In the PC world, people tend to just use the OS until it's time to scrap the machine.
XP is six years old... don't you think there's demand for new computers?
Vista will be just as successful as Windows XP has been.
You know, I just pointed out that it's not doing half as well.
Apple people upgrade OS's every year or so because they have money to burn...
They don't charge for OS upgrades up to a point release or so behind.
Linux people upgrade seeming daily... actually
Because they can. Unlike the Windoze time of the month, free software upgrades make things better. Applications don't mysteriously die in the GNU/Linux world.
With Vista bombing so badly, people looking for performance should be looking to the free software world. 2007 is the year of Linux.
people will be moving to Vista when it becomes the sole option on new machines.
It's already hard to get anything but Vista. With a choice between a six year old POS and a DRM nightmare, people are simply not buying. Well, Apple and GNU/Linux are doing OK.
It's been well acknowledged here that Vista sales are roughly only equal to XP over the same time measured.... What did they think would happen?
It's also well known that estimate is generous but only half of the expected value because there are twice as many computer users as there were in 2001. Worse for M$, XP sales were disappointing because they had 98, ME and W2K to compete with. That makes Vista a real bomb like ME.
I've said it before and I'll say it again - Vista is not selling.
While some may interpret "electronic document" to mean only word processing documents and spreadsheet documents it may be that other things such as emails, database entries, and many, many other state records....
Now that you mention it, there's good reason to use free software for everything. Binary formats have their place, obviously, but non free ones like pst and M$ email formats need to go as well. Thanks for noticing.
The trouble with this whole debate is that the pro-ODF people have become the very thing they claim to stand against.
No, they simply say that government should not use secret formats owned a single company. M$ can play the game too, if they want. There are no royalties, patents or anything unclear about ODF. There are many editors that use ODF now, and plenty of choice.
It is wrong for the government to patronize M$ by using their formats. People should not have to purchase M$ to use public services.
The Linux and OpenOffice crowd have failed to displace MS Windows and MS Office in a competitive market for years...
And for years M$ has failed to co-operate. It was as anti-social as it was intentional, they deserve to lose money for it. They have failed to anticipate a significant market evolution and then failed to adapt to it.
[blah blah blah].... In the meantime, if they want to store it in a popular format that is viewable by many people over the Internet in addition to their basic obligation to preserve the information and make it accessible to anyone who wants to see it, then that harms no-one and helps many.
Nope, fuck that. No one should ever be penalized by their government because of their choice of software. It should be just as easy for GNU/Linux and Mac users to exchange information with the government as it is for MickeySoft users. Government should demand this and the free market has developed the means. If M$ won't play, they are out.
In fact, I'm reasonably sick of government wasting money on Word and friends. It costs more and locks them out of non M$ choices, despite what non free advocates like you say. There are no usable Mac and GNU/Linux OOXML viewers, so this is not the open format M$ claims. They have really screwed the pooch with this latest "upgrade". The format wars have always been wasteful. M$ needs to quit and get with the program.
wouldn't it be easier to look up the IP address and persuade the ISP to hand over the user details?
Requiring the ISP to keep records with "wiretapping" laws and then getting the details is the US method. Farming out the collation of records to a company like Choice Point goes beyond the laws and is both cheap and efficient.
In China, the regime is the ISP and they have the best equipment and methods that US companies could provide.
As technology improves, you can do more with less, but no amount of technology is going to make a limited resource like spectrum, infinite.
No amount of wishful thinking is going to save the incumbent telcos. As hundreds of people easily share a single radio frequency in public places every day, spectrum is practically infinite. If allocated properly, there's enough for every person to broadcast video. The old spectrum allocation is wasteful and every day it lasts robs the public. A radical overhall is in order and those fighting it are evilvipers such as yourself.
You can easily get the text out of a docx file, just open the zipped file and look at the XML text. It's an open format.
Are you making your point out of ignorance, or deliberately... [insult]?
