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Arthur T Knackerbracket has found the following story:
The New York State Public Service Commission (PSC) today voted to revoke its approval of Charter Communications' 2016 purchase of Time Warner Cable (TWC). The PSC said it is ordering Charter to sell the former TWC system that it purchased in New York, and it's "bring[ing] an enforcement action in State Supreme Court to seek additional penalties for Charter's past failures and ongoing noncompliance."
Charter has repeatedly failed to meet deadlines for broadband expansions that were required in exchange for merger approval, state officials said. The PSC has steadily increased the pressure on Charter with fines and threats, but Charter never agreed to changes demanded by state officials.
As a result of today's vote, "Charter is ordered to file within 60 days a plan with the Commission to ensure an orderly transition to a successor provider(s)," the PSC's announcement said. "During the transition process, Charter must continue to comply with all local franchises it holds in New York State and all obligations under the Public Service Law and the Commission regulations. Charter must ensure no interruption in service is experienced by customers, and, in the event that Charter does not do so, the Commission will take further steps, including seeking injunctive relief in Supreme Court in order to protect New York consumers."
[...] Charter has denied failing to meet obligations to expand broadband service. But as we've previously written, state officials say that Charter is trying to count locations that it was already required to serve as part of franchise agreements toward its merger commitments.
[...] Charter's statement did not say whether it will appeal the PSC decision, or whether it will comply with the PSC's order to sell the former Time Warner Cable system in New York. We asked Charter those questions today and will update this story if we get a response.
-- submitted from IRC
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday July 30 2018, @01:29PM (56 children)
Not quite "the state", this action is from the New York State Public Service Commission. Does anyone know their relation to state government? Appointed positions?? In the past the PSC seems to have done a reasonable job controlling things like the rate increase granted to electric power utilities. If they can axe Charter/Spectrum that could be a good thing for me, it's a little hard to imagine a worse cable company than Charter (but it may exist!!) Certainly Spectrum has not been an improvement over our previous cable "natural monopoly" owner Time Warner Cable.
(Score: 0, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Monday July 30 2018, @01:36PM (54 children)
Look, there's no such thing as a natural monopoly. There is just imposition.
If you look to your local violenly imposed monopoly to build your infrastructure, then guess what? You're going to end up with a violently imposed monopoly in control of your infrastructure. Who knew..
(Score: 3, Informative) by c0lo on Monday July 30 2018, @02:21PM (44 children)
Don;t know about you, but I prefer an infrastructure that works well (even when controlled by the local public administration) over one that barely works but is fraudulently overcharged [reuters.com].
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday July 30 2018, @02:45PM (41 children)
We're in this awful position because control over the infrastructure has been fundamentally commandeered by a political entity, rather than a voluntary, organically grown service provider.
I think things have to get worse before they get better.
You know, one of the key features of the Internet is that it should be able to route around damage. Well, that's what I'd like to see; I'd like to see some organization of determined young men say "Fuck it! We're tired of this nonsense, and so we're going to ignore the crap the 'authorities' offer us." and then build out, say, for example, point-to-point wifi beams atop some neighborhood's roofs, and thereby build out slowly but surely a mesh network that maybe isn't good enough to stream ultra HD netflix 3D movies, but is at least good enough to participate on the Internet reasonably well.
Come on!
Where the fuck is the American spirit of do-it-yourself entrepreneurship. We can't be looking to the State all the time; rather, a society is healthy when the State is looking to The People for direction instead. God damn!
(Score: 5, Touché) by c0lo on Monday July 30 2018, @02:53PM (34 children)
In China, of course.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday July 30 2018, @03:01PM (1 child)
When China's hammer and sickle falls, it falls hard.
However, China's government just doesn't have the resources to impose the total control of the bureaucrats dreams. The result is that the industrious Chinese do indeed benefit from being relatively free to try new ways of doing things.
Of course, the result is that there's a lot of fraud and danger, but that's because regulation is a facet of society that has been explicitly commandeered by government, so there's little incentive to come up with a competing (i.e., market-based) framework for ensuring integrity.
(Score: 2, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Monday July 30 2018, @04:05PM
[quote]
but that's because regulation is a facet of society that has been explicitly commandeered by government
[/quote]
I don't think those words mean what you think they mean.
Muwhahahahah, yeah, like credit bureaus.
I think your dream of a free-market utopia governing everything without societal regulations regulations is as realistic as Communism (I was going to say or Anarchy, but that would be redundant). Unless, of course, you dream of dystopia instead of utopia., then carry on.
