...I have a niggling suspicion that Comcast owns a major piece of Music Choice...
Suspicion validated! From a Music Choice press release:
Headquartered in Horsham, PA, Music Choice is a partnership among subsidiaries of Microsoft Corporation, Motorola, Inc., Sony Corporation of America, EMI Music and several leading U.S. cable providers: Adelphia Cable Communications, Comcast Cable Communications, Cox Communications and Time Warner Cable.
Egads, the seven horsemen of the apocalypse plus the antichrist?
Yeah, right. Basic XM service is $12.95 per month. Once they've got you hooked, they'll raise the rates and add fees and surcharges, just like cable TV.
Anything's possible, I guess, but so far, XM has added channels, dropped the fee for at least one of the premium channels and dropped the fee for Internet XM Radio without raising the price or adding surcharges, so I guess in that respect, they're doing the opposite of what you predict.
They did, however, raise the price from $9.95 a month to $12.95 a month a while back.
In LA and NYC maybe there's a big variety of FM formats, but where I live, it's either country music, hip hop or Clear Channel. I'm happy to pay $12.95 for the variety.
BTW, I also pay $10 a month to support my local Public Radio stations. Unfortunately, there's a little too much variety from them - sort of like XM on one channel.
It's a solenoid if you pass an electric current through it. As an antenna, it reacts to the electromagnetic waves of a certain frequency to generate a corresponding current.
All electrical solenoids are loops of wire, but not all loops of wire are solenoids.
Reading past the marketing words, the report is calculating the R&D expense of Intel, Oracle, EMC and RedHat.
In Dell's latest quarter, the company spent $122 million on "Research, development and engineering". Maybe I'm cynical, but I read that as a bunch of technicians testing parts and software to see if they're compatible. Not really R&D.
If my engineering experience with Dell is any indicator, the "unique knowledge and expertise" that they share is a list of requirements that their vendors have to meet. And, now and then, some of those requirements show a serious lack of understanding of the way that computers work.
Heck, if he had been paying attention he would have realized that "Windows" isn't a registered Trademark, but that "Microsoft Windows" is instead.
As has been posted elsewhere in this topic, "Windows" is a registered trademark, not only in the US, but all over the world (including in Australia, where the dispute took place). "Microsoft Windows" is also trademarked. Oh, and Microsoft isn't the only company that has registered the trademark "Windows". Even Kimberly Clark (the paper products company) has one. Windows toilet paper, maybe?
I think that it's kind of funny that all of the amateur lawyers used to spring up to tell us all about having to defend a trademark to be able to keep it - but suddenly they're silent now. I guess that barratry is more fun and esoteric to talk about than trademark defense. It can't possibly be hypocricy!
Microsoft has a trademark on the term "Microsoft Windows" because they were denied a trademark on the term "Windows."
Really? From the USPTO:
Word Mark WINDOWS Goods and Services IC 009. US 021 023 026 036 038. G & S: Computer programs for use in automobiles, namely, computer programs for monitoring automobile performance, for mapping and navigation, for electronic mail and wireless communications, for maintaining personal directories, contact lists, address and telephone number lists; operating system programs and utilities; computer programs for wallet-sized personal computers, namely, personal information manager programs with calendars, contact information files and to do lists; programs for facilitating voice, text and pen input; access programs for global communication networks; computer programs for accessing global communication networks and displaying content therefrom; and computer programs for use with hand-held computers, namely, operating system and utility programs; a full line of business application programs for use with hand-held computers. FIRST USE: 19840000. FIRST USE IN COMMERCE: 19840000 Mark Drawing Code (1) TYPED DRAWING Serial Number 75980682 Filing Date October 10, 1996 Current Filing Basis 1A Original Filing Basis 1B Published for Opposition April 28, 1998 Registration Number 2565965 Registration Date April 30, 2002 Owner (REGISTRANT) Microsoft Corporation CORPORATION WASHINGTON One Microsoft Way Redmond WASHINGTON 980526399 Attorney of Record WILLIAM O. FERRON JR Prior Registrations 1872264;1875069;1989386;2005901;AND OTHERS Type of Mark TRADEMARK Register PRINCIPAL-2(F) Live/Dead Indicator LIVE
And from IP Australia:
Word: WINDOWS Image: Lodgement Date: 23-APR-1992 Registered From: 23-APR-1992 Acceptance Advertised: 04-APR-1996 Registration Advertised: 21-NOV-1996 Sealing Date: 04-NOV-1996 Renewal Due: 23-APR-2012 Class/es: 9 Status: Registered/Protected Kind: n/a Type of Mark: Word
Endorsement Owner/s: Microsoft Corporation
a Washington corporation
One Microsoft Way
Redmond
Washington 98052-6399
UNITED STATES OF AMERICA
Address for Service: Davies Collison Cave
GPO Box 3876
SYDNEY
2001,NSW
Goods & Services
Class: 9 Computer systems software, computer systems software and programmers reference and users manuals sold as a unit