Read the thread yourself. He was unable to get text out by your old trick. There are a couple others where no one is reporting a way to deal with M$'s obnoxious new format. M$ has done it again and all of their talk about openness and caring is worthless. This is intentional waste at it's finest.
.... there are hundreds of reasons to hate Office and ditch it, no need to make up some that don't exist.
PDF printing shows how slow and greedy M$ is and that's a good reason to ditch them. It has taken M$ till 2007 to get pdf printing and, despite what you say, people are going to have to upgrade to get Office 2007 working. This is the way the M$ upgrade train always "works". They are slow as all hell to add features because they want to sell a whole new stack every few years. Meanwhile, free software has been printing to post script and pdf for a decade. This is part and parcel of the non free suck. The M$ user is supposed to be so happy for this tiny new feature that they don't notice everything else on the treadmill is about the same.
after a few hundreds, Office comes at a flat fee for unlimited licenses.
I'm well aware of the usual double screw M$ gives to all but the largest of businesses and would like to give to everyone. First they are constrained to buy a computer from a large vendor, which also comes with a M$ OS and some kind of PIM/Office software. They don't get their money back for that software nor do they get to use it - they have to wipe it and load it with yet more software by the volume license. Lest you suspect volume deals are cheaper, you should remember these are the same people who sold "software assurances" for software they never released. They would love to have every one on a subscription and have done as much at LSU, where a significant proportion of tech fees goes to Tigerware, where you can get.... all the software that your computer came with anyway. No thanks.
As for your link, it doesn't state that they can't unzip the DOCX.... blah blah blah
What it shows is that you can't get the text out, which is all the man wanted. How's that for Open?
... the specs are published in their entirity with the exception of a few minor obsolete things which should be removed anyway.
Just stop while you are behind! Those "few minor obsolete" things are people's work that M$ should have translated for them not thrown away. But M$ can't do that because their formats are mutually contradictory. That's why much of their spec simply states do it like prints of the old versions without further explanation.
The OOXML propaganda is bigger and dirtier than Mnt. San Diego but will cost much more. You just can't wash this stuff and the truth will be out soon enough. Microsoft has wasted their time and money making yet another M$ only format and they should be punished by market rejection, not rewarded with state money.
your comment that only MS can use MS formats is a red-herring
Show me working Mac and GNU/Linux editors. No, I don't mean the pathetic half done Word readers from Novel and M$, I mean full working office suits. It's not because OOXML is not really Open. The people who reverse engineered the previous generation of M$ DOC are more than capable of understanding and implementing this supposedly easier format, but it's not really easier and it's going to take time. This is because M$ is lying and there's no real difference between the new and old formats. It can and is being used as a binary container. The unzip trick no longer works.
Office 2007 gets a plugin to save as pdf the first time you try. Easy enough.
Wow, I'm sold, can you hear my wallet snapping open as I run to the nearest M$ vendor to buy Office 2007 so that I can finally print pdf? I don't care that I'll probably have to buy a whole new computer to get reasonable performance, that "free" pdf print out is just too good to pass up.
On second thought, I'll just keep my six year old computer which runs the latest and greatest Open Office without a hitch. Thanks anyway.
You know, if my individual savings were multiplied by the tens of thousands of computers my state keeps up, my state would save a whole boatload of money. Better yet, if my state moved to free formats me and Mac users would not be left in the cold when dumb ass state workers start using the fancy new "open" formats than no one else really has. That "free" pdf printing was tempting, but I'm afraid that I already have on that works and I'd like to share it with my state government.
This fight has only begun. There are hundreds of millions of dollars that will be wasted in each state if ODF loses. The fight is going to go on and on until free software wins because it's cheapest and easiest.
All they have to do is explain that getting Office to output OOXML is not part of office but requires a downloaded addon, follow that with a breakdown of the man-hours required to get it installed on everyones machines, then top it off with a mention that there is no real way to regulate attachments coming from outside and this is DOA in any local govt. Then explain to them that the addon is painful to use and they really need to throw away all of their computers so that they can run Office 2007, which works best on Vista. It's not nice and its not practical.
