When you write a kernel the world can use...
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Linus on Linux in 1994
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· Score: 5, Insightful
...then I'll take some heed as to your notion of "appropriate" or not with respect to comments.
Linus et. al. have created an operating system I have used for over a decade and made over a million dollars using. If they find a little harmless humor or expressive freedom in swearing on occasion in the comments of their code, more power to them.
Saying "this implimentation if f*cked and needs fixed" is (in context) informative even if it is vulgar, and, quite frankly, it is their code, not Disney's (or $CO's).
i know that when i do coding, i try to make sure that not only the code itself is of high quality, but also that the comments are informative and useful -- not vulgar.
i just think that it's a childish thing to do.
It is no more childish than chiding someone who has put countless hours of hard work in for your benefit because their linguistic aesthetic differs from yours.
Yes, we are all aware of how much better the mac is at dvd authoring, but for various reasons many of us are tied to x86 win/linux world.
I have a Mac Powerbook 17" (and an external 200MB firewire drive for extra storage). I am quite familiar with the DVD authoring tools on Mac, but am unwilling to shell out an addition $1000 for the professional version of iDVD (or its similiarly priced competing product). The iMovie and iDVD software that came with my system should be sufficient.
Alas it is not.
I have had the system hang during burns (despite turning off the powersave features that are supposed to be the cause of this), I have successfully burned numerous DVDs only to have them hang during playback on both commercial players and other non-Apple systems.
Far from being a timesaver, I would have been better off sticking with Linux from the beginning for this project. (As an aside, I do not regret buying the powerbook, as I like the apple hardware and plan to install Linux on it when I get the time, and I do like the eye candy. The powerbook is the nicest laptop hardware wise I've seen, and the other Apple software, such as iTunes, is unparalleled.)
Now I am gearing up to attempt the project once again, this time using GNU and Linux software (making this/. article very timely).
I like Apple's products, but the Apple zealots and astroturfers are here in force just like their Microsoft equivelents, and they are not shy about modding postscriticial of Apple into oblivion. Even someone who is a fan of their products, and who has recommended their platform to more than one person who wishes to move away from Microsoft and isn't ready for Linux get's silenced if they do not toe the party line, it seems.
In any event, the meme that Apple is superior to Linux for video editing is not born out of my experience, and I am a very experienced engineer and user of Windows, UNIX, Linux, and Apple, so this is not some niave user error. This is buggy software, and for my home videos (taken from a Sony firewire video camera and edited only slightly) it doesn't work very well at all. I have already had better luck with dvgrab and transcode under Linux, and will be trying out the suggestions mentioned in this thread RSN.
So yes, Apple is good. But not that good (unless you pony up even more cash), and the assumption that it is superior to Linux for these sorts of tasks is premature at best, and certainly not a given.
Translation: Our PR department has been trying to kill this speculation for weeks. Please stop discussing it, lest our market capitalization decrease.
Apple wins when the cost/performance ratio is considered; that's why Virgina Tech bought all those G5's last summer!
Virginia Tech bought all those G5s last summer because at the time they were available and less expensive than other 64-bit architectures. The AMD 64 wasn't available in quantity. They also received quite a bit of consideration from Apple sweetening the deal.
Nevertheless, this advantage will be lost with the costs of the first upgrade cycle.
It's not a CEO mandate. It's a valid technical decision.
That may or may not be (hence the discussion you would like to suppress).
AMD 64s are much less expensive, noticably faster, and run a cost-free operating system Pixar has already migrated to, and upon which their critical applications (and in-house applications) already run. They also have a sizable investment in existing infrastructure that would blend seamlessly with newer, faster, and less expensive Linux/AMD64 solutions.
Instead they have, at the public urging of their CEO (who also happens to have been CEO of Apple for a much longer period of time), opted to migrate their entire enterprise, at considerable cost in time and energy, to a new, more expensive, and slower platform.
Even if the equipment and software are provided by Apple at cost, this is a costly deal. Add to that the licensing and hardware costs of future upgrades (which almost certainly won't be supplied at cost), and any advantage today's freebie gave Pixar is negated.
This will be costing Pixar far more than a Linux/AMD solution would have after the first upgrade cycle, and that adversely affects shareholder value. It is, in short, good for Apple and lousy for Pixar.
And this isn't SCO we're talking about, so you can keep your "fudiciary" issues to your fudself.
A a stock holder I most certainly will speak up when I see a CEO with a conflict of interest doing something that appears to be quite at odds with the value of my holdings.
Second, check out some of the Linux threads on the mac fora (I have a mac, so I lurk there). The anti-Linux and anti-GPL feeling is quite deep, and includes some remarks from Apple's leadership as well.
I'm sure they are perfectly fine with GPLed applications running os OSX. They are much less enthusiastic with infrastructure which is GPLed, and are frankly quite luke warm to any free software that competes, even indirectly, with their products. Understandable, mind you, but taking every bit of Apple spin and PR as gospel is more than a little niave.
Modding an informative post from +4 insightful to -1 insightful is rather interesting, and smacks of a rather coordinated onslaught of moderators. One wonders who pays their paychecks to be moderating comments during the work day.
Either that, or moderators with no business experience are unusually gullible today.
Reference:
Really though do they need to change the Linux farm? I'd be surprised if they did, there's no real need...
There is no need to, strictly speaking, and long term this move will likely be rather costly to Pixar and their shareholders, but with Steve Jobs as CEO of both Pixar and Apple, and the probability that this initial transaction was conducted "at cost," it is hardly surprising.
My overall take on this is a little controversial (tin-foil hat optional):
Steve Jobs isn't a particularly staunch fan of GNU/Linux, nor of software freedom. He sees an opportunity to close out a rival (Linux) before it threatens him, kill off a competitor or five (SGI and a dozen small Linux rendering solution companies), and to do so while our attention is occupied by SCO and Microsoft.
Remember, software freedom is, long term, as big a threat to Apples business model as it is Microsoft and SCO's. The difference is that, as a non-monopolist used to competing, the threat isn't as immediate or acute. It is, nevertheless, quite real, and Jobs would like to have Apple well entrenched (and Linux perhaps starved of the multi-media applications that make it a competitor today) before the paradigm shift to software freedom threatens his company with relegation to a mere hardware vendor directly.
The difference being though, that my PC isn't going to kill anyone if I don't know how to use it, whereas thats a lot more likely when driving a car.
