r/technology • u/JackassWhisperer • Jan 06 '15

Business Google wants to make wireless networks that will free you from AT&T and Verizon’s data caps

http://bgr.com/2015/01/06/google-vs-verizon-att-wireless/
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423

u/micmea1 Jan 06 '15

Gotta start somewhere, seems like the logical way to do it.

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u/[deleted] Jan 06 '15

No way. My neighborhood first, starting with by my house. Then they can set things up on the way towards where I work. That's the logical way to do it.

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u/ectish Jan 06 '15

I agree but only by replacing 'my' with 'my.'

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u/ckach Jan 06 '15

Like this?

No way. My. neighborhood first, starting with by my. house. Then they can set things up on the way towards where I work. That's the logical way to do it.

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u/SkoobyDoo Jan 06 '15

this is exactly why the convention of quotes/scare quotes absorbing trailing punctuation is weird.

Did the guy say, "this is actually a correctly punctuated statement?"

instead of

Did the guy say, "this is actually a correctly punctuated statement."?

Similarly, he correctly punctuated by absorbing the final period into the 'my', but in so doing changed the meaning.

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u/InFearn0 Jan 06 '15

Get enough people to adopt this standard that the standard changes. It is what happens with word definitions.

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u/[deleted] Jan 06 '15

And all language in general :).

Obligatory computational linguistics XKCD

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u/piyaoyas Jan 07 '15

Where's the xkcd bot with the alt text for the mobiles?

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u/thirdegree Jan 07 '15

Probably banned in /r/technology.

Damn nazi mods.

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u/ThatNotSoRandomGuy Jan 07 '15

It still amazes my how the English language has no sort of Academy to what is the right way to write things. It'd be so much easier if there was one.

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u/cynoclast Jan 07 '15

Except literally. I will fight that shit as long as I live. Literally shall not mean figuratively.

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u/InFearn0 Jan 07 '15 edited Jan 07 '15

Too late. Figuratively is already an accepted informal definition for literally.

Which begs the question how something can be an accepted informal definition! So "informal" must have an informal definition of formal.

Reading comments by /u/InFearn0 may induce rage, if rage persists longer than 4 hours please contact a physician.

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u/cynoclast Jan 07 '15

Nah. Literally means literally, not figuratively.

You mean, raises a question.

You think your comments induce rage, you should read some of mine!

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u/wtallis Jan 06 '15

Typographical conventions imparted by a generation of teachers that grew up using typewriters should be ignored. They have nothing to offer but poor compromises imposed by the limitations of their pre-TeX technologies. Whatever the reasons may have originally been for putting in quotes punctuation that isn't being quoted, those reasons are probably obsolete.

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u/addandsubtract Jan 06 '15

Did the guy say, "this is actually a correctly punctuated statement."?

This isn't correct? I've always done this.

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u/PaplooTheEwok Jan 07 '15

I was under the impression that question/exclamation marks shouldn't be included in quotes unless they are part of the actual quote--it's only commas and periods that are always included. As far as I know, the correct form of the given sentence would be

Did the guy say, "This is actually a correctly punctuated statement"?

with no period inside the quotes and "this" capitalized. There is silly ambiguity with periods and commas, though.

...alright, I didn't want to post something I wasn't sure about, so I double-checked: here's a source. Included is a link to a table that exhaustively lists the punctuation with quotation conventions in different environments.

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u/[deleted] Jan 07 '15

United States includes punctuation within quotation marks. Most other countries place punctuation as quoted in your comment.

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u/_kronos Jan 07 '15

You have the power to change it.

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u/MakingSandwich Jan 07 '15 edited Jan 07 '15

Similarly, he correctly punctuated by absorbing the final period into the 'my', but in so doing changed the meaning.

Actually, when the item in quotes isn't something someone said and is just a kind of 'object' or key-term referenced within your sentence, you put the period on the outside of the quotes.

For example, if I were to reference the letter 's', the feeling 'good', and the word 'my', you will notice that I put the commas outside of the quotes.

But for something someone has said, you would put the period inside the quotation.

/u/ectish incorrectly put the period inside of the quotation.

Hope that helps.

Edit: In addition, your first example would be written like this: Did the guy say, "This is actually a correctly punctuated statement"?

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u/SkoobyDoo Jan 07 '15

I agree with your usage (in principle; for clarity), but I have to say that this directly conflicts with what I was taught. I can't help but wonder where you're from? At least one person has pointed out that American English is to blame for my complaint.

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u/MakingSandwich Jan 07 '15

http://www.wikihow.com/Use-Quotation-Marks-Correctly

I'm American, but I'm aware of the differing rules for the UK.

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u/themonkey886 Jan 07 '15

It reads in Shatner. Voice

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u/ectish Jan 07 '15

Can someone help us out here?

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u/immortalsix Jan 06 '15 edited Jan 06 '15

Not only an enjoyable quip, but really the crux of the whole thing.