Or you could explain to them they could get Open Office at no cost on any OS of their choice and keep their computers for the next ten years, longer if they virtualize the desktops like any reasonable shop should. Why limit yourself to M$ only options that cost more when you could spend the money on roads, hospitals, child care and the many other things voters actually care about?
the Reps admit to being technically clueless and correctly point out that they should not be choosing technical formats.
It's not a technical question. The issue is getting away from a single vendor lock in that limits choice. I'm a GNU/Linux user and I can't do anything with M$'s new "open" format. Mac users are in the same boat. The new format is not "open" and legislators should be able to see the issue for what it is. If they want their documents to be readable, they need to dump the bad apple, M$.
IBM were apparently deliberately disingenuous about the situation with ODF in Massachusetts.
Really? What exactly have they said that could be worse than the above facts?
There is no way a person with an open mind can equate M$'s utter bullshit with advocacy of real document standards, especially when those standards are royalty free and there are no cost implementations of them. Legislators who reject ODF are going to be wasting public money on the new M$ Office. That's money they could have spent on things voters care about. Every dollar spent on M$ Office is a dollar your state does not have for roads, schools, hospitals and everything else your state usually does for you.
Limiting choice to free things is a good limitation. Allowing things like slavery is bad. Yes, the difference is really that stark and the issue will not go away. Those who voted these bills down are going to be embarrassed of their actions soon.
M$ spoon fed these people a load of crap and they bought it. The only people fighting ODF is M$ and there is no reason they could not use it. The only people who can use M$ formats is M$. It will always be this way because M$ is NOT RESPONDING and never has. They have promised something that they have never done so that people won't get the ability to use ANY software to read their public documents today.
The users should rent it from the government that is enforcing their property rights over this natural resource.
Others have argued there is no scarcity of the resource you are talking about, so no regulation is required. Taxing unlimited resources is socially harmful. In this case, the only purpose of the tax is to "protect" incumbents and their revenue stream. The cost to the rest of us for that revenue stream is the majority of your monthly telco bill, and a proportion of all the goods and services you purchase. The cost of that protection is monopolies which maximize your cost and minimize your service. This is why the US is falling behind the rest of the world in network service.
The FCC has intentionally let the market collapse to a false competition between a local cable company and a local phone company. Very few phone companies have come through with their promisses so Cable is really the only option most people may have. Cable everywhere has blocked ports and intentionally low upload speeds. The US 16th in the network world and falling fast.
Software patents are not on any candidate's radar this election cycle. There is the war, there is health care. A hundred other issues that draw more passion then anything the geek can offer.
IT is one of the most stressful things people have to deal with. Computers are part of everyone's daily lives and the suck of non free software is too. A politician that does not realize this is out of touch. One that can't harness it is not a leader.
How can I convince you that software patents are important? Easy, it's your freedom, wellbeing and prosperity. The war is important. Declining standards of living is important and healthcare is part of that. Computers touch on these and all 100 of your other issues, but the bigger connector is run away corporate power and greed. Your computer needs to be free if you are ever to learn the truth about wars, healthcare and standards of living. Without a free press to inform you of your leader's dirty work, you will continually suffer unjust laws, wars and declining standards of living.
Laws like the DMCA and other crazy copyright attacks are both a symptom and a cause of corporate power. They are a symptom because free people would never knowingly vote their rights away. People voted that way because they were lied to. They were told that copyright and patent laws were "enablers." We understand the lie because our computers and the internet are a relatively free place. They are a cause because they can be used to take your freedoms away, which will leave you ignorant. Make no mistake you can worse off even than people before the internet if the internet is made non free. Before the internet, people had printed newspapers but you will only have broadcast and non free internet.
No, it's possible to lower the cost of wireless by fixing the bidding process. If ATT and friends know there will be real competition, they will be less able to run the prices up. It won't be impossible but it will be harder.