It might if you're a doctor, or a foreman running an industrial assembly robot, or a dispatcher queing up a 911 call, or any number of other professions using a computer in a mission critical setting.
Ease of use is never a substitute for knowledge, and ignorance can kill. Encouraging ignorance is foolish in any situation, and quite possibly fatal in many.
Making animated movies of the sort that Pixar produces would certainly be very hardware-intensive. I think it just makes sense.
Why select a slower, more expensive platform and take on the cost of porting one's in-house software to yet another platform, when multi-processor AMD-64 chips running GNU/Linux are a dime a dozen?
Even at cost, this deal will be expensive for Pixar in the medium term, and certainly in the long term. There is no technical, and even less, financial reason for this move. The move is strategic and PR related, and has more to do with Apple nipping its Linux competition in the bud as an initial move to freeze the platform out of the lucrative entertainment industry long term as anything else.
Long term, Linux is as much a threat to Apple as Microsoft is, arguably more so, since Microsoft is restrained by anti-trust legislation, while the numerous competing Linux providors, by definition, don't run afoul of such laws (and thus aren't so restricted). Indeed, software freedom represents a fundamental long-term threat to companies who make their money selling software rather than services, and Apple probably does not want to be relegated to the role of hardware vendor only, forced to compete with faster, cheaper offerings such as AMD.
It is interesting to see the CEO of Apple/Pixar mandate a move that is strategically important to Apple, but costly to Pixar's shareholders. One wonders what sorts of fudiciary issues such a maneuver might raise.
Really though do they need to change the Linux farm? I'd be surprised if they did, there's no real need...
There is no need to, strictly speaking, and long term this move will likely be rather costly to Pixar and their shareholders, but with Steve Jobs as CEO of both Pixar and Apple, and the probability that this initial transaction was conducted "at cost," it is hardly surprising.
My overall take on this is a little controversial (tin-foil hat optional):
Steve Jobs isn't a particularly staunch fan of GNU/Linux, nor of software freedom. He sees an opportunity to close out a rival (Linux) before it threatens him, kill off a competitor or five (SGI and a dozen small Linux rendering solution companies), and to do so while our attention is occupied by SCO and Microsoft.
Remember, software freedom is, long term, as big a threat to Apples business model as it is Microsoft and SCO's. The difference is that, as a non-monopolist used to competing, the threat isn't as immediate or acute. It is, nevertheless, quite real, and Jobs would like to have Apple well entrenched (and Linux perhaps starved of the multi-media applications that make it a competitor today) before the paradigm shift to software freedom threatens his company with relegation to a mere hardware vendor directly.
Immediately Available is Double-plus good!
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KDE 3.2.1 Released
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· Score: 1
What is the difference between the "availablility" and the "immediate availability" of a product?
Other than your unwarrented use of the unword "difference" (c.f. Newspeak dictionary Edition 10, that should read "commonality"), nothing. Immediately available is doubleplus good, while available is double-plus good.
Remember, you are required to think in Newspeak. Failure to do so constitutes a thought-crime, and could be treasonously detrimental to the economic prosperity in your area.
No infringement required; allegations are enough
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EU Passes Nasty IP Law
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· Score: 2, Insightful
Still, it would have to be a copyright infringement to start with. Trading cassette tapes (or CDs) with friends is not nessecarilly copyright infringement in some countries. Even with the new proposed copyright laws here in Sweden, you can copy for example music for close friends and family.
No. There need only be the accusation of copyright infringement. The DMCA is used at least as often to silence criticism as it is to take down actual, infringing material. It, like this law, has no requirement for due process: the accusation is sufficient to have a web site silenced and an account revoked. The same is true of this law: the accusation is enough to have your door broken down, and the accusation of organized copyright infringement (what defines "organized" I wonder? Participating in a p2p network with thousands of other users might qualify as "organized" to many... which puts us right back where we started, with assets seized and frozen for downloading a song via a P2P protocol) is enough to have your assets frozen and seized, and your physical self imprisoned.
This law is a trajedy for Europe. I do not think most Europeans realize just how many of their basic freedoms and rights they have lost with this one piece of ill-considered legislation.
This gets back to the argument I made years ago. Capitalism doesn't work in a world of plenty. It doesn't work with ideas, it doesn't work with expression, and it most assuredly doesn't work with digital information. To make it work, you have to enact and enforce profoundly draconian laws: laws that run counter to every human impulse with respect to sharing (information, knowledge, expression, you name it) in order to create an artificial scarcity where in reality none exists. This will work no better than communism's attempt to impose a communist economic system on a domain where it wasn't applicable (a domain of scarcity), and the result will be the same draconian government, the same lack of freedoms, the same invasive government that will make no one safe, even in their own homes.
Farewell enlightened democracy in the west. We've chosen an outmoded economic system over the ideals of our forefathers. I hope we're proud of ourselves... our forefathers, spinning in their graves at what we've done, certainly are not.
"But a late amendment limited them to organised counterfeiters and not people downloading music at home."
One important detail got left out of your post.
This applies ONLY to freezing bank accounts and doing background checks.
They CAN still break down your door for suspected copyright infringement at the personal level. This includes trading cassette tapes, as college students have been doing for thirty years.
I predicted that, in the day of the Internet and digital media, either the copyright and patent regimes would have to weakened if not scrapped, or draconian laws that would make the former Soviet Union look liberal would have to be enacted.
Looks like we've chosen the stalinist route: Communism^H^H^H^H^H^H^H Capitalism over Freedom.
Nice going Europe. Scratch another place to move to... which brings up the ultimate goal of these disgusting cartels. If and when they get their way, there will be no place for us to move to. We'll all be equally beneath their heel.
The day they let you shoot Survivor "contestant is the day I turn off the computer.
Yeah, but the day they televise someone capping the idiot who got rich "inventing" reality tv is the day I'll turn back on the television, if only for those few, choice minutes. I don't want to watch ordinary people who get lured into 15 minutes of self-derogatory fame by rich TV execs get killed, but the jackasses who get rich on these train wrecks... I'd pay good money to watch them getting forcefully removed from the evolutionary process. The species is adversely affected by their genetic presence, and a cleanup of the gene pool would be worth watching.
Maybe they could have a virtual survivor, where they still have to swim and get the flag, but I get to crouch on the beach and snipe at them the whole time.
It shouldn't be too hard to put together a Doom or Quake WAD to do just that.
Something is generally better than nothing
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Real's Reality
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· Score: 1
Who cares if Real developed for Linux if it's bad software in the first place? What kind of merit does that give Real?
