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Comment Re:1 or 1 million (Score 5, Insightful) 274

Unlimited bandwidth is not possible. You can make it illegal all you want. It doesn't trump physics.

Solution: Don't lie and call it unlimited. The point is that customers are paying for something Verizon calls "unlimited" which is not actually unlimited. The customers contracts are up so they can put those customers on other plans, the problem is when they still call the altered plan "unlimited."

Comment Re:Could be a different route involved for the VPN (Score 2) 398

Why should Verizon spend many billions of dollars to subsidize Netflix?

They're not. Verizon's customers are paying them to provide a service. Just because a bulk of the traffic is coming from a particular source doesn't mean it's okay for them to charge their customers for a service that they're not providing. It all comes down to Verizon trying to double-dip.

Comment Re:surpising (Score 1) 168

The barrier to entry is so absurdly low that I dont think anyone needs to worry about Amazon's monopoly, at least in the shopping sector.

The barrier to entry is significant. Not necessarily on the logistics/shipping side, but most certainly on the marketing side. In Q2 of 2014, Amazon spent $943 million on marketing. In 2013, they spent $3.1 Billion (yes, with a "B") on marketing. How money potential online retail start-ups have even a fraction of that amount? The online retail market isn't a "if you build it they will come" thing, hasn't been for awhile. You either need a really innovative and unique product to sell to carve out a yet-to-exist niche, or marketing to drive customers to you instead of the other guys.

Comment Re:Your next supercar. (Score 1) 138

Your next supercar will be ugly as hitting your father with a sweaty sock, but really efficient because, as we all know, people buy supercars for their efficiency.

People buy super cars because they consider them to be cool (and they have nothing better to spend their money on). New technology is cool. If this is cool new tech, a super car seems like a logical place to start. Also note that efficiency isn't necessarily solely fuel economy, but can also affect top speed.

As far as making it's way into the mass market...it seems like the "morphing" would be the expensive part. Why not just have it be a fixed dimple on a mass-production car? Perhaps it wouldn't be quite as efficient as one that optimized the dimple depth for the speed of the car, but ought to be a helluva lot cheaper. A disadvantage is that the dimples are going to fill up with grime and will be a PITA to clean.

Comment Re:Verizon customers are screwed (Score 2) 75

I think you're missing the point. It's not that this gives them permission to track you, like you said that's probably already in your service contract. The point is that it gives explicit permission to sell that data to somebody else, thus legitimizing it and making it more valuable by decreasing legal and PR risk.

Comment Re:The saddest part (Score 1) 75

After what's come out about corporations having to feed the surveillance beast, anyone who opts in should be subjected to having their house and cars wiretapped in perpetuity by the NSA with a direct feed to the FBI as the price for their nonchalance toward surveillance.

This is already a service being provided to everyone, no need to opt-in. Plus, we only have to pay the subscription fee once a year on April 15.

Comment Re:So It's Come to This (Score 1) 75

I see the exchange of value in one business plan, and not the other.

And there's another big difference. Google gives you services for free (which many people find useful) in exchange for exploiting your info. Verizon is going to give you discounts for third party services that will still cost money in exchange for exploiting your info while overcharging you money for using their services.

Comment Re:Well.. revived an idea (Score 3, Informative) 50

The ExoLance folks don't seem to claim that the idea of going below the surface is novel, only the "news" article does that. It is apparent, however, that their ideas for the design are different from DS2:
http://exploremars.org/exolanc...

Additionally, their video mentions DS2, they themselves don't say that the idea of subsurface is novel, but that their implementation is.

Comment Re:You can find your member's contact info (Score 1) 52

Thanks for that. It would be doubly helpful if we knew which congressmen were supporting this, I'm sure that it's more than just R's that are getting big campaign contributions. The article only says "some House members." I'd like to know if mine is supporting it. A quick Google search finds another article that says it's being introduced by Marsha Blackburn (R-TN). There's another one, HR 4752 being introduced by Bob Latta (R-OH) that would prevent the FCC from regulating ISPs under Title II (common carrier).

OTOH, there is a group of senators who are pushing the FCC to reclassify ISPs so they can be regulated: Charles Schumer (D-N.Y.), Ed Markey (D-MA), Al Franken (D-MN) and Bernie Sanders (I-VT), and Ron Wyden (D-OR). Once again Wyden falls on the side of sanity.

http://www.dailykos.com/story/...

Comment Re:Also available for UK, Canada, France ... (Score 1) 95

The few that I checked out, were all clarifying legitimate typos.

Looks like there are several of those. But then there's the one about a radio host saying he's a disinformation agent of the Kremlin. Or the tea bagger that had a paragraph added with wording that sounds like it's from a campaign pamphlet (rather than facts about what his platforms are).

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