A real sharing of spectrum is possible but politically unlikely. Really, we should claim the air for ourselves and no further regulation is required other than policing intentional disruption.
Why wouldn't [Google] simply outbid the competitors and sell the space themselves?
The "competitors" can collude and form a much larger bidder than anyone else. They drive the price up where real competition advances but leave prices low for themselves elsewhere. If bidding is anonymous, it will be harder for people to collude and everyone will have to pay what they think the airwaves are worth.
There are still problems with the proposals. The first is that the incumbents won't treat their competitors fairly, even if forced by law to share. They will screw them over and pay whatever fees the government levies but then pass the costs back to you and me. The second problem is that the incumbents can overbid because they know there will be no real competition and they can charge whatever they like in the long run. These are not shortcomings of a free market, they are failures in regulations for a scarce resource which some say is not scarce afterall. It's ultimately a failure to share equitably.
How much do you really want to pay for your airwaves? I want mine free. The FCC should change it's mission to the above mentioned report and enforcing peaceful co-existence. The only problems with spectrum would be accidental disruption, which can be fixed, and willful disruption, which should be punished.
Cable and DSL. Most people have given up on fiber to the home along with DSL, so there is really only one broadband provider in the US and it's intentionally crippled by M$ and the MAFIAA.
I know, you wanted to hear about tubes or something. Jokes about tubes come through the interntet, it's like a clammor of thoughts that bounce back and forth in a public space. Not everyone wants it that way.
Well, now that you've told us what's wrong with these companies, maybe you can tell us what's not wrong with BestBuy, Hewlett-Packard, IBM/Lenovo, Gateway, Sony, LG, Ericsson and all the others that are in the same segments as these poor victims of evil "M$"?
OK
BustBuy sells major appliances.
HP is doing well by selling GNU/Linux servers and printer ink. Windoze printing does a lot for ink companies.
IBM is doing well with GNU/Linux on servers and servicing said servers.
Lenovo, has Linux friendly laptops but may be suffering from M$ anti-competitive practices.
I'm not sure about Gateway.
Sony is hurting, despite having a large range on non PC dependent stuff. Their Ericsson phone devision has been punished by M$'s usual tactics as they charged into Cellphones. Hopefully, they will see the light and go with Linux in the near future.
Slashdot Mirror
It's selling 95% as fast as new PC's are.
That and ten cents won't get you a cup of coffee.
In the PC world, people tend to just use the OS until it's time to scrap the machine.
XP is six years old ... don't you think there's demand for new computers?
Vista will be just as successful as Windows XP has been.
You know, I just pointed out that it's not doing half as well.
Apple people upgrade OS's every year or so because they have money to burn ...
They don't charge for OS upgrades up to a point release or so behind.
Linux people upgrade seeming daily... actually
Because they can. Unlike the Windoze time of the month, free software upgrades make things better. Applications don't mysteriously die in the GNU/Linux world.
With Vista bombing so badly, people looking for performance should be looking to the free software world. 2007 is the year of Linux.
people will be moving to Vista when it becomes the sole option on new machines.
It's already hard to get anything but Vista. With a choice between a six year old POS and a DRM nightmare, people are simply not buying. Well, Apple and GNU/Linux are doing OK.
ouch
It's been well acknowledged here that Vista sales are roughly only equal to XP over the same time measured. ... What did they think would happen?
It's also well known that estimate is generous but only half of the expected value because there are twice as many computer users as there were in 2001. Worse for M$, XP sales were disappointing because they had 98, ME and W2K to compete with. That makes Vista a real bomb like ME.
I've said it before and I'll say it again - Vista is not selling.
While some may interpret "electronic document" to mean only word processing documents and spreadsheet documents it may be that other things such as emails, database entries, and many, many other state records ....
Now that you mention it, there's good reason to use free software for everything. Binary formats have their place, obviously, but non free ones like pst and M$ email formats need to go as well. Thanks for noticing.