Something that works, even poorly, is genernally better than nothing at all. Real allowed Linux users to stream video media to their PCs long before other applications (mplayer, xine, etc.) were available. Yes, it sucked, but it sucked less than not being able to watch NASA-TV or listen to NPR would have, which was the alternative.
So yes, Real does deserve some credit for making their product available on free platforms... something media player has never offered.
Now we have mplayer and xine, and can watch pretty much any video displayable under windows or Mac OS X, and Real's usefulness is past (particularly given the security issues with their software), but that doesn't detract from the fact that they did make their product available equally under both Windows and non-windows platforms alike, nor that that factor probably played a role in their format gainaing as much acceptance as it did.
They still suck, but having everything in a WMA format locked to Windows only players via Microsoft DRM would suck one hell of a lot worse.
And the current practice of blaming the users for your program's shortcomings, and calling them names like "lusers" or even "idiots", is a sad mockery of what the vendor-customer relationship was supposed to mean.
If that "clueless luser" had to call tech support to get your program to work, it's _your_ failure. It's that simple.
That is vastly simplified and in many cases flat out wrong. Yes, there is poorly written software that leaves users vulnerable, and requires users to know things they can't reasonably be expected to know. Microsoft is exceptionally guilty in this respect, as the plethora of viruses, worms, and trojans on that platform, and the tremendous damange they cause, attest to.
But users need to be competent to use a computer, and Microsoft engages in a rhetoric that actively discourages competence, replacing education with soothsaying and empty promises of future security and performance.
A more constructive approach would be for people to recognize that computers are like cars in some important respects with respect to what is required for a person to be capable of using them effectively and safely.
In order to drive a car you have to get several weeks of training, pass written and operational exams, and be licensed.
You have to not only learn the mechanics of operating a motor vehicle (how to turn the engine on, in both warm and cold weather, how to operate the transmission, windshield wipers, headlights, turn signals, how to parallel park, etc.) but also the rules of the road (when to use the turn signals, how to read the signage, the unposted rules of the road such as default speed limits in residential vs. rural areas, etc.).
Even in the more permissive countries with respect to driving (such as the USA) you have to take a semester long class in how to drive before you are remotely considered competent enough to take the state exam, and in Europe the training is even more rigorous (and expensive) than that.
Computers are machines at least as complex as cars, capable of doing far more diverse tasks than a car. It is the responsibility of the computer user to gain some degree of competence, and while not every car driver is a mechanic (nor every computer user willing to take the cover off of their machine), every driver does know the basic rules of the road and how to operate the vehicle. The same should be expected of computer users: they don't need to necessarilly know how to install a device driver, but they should be required and expected to know what a filesystem is, what a file vs. directory is, that different programs store information in different formats (mp3, avi, etc.), and the difference between persistent storage and RAM, as well as the difference between what is stored on their local drive and what is on the internet.
Microsoft has persued a philosophy of keeping the users as stupid and uninformed as possible, to their own detriment. The fact that this laziness is embraced by their users (and is no small factor in the spread of worms and trojans among these people) is no excuse... most of us wouldn't bother to take driver's ed either if we could just get the keys to the car and start learning on our own (making the roads as unsafe as the Internet has become).
People need to be literate to read and write, and educated to operate a motor vehicle, and none of us expects to be able to do these tasks without being educated in the basic skills required to do so. It is absurd that we expect to be able to operate something vastly more complex and flexible... computers... and demand the ability to do so with little or no education or competence.
Today's windows user is like the illiterate peasant of the 19th century, going to the local scribe to write or read a letter because they can't. The difference is that, at least in Europe and the US, efforts were being made to teach the peasant to read and write. Today the opposite is true
if Microsoft can define 'repackaging old Apple, Xerox and Unix tech for the masses' as 'innovation', then sure, a downgrade can be an 'upgrade'. Businesses lying is nothing new.
Excellent point.
As Martha Stewart showed the world, truth is a one way street.
The government lies to the people everytime the White House or Congress issues a press release, holds a press conference, or otherwise speaks publicly, and are immune from any negative reprocussions. Indeed, Americans follow like sheep to the slaughter.
If we the people lie to the government, however, we go to jail.
Now that corporate governance and government have become synonymous, we are in the situation where corporations may lie to us with impunity, but if we lie to them we are in a world of hurt (liability, fraud charges, etc).
We the slaves must be honest with our masters. Our masters, however, are not similiarly required to be the least bit honest with us.
Odd. I would say that it is proof positive that you should not, in any circumstances, commit a crime against an entire police department.
So, now it is a crime to not work for free for your local police department, or to shut down a service which is costing you money each month when the other party refuses to pay? Please.
What's next? Do we classify everyone who dares bill the government for services rendered (Haliburton & Other Presidential Butt Buddies(tm) excluded, of course) as terrorists? Or is it only a felony to not work for free if you don't have a written contract?
The guy refused to continue working for free, and refused to continue subsidizing the local police department's web site by picking up the tab. Try going for two years without paying your power bill or your ISP and see how far you get.
So, let me get this straight. He managed this web site on his own, withough compensation, then closed it. And because he mentioned that he needed to be paid to keep it open, that's extortion.
The moral of the story isn't just "Get a contract" it is "Don't do business with pigs unless you've had a very good lawyer vet the contract, and even then they may just lock you up because they can."
Having a business relationship with the police in a police state such as ours has become is even more dangerous than having a business realtionship with Caldera aka SCO (another set of pigs one should avoid contact with). The SCO Group may frivolously sue you into bankrupcy, but at least they can't imprison you for a contractual dispute.
This is abuse of power at its most flagrant. and the sherif in this county belongs behind bars.
I use an HDTV tuner card for off-the-air HDTV, and a Hauppauge 350 card (in the same computer) for cable/analog TV.
It is a little tricky getting the drivers to live together, but I found a handy howto on getting it done (sorry, I don't have the link handy, but check out the mythtv forums, pcHDTV forums, and ivtv driver lists for details.
Far easier, if you have more than one computer, is to have your HDTV tuner card in one and your hauppauge card in a second. Mythtv allows you to use one seamless interface for multiple backend recorders, giving you the best of all possible worlds with a lot less manual hacking than is required if you try to combine all of the hardware into one box (this was ultimately my preferred solution, though you CAN make the hardware all work together with a little blood and sweat).
