In the department of removing access to birth control for population reasons. . . .

Iran is ahead of the curve I think

I am somewhat curious what the Law Enforcement / municipalities plans are about revenue generation via Moving Violations and Speed Traps if / when the shift to self driving cars becomes a reality.

Granted we're talking decades to even phase it in once we begin to deploy such systems at all, but there are some towns / cities that rely heavily on that income so I'm curious what their plans are to offset the loss.

Dunno.

Look how well the whole DMCA thing works. Pretty much anyone can toss out a bogus claim and have all sorts of things taken offline without a whole lot of investigation done about the legitimacy of said claim.

Imagine taking a network offline from the ISP level due to some bogus botnet claim. Getting your YouTube video taken down is one thing, knocking your entire business offline is quite another. Some may consider that to be a strawman, but I try to think about what some idiot with nothing else to do with their time would / could do with such a process in place.

Some very well thought out rules need to be in place in addition to requiring more than one entity to make the decision. Otherwise, there isn't anything to stop the government from politicizing said new power to shut down sites they dislike, ( say . . . Wikileaks, or The Pirate Bay, North Korea, whatever ) by simply declaring the network to be a bot-net participant. ( Our government would never lie right ? RIGHT ? :| )

Always, ALWAYS question the motives of any governmental request for additional powers. Like campaign promises, they're only used to get their foot in the door and once given away, they're very difficult to take back.

*groan*

No offense, but like the Ben Franklin quote about freedoms vs security, the Star Wars reference about applause needs to be buried and never heard again.

Not entirely true.

There is quite a bit of new gear rolling out to compete with Google, but infrastructure isn't really a standalone expense. I can drop epic pipe sized Sonet multiplexers all over the place, but you also have to house them, power them, protect them and feed them fiber. Then you get to upgrade the other parts of the network to handle the tidal wave of data that will be flowing across those systems. This all costs equally epic amounts of $$$$ to do so. Nor does it happen overnight on a telco / carrier sized network. ( Trivia: Limiting the query to a single vendor only, the company has over twenty THOUSAND routers / switches in its network. This isn't something you can just upgrade and / or replace overnight. )

AT&T is investing plenty in the markets where most of its profits come from. The business / commercial markets. They know Google poses a serious threat to that revenue stream, so that's where all the investment is going currently. If I told you AT&T is in the process of installing at least ten THOUSAND sites across the country including all the infrastructure required to support it ( this is for Gigabit Ethernet btw ), would you still think the company isn't investing in its infrastructure ?

Granted, their focus probably isn't what it should be for the average consumer, but the data world is in a big transition period and technology is evolving faster than many can keep up. Hell, think about what a fast connection speed was ten - twenty years ago. The technology to even provide today's slower connection speeds didn't even exist. Ripping out and replacing everything every five years or so is pretty much impossible to do financially for a network this size.

The focus going forward is likely to be in wireless and broadband ( which is why the Title II thing scares the hell out of them ). They will, like the other telcos, probably exit the wireline market in the near future. The copper plant is simply no longer profitable and is cost prohibitive to maintain. ( Especially for a service that sees fewer and fewer customers every year. )

Do we need competition? Absolutely. It's what lights the fire under the behemoths to actually get up and do something once in a while. They get used to being the only player on the field and doing what they want. Then someone shows up and threatens the business model and all hell breaks loose. This is pretty much where we are today.

Will see how it plays out.

Don't worry, the CEO and upper echelon of executives at AT&T know exactly what their goals are.

Now, whether those goals align with the public's perception of what those goals SHOULD be are another matter.

AT&T is against the whole Title II thing because it takes away their choice and / or power for the matter at hand. For a long time AT&T has been able to interpret ( and sometimes influence ) the rules and play the game as they wanted. They know that once the regulators start getting involved, those days are over. They also know that playing the game according to the governments rules will cost them dearly in the profits department.

Make no mistake about it, the only reason AT&T would do anything to counter the Title II regulations is based solely on projected profits. Nothing else.

"Read the news. It is not hard to find an accidental shooting every single day in this country that involves a child. Hell, there were three accidental shootings in Houston involving children over the weekend [cnn.com]. It does happen every day, and it is the fault of irresponsible gun owners."

