I wonder if tax policy could be used to encourage placing content in the public domain. This could especially be useful for software, since there probably isn’t much money to be made in selling Windows 3.1 licenses, but a nominal tax credit could encourage Microsoft to put it in the public domain and let the public play around with it, inspire them, etc.
I wish the FCC would regulate how ISPs advertise their speeds and force reliability disclosures. It's impossible to compare two ISPs without actually subscribing. I know Comcast can offer me 10x the advertised bandwidth, but I know in practice that can vary widely.
I use Google Webpass (a microwave radio link). The speed is 100Mbps, and the service is phenomenal. I've had one outage in 3 years, only lasting about 6 hours. I had switched to RCN for about a month, as they had advertised 300Mbps for a cheaper price. The speed in tests was about that high (and actually even higher), but I was getting a lot of buffering when streaming videos, that made the service much worse.
When I worked at att I was really only estimating what your bill would be, I never actually knew what we would charge you for phone service cable or internet even with our internal tools. Bills would also be different from month to month for seemingly no reason
I love this idea because it would really help companies like my rural cable supplier. They advertise 300/30 for $80/month, but I regularly get 350/30, with as good as it gets ping and jitter. I'd love for their service to have some official recognition.
I've gone through some level of effort to try to document ISP reliability issues over the years and it's remarkably difficult to do anything comprehensive. SamKnows is the closest thing I've found but it's difficult to understand the distribution of their service and/or what all is done with the data they collect.
> Have cookie consent pop ups made the web better?
Those that are compliant have. 99% of them are still noncompliant so I think it's too soon for a ruling yet. If this law is actually enforced then websites will only have choices of 1) compliant banners/popups in which few will consent 2) finding alternative business models 3) going out of business.
Right now, most sites do 4) just be noncompliant for now because 1..3 means we go out of business anyway.
How many sites have seriously thought about reducing Google analytics and intrusive ads? If it's even 1% then the banners unequivocally HAVE made the web better.
are we sure it won't? and whether the goal is to lift anyone from poverty (not sure that's a stated goal), perhaps it may force companies to look for other ways to spend their money. Perhaps more will find its way in to company/equipment reinvestment, more hiring, etc, or... uh-oh - might just end up getting taxed and make its way back to society via govt confiscation(!)