It is a bit of work getting all of this working seamlessly, but having control of your own hardware (rather than giving such control to the MPAA or another third party) makes it well worth the time.
Those days are gone. In the USA HDTV is law. Broadcasters have to broadcast it; manufacturers have to make it.
True
The market chose CD over DAT and DVD over DivX, but in this case there is no competing technology. If you don't want an HDTV, eventually your only option will be no TV at all.
This is not correct.
The Internet is a competing medium, and a trickle of content is already available. Consumers can firmly chose to get their entertainment from a source other than HDTV, and from sources other than the MPAA and television stations.
Of course, one has to have content as well as a delivery mechanism, so while the Internet can wipe the floor with HDTV, the content offerings remain anemic. However, that need not be the case. We have the tools to make our own content, available for free, and some are already doing that.
If enough people follow this course, the Media Cartel could find themselves crawling back to the 'net, hat in hand, begging for some viewership again.
This all assumes people will refuse the kinds of draconian controls the MPAA and others are trying to instill in our media. This is certainly not guaranteed, but neither is it as unlikely as conventional wisdom presupposes. In any event, I believe that, even if the MPAA "wins" this battle, they will lose, in that overall spending and interest in their product will decline, much as it has for their cousin industry, the RIAA. Worse, they will take the consumer electronics industry with them... who wants to buy a VCR if they can't record anything, or a TiVo if they can't timeshift or skip commercials?
We'll go back to watching a few programs on TV... whenever we happen to be home to catch them... and ignoring the medium otherwise. Viewership will, if anything, probably go down as a result. It's hard to stay interested in that ongoing saga or soap if you've missed enough episodes to lose the storyline.
I would never have watched, much less bought on DVD, the Babylon 5 series if I hadn't been able to record it first. Those old videotapes and Divx3 CDs aren't worth anything now, but at the time they let me timeshift as needed, so I could keep up with the story without reserving a timeslot each week out of my life. Take that away, and you may keep the hard core couch potatoes glued to the set, but the rest of us will find we simply can't be bothered.
And no, I don't find it *anything*. Here in the real world, people use Word.
Here in the real world people use Open Office, and do not suffer from these issues. Just goes to show that some of us in the real world make smarter decisions than others of us also inhabiting the real world. Go figure.
Even if all of the videophiles in the nation united, it would not compare to the number of people who would buy them anyway because they just don't care.
Wrong.
Early adopters are critical to a new product's success. If the videophiles, who are the early adopters of HDTV, do not buy the products, there is a good chance few others will.
Remember, not only do enthusiasts buy the expensive ("development-cost recouping") equipment, they are also the ones their friends and families turn to for advice on what to buy and what not to buy. Withholding their willingness to purchase will almost certainly be enough to kill obnoxious new products... telling their family and friends not to buy obnoxious products will most certainly kill them dead.
This has already happened, with DAT tapes and divx DVD's. It can happen again with crippled HDTV... if the early adopters are informed enough, and intelligent enough, to make the right choice.
Don't kid yourself about the potential impact... video and audiophiles have a disproportionate impact on which consumer electronic devices succeed and which ones fail.
On an off-topic note - what Linux HDTV tuner do you use, and how open are the drivers?
I use a PC HDTV card. The drivers are free software (GPLed) and available online (they are v4l2 based, rather than v4l, but can be made to work with mythtv and xine-hd).
Buy 'em early and often... who knows how long before the thugs in Washington ban the technology outright.
Only one problem is that hdtv is government mandated.
Paying money for an HDTV isn't. The government can mandate that HDTV is offered, they can't mandate that we buy it.
Buy a computer monitor instead, and download your free, legal content online. Machinima, Blenderwars, assorted Povray sites, etc. are a good starting point.
Bored? Make your own TV show and disseminate it online. If you're good, maybe you'll be able to sell ad placements (Coke signs in the background a la Blade Runner, etc.) and make a living at it. If not, you have a cool hobby and are helping yourself and others choose a path different than that the thugs with the flack jackets and jack boots are ushering us toward.
Well, pookie-kins, it's not always possible to move to a better neighborhood. Moving to a better neighborhood costs money, as does the higher rent one would pay in the aforementioned 'better neighborhood'.
Not the sharpest knife in the drawer, are you?
Moving to the FreeBSD Neighborhood costs you $0.00.
Moving to the GNU/Linux Neighborhood costs you the same: $0.00.
The time spent learning a new system is an investment, that while paid up front, will cost far less (in time) and infinitely less (in money and in lost data) than running a Microsoft system... indeed, you'll have probably recouped every minute spent installing and learning a new system inside of one year, over the time wasted by your Microsoft-using friends as they clean out yet another Microsoft worm, virus, or trojan.
So yes, you can get out of the Ghetto... for $0.00 down and $0.00/month, at 0% interest for the rest of your life.
If I don't own the TV set outright, I shouldn't have to pay $3000 for a plasma TV. I think I should only have to pay $3.
We (collectively) have complete control over the price. Do not buy an HDTV with these sorts of crippling features. I own an HDTV, which I use as a 61" computer monitor and DVD playback device. I own an HDTV (Linux PCI card) tuner which does allow digital recording. I will not purchase a device with these flags enabled.
If enough other videophiles are informed enough and smart enough to do likewise, the product will go the way of the original DIVX self-destructive DVDs... i.e. they (and HDTV) will be a complete flop, and television will be replaced by the Internet completely, once and for all.
(There is a lot to be done on the content side to offer entertainment alternatives to the Corporate State's Bread and Circuses program, but Red v. Blue and other content online is already showing the way, and Blender et. al. put the tools in our hands to make our own high quality content. The rest is up to us).
Does anyone realize that in order to "allow" competition this forces Verizon to sub-lease out their phone lines at BELOW cost?
This assumes the local telco's claim as to cost is honest. A long and very checkered history suggests otherwise
This is a return to Monopoly? Ridiculous.
It is probably a return to local telco monopoly, and is a disservice to anyone who has ever been afflicted with the need to deal with the local Baby Bells. For the end user/customer, this is a very bad development at best. Some things cable and cell phones can't replace (some in-house front-door intercoms won't work with a cell for example, forcing one to have a land line. Thanks to this ruling, this will mean being forced to do business with the likes of Ameritech or Verizon, regardless of how appalling the companies behave).
Verizon was being forced by the FCC to basically hand out cash to any telecom company that wanted it. This has obvious results, Verizon won't invest in those lines, since it is LOSING MONEY.
