happen to also be providers.
Transit networks have always had to be paid for asymmetric flow. Settlement free only lasts so long as the ratio to and fro isnt far from balanced.
Netflix's current ISP is Level 3. Back in the days when Cogent was Netflix's ISP, Level 3 ended their settlement free agreement, disconnected from Cogent, and demanded money because Cogent had a very imbalanced ratio with them. Now that Level 3 is Netflix's ISP, they pretend that ratios don't matter. Bullshit.
Actually settlement free peering has always existed for the last mile providors, who will ALWAYS by definition have a traffic imbalance.
Most last mile providers are tier 3 networks and purchase transit. Thats not "settlement free."
Even Comcast which is tier 2 purchase their primary transit from Tata. They don't get a free ride because they can't do the transit.
Verizon is tier 1. They dont buy transit. They do transit. You dont get to dump many times as much data on another transit network as they dump on yours without consequences. You cannot argue around this because this is the way it is, the way its been, and the way it will continue to be. The burden is on the sender because thats the only way it makes sense to do it. The receiver shouldn't be paying because they may have neither requested nor want it. A lot of people bring up the idea that netflix users "requested" the data. The internet maintains no concept of "requested." Packets are pushed through the network, not pulled.
Netflix's old ISP was Cogent. Remember the issues between Cogent and Level3 back in 2005? Netflix's current ISP, Level 3, didnt want Cogent to get a free ride and shut down the interlinks, but now that Level3 is netflix's ISP they suddenly are all for free rides with everybody? Really?
There is the way you want things to work, and the way they actually work. There is good reason for the way things actually work.
With your bare hands?!?