By the same token, car accidents and medical illness deaths are so commonplace that we don't even bother reporting them in the news because if we did, there wouldn't be any room for anything else.

People of all ages die from all sorts of irresponsibility every day, yet many continue to focus on firearms even though other issues kill far more every year.

In 2010, about forty thousand deaths by suicide occurred in the United States. Only about half of those were from firearms. ( 19,392 actually )
The CDC states there are about eleven thousand homicides by firearm in the United States in the same year.

While noteworthy, those numbers aren't even playing the same game as the issues that really kill us in large numbers:

        Heart disease: 611,105
        Cancer: 584,881
        Chronic lower respiratory diseases: 149,205
        Accidents (unintentional injuries): 130,557
        Stroke (cerebrovascular diseases): 128,978
        Alzheimer's disease: 84,767
        Diabetes: 75,578
        Influenza and Pneumonia: 56,979
        Nephritis, nephrotic syndrome, and nephrosis: 47,112
        Intentional self-harm (suicide): 41,149

So, while the intentions are good, focusing on firearms as a high priority issue is a bit misguided when considering the numbers above. We would do a lot more by pouring money into medical research if saving lives is truly the goal.

Because it's pointless.

While away from home, fine. Keep your guns locked in a safe. It makes it harder for the local thugs to steal them. Folks don't normally claim " overthrowing the government " as a reason for not locking up firearms, rather those that do own them understand that, while at home, guns locked inside a safe are not very useful. The whole point of a firearm is to level the playing field as it relates to defense. If it isn't available to you, then you negate the entire reason for owning it to begin with.

Teach your kids what they are so they respect them. If you do it right, you never have to worry about your kids safety when it comes to firearms ever again.

If you fail at being a parent, then you should refrain from owning firearms or having children. ( or both )

In a country where Law Enforcement can jail you for not handing over encryption keys on demand, I don't know how comfortable I would be on having any recorded footage that could also be subject to the same line of thinking in the future.

Eg: Hand over your CCTV footage to prove you were home last night or we put you in jail.

Not to sound TOO tin-foil hat here, but I tend to view anything that Law Enforcement says these days with a bit of apprehension / suspicion.
Regardless of how well it sounds at the time.

I'm pretty sure the NSA will get what they want.

They just won't tell anyone else about it and the only way we'll ever learn of its existence is via another TS slideshow years from now when another Snowden makes said information public.

I am curious what they plan on doing for damage control when they end up targeting the wrong networks for retaliation. Think of the fun you can have with that. It's like Swatting, just on a different level completely. Take over systems in a corporation you loathe, use them to attack the NSA, their retaliation strike takes down the corporation for you. Win - Win.

Open carry of guns in general probably isn't a good idea anyway.
( Should still be legal, just not a great idea unless you're out hunting )

Because if you're carrying it out in the open in public, it makes it easier for the guy who snaps to know whom to target first.
( Then again, you walk into a location with the intent of going on a rampage and note EVERYONE is carrying a firearm, you may change your mind )

Or for the police to harass for that matter. ( They generally dislike folks without badges carrying guns yanno )

You're limiting your thinking to the short term. Expand it out a decade or two and try to picture what the tech can evolve into.

Imagine a satellite ( or something like the ISS ) based weapon that will fire an invisible high-kilowatt ( or even megawatt ) beam on any target it can see from orbit. Maybe combine a few of these satellites onto the same target for even more power output.

Then realize you can pretty much incinerate any human target on the planet, instantly. From orbit. Crank the power output up enough and you can do the same with aircraft, other satellites, light vehicles, ICBM's, etc. The puppet you installed during your regime change a decade ago giving you shit ? No problem. Hope they remember to wear their SPF-10000 today . . . . :| Those pesky whistleblowers taking refuge in a non-extradition country ? Pffft. No problem. Start some wildfires, disable power grids, use your imagination.

On the ground, the target will just heat up, catch fire and die horribly. No collateral damage, nor explanation as to wtf just happened.

Is the tech clumsy today ? Sure it is. All tech starts that way. Compare computers from 20-30 years ago with what is common today if you want to see tech evolution in action.