The trouble with this whole debate is that the pro-ODF people have become the very thing they claim to stand against.
No, they simply say that government should not use secret formats owned a single company. M$ can play the game too, if they want. There are no royalties, patents or anything unclear about ODF. There are many editors that use ODF now, and plenty of choice.
It is wrong for the government to patronize M$ by using their formats. People should not have to purchase M$ to use public services.
The Linux and OpenOffice crowd have failed to displace MS Windows and MS Office in a competitive market for years ...
And for years M$ has failed to co-operate. It was as anti-social as it was intentional, they deserve to lose money for it. They have failed to anticipate a significant market evolution and then failed to adapt to it.
[blah blah blah] .... In the meantime, if they want to store it in a popular format that is viewable by many people over the Internet in addition to their basic obligation to preserve the information and make it accessible to anyone who wants to see it, then that harms no-one and helps many.
Nope, fuck that. No one should ever be penalized by their government because of their choice of software. It should be just as easy for GNU/Linux and Mac users to exchange information with the government as it is for MickeySoft users. Government should demand this and the free market has developed the means. If M$ won't play, they are out.
In fact, I'm reasonably sick of government wasting money on Word and friends. It costs more and locks them out of non M$ choices, despite what non free advocates like you say. There are no usable Mac and GNU/Linux OOXML viewers, so this is not the open format M$ claims. They have really screwed the pooch with this latest "upgrade". The format wars have always been wasteful. M$ needs to quit and get with the program.
No, it's not OK when Google does things that might be used to harm people who have done nothing wrong.
This thread, however, is about the much nastier things that M$ does gleefully. I'd enjoy it if you compared the details.
wouldn't it be easier to look up the IP address and persuade the ISP to hand over the user details?
Requiring the ISP to keep records with "wiretapping" laws and then getting the details is the US method. Farming out the collation of records to a company like Choice Point goes beyond the laws and is both cheap and efficient.
In China, the regime is the ISP and they have the best equipment and methods that US companies could provide.
As technology improves, you can do more with less, but no amount of technology is going to make a limited resource like spectrum, infinite.
No amount of wishful thinking is going to save the incumbent telcos. As hundreds of people easily share a single radio frequency in public places every day, spectrum is practically infinite. If allocated properly, there's enough for every person to broadcast video. The old spectrum allocation is wasteful and every day it lasts robs the public. A radical overhall is in order and those fighting it are evilvipers such as yourself.
Some kind of Fanboy persists:
You can easily get the text out of a docx file, just open the zipped file and look at the XML text. It's an open format. Are you making your point out of ignorance, or deliberately ... [insult]?
Read the thread yourself. He was unable to get text out by your old trick. There are a couple others where no one is reporting a way to deal with M$'s obnoxious new format. M$ has done it again and all of their talk about openness and caring is worthless. This is intentional waste at it's finest.
PDF printing shows how slow and greedy M$ is and that's a good reason to ditch them. It has taken M$ till 2007 to get pdf printing and, despite what you say, people are going to have to upgrade to get Office 2007 working. This is the way the M$ upgrade train always "works". They are slow as all hell to add features because they want to sell a whole new stack every few years. Meanwhile, free software has been printing to post script and pdf for a decade. This is part and parcel of the non free suck. The M$ user is supposed to be so happy for this tiny new feature that they don't notice everything else on the treadmill is about the same.
after a few hundreds, Office comes at a flat fee for unlimited licenses.
I'm well aware of the usual double screw M$ gives to all but the largest of businesses and would like to give to everyone. First they are constrained to buy a computer from a large vendor, which also comes with a M$ OS and some kind of PIM/Office software. They don't get their money back for that software nor do they get to use it - they have to wipe it and load it with yet more software by the volume license. Lest you suspect volume deals are cheaper, you should remember these are the same people who sold "software assurances" for software they never released. They would love to have every one on a subscription and have done as much at LSU, where a significant proportion of tech fees goes to Tigerware, where you can get .... all the software that your computer came with anyway. No thanks.