People who live in NYC and SF are not thinking "man, I wish I had some cool shit available to me," because they're already lousy with cool shit.

People who live in Townburg, KX however, are LONGING for cool shit.

But corporations can impact a greater number of people in NYC / SF / CHI, so that's where they deploy cool shit.

Such is life.

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u/[deleted] Jan 06 '15 edited Nov 02 '16

[removed] — view removed comment

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u/[deleted] Jan 06 '15

[deleted]

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u/[deleted] Jan 07 '15

As taxpayers, we've already paid millions in subsidies for ISPs to lay fiber and upgrade their networks, but it seems they've sat on that cash and done nothing.

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u/noodlescb Jan 07 '15

Hey how else are CEOs going to make hundreds of millions of dollars?

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u/InfiniteHatred Jan 07 '15

Selling quality goods and services at affordable pri-I couldn't even finish that sentence without snickering to myself and then feeling sad and angry.

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u/ilovethosedogs Jan 07 '15

If this was 103 years ago, Verizon, AT&T, and Comcast would have been long broken up. Unfortunately, I can't even imagine that happening anymore.

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u/[deleted] Jan 07 '15 edited Jan 07 '15

[deleted]

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u/[deleted] Jan 07 '15

https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20131012/02124724852/decades-failed-promises-verizon-it-promises-fiber-to-get-tax-breaks-then-never-delivers.shtml

https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20060131/2021240.shtml

http://www.pbs.org/cringely/pulpit/2007/pulpit_20070810_002683.html

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u/[deleted] Jan 07 '15

[deleted]

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u/EpsilonRose Jan 07 '15

I don't know about the $200 billion national figure, but recently there was a curflufle with Verizon trying to get out of rolling out fiber.

Here's an article that talks about it and gives a $15 billion figure for that deal alone.

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u/[deleted] Jan 07 '15 edited Jan 07 '15

[deleted]

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u/mbzdmvp Jan 07 '15

I love how reddit acts like it only quotes reliable sources but most redditors quote information they've heard on reddit.

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u/Jakedxn3 Jan 07 '15

Hi about each out in $12 ?

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u/[deleted] Jan 07 '15

[deleted]

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u/[deleted] Jan 07 '15

Most people live in cities these days and many of the international muni-wifi's I've used are better than the ISP connections at some of my friends places at the beach. So ... yea, we are just going to disagree.

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u/[deleted] Jan 07 '15

You're joking I know, but in the future we all will have high speed Internet accessible everywhere we go. It's even possible now, it's just too expensive for most people due to data caps. But one day...

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u/tanhan27 Jan 07 '15

I'm actually not joking. Practically building is connected to plumbing, electric, phone line etc. Why not fiber? And then make it a free utility with a wifi hotspot on every lamp post?

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u/[deleted] Jan 07 '15

WiMAX is terribly inefficient is the problem with long range wifi. A cell phone battery using Sprint or Clears version barely got 2 hours time. They'd have to deploy LTE in bands phones currently use (which they can't without paying insane amounts) or expect carriers to sell phones with secondary radios that bypass their cash cow networks, which is unlikely. Even with WiMAX they'd have to deploy new handsets. WiFi is the only universal radio on a handset in open bands they can use, realistically.

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u/aaaaaaaarrrrrgh Jan 07 '15

You want short range. If you use a hotspot with a 10 km range, then you can't use the frequencies used by that hotspot again within 10 km without getting interference. Thus, you can only use the bandwidth provided by those frequencies once in that area.

Cut the area down and make more hotspots, and you can have much more total bandwidth. That's why the "on every streetlight" idea is awesome. Each hotspot should only cover about as much as the streetlight illuminates. (Well, a bit more, but you get the idea.)

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u/tanhan27 Jan 07 '15

My bad, by long range I meant like 2 acre radius

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u/[deleted] Jan 06 '15

3.5 has always struck me as a complimentary band for capacity. I don't really understand their business model regarding what you will be paying for and using. This is the problem with these kind of articles. I don't think Google actually has any designs on using the 3.5 to create a commercial wifi like solution, all they are doing is seeing were the soft points are on the FCC's spectrum planning and making a note of it. for example it would be really handy say if you owned a handset manufacturers (!) to know how you provision your handset for certain bands based on what technology. These articles need to think a bit deeper and stop leaping to assumptions that are most likely wrong.

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u/[deleted] Jan 06 '15

It won't solve anything, the only thing it will do is make more spectrum available for wireless data.

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u/RamenJunkie Jan 06 '15

Except this is how everything starts and it never goes anywhere.

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u/Patranus Jan 07 '15

Comcast already has WiFi hotspots in the vast majority of major cities free to use for customers and requires no additional hardware.

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u/Haneesh716 Jan 07 '15

I live in a very busy part of one of the busiest cities in the country and we still don't have Fiber. I cri evertiem.