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Brock Beauchamp

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Everything posted by Brock Beauchamp

  1. Brock Beauchamp
    Diehard, your analogy would have more merit if you changed "kids" to "women", "Mexicans", or "Catholics". Restaurants choose not to serve children because some are disruptive, not because they exist. As a typical white dude, I struggle to even weigh in on this subject meaningfully because I don't even know what it feels like to be denied service or even face discrimination. Nobody says "I don't want white guys in my establishment" but were that to ever happen, I suspect it would piss me off to no end. I think that's a good thing to keep in mind when discussing these kinds of subjects. How is it fair to support people denying service to others when you know that it will never happen to you? That seems kinda screwed up to me.
  2. Brock Beauchamp
    The amount of blowback from that kind of ToS change - not to mention the questionable legality of doing such a thing - would be catastrophic to Google's PR. I'm not even convinced Google wants Fiber to be dominant in the market. I've received the impression that they created Fiber more to prove that widespread gigabit without data caps can be profitable; an attempt to show consumers just how badly they're getting hosed by their ISPs. This is backed up by how slowly Google is expanding Fiber; given Google's assets and market influence, they could be rolling Fiber out exponentially faster than they are right now. Because widespread gigabit is going to help Google's bottom line in the long run. By showcasing Fiber, Google is firing a very public shot across the bow of established telecom/cable, trying to show America just how badly they're getting screwed by ISPs. If Google pushes the rest of the telecom industry forward, they win in the long run, even if Fiber never becomes a significant portion of their business.
  3. Brock Beauchamp
    We're working on restructuring our entire ad system. It's going to take 6-8 weeks to implement but work is being done on all the sites to alleviate this issue.
  4. Brock Beauchamp
    Jay, this will blow over once real baseball gets underway. This happens every year. The last half of March is a ****storm on the forums.
  5. Brock Beauchamp
    Also, this is a good primer video on net neutrality and why this situation is so entirely jacked up, all put into layman terms. It's a long video but it gives a good timeline of events so you can see just how ****ed up this is. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NAxMyTwmu_M
  6. Brock Beauchamp
    I agree that Google's privacy track record is a bit spotty but you're wearing a tinfoil hat, diehard. Google has a vested interest in seeing customers with blazing fast internet... so those customers can consume more Google content. There's no grand conspiracy here. Google doesn't track data for mining purposes with Fiber. Direct from Google's Fiber page: "Technical information collected from the use of Google Fiber Internet for network management, security or maintenance may be associated with the Google Account you use for Fiber, but such information associated with the Google Account you use for Fiber will not be used by other Google properties without your consent. Other information from the use of Google Fiber Internet (such as URLs of websites visited or content of communications) will not be associated with the Google Account you use for Fiber, except with your consent or to meet any applicable law, regulation, legal process or enforceable governmental request." I have plenty of issues with Google but not every single thing they do is about mining customer data. They saw a giant, gaping hole in ISP coverage and walked right through it because it's going to make them piles and piles of money.
  7. Brock Beauchamp
    Because I've been reading about this independently for years, the kind of in-depth reading that doesn't come from mainstream media. I didn't form an opinion based on a three minute newsclip or a politician's tweet; my opinion was formed after years of interest and reading hundreds of articles from a wide variety of sources. After all, this is my livelihood at stake here. It's in my interest to know what is happening and the potential impact of any new legislation. At the end of the day, Title II reclassification does not give the government more or less power to control the content of the Internet. You know how I know that? Because the government has technically held that power since day one. Should the government try to exercise that power in the manner you proposed, it'd be a rather clear violation of the First Amendment.
  8. Brock Beauchamp
    More importantly, Title II reclassification did nothing to increase or decrease the government's ability to "shut down the internet". Nothing has changed in this regard. It's a moot point.
  9. Brock Beauchamp
    The government doesn't control the Internet any more or less today than they did five years ago (unless you count relinquishing ICANN control, which has nothing to do with this situation). This reclassification merely says "Nobody can control the delivery of data, specifically the last few hundred feet to the consumer." There's a Grand Canyon of difference between those two things. You're falling prey to hyperbolic nonsense that is being spewed by politicians.
  10. Brock Beauchamp
    What I find most sad about this situation is the "don't change the internet!" argument against regulation. Well, guess who actually "changed" the internet? Verizon. They're the ones who sued the FCC to break a long-standing policy of net neutrality (and they pissed off a grip of other ISPs by doing so, ISPs who were smart enough to realize that upsetting the apple cart was a bad idea). This situation wasn't caused by government overreach. It was created by corporate greed overreach. The rules and system we had in place were good enough but Verizon, in a blatant attempt at cash-grabbing, decided that they wanted more money and sued so they could start making money not only from consumers but also from content providers. It's a classic case of double-dipping. But the right doesn't want to talk about that. This is an incredibly complex situation and I've been reading tech sites covering this subject for the past five years (when news of the Verizon lawsuit first broke). What I find terribly disappointing is that so few Americans truly understand how the Internet works and fall back to shoddy news coverage that doesn't actually examine the situation, they just spew partisan talking points. Net neutrality is too damned important to be influenced by partisan talking points.