How exactly does Verizon define (read: inflate) cost I wonder. There are abuses on all sides, including a long history of people like Ameritech (our local Verizon equivelent) artificially inflating "costs" in order to gouge the competition and effectively keep them out of markets. Thus, the FCC had to define what the costs were. I am skeptical as to whether or not they really are "below actual costs" or not.
There is only one way to clear this up. Nationalize the copper infrastructure, support it as a public works project in a manner similiar to the highway system, and let all telcos offer services on top of the wire under terms of equal access. Some things government is better at than private industry: maintaining natural monopolies in a fair and reasonable manner (water services, sewage, and roads are existing examples: communication and power lines are an obvious and IMHO acutely needed addition).
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...then I'll take some heed as to your notion of "appropriate" or not with respect to comments.
Linus et. al. have created an operating system I have used for over a decade and made over a million dollars using. If they find a little harmless humor or expressive freedom in swearing on occasion in the comments of their code, more power to them.
Saying "this implimentation if f*cked and needs fixed" is (in context) informative even if it is vulgar, and, quite frankly, it is their code, not Disney's (or $CO's).
i know that when i do coding, i try to make sure that not only the code itself is of high quality, but also that the comments are informative and useful -- not vulgar.
i just think that it's a childish thing to do.
It is no more childish than chiding someone who has put countless hours of hard work in for your benefit because their linguistic aesthetic differs from yours.
Yes, we are all aware of how much better the mac is at dvd authoring, but for various reasons many of us are tied to x86 win/linux world.
/. article very timely).
I have a Mac Powerbook 17" (and an external 200MB firewire drive for extra storage). I am quite familiar with the DVD authoring tools on Mac, but am unwilling to shell out an addition $1000 for the professional version of iDVD (or its similiarly priced competing product). The iMovie and iDVD software that came with my system should be sufficient.
Alas it is not.
I have had the system hang during burns (despite turning off the powersave features that are supposed to be the cause of this), I have successfully burned numerous DVDs only to have them hang during playback on both commercial players and other non-Apple systems.
Far from being a timesaver, I would have been better off sticking with Linux from the beginning for this project. (As an aside, I do not regret buying the powerbook, as I like the apple hardware and plan to install Linux on it when I get the time, and I do like the eye candy. The powerbook is the nicest laptop hardware wise I've seen, and the other Apple software, such as iTunes, is unparalleled.)
Now I am gearing up to attempt the project once again, this time using GNU and Linux software (making this
I like Apple's products, but the Apple zealots and astroturfers are here in force just like their Microsoft equivelents, and they are not shy about modding posts criticial of Apple into oblivion. Even someone who is a fan of their products, and who has recommended their platform to more than one person who wishes to move away from Microsoft and isn't ready for Linux get's silenced if they do not toe the party line, it seems.
In any event, the meme that Apple is superior to Linux for video editing is not born out of my experience, and I am a very experienced engineer and user of Windows, UNIX, Linux, and Apple, so this is not some niave user error. This is buggy software, and for my home videos (taken from a Sony firewire video camera and edited only slightly) it doesn't work very well at all. I have already had better luck with dvgrab and transcode under Linux, and will be trying out the suggestions mentioned in this thread RSN.
So yes, Apple is good. But not that good (unless you pony up even more cash), and the assumption that it is superior to Linux for these sorts of tasks is premature at best, and certainly not a given.
This has been discussed quite enough.
Translation: Our PR department has been trying to kill this speculation for weeks. Please stop discussing it, lest our market capitalization decrease.
Apple wins when the cost/performance ratio is considered; that's why Virgina Tech bought all those G5's last summer!
Virginia Tech bought all those G5s last summer because at the time they were available and less expensive than other 64-bit architectures. The AMD 64 wasn't available in quantity. They also received quite a bit of consideration from Apple sweetening the deal.
Nevertheless, this advantage will be lost with the costs of the first upgrade cycle.
It's not a CEO mandate. It's a valid technical decision.
That may or may not be (hence the discussion you would like to suppress).
AMD 64s are much less expensive, noticably faster, and run a cost-free operating system Pixar has already migrated to, and upon which their critical applications (and in-house applications) already run. They also have a sizable investment in existing infrastructure that would blend seamlessly with newer, faster, and less expensive Linux/AMD64 solutions.
Instead they have, at the public urging of their CEO (who also happens to have been CEO of Apple for a much longer period of time), opted to migrate their entire enterprise, at considerable cost in time and energy, to a new, more expensive, and slower platform.
Even if the equipment and software are provided by Apple at cost, this is a costly deal. Add to that the licensing and hardware costs of future upgrades (which almost certainly won't be supplied at cost), and any advantage today's freebie gave Pixar is negated.
This will be costing Pixar far more than a Linux/AMD solution would have after the first upgrade cycle, and that adversely affects shareholder value. It is, in short, good for Apple and lousy for Pixar.
And this isn't SCO we're talking about, so you can keep your "fudiciary" issues to your fudself.
A a stock holder I most certainly will speak up when I see a CEO with a conflict of interest doing something that appears to be quite at odds with the value of my holdings.
Second, check out some of the Linux threads on the mac fora (I have a mac, so I lurk there). The anti-Linux and anti-GPL feeling is quite deep, and includes some remarks from Apple's leadership as well.
I'm sure they are perfectly fine with GPLed applications running os OSX. They are much less enthusiastic with infrastructure which is GPLed, and are frankly quite luke warm to any free software that competes, even indirectly, with their products. Understandable, mind you, but taking every bit of Apple spin and PR as gospel is more than a little niave.
Modding an informative post from +4 insightful to -1 insightful is rather interesting, and smacks of a rather coordinated onslaught of moderators. One wonders who pays their paychecks to be moderating comments during the work day.
Either that, or moderators with no business experience are unusually gullible today.
Reference:
The difference being though, that my PC isn't going to kill anyone if I don't know how to use it, whereas thats a lot more likely when driving a car.
It might if you're a doctor, or a foreman running an industrial assembly robot, or a dispatcher queing up a 911 call, or any number of other professions using a computer in a mission critical setting.
Ease of use is never a substitute for knowledge, and ignorance can kill. Encouraging ignorance is foolish in any situation, and quite possibly fatal in many.
Making animated movies of the sort that Pixar produces would certainly be very hardware-intensive. I think it just makes sense.
Why select a slower, more expensive platform and take on the cost of porting one's in-house software to yet another platform, when multi-processor AMD-64 chips running GNU/Linux are a dime a dozen?