(Score: 2) by RS3 on Monday July 30 2018, @03:11PM (31 children)
Yes, and we're buying, from China, the routers, hot-spots, and long-range antennas to build out the mesh network.
(Score: 2) by c0lo on Monday July 30 2018, @03:43PM (30 children)
You could, but chances are you won;t,
You are conditioned towards competition and seizing the opportunity.
A job like this requires cooperation on a quite large scale, and this sounds too much like socialism, which is a cultural anathema.
Besides, the point of exit into the world wide Internet - that will imply costs, which will require a commercial identity to deal with the contractual matters - good luck with that herd of cats (no, multiple individual personal exits will not work - the ones with higher bandwidth available will see a spike in their traffic/cost; why would their freely share it?)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday July 30 2018, @03:44PM (25 children)
Cooperation is voluntary exchange.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by c0lo on Monday July 30 2018, @03:50PM (23 children)
Spare me, will you?
I'm not in the mood to learn all the new quaint meanings you attach to the words you don't actually know their original sense.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday July 30 2018, @03:55PM (22 children)
If you want socialism to work, it has to be built atop capitalism; socialism has to be constrained by capitalism, otherwise you end up with tyranny and then failure.
(Score: 2) by c0lo on Monday July 30 2018, @04:00PM (19 children)
Socialism built on top of capitalism is still socialism - have heaps of voluntary social ownership by cooperation.
Voluntary or not, good luck convincing TMB and his ilk to stop calling you thieves.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday July 30 2018, @04:07PM (10 children)
That's what makes the atop-built socialism cooperative. Without the underlying capitalism, socialism quickly deteriorates into imposition, which is no good at adapting to changing conditions.
(Score: 2) by c0lo on Monday July 30 2018, @04:19PM (9 children)
Da fuck you need capitalism, You can build socialism on top of (a mild) capitalism, but it is not a prerequisite.
You can build socialism on top of a gift economy (see open-source for an example of gift economy) or commons-based peer production [wikipedia.org]
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: -1, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Monday July 30 2018, @04:20PM (8 children)
Capitalism is the fundamental philosophy of a free society.
Capitalism is a prerequisite for a free society.
(Score: 2) by c0lo on Monday July 30 2018, @04:38PM (7 children)
Those are postulates.
I can come with similar: "Gift economy is a prerequisite of a free society" - they lead to an equally coherent set of social organisation rules.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday July 30 2018, @04:45PM (6 children)
You cannot make a gift of something unless you own it.
(Score: 2) by c0lo on Monday July 30 2018, @04:57PM (5 children)
Really?
What if nobody owns anything and the gift is actually the service of manufacturing or obtaining something from nobody ownership and gifting the right to use of that something to the person that needs it?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday July 30 2018, @05:09PM (4 children)
Either those resources are allocated by compliance, or they are allocated by cooperation.
Cooperation requires voluntary exchange, and voluntary exchange requires ownership by each party.
A perfectly free society emerges from solely cooperation. I hope that compliance is merely an artifact of primitive, naive logistics, and that humanity will discover ways to stamp it out.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday July 30 2018, @05:16PM
Failing hard again huh?
(Score: 2) by c0lo on Monday July 30 2018, @05:27PM (2 children)
You are too bound by your own conceptualization to be able to think something else.
Very likely, an useless waste of time in such a discussion on both sides
For other alternatives, stewardship and meritocracy, do those term ring any bell to you?
They are quite commonly used in open source.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 2, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Monday July 30 2018, @05:58PM
It is like VIM dude needs to have the same debate with each and every user, and apparently when the usual suspects don't step up yet another user decides to take up the banner of critical thinking. It is a waste of time, all the same points have been pointed out many times and VIM dude just repeats his shaky world view and adds "get it yet?" to the end.
Don't waste your time.
(Score: 0, Disagree) by Anonymous Coward on Monday July 30 2018, @06:24PM
FOSS is capitalism; your contribution to FOSS is an allocation of your capital.
(Score: 1, Flamebait) by The Mighty Buzzard on Monday July 30 2018, @06:23PM (7 children)
Voluntary is fine. I have no issue with people giving away their money, only with it being stolen.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday July 30 2018, @07:26PM (6 children)
You are free to live on a boat in international waters. If you don't like this arrangement you are free to fuck off out of my country.
(Score: 2) by The Mighty Buzzard on Monday July 30 2018, @07:58PM (5 children)
Yours? There are 325 million or so people who might beg to differ and most of them think more like me than like you.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday July 30 2018, @09:45PM (4 children)
BZZT wrong!
