tc

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121.
by tc 17y ago
Hmmm... I always considered that a feature rather than a bug. Only voting when the scores looked "wrong" was an optimization. How do I decide when to vote now? I have a feeling I'm going to settle into a pattern of voting to reorder comm
122.
by tc 17y ago
Wow, this interferes with key elements of my system for voting/commenting on HN. Here are some things that don't work now: * If a comment is sitting at 1 or 0, I'll try to avoid downvoting it unless I really think the comment subtracts val
123.
by tc 17y ago
Carriers want to sell "unlimited" LD plans. Customers like unlimited LD plans. And for most of the US, LD is cheap enough that you can make that work. The model breaks down a bit if you have to start subsidizing your customers' calls to
124.
by tc 17y ago
Live by the sword, die by the sword. This is the danger of increasing regulation; the blade cuts both ways. You may think that Net Neutrality is about taking on big companies, but I guarantee that in just a few short years their smart lega
125.
by tc 17y ago
And if your purpose is to discover rather than to persuade, then you might not care. Which brings us back to the title of the piece.
126.
by tc 17y ago
I'm taking issue with the parent's assertion that a writer shouldn't make two points in the same essay. The implicit reasoning is it is distracting -- which is true whether you think the point is offensive or just wrong. That's a good r
127.
by tc 17y ago
There's a meta-point in here somewhere though, as his essay was about the fact that pandering to readers isn't his highest priority [1]. His essay also would have offended unionists and people who hold a religious devotion to the "greatest
128.
by tc 17y ago
No one encouraged me to be an engineer either (doctor? yes. lawyer? yes. engineer? no.). I'd wager that many people here were actively discouraged in some way from going down the path of technology or entrepreneurship. Most nontechnical p
129.
by tc 17y ago
They surely did influence the process. But it is also true that any rational business would have bid less for spectrum with a neutrality or open access mandate. I don't have much sympathy for AT&T on this one, though, since they've
130.
by tc 17y ago
Don't even bother with this. It's just blather. The real issue is that AT&T feels betrayed. They funded this whole initiative to hurt their competitors, and now the gun might be pointed at them as well. "All those expensive Congressi
131.
by tc 17y ago
This is actually beautifully ironic to those who understand what is going on here. AT&T has quietly backed and financed (some might say "astroturfed" ) the whole push for net neutrality... of wired networks. Why might they do that?
132.
by tc 17y ago
I'm sympathetic to the idea and curious to see how it works for the author. A clear subset of salespeople have a distinct entrepreneurial streak. They work in sales because, similar to being a business owner, you get paid based directly o
133.
by tc 17y ago
Yes. Building out fiber to a single point would be the easy part (as low as hundreds of thousands of dollars, perhaps). The continuous 3G coverage would be expensive though.
134.
by tc 17y ago
Look, I don't support subsidies either. Like with most US subsidies, the money was probably mostly wasted (but I'm sure it created jobs ). In all seriousness, telecom subsidies in the US mostly go to building out old-fashioned POTS lines
135.
by tc 17y ago
I think using the Stockholm syndrome is an absurd metaphor in this case. In the Stockholm syndrome, the victim defends the attacker. In this case, the 'attacker' is the regulation, and I'm opposing it. Seriously though, I think I've addre
136.
by tc 17y ago
Remember Japan's "lost decade"? The government threw money at every infrastructure project they could find. Before you get too nostalgic about Japanese internet though, a friend who worked in Tokyo for a couple of months tells me it isn't
137.
by tc 17y ago
Speaking as just one person in this field, every new regulation makes me reconsider my desire to be in the industry. It doesn't so much even matter who the regulations favor. It's that at some point, after spending countless hours with law
138.
by tc 17y ago
"Without any kind of inside knowledge, I would guess" I don't want to be overly-harsh to you in particular, but I think this is the key to so much of the useless posturing and speculating on this issue. It may in fact be similar to the fa
139.
by tc 17y ago
Being a competitor in this industry, I'm always surprised by the simplistic treatment telecom issues receive even by technical people. I suppose it is the difference between being a driver on a road, or perhaps even the manufacturer of an a
140.
by tc 17y ago
More companies than you probably realize lay fiber and copper. You can check the permits issued by your local municipality to see what I mean. If you wanted to lay a few miles of fiber yourself, you'd find that it is fairly straightforward
141.
by tc 17y ago
Since I'm in this industry, I'd like to point out that bandwidth is not artificially scarce. It is just scarce , necessarily limited by the capital available to buy equipment and lease facilities, fiber, and copper. Before talking abou
142.
by tc 17y ago
This is the most important point: Third, the new regulations create an additional layer of government bureaucracy where the free market has already proven its effectiveness. The reason you’re not using AOL to read this right now isn’t beca
143.
by tc 17y ago
That's being a bit equivocal. You're using the word freedom in very different way than Jefferson ever meant it. In Jefferson's world, the Mint founders are no more or less free now than before selling to Intuit. Otherwise, I agree that i
144.
by tc 17y ago
Thompson introduced the multiple-state simulation approach in his 1968 paper. In his formulation, the states of the NFA were represented by small machine-code sequences, and the list of possible states was just a sequence of function call
145.
by tc 17y ago
One non-profit that works in this space estimates that 78% of the "family member or parent" abductions are due to a non-custodial parent. That would put the total around 159k, which puts the parent poster in the right order of magnitude.
146.
by tc 17y ago
Citation not needed, because this is a conversation, not an encyclopedia article, and he gave a rough order of magnitude estimate which happens to be reasonably correct. http://freakonomics.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/01/06/the-cost-of... htt
147.
by tc 17y ago
In the real world, thieves destroy wealth in the process of redistributing. They break windows, they cause people to hire security guards, and their actions make people feel vulnerable and insecure -- all wealth-destroying. The redistribu
148.
by tc 17y ago
If your company is on solid footing, it shouldn't matter if your stock price is zero (that'd be great, actually; you could buy back your whole company). Your argument is functionally equivalent to saying that any number of unfunded and dea
149.
by tc 17y ago
The investors lost money. They put their trust in bad (or simply imperfect or misguided) CEOs and careless boards. In the future, perhaps they will be more careful in their selection of managers. If not, they will continue to lose money.
150.
by tc 17y ago
Unrelated to the criticisms above... Having not reread this essay for a few years, I'd forgotten what a wonderful piece this was. Your exploration of the common fallacies that lead people astray is particularly clearheaded and well support

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