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Limiting Free Weather Service? Forecast Bad For Protected Businesses
from the save-it-for-a-rainy-day dept
Companies often cry foul at free services that allegedly take away their business. The unfairness claims get even more adamant when government is subsidizing the competitive freebies. These complaints seem to be the basis of a pending Senate bill that would strip the federally funded National Weather Service of its weather forecasting. Lest you wonder what else a weather service might do, the legislation would allow NWS to keep making hazard alerts, like hurricane warnings. The bill was sponsored by Sen. Rick Santorum on behalf of companies such as AccuWeather and The Weather Channel, which argue that the overlapping free services are anti-competitive. The problem with that argument is that studies show the exact opposite is true: free services in the weather business have actually spurred competition, not hindered it. A huge, thriving industry has grown around free weather info because companies have been forced to build value on top of the commodity, which becomes the input for innovation rather than the final output. In this case, it appears government intervention helps boost business and competitiveness. As the NWS could tell you, messing with that might quickly lead to disaster.
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I could be wrong, but haven't I already paid for access to this data via my taxes?
Oh, Rick Santorum. Say no more....
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He he, you said Santorum. You cheeky bastard!
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Prediction:
Home weather monitoring hardware on your roof (build it yourself or buy a premade kit) + distributed computing weather prediction software = all weather predicting companies out of business within 30 years.
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Aha... timely -- AccuWeather launched Google Local content today..
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Basic weather service required by pilots and utilized by hundreds of thousands of radio and news providers around the country. This bill passes and we are all put at risk and seriously lives could be lost.
Bad bill, greedy seedy. Seriously, look at whats happened with network news. Do we really want our weather forecasts to be that bad?
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