The majority of US citizens want socialized healthcare and a return to pre-Reagan programs that helped with education and such. Keep fooling yourself about being in the majority all you want.
Yes MY country, you seem like a decent citizen but your personal ideologies are for a broken US that values greed over freedom and you're too pig headed to comprehend.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday July 30 2018, @10:06PM
For a moment there, I thought you were Mr. Vim. However, you cannot be, because capitalism values greed over freedom.
(Score: 2) by The Mighty Buzzard on Tuesday July 31 2018, @03:15AM (2 children)
And if you keep telling yourself that over and over, one day you may actually believe it.
As for my ideologies, they value freedom over everything. Fuck money, fuck comfort, fuck life if it comes to it. That means freedom for everybody though not just those who agree with me, unlike your authoritarian ass.
Now get in your little red boat and row your commie ass back to China, please.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday July 31 2018, @04:13AM (1 child)
Whatever you say VIM dude. Sadly your idea of freedom is so childish it is dangerous and I'm tickled red you think I'm a commie. Your lack of education is showing again, go back to school ya jackass!
(Score: 2) by The Mighty Buzzard on Tuesday July 31 2018, @04:22AM
Yeah, children can understand freedom pretty well. It takes an intellectual to fuck it up so thoroughly that it can be used to oppress people. It's pretty amusing that they can also get idiots like you to buy into their bullshit but then I dig on gallows humor.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 2) by c0lo on Monday July 30 2018, @04:08PM
Linky got eaten in my prev comment : https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_ownership#Typology [wikipedia.org]
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday July 30 2018, @05:35PM
Did you forget that we debunked this point on the last exciting episode of Mr. Vim Explains Political Science?
You keep using the word. I do not think it means what you think it means.
(Score: 2) by Runaway1956 on Monday July 30 2018, @06:40PM
Cooperation is a wonderful thing, yes? So, at lunch, I share with some dude who has no food. He's homeless, maybe, or his wife doesn't love him, or whatever - he has no food. I share. That's cooperation, right?
But, as time goes on, the bum gets more demanding, sometimes even eating my whole lunch before I break for lunch. Is that still cooperation?
To be called "cooperation", that damned bum had better be giving something back if he expects any food from me! Otherwise, it's just charity.
(Score: 2) by RS3 on Monday July 30 2018, @04:22PM (3 children)
I perceive you to be based outside USA. What you hear, believe, "know" about USA is only part of the story, and quite biased by "news" media, advertising, etc. The Spirit of the American Revolution is still quite strong in many of us. There have been many stories of neighborhoods, towns and even cities where people coordinated and built out their own fiber and mesh networks. You just need a good, inspiring leader. Someone who can sell them on the benefits, get (or provide) financing, and make it happen.
In my area, and perhaps US-wide, we buy our electricity from company X, but pay the local electric company a fee to use their wires. I would prefer the wires be owned by society. Define that however you wish. The current (sorry, bad pun) wire-owning company is pretty good, but not cost efficient, IMHO, but I'm not a power-line EE, so what do I know. For instance, the old story / argument about burying power lines: I know many places they buried lines and there have been NO problems for more than 30 years. Cynic in me wonders if they're afraid of losing business / work repairing storm / car crash damage...
(Score: 2) by c0lo on Monday July 30 2018, @04:34PM (1 child)
Yes, indeed.
I'm quite happy to be proven wrong. Perchance, do you have some linkies, thank you in advance?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 1) by organgtool on Monday July 30 2018, @08:36PM
Here is a good article [arstechnica.com] that has a lot of information about municipal broadband.
(Score: 3, Informative) by Runaway1956 on Monday July 30 2018, @06:45PM
c0lo has requested links. I don't know how inspired you might be to provide such links - but - if you do some searches, you WILL find that many of those projects have been challenged in court by commercial interests. The theory behind the challenges seems to be something like this: "This is our monopoly area, and the towns and cities are imposing on our monopoly. No matter that we haven't bothered to develop any infrastructure for the town, they are still imposing on our monopoly. City and town owned infrastructure needs to be outlawed!"
Yes, there are stories like you cite, but there are almost as many discouraging stories to compare them to.
(Score: 1, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Monday July 30 2018, @03:54PM
Dude, as much as I love to debate you, I think in this instance I'm tempted to mod you funny. You almost overloaded my irony meter!