Word Mark WINDOWS Goods and Services IC 009. US 021 023 026 036 038. G & S: Computer programs for use in automobiles, namely, computer programs for monitoring automobile performance, for mapping and navigation, for electronic mail and wireless communications, for maintaining personal directories, contact lists, address and telephone number lists; operating system programs and utilities; computer programs for wallet-sized personal computers, namely, personal information manager programs with calendars, contact information files and to do lists; programs for facilitating voice, text and pen input; access programs for global communication networks; computer programs for accessing global communication networks and displaying content therefrom; and computer programs for use with hand-held computers, namely, operating system and utility programs; a full line of business application programs for use with hand-held computers. FIRST USE: 19840000. FIRST USE IN COMMERCE: 19840000 Mark Drawing Code (1) TYPED DRAWING Serial Number 75980682 Filing Date October 10, 1996 Current Filing Basis 1A Original Filing Basis 1B Published for Opposition April 28, 1998 Registration Number 2565965 Registration Date April 30, 2002 Owner (REGISTRANT) Microsoft Corporation CORPORATION WASHINGTON One Microsoft Way Redmond WASHINGTON 980526399 Attorney of Record WILLIAM O. FERRON JR Prior Registrations 1872264;1875069;1989386;2005901;AND OTHERS Type of Mark TRADEMARK Register PRINCIPAL-2(F) Live/Dead Indicator LIVE
One of the previous posters suggested that the difference between having a degree and not having one is $10,000 a year.
I know that one point does not a sample make, but I agree. Prior to spending five years at my local state university, I made about $40,000 managing the tech support call center for a (at the time) major computer manufacturer (following 10 years in the US Navy). I took five years off, worked part time for about $20K per year and ended up as an electrical engineer at $58K per year. After three years, I'm at $72K+. And, as a kicker, I've also started a small electronics company with revenues of around $100k - and after a year, it's breaking even. For my case, the total cost of school was actually less than zero - the GI bill paid for it. From just a pure money point of view, I gave up $100K over five years, but with the increase in salary, bonuses and options, I've made that back in three.
Interestingly (to me, anyway), almost all of the EEs who graduated with me are all working in their field and doing pretty well. I guess that there were about 30 of us in my class - maybe half went on to get their MSc - and 27 of them are working as EEs, the other three are working on their Ph.Ds. And we didn't go to any kind of prestigious school - but it was a traditional school, if that matters.
Even more interesting, some states, including Idaho (my home state) do not tax income that is not made within the state. So, when I was stationed in Rhode Island and California, I did not pay income tax to either of those states. But since I did not make my money in Idaho, I didn't pay them, either.
When I was in California between 1992 and 1996, the legislature passed a law defining what qualified a person as a resident of California. If I recall correctly, the criteria were any two of home ownership, driver's license and (I think) a certain time of continuous residence. The net result was that most military members would end up being California residents (according to California) and would have to pay income tax, even if their official state of residence was elsewhere (and where they were also paying income tax). The DoD pounced on that very quickly and it was successfully challenged in court.
Pretty much everybody has missed the point of the interview, probably because both the question and the answer were a little vague (I'm giving the benefit of the doubt).
Witacre's position is that if Google is going to be a service provider, then they should have to pay SBC for the use of the pipe. The question grouped MSN, Vonage and Google together. What do they have in common? MSN and Vonage are both ISPs and Google is breaking into the market. So Witacre's position is that if any of them want to use SBC's pipe to get customers to the Internet, then SBC wants payment for that. And, to me, that seems reasonable.
Sure, the phone company got breaks from the government in the form of utility easements, but they still had to put up the capital for the infrastructure. And, yes, for many services, they have a guaranteed monopoly, but that is balanced by pretty close government oversight. Phone service is pretty cheap, all things considered.
Quite honestly, what Witacre said is pretty reasonable - if MSN, Google, et al, want to compete with SBC in the Internet business using the same pipe, then SBC want them to pay to get access to the pipe.
Interestingly, I have Qwest DSL service. Qwest is also my ISP and the ISP service is broken out seperately from the DSL service. I could have chosen one of several other ISPs for my service - Qwest carries the signal and the ISP provides the service. The ISP pays Qwest for access to the pipe - it doesn't seem any different than what Witacre is saying in his interview.
Subscription based licensing will encourage the release of products that don't suck.