  11. Brock Beauchamp
    That's not true at all. Our internet prices already aren't competitive. The problem with ISPs is that they're not free market. They have handshake agreements not to enter each others' markets and then they provide lackluster service at high prices. Despite inventing the internet, the US lags behind most of the industrial world in internet speed. For example, I live within Minneapolis' city limits. The MSP market is the 15th largest in the United States. How many "choices" do I have for broadband? One. Yes, one. Where's your competition? You think this will make pricing less competitive? Then why was Google - the biggest market disruption in ISPs right now - champing at the bit for reclassification because it allows them access to poles and infrastructure? ISPs are terrified of Google getting access and for good reason: Google is swooping into cities and destroying the competition with low prices and speeds (on average) fifty times faster than what traditional ISPs are offering their customers. In markets that Google has entered (Kansas City, Austin, and a handful of others), established ISPs have been forced to reduce pricing and increase bandwidth to keep up with what Google is doing. You want your free market, you got it. And I haven't even brought up the content delivery side of the coin, which is actually the most important piece of the reclassification. Consumers won with this reclassification. It's that simple. The only losers were the established ISPs who want to protect their gravy train. Oh, and the politicians who take money to protect that gravy train... Like Ted Cruz.
  12. Brock Beauchamp
    We can disagree but any man who is on the Committee for Science, Space, and Technology and calls net neutrality "ObamaCare for the internet" is either an idiot or a demagogue. Cruz should have been kicked off the committee for saying something so inane. Whether you like ObamaCare or not, net neutrality is nothing like ObamaCare and presenting it as such is blatant demagoguery. He didn't present a factual counter-argument to the net neutrality announcement, he cast it in such a light to strike fear into his base while giving them no actual information on the topic. That's textbook demagoguery. I'd struggle to come up with a more clear-cut case of it, actually. Unsurprisingly, Cruz received about $50k from big telecom in 2014. His motives were pretty clear as to why he was "against" net neutrality.
  13. Brock Beauchamp
    I said she should catch flak for it. I guess I just expect politicians to do this kind of crap so when the news on this broke, I just shrugged and said "yeah, so that happened". It was an incredibly stupid move and I have bigger issues with the security implications than I do the secrecy of her email.
  14. Brock Beauchamp
    That's cool. I'm not a Democrat. And Ted Cruz is still a demagogue.
  15. Brock Beauchamp
    I'm not sold that it's a big deal but it's not irrelevant, either. She deserves to catch a lot of flak for, at the very least, compromising internal security. WTF was she thinking?
  16. Brock Beauchamp
    I can't really disagree with this take, at least not in 2015. The Twins have so many guys who could step into a relief role. I like the idea of scrapheap pick-ups but if they're not performing, you cast them aside quickly and you certainly don't let them get in the way of guys like Burdi.
  17. Brock Beauchamp
    I think Ryan is right in avoiding high profile bullpen arms in free agency. Relievers are just too damned volatile from season to season and the impact of a single reliever just isn't high enough to offset that risk. If things get bad, be aggressive and call up Nick Burdi.
  18. Brock Beauchamp
    I didn't mean to imply that last year's bullpen was good. My intent was to point out that Ryan's bullpens are rarely bad. Last year faltered as yet another rotation fell to pieces mid season but they weren't a very strong group of pitchers in the first place. I'm not going to fret about the bullpen until they throw innings in MLB games that count. Do I trust this bullpen? No, not even a little bit. But given the volatility of bullpen arms and the live arms in the Twins' farm system, I'm not going to go marching up to 34 Twins Way with a torch and pitchfork quite yet.
  19. Brock Beauchamp
    They've gotten the job done, whether xFIP wants you to believe that or not. Any failings of the bullpen have been directly tied to the rotation and eight men bullpens. The Twins' core bullpen guys have been "good enough". No, they're not flashy and no, they're not the darling of advanced metrics but they haven't killed the team. What has killed the pitching staff is a rotation that can barely pitch five innings a game. No bullpen will shine under that spotlight as you dig into your eighth, ninth, tenth, eleventh best bullpen option during the season.
  20. Brock Beauchamp
    I'm pretty disappointed that May was sent down.
  21. Brock Beauchamp
    I've already seen it. A true thing of incoherent, rambling, pandering to a constituency glory.
  22. Brock Beauchamp
    There are many reasons to be frustrated with Ryan but his bullpens are not one of them. The guy has built a career of slapping together quality bullpens on the cheap. Yeah, I'm not in love with the appearance of the 2015 pen but I'm going to let them pitch before I get too upset about it.
  23. Brock Beauchamp
    So instead of incompetent, he's a demagogue. That's even worse.
  24. Brock Beauchamp
    Probably. While I'm not entirely on board with the "Mauer is too passive" crowd (mainly because getting on base is so valuable), I think Joe could take a few more swings in favorable counts.
  25. Brock Beauchamp
    I agree that one shouldn't put too much stock in this article, though it's an interesting observation that says something about how the player approaches the plate. Does this tell us whether Arcia is a disciplined hitter? No, but when coupled with the eye test and other stats, it's an interesting side note that supports other observations made about the player.
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