Even at cost, this deal will be expensive for Pixar in the medium term, and certainly in the long term. There is no technical, and even less, financial reason for this move. The move is strategic and PR related, and has more to do with Apple nipping its Linux competition in the bud as an initial move to freeze the platform out of the lucrative entertainment industry long term as anything else.
Long term, Linux is as much a threat to Apple as Microsoft is, arguably more so, since Microsoft is restrained by anti-trust legislation, while the numerous competing Linux providors, by definition, don't run afoul of such laws (and thus aren't so restricted). Indeed, software freedom represents a fundamental long-term threat to companies who make their money selling software rather than services, and Apple probably does not want to be relegated to the role of hardware vendor only, forced to compete with faster, cheaper offerings such as AMD.
It is interesting to see the CEO of Apple/Pixar mandate a move that is strategically important to Apple, but costly to Pixar's shareholders. One wonders what sorts of fudiciary issues such a maneuver might raise.
Really though do they need to change the Linux farm? I'd be surprised if they did, there's no real need...
There is no need to, strictly speaking, and long term this move will likely be rather costly to Pixar and their shareholders, but with Steve Jobs as CEO of both Pixar and Apple, and the probability that this initial transaction was conducted "at cost," it is hardly surprising.
My overall take on this is a little controversial (tin-foil hat optional):
Steve Jobs isn't a particularly staunch fan of GNU/Linux, nor of software freedom. He sees an opportunity to close out a rival (Linux) before it threatens him, kill off a competitor or five (SGI and a dozen small Linux rendering solution companies), and to do so while our attention is occupied by SCO and Microsoft.
Remember, software freedom is, long term, as big a threat to Apples business model as it is Microsoft and SCO's. The difference is that, as a non-monopolist used to competing, the threat isn't as immediate or acute. It is, nevertheless, quite real, and Jobs would like to have Apple well entrenched (and Linux perhaps starved of the multi-media applications that make it a competitor today) before the paradigm shift to software freedom threatens his company with relegation to a mere hardware vendor directly.
What is the difference between the "availablility" and the "immediate availability" of a product?
Other than your unwarrented use of the unword "difference" (c.f. Newspeak dictionary Edition 10, that should read "commonality"), nothing. Immediately available is doubleplus good, while available is double-plus good.
Remember, you are required to think in Newspeak. Failure to do so constitutes a thought-crime, and could be treasonously detrimental to the economic prosperity in your area.
Still, it would have to be a copyright infringement to start with. Trading cassette tapes (or CDs) with friends is not nessecarilly copyright infringement in some countries. Even with the new proposed copyright laws here in Sweden, you can copy for example music for close friends and family.
... which puts us right back where we started, with assets seized and frozen for downloading a song via a P2P protocol) is enough to have your assets frozen and seized, and your physical self imprisoned.
... our forefathers, spinning in their graves at what we've done, certainly are not.
No. There need only be the accusation of copyright infringement. The DMCA is used at least as often to silence criticism as it is to take down actual, infringing material. It, like this law, has no requirement for due process: the accusation is sufficient to have a web site silenced and an account revoked. The same is true of this law: the accusation is enough to have your door broken down, and the accusation of organized copyright infringement (what defines "organized" I wonder? Participating in a p2p network with thousands of other users might qualify as "organized" to many
This law is a trajedy for Europe. I do not think most Europeans realize just how many of their basic freedoms and rights they have lost with this one piece of ill-considered legislation.
This gets back to the argument I made years ago. Capitalism doesn't work in a world of plenty. It doesn't work with ideas, it doesn't work with expression, and it most assuredly doesn't work with digital information. To make it work, you have to enact and enforce profoundly draconian laws: laws that run counter to every human impulse with respect to sharing (information, knowledge, expression, you name it) in order to create an artificial scarcity where in reality none exists. This will work no better than communism's attempt to impose a communist economic system on a domain where it wasn't applicable (a domain of scarcity), and the result will be the same draconian government, the same lack of freedoms, the same invasive government that will make no one safe, even in their own homes.
Farewell enlightened democracy in the west. We've chosen an outmoded economic system over the ideals of our forefathers. I hope we're proud of ourselves
"But a late amendment limited them to organised counterfeiters and not people downloading music at home."
... which brings up the ultimate goal of these disgusting cartels. If and when they get their way, there will be no place for us to move to. We'll all be equally beneath their heel.
One important detail got left out of your post.
This applies ONLY to freezing bank accounts and doing background checks.
They CAN still break down your door for suspected copyright infringement at the personal level. This includes trading cassette tapes, as college students have been doing for thirty years.
I predicted that, in the day of the Internet and digital media, either the copyright and patent regimes would have to weakened if not scrapped, or draconian laws that would make the former Soviet Union look liberal would have to be enacted.
Looks like we've chosen the stalinist route: Communism^H^H^H^H^H^H^H Capitalism over Freedom.
Nice going Europe. Scratch another place to move to
The day they let you shoot Survivor "contestant is the day I turn off the computer.
... I'd pay good money to watch them getting forcefully removed from the evolutionary process. The species is adversely affected by their genetic presence, and a cleanup of the gene pool would be worth watching.
Yeah, but the day they televise someone capping the idiot who got rich "inventing" reality tv is the day I'll turn back on the television, if only for those few, choice minutes. I don't want to watch ordinary people who get lured into 15 minutes of self-derogatory fame by rich TV execs get killed, but the jackasses who get rich on these train wrecks
Maybe they could have a virtual survivor, where they still have to swim and get the flag, but I get to crouch on the beach and snipe at them the whole time.
It shouldn't be too hard to put together a Doom or Quake WAD to do just that.
Who cares if Real developed for Linux if it's bad software in the first place? What kind of merit does that give Real?
... something media player has never offered.
Something that works, even poorly, is genernally better than nothing at all. Real allowed Linux users to stream video media to their PCs long before other applications (mplayer, xine, etc.) were available. Yes, it sucked, but it sucked less than not being able to watch NASA-TV or listen to NPR would have, which was the alternative.
So yes, Real does deserve some credit for making their product available on free platforms
Now we have mplayer and xine, and can watch pretty much any video displayable under windows or Mac OS X, and Real's usefulness is past (particularly given the security issues with their software), but that doesn't detract from the fact that they did make their product available equally under both Windows and non-windows platforms alike, nor that that factor probably played a role in their format gainaing as much acceptance as it did.