Because if the product sucks, nobody will renew the subscription.
The EDA software that I rely on to electrically simulate memory modules is sold on a subcription basis - and it's thousands of dollars a year for a single license! It has bugs. It has a poor user interface. I receive patches and upgrades at least once a month. I could switch to the competitor's product, but then I'd be forced to convert all of my libraries and databases to their format - and that product is no more reliable than the one that I'm using.
The two different software packages are used by nearly every PCB and IC manufacturer in the world. Everybody pays their yearly "maintenance" fee for a software package that constantly needs upgrading - and is constantly a year or two behind the industry standards, forcing users to create shortcuts and workarounds to get the job done.
The products suck, but everybody renews because there's no other choice. Now, if the buy-in price was low and the yearly license fees made up the difference, then perhaps there would be a case for that sort of licensing. But in the case of the tools that I use, the buy-in is many tens of thousands of dollars and the yearly fees are several thousand. And a major version upgrade is nearly as expensive as an original license. So, I'm suspicious of the idea that subscription-based licensing will improve software quality.
I guess that I don't get it - you're arguing some theoretical idea with a guy who has both years of practical and theoretical experience. I know how ping stealing works and I've been involved in real-life exercises attempting to take advantage of it. The bottom line is that by the time you know enough about the environment and the target of interest to make ping stealing practical, you already know enough about the target to make ping stealing unnecessary - and that's in a surface ship. In a submarine, the target solution becomes clear even sooner because of the submarine's superior ability to passively exploit the different sonic layers in the ocean.
Also, bear in mind that active ranges in the ocean, on a good day, are maybe 20 miles using the most powerful, newest, low power sonars. Typical ranges are substantially less than that. Tactical passive ranges, however, are easily a hundred miles and more, depending on the target and water conditions. SURTASS and fixed passive arrays have much greater ranges.
To elaborate on the ping stealing problem, yes, you know the bearing from which the transmission comes, but you don't know the range. You may know the bearing from which the echo comes, but you don't know the range. If you don't know the range, you don't know if the transmission is arriving via direct path, bottom bounce or convergence zone transmission paths. Likewise, you don't know which transmission path the echo has taken. Is the target moving toward you or away from you? Without knowing the course and speed of the transmitting platform, you can't evaluate dopler effects of the echo. So, the best that you can do is tell that the target is on a line of bearing some distance from you. But you already know at least that from passive sonar. And through less than half an hour of target motion analysis, you can determine range, bearing, course and speed of the target, without using active sonar at all!
And, again, a fixed active array would almost immediately become useless as a tactical or strategic asset because it would be a piece of cake to avoid! Besides, there are no fixed tactical or strategic active sonar arrays out there anyway, so it makes the whole argument moot.
There are different sorts of sonar. How powerful were the ones your ships were using? Levels > 160dB can kill many things.
You're telling me? Of course there are different sorts of sonar! My ship had the most powerful surface sonar in the Navy - it was capable of producing sound intensities in excess of 200dB (one meter from the transducer). Could it kill? No. Could it injure? Not really - it would make your ears hurt, but not make you deaf. Actually, the sonar system was one of our defenses against attacks from divers when we were in port - it was obviously very uncomfortable to be in the water when the active sonar was pinging.
While I am not a sub/military/sonar guy, I think that submarines can use active sonar pulses from fixed sonar arrays.
Clearly you're not a sub/military/sonar guy. Fixed sonar arrays are almost entirely passive. Think about it - a fixed active array is like waving a flag to say "Don't come over here!" As soon as it goes active, it becomes worthless.
Now, you've touched tangentally on something called "ping stealing" that works a lot better in the movies than it does in real life. As the story goes, you can count the time between the active ping and the echo that you hear and tell how far away the target is. But you have to know where the active ping is coming from, you have to have a good idea of the bearing of the target and you have to be able to hear the echo. Suffice to say that any Sonar Tech in the Navy doing ping stealing is just playing a game.
By the way, there are a lot of mechanisms for sound to lose energy in water. Acoustic impedance mismatch as the sound passes through the dome window, heat loss as the sonic energy travels through the water, reflection loss as the energy bounces off particles in the water and, biggest of all, spreading loss. Spherical spreading loss goes as the square of the distance - the sound level drops dramatically as the "wave" spreads through the water. That's why the transmission is so loud to begin with - by the time the sound travels any appreciable distance, it has dropped in intensity by a lot!
This way submarines can use "active sonar" without being a source of the sound themselves. There are so many possible ways to use that sort of thing.
Many possibilities, but only a few implementations. Submarines do not rely on active sonar. Period. Most of the very best acoustic analysts come from the submarine service because they rely almost entirely on passive sonar for everything from strategic and tactical defense to navigation. That's just the way it is.