As for your link, it doesn't state that they can't unzip the DOCX .... blah blah blah
What it shows is that you can't get the text out, which is all the man wanted. How's that for Open?
Just stop while you are behind! Those "few minor obsolete" things are people's work that M$ should have translated for them not thrown away. But M$ can't do that because their formats are mutually contradictory. That's why much of their spec simply states do it like prints of the old versions without further explanation.
The OOXML propaganda is bigger and dirtier than Mnt. San Diego but will cost much more. You just can't wash this stuff and the truth will be out soon enough. Microsoft has wasted their time and money making yet another M$ only format and they should be punished by market rejection, not rewarded with state money.
An AC has the nerve to say OOXML is usable:
your comment that only MS can use MS formats is a red-herring
Show me working Mac and GNU/Linux editors. No, I don't mean the pathetic half done Word readers from Novel and M$, I mean full working office suits. It's not because OOXML is not really Open. The people who reverse engineered the previous generation of M$ DOC are more than capable of understanding and implementing this supposedly easier format, but it's not really easier and it's going to take time. This is because M$ is lying and there's no real difference between the new and old formats. It can and is being used as a binary container. The unzip trick no longer works.
Office 2007 gets a plugin to save as pdf the first time you try. Easy enough.
Wow, I'm sold, can you hear my wallet snapping open as I run to the nearest M$ vendor to buy Office 2007 so that I can finally print pdf? I don't care that I'll probably have to buy a whole new computer to get reasonable performance, that "free" pdf print out is just too good to pass up.
On second thought, I'll just keep my six year old computer which runs the latest and greatest Open Office without a hitch. Thanks anyway.
You know, if my individual savings were multiplied by the tens of thousands of computers my state keeps up, my state would save a whole boatload of money. Better yet, if my state moved to free formats me and Mac users would not be left in the cold when dumb ass state workers start using the fancy new "open" formats than no one else really has. That "free" pdf printing was tempting, but I'm afraid that I already have on that works and I'd like to share it with my state government.
This fight has only begun. There are hundreds of millions of dollars that will be wasted in each state if ODF loses. The fight is going to go on and on until free software wins because it's cheapest and easiest.
Or you could explain to them they could get Open Office at no cost on any OS of their choice and keep their computers for the next ten years, longer if they virtualize the desktops like any reasonable shop should. Why limit yourself to M$ only options that cost more when you could spend the money on roads, hospitals, child care and the many other things voters actually care about?
the Reps admit to being technically clueless and correctly point out that they should not be choosing technical formats.
It's not a technical question. The issue is getting away from a single vendor lock in that limits choice. I'm a GNU/Linux user and I can't do anything with M$'s new "open" format. Mac users are in the same boat. The new format is not "open" and legislators should be able to see the issue for what it is. If they want their documents to be readable, they need to dump the bad apple, M$.
IBM were apparently deliberately disingenuous about the situation with ODF in Massachusetts.
Really? What exactly have they said that could be worse than the above facts?
There is no way a person with an open mind can equate M$'s utter bullshit with advocacy of real document standards, especially when those standards are royalty free and there are no cost implementations of them. Legislators who reject ODF are going to be wasting public money on the new M$ Office. That's money they could have spent on things voters care about. Every dollar spent on M$ Office is a dollar your state does not have for roads, schools, hospitals and everything else your state usually does for you.
Limiting choice to free things is a good limitation. Allowing things like slavery is bad. Yes, the difference is really that stark and the issue will not go away. Those who voted these bills down are going to be embarrassed of their actions soon.
M$ spoon fed these people a load of crap and they bought it. The only people fighting ODF is M$ and there is no reason they could not use it. The only people who can use M$ formats is M$. It will always be this way because M$ is NOT RESPONDING and never has. They have promised something that they have never done so that people won't get the ability to use ANY software to read their public documents today.
The users should rent it from the government that is enforcing their property rights over this natural resource.