They still suck, but having everything in a WMA format locked to Windows only players via Microsoft DRM would suck one hell of a lot worse.
And the current practice of blaming the users for your program's shortcomings, and calling them names like "lusers" or even "idiots", is a sad mockery of what the vendor-customer relationship was supposed to mean.
... most of us wouldn't bother to take driver's ed either if we could just get the keys to the car and start learning on our own (making the roads as unsafe as the Internet has become).
... computers ... and demand the ability to do so with little or no education or competence.
If that "clueless luser" had to call tech support to get your program to work, it's _your_ failure. It's that simple.
That is vastly simplified and in many cases flat out wrong. Yes, there is poorly written software that leaves users vulnerable, and requires users to know things they can't reasonably be expected to know. Microsoft is exceptionally guilty in this respect, as the plethora of viruses, worms, and trojans on that platform, and the tremendous damange they cause, attest to.
But users need to be competent to use a computer, and Microsoft engages in a rhetoric that actively discourages competence, replacing education with soothsaying and empty promises of future security and performance.
A more constructive approach would be for people to recognize that computers are like cars in some important respects with respect to what is required for a person to be capable of using them effectively and safely.
In order to drive a car you have to get several weeks of training, pass written and operational exams, and be licensed.
You have to not only learn the mechanics of operating a motor vehicle (how to turn the engine on, in both warm and cold weather, how to operate the transmission, windshield wipers, headlights, turn signals, how to parallel park, etc.) but also the rules of the road (when to use the turn signals, how to read the signage, the unposted rules of the road such as default speed limits in residential vs. rural areas, etc.).
Even in the more permissive countries with respect to driving (such as the USA) you have to take a semester long class in how to drive before you are remotely considered competent enough to take the state exam, and in Europe the training is even more rigorous (and expensive) than that.
Computers are machines at least as complex as cars, capable of doing far more diverse tasks than a car. It is the responsibility of the computer user to gain some degree of competence, and while not every car driver is a mechanic (nor every computer user willing to take the cover off of their machine), every driver does know the basic rules of the road and how to operate the vehicle. The same should be expected of computer users: they don't need to necessarilly know how to install a device driver, but they should be required and expected to know what a filesystem is, what a file vs. directory is, that different programs store information in different formats (mp3, avi, etc.), and the difference between persistent storage and RAM, as well as the difference between what is stored on their local drive and what is on the internet.
Microsoft has persued a philosophy of keeping the users as stupid and uninformed as possible, to their own detriment. The fact that this laziness is embraced by their users (and is no small factor in the spread of worms and trojans among these people) is no excuse
People need to be literate to read and write, and educated to operate a motor vehicle, and none of us expects to be able to do these tasks without being educated in the basic skills required to do so. It is absurd that we expect to be able to operate something vastly more complex and flexible
Today's windows user is like the illiterate peasant of the 19th century, going to the local scribe to write or read a letter because they can't. The difference is that, at least in Europe and the US, efforts were being made to teach the peasant to read and write. Today the opposite is true
Downgrades are upgrades.
if Microsoft can define 'repackaging old Apple, Xerox and Unix tech for the masses' as 'innovation', then sure, a downgrade can be an 'upgrade'. Businesses lying is nothing new.
Excellent point.
As Martha Stewart showed the world, truth is a one way street.
The government lies to the people everytime the White House or Congress issues a press release, holds a press conference, or otherwise speaks publicly, and are immune from any negative reprocussions. Indeed, Americans follow like sheep to the slaughter.
If we the people lie to the government, however, we go to jail.
Now that corporate governance and government have become synonymous, we are in the situation where corporations may lie to us with impunity, but if we lie to them we are in a world of hurt (liability, fraud charges, etc).
We the slaves must be honest with our masters. Our masters, however, are not similiarly required to be the least bit honest with us.
Odd. I would say that it is proof positive that you should not, in any circumstances, commit a crime against an entire police department.
So, now it is a crime to not work for free for your local police department, or to shut down a service which is costing you money each month when the other party refuses to pay? Please.
What's next? Do we classify everyone who dares bill the government for services rendered (Haliburton & Other Presidential Butt Buddies(tm) excluded, of course) as terrorists? Or is it only a felony to not work for free if you don't have a written contract?
The guy refused to continue working for free, and refused to continue subsidizing the local police department's web site by picking up the tab. Try going for two years without paying your power bill or your ISP and see how far you get.
So, let me get this straight. He managed this web site on his own, withough compensation, then closed it. And because he mentioned that he needed to be paid to keep it open, that's extortion.
The moral of the story isn't just "Get a contract" it is "Don't do business with pigs unless you've had a very good lawyer vet the contract, and even then they may just lock you up because they can."
Having a business relationship with the police in a police state such as ours has become is even more dangerous than having a business realtionship with Caldera aka SCO (another set of pigs one should avoid contact with). The SCO Group may frivolously sue you into bankrupcy, but at least they can't imprison you for a contractual dispute.
This is abuse of power at its most flagrant. and the sherif in this county belongs behind bars.
I use an HDTV tuner card for off-the-air HDTV, and a Hauppauge 350 card (in the same computer) for cable/analog TV.
It is a little tricky getting the drivers to live together, but I found a handy howto on getting it done (sorry, I don't have the link handy, but check out the mythtv forums, pcHDTV forums, and ivtv driver lists for details.
Far easier, if you have more than one computer, is to have your HDTV tuner card in one and your hauppauge card in a second. Mythtv allows you to use one seamless interface for multiple backend recorders, giving you the best of all possible worlds with a lot less manual hacking than is required if you try to combine all of the hardware into one box (this was ultimately my preferred solution, though you CAN make the hardware all work together with a little blood and sweat).
It is a bit of work getting all of this working seamlessly, but having control of your own hardware (rather than giving such control to the MPAA or another third party) makes it well worth the time.
Those days are gone. In the USA HDTV is law. Broadcasters have to broadcast it; manufacturers have to make it.
... who wants to buy a VCR if they can't record anything, or a TiVo if they can't timeshift or skip commercials?
... whenever we happen to be home to catch them ... and ignoring the medium otherwise. Viewership will, if anything, probably go down as a result. It's hard to stay interested in that ongoing saga or soap if you've missed enough episodes to lose the storyline.
True
The market chose CD over DAT and DVD over DivX, but in this case there is no competing technology. If you don't want an HDTV, eventually your only option will be no TV at all.
This is not correct.
