Somebody has to write the standards. Transit agencies don't care about making a data format that works for other transit agencies, as it doesn't affect them. Only companies that need data from multiple transit agencies will do this kind of work.
There are two approaches to aggregating data. You can either treat each agency as a unique snowflake, or you can convince all agencies to use the same format. The former approach means that all work you do is only for you, and you've built up an interesting base of intellectual property in an industry that doesn't matter. (There is no money in providing transit directions.) The latter means that anyone can show up and do neat things with transit data. (I have my own little webpage, jrock.us/mta.html that uses this data to provide me with exactly the interface I want. Do you think the MTA wanted to hire programmers to make this for people like me? Absolutely not. But they did make it for Google, and now I benefit.)
In China, you will probably do all of the above in WeChat rather than email. Whenever I need to conduct business with someone in China, it's always over WeChat rather than email.
One of the Chinese court systems actually sends notifications through their WeChat account. I believe there are even pilot programs where you can initiate court cases through WeChat as well.
As a non-Chinese, this seems... problematic to say the least. What if you don't have WeChat, or prefer not to use it? Are there standards-based alternatives offered? Off-line alternatives, maybe?
Apple bought C3 Technologies, a Swedish 3D mapping company back in 2011. It was originally spun out of SAAB (the mapping solution was originally used for missile targeting systems, iirc.)
add some more context, this NYT editorial was written a couple days before Abraham Lincoln was sworn into office (March 4th, 1861).
The states had already voted to secede (or not to) earlier in the year. The Confederates had even provisionally elected a president, Jefferson Davis, on February 18th. The secession crisis started after Abraham Lincoln was elected in November of 1860.
The nation really was falling apart, hence the lamentation of the republic being just a collection of states in the editorial.
In the wireless data sector, which operates under separate and looser "net neutrality" rules, there are already packages to allow "unlimited" access to preferred applications.
T-mobile does this[1] as well as Virgin[2]. Scroll down to see packages like:
* "Unlimited Instagram — Monthly $5.00"
* "Unlimited Pinterest — Monthly $5.00"
* "Unlimited Social — Monthly $15.00"
If you are a web or app startup, it's gonna be might hard to get people to use your product when they can use Facebook or other preferred apps for free.
Sure, the above plans are made for low income demographics but it is a looking glass of what the ISP/telecom companies view as the future of the internet.
>I think the strongest argument against net neutrality is that the US has gone through long periods without it and none of the doomsday scenarios have occurred.
Incorrect, the Internet in the United States has been under de-facto net neutrality rules through a patchwork of agreements, policy statements, and regulations.
The current debate is just about formalizing the legal method & the scope of any rules to maintain a "Open Internet". (That is the term that the FCC uses for the various net neutrality issues.)
> As far as I can tell, there was no regulation before the 2005 open internet regulations.
Before around 2005 there was competition. Regardless of who your phone company was you could get internet access from AOL, CompuServe, Prodigy, Earthlink or any number of local hole in the wall ISPs with a couple of T1s and a bank of modems. Those companies had every intention of leasing DSL and cable lines in the same way they traditionally leased phone lines.
The FCC decided that broadband ISPs didn't have to lease their lines to competitors, which essentially killed all of the competitors.
We can have a competitive market with little regulation. We can have a monopoly with strong regulation. What we absolutely cannot allow is a monopoly with little regulation.
They all generally obeyed them because those ISPs didn't want to tangle with the FCC and their Open Internet order. (Who does?) Also at various times before the 2005 regulations, certain parts of the internet infrastructure were under regulations that had the side effect of having a neutral internet.
The reason why the formalizing the rules is now an issue is because a federal court has thrown out the legal method the FCC had been using to wave at ISPs to be neutral.
So now there is no ruling, and the ISPs wouldn't have spent all that time & money on lawyers to preserve what they just took down.
So right now, the FCC is going to release new rules on the Open Internet. The question is, will it be under a new interpretation of the old method that was thrown out of court (Section 702), or by calling ISPs common carriers and then forbearing most of the sections in Title II (as the court alluded is possible).