(I sent out a contract for fulfillment on a new one after jmorris broke my old one. Then I contracted with a contract enforcer just in case, and that contract is enforced by another contract enforcer, and after that, the rest of the enforcement is crowdsourced to turtles.)
(Score: 2) by Runaway1956 on Monday July 30 2018, @06:29PM
Alright - but you've got to define "good enough". Is that 2MB? That's what I have. Uhhhh - actually, it's sorta kinda mostly "good enough". Except for lag, packet loss, buffer bloat, and assorted other "minor" complaints. 2MB without all those peripheral complaints would probably keep me from bitching all the time.
But, that mesh network would probably INCREASE all those peripheral complaints, rather than reducing them. So, let's insist that 10MB is "good enough". Is that reasonable? Careful now - I think that a whole lot of OTHER PEOPLE are going to insist that anything less than 100MB is totally UNreasonable!
(Score: 2) by PartTimeZombie on Monday July 30 2018, @09:41PM (3 children)
You're in this situation because the political entity that commandeered the infrastructure has been in turn commandeered by the commercial entities that profit most when they have monopoly control, so that is exactly what they granted themselves all over the US.
Allowing further mergers and vertical integration just extends this control. Don't forget, the end game of Capitalism is monopoly.
(Score: 2) by The Mighty Buzzard on Tuesday July 31 2018, @03:17AM (2 children)
The funny thing is, they don't profit most by monopoly control. They'd profit far more if they had real and dangerous competition. And so would everyone else.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday July 31 2018, @04:15AM (1 child)
Yer gonna have to explain that logic.
(Score: 2) by The Mighty Buzzard on Tuesday July 31 2018, @04:35AM
Really? I would have thought it blindingly obvious. Better products get more people wanting them and competition forces production of better products. Having a monopoly doesn't really do you any good at all unless people need your product to survive. If your product sucks ass and they don't genuinely need it, they're not going to pay for it.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday July 30 2018, @05:53PM
If you don't like it, try Australia [soylentnews.org].
(Score: 3, Informative) by Runaway1956 on Monday July 30 2018, @06:23PM
A "reasonable consumer" buys 10MB, he expects to get 10 MB. If he sometimes gets 10.5 MB, he's ahead. If he occassionaly gets 9.5 MB, he may be content. But, he expects 10 MB. When he can only get 2, or 5, or 7 MB, he's going to be pissed off. That is a "reasonable consumer".
None of us needs the telcos and ISP's to define "reasonable" for us. That is something that we, the "consumers" will define.
If Charter cannot provide the required bandwidth, as agreed before the merger, then the merger should never have happened. If Charter cannot provide that bandwidth they are selling, then the value of Charter and it's services can be considered as substandard.
Kick their asses out of the state, and let someone with more ethics run the business. I'm all for that.
(Score: 2) by The Mighty Buzzard on Monday July 30 2018, @03:42PM (8 children)
Erm, yes, there most certainly is. Manufactured != natural but natural ones most definitely exist.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday July 30 2018, @03:46PM (7 children)
You can come up with any silly scenario you want; I'll never agree.
That's my lived experience, bitch.
(Score: 2) by The Mighty Buzzard on Monday July 30 2018, @03:57PM (6 children)
Dude, seriously, work on your game. This is some weak shit.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: -1, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Monday July 30 2018, @04:17PM (4 children)
So, dude, seriously, work on your game. This is some weak shit.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday July 30 2018, @05:27PM (3 children)
You're both weak shit, but AC if even TMB is disagreeing with your VIMVIEW then it is time to put the crack pipe down.
(Score: 2) by The Mighty Buzzard on Monday July 30 2018, @06:25PM (2 children)
My shit has the strength of ten shits because its heart is pure, I'll have you know. Also because of the hotwings.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 2) by PartTimeZombie on Monday July 30 2018, @09:43PM (1 child)
I made hotwings for the junior zombies last night and they weren't that great.
Any tips?
(Score: 2) by The Mighty Buzzard on Tuesday July 31 2018, @03:20AM
Mango habanero has been my go-to sauce of choice of late, though anything with four chilies or more on a menu is probably pretty good. The broadly flavored sweetness of the mango and the smokiness of the habanero really compliment the hell out of each other.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: -1, Spam) by Anonymous Coward on Monday July 30 2018, @06:25PM
So, dude, seriously, work on your game. This is some weak shit.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday July 31 2018, @04:39AM
"...hard to imagine a worse cable company than Charter (but it may exist!!"
Yep...it's called Comcast