The Internet is a competing medium, and a trickle of content is already available. Consumers can firmly chose to get their entertainment from a source other than HDTV, and from sources other than the MPAA and television stations.
Of course, one has to have content as well as a delivery mechanism, so while the Internet can wipe the floor with HDTV, the content offerings remain anemic. However, that need not be the case. We have the tools to make our own content, available for free, and some are already doing that.
If enough people follow this course, the Media Cartel could find themselves crawling back to the 'net, hat in hand, begging for some viewership again.
This all assumes people will refuse the kinds of draconian controls the MPAA and others are trying to instill in our media. This is certainly not guaranteed, but neither is it as unlikely as conventional wisdom presupposes. In any event, I believe that, even if the MPAA "wins" this battle, they will lose, in that overall spending and interest in their product will decline, much as it has for their cousin industry, the RIAA. Worse, they will take the consumer electronics industry with them
We'll go back to watching a few programs on TV
I would never have watched, much less bought on DVD, the Babylon 5 series if I hadn't been able to record it first. Those old videotapes and Divx3 CDs aren't worth anything now, but at the time they let me timeshift as needed, so I could keep up with the story without reserving a timeslot each week out of my life. Take that away, and you may keep the hard core couch potatoes glued to the set, but the rest of us will find we simply can't be bothered.
And no, I don't find it *anything*. Here in the real world, people use Word.
Here in the real world people use Open Office, and do not suffer from these issues. Just goes to show that some of us in the real world make smarter decisions than others of us also inhabiting the real world. Go figure.
Even if all of the videophiles in the nation united, it would not compare to the number of people who would buy them anyway because they just don't care.
... telling their family and friends not to buy obnoxious products will most certainly kill them dead.
... if the early adopters are informed enough, and intelligent enough, to make the right choice.
... video and audiophiles have a disproportionate impact on which consumer electronic devices succeed and which ones fail.
Wrong.
Early adopters are critical to a new product's success. If the videophiles, who are the early adopters of HDTV, do not buy the products, there is a good chance few others will.
Remember, not only do enthusiasts buy the expensive ("development-cost recouping") equipment, they are also the ones their friends and families turn to for advice on what to buy and what not to buy. Withholding their willingness to purchase will almost certainly be enough to kill obnoxious new products
This has already happened, with DAT tapes and divx DVD's. It can happen again with crippled HDTV
Don't kid yourself about the potential impact
On an off-topic note - what Linux HDTV tuner do you use, and how open are the drivers?
... who knows how long before the thugs in Washington ban the technology outright.
I use a PC HDTV card. The drivers are free software (GPLed) and available online (they are v4l2 based, rather than v4l, but can be made to work with mythtv and xine-hd).
Buy 'em early and often
Only one problem is that hdtv is government mandated.
Paying money for an HDTV isn't. The government can mandate that HDTV is offered, they can't mandate that we buy it.
Buy a computer monitor instead, and download your free, legal content online. Machinima, Blenderwars, assorted Povray sites, etc. are a good starting point.
Bored? Make your own TV show and disseminate it online. If you're good, maybe you'll be able to sell ad placements (Coke signs in the background a la Blade Runner, etc.) and make a living at it. If not, you have a cool hobby and are helping yourself and others choose a path different than that the thugs with the flack jackets and jack boots are ushering us toward.
Well, pookie-kins, it's not always possible to move to a better neighborhood. Moving to a better neighborhood costs money, as does the higher rent one would pay in the aforementioned 'better neighborhood'.
... indeed, you'll have probably recouped every minute spent installing and learning a new system inside of one year, over the time wasted by your Microsoft-using friends as they clean out yet another Microsoft worm, virus, or trojan.
... for $0.00 down and $0.00/month, at 0% interest for the rest of your life.
Not the sharpest knife in the drawer, are you?
Moving to the FreeBSD Neighborhood costs you $0.00.
Moving to the GNU/Linux Neighborhood costs you the same: $0.00.
The time spent learning a new system is an investment, that while paid up front, will cost far less (in time) and infinitely less (in money and in lost data) than running a Microsoft system
So yes, you can get out of the Ghetto
Then I want control over the price....
... i.e. they (and HDTV) will be a complete flop, and television will be replaced by the Internet completely, once and for all.
If I don't own the TV set outright, I shouldn't have to pay $3000 for a plasma TV. I think I should only have to pay $3.
We (collectively) have complete control over the price. Do not buy an HDTV with these sorts of crippling features. I own an HDTV, which I use as a 61" computer monitor and DVD playback device. I own an HDTV (Linux PCI card) tuner which does allow digital recording. I will not purchase a device with these flags enabled.
If enough other videophiles are informed enough and smart enough to do likewise, the product will go the way of the original DIVX self-destructive DVDs
(There is a lot to be done on the content side to offer entertainment alternatives to the Corporate State's Bread and Circuses program, but Red v. Blue and other content online is already showing the way, and Blender et. al. put the tools in our hands to make our own high quality content. The rest is up to us).
Does anyone realize that in order to "allow" competition this forces Verizon to sub-lease out their phone lines at BELOW cost?
This assumes the local telco's claim as to cost is honest. A long and very checkered history suggests otherwise
This is a return to Monopoly? Ridiculous.
It is probably a return to local telco monopoly, and is a disservice to anyone who has ever been afflicted with the need to deal with the local Baby Bells. For the end user/customer, this is a very bad development at best. Some things cable and cell phones can't replace (some in-house front-door intercoms won't work with a cell for example, forcing one to have a land line. Thanks to this ruling, this will mean being forced to do business with the likes of Ameritech or Verizon, regardless of how appalling the companies behave).
Verizon was being forced by the FCC to basically hand out cash to any telecom company that wanted it. This has obvious results, Verizon won't invest in those lines, since it is LOSING MONEY.
How exactly does Verizon define (read: inflate) cost I wonder. There are abuses on all sides, including a long history of people like Ameritech (our local Verizon equivelent) artificially inflating "costs" in order to gouge the competition and effectively keep them out of markets. Thus, the FCC had to define what the costs were. I am skeptical as to whether or not they really are "below actual costs" or not.
There is only one way to clear this up. Nationalize the copper infrastructure, support it as a public works project in a manner similiar to the highway system, and let all telcos offer services on top of the wire under terms of equal access. Some things government is better at than private industry: maintaining natural monopolies in a fair and reasonable manner (water services, sewage, and roads are existing examples: communication and power lines are an obvious and IMHO acutely needed addition).