Others have argued there is no scarcity of the resource you are talking about, so no regulation is required. Taxing unlimited resources is socially harmful. In this case, the only purpose of the tax is to "protect" incumbents and their revenue stream. The cost to the rest of us for that revenue stream is the majority of your monthly telco bill, and a proportion of all the goods and services you purchase. The cost of that protection is monopolies which maximize your cost and minimize your service. This is why the US is falling behind the rest of the world in network service.
The FCC has intentionally let the market collapse to a false competition between a local cable company and a local phone company. Very few phone companies have come through with their promisses so Cable is really the only option most people may have. Cable everywhere has blocked ports and intentionally low upload speeds. The US 16th in the network world and falling fast.
Software patents are not on any candidate's radar this election cycle. There is the war, there is health care. A hundred other issues that draw more passion then anything the geek can offer.
IT is one of the most stressful things people have to deal with. Computers are part of everyone's daily lives and the suck of non free software is too. A politician that does not realize this is out of touch. One that can't harness it is not a leader.
How can I convince you that software patents are important? Easy, it's your freedom, wellbeing and prosperity. The war is important. Declining standards of living is important and healthcare is part of that. Computers touch on these and all 100 of your other issues, but the bigger connector is run away corporate power and greed. Your computer needs to be free if you are ever to learn the truth about wars, healthcare and standards of living. Without a free press to inform you of your leader's dirty work, you will continually suffer unjust laws, wars and declining standards of living.
Laws like the DMCA and other crazy copyright attacks are both a symptom and a cause of corporate power. They are a symptom because free people would never knowingly vote their rights away. People voted that way because they were lied to. They were told that copyright and patent laws were "enablers." We understand the lie because our computers and the internet are a relatively free place. They are a cause because they can be used to take your freedoms away, which will leave you ignorant. Make no mistake you can worse off even than people before the internet if the internet is made non free. Before the internet, people had printed newspapers but you will only have broadcast and non free internet.
Sounds great. Where do I sign up?
No matter who wins this fight, we all lose.
No, it's possible to lower the cost of wireless by fixing the bidding process. If ATT and friends know there will be real competition, they will be less able to run the prices up. It won't be impossible but it will be harder.
A real sharing of spectrum is possible but politically unlikely. Really, we should claim the air for ourselves and no further regulation is required other than policing intentional disruption.
Why wouldn't [Google] simply outbid the competitors and sell the space themselves?
The "competitors" can collude and form a much larger bidder than anyone else. They drive the price up where real competition advances but leave prices low for themselves elsewhere. If bidding is anonymous, it will be harder for people to collude and everyone will have to pay what they think the airwaves are worth.
There are still problems with the proposals. The first is that the incumbents won't treat their competitors fairly, even if forced by law to share. They will screw them over and pay whatever fees the government levies but then pass the costs back to you and me. The second problem is that the incumbents can overbid because they know there will be no real competition and they can charge whatever they like in the long run. These are not shortcomings of a free market, they are failures in regulations for a scarce resource which some say is not scarce afterall. It's ultimately a failure to share equitably.
How much do you really want to pay for your airwaves? I want mine free. The FCC should change it's mission to the above mentioned report and enforcing peaceful co-existence. The only problems with spectrum would be accidental disruption, which can be fixed, and willful disruption, which should be punished.
What is this third pipe? What are the other two?
Cable and DSL. Most people have given up on fiber to the home along with DSL, so there is really only one broadband provider in the US and it's intentionally crippled by M$ and the MAFIAA.
I know, you wanted to hear about tubes or something. Jokes about tubes come through the interntet, it's like a clammor of thoughts that bounce back and forth in a public space. Not everyone wants it that way.
Well, now that you've told us what's wrong with these companies, maybe you can tell us what's not wrong with BestBuy, Hewlett-Packard, IBM/Lenovo, Gateway, Sony, LG, Ericsson and all the others that are in the same segments as these poor victims of evil "M$"?
OK