The quick answer is that if you don't like what you're being paid, look somewhere else. Or maybe that's the flip answer.
But if you look somewhere else and the pay isn't any better then maybe you're being paid what the market suggests. The Fortune 500 company that I work for does annual market surveys. Sometimes we get a raise, sometimes we don't. I went for four years with no raise. Last year was 6%, this year was nearly 20%. For my job (requires a BSEE and experience), I get paid a bit above average, just a bit. And if I went to the company across town, I'd get about the same thing.
Now, I happen to like my job and think that I get paid what I deserve, so I guess that I've got a rosy view of things, but I'd say that if you're upset about your pay enough that it weighs on your mind all the time, then maybe you're in the wrong job. Or maybe you just think about pay an inordinate amount. Tough to say. But, for the rank and file, pay usually reflects the market.
Oh yeah, getting aggravated about the executives is just an exercise in futility.
I can say that, after spending 10 years as a sonar tech on a surface ship in the US Navy, there are a lot of people writing a lot here about something that they don't know much about - and pretty much getting it wrong. Even in littoral waters, passive sonar is an effective asset, but for a final targeting solution, nothing beats the accuracy of active sonar.
Subs tend to not use active sonar for what ought to be obvious reasons. Surface ships don't use it as a primary sensor because it's relatively easy for the target to hide below the thermal layer. Even aviation assets don't use it for the number one reason that everyone else doesn't use it: once you ping the enemy, they know that you're coming.
But, once you've made the decision to attack, you've got to have a very accurate fix on the target. Active sonar does that. Active sonar is the sensor of last resort - once you start pinging, you've given away the fact that you know where the enemy is - and the enemy knows that, too. No ship, submarine or aircraft in any Navy cruises around with their active sonar blaring away - number one, it's like waving a big old flag saying "here I am" and number two, it's about impossible to sleep through if your berthing area is below decks. You won't go deaf, but you won't sleep, either.
Also, just as anectodal evidence, when we participated in exercises off of the Bahamas and Florida, we never suffered a dearth of dolphins swimming with the ship, even when we were actively pinging a target. The sonar would be going off like crazy and the dolphins would stay right with the bow of the ship. And in the Gulf of Oman, there didn't seem to be any shortage of whales, either, even though there were destroyers alongside of a repair tender operating low and mid frequency active sonar for maintenance.
So don't get the idea that the Navy is out there pounding the water with sonar - they're not. And based on what I've seen and read, I'm not even close to being convinced that sonar is negatively affecting the cetacean population.
Slashdot Mirror
So to condense your and others' similar rants, what you're really saying is, "I'm not going to subscribe." After all, Cingular isn't making you pay.
...I have a niggling suspicion that Comcast owns a major piece of Music Choice...
Suspicion validated! From a Music Choice press release:
Headquartered in Horsham, PA, Music Choice is a partnership among subsidiaries of Microsoft Corporation, Motorola, Inc., Sony Corporation of America, EMI Music and several leading U.S. cable providers: Adelphia Cable Communications, Comcast Cable Communications, Cox Communications and Time Warner Cable.
Egads, the seven horsemen of the apocalypse plus the antichrist?
-h-
Yeah, right. Basic XM service is $12.95 per month. Once they've got you hooked, they'll raise the rates and add fees and surcharges, just like cable TV.
Anything's possible, I guess, but so far, XM has added channels, dropped the fee for at least one of the premium channels and dropped the fee for Internet XM Radio without raising the price or adding surcharges, so I guess in that respect, they're doing the opposite of what you predict.
They did, however, raise the price from $9.95 a month to $12.95 a month a while back.
In LA and NYC maybe there's a big variety of FM formats, but where I live, it's either country music, hip hop or Clear Channel. I'm happy to pay $12.95 for the variety.
BTW, I also pay $10 a month to support my local Public Radio stations. Unfortunately, there's a little too much variety from them - sort of like XM on one channel.
-h-
A solenoid, you mean? Interesting.
It's a solenoid if you pass an electric current through it. As an antenna, it reacts to the electromagnetic waves of a certain frequency to generate a corresponding current.
All electrical solenoids are loops of wire, but not all loops of wire are solenoids.
-h-
Reading past the marketing words, the report is calculating the R&D expense of Intel, Oracle, EMC and RedHat.
In Dell's latest quarter, the company spent $122 million on "Research, development and engineering". Maybe I'm cynical, but I read that as a bunch of technicians testing parts and software to see if they're compatible. Not really R&D.
If my engineering experience with Dell is any indicator, the "unique knowledge and expertise" that they share is a list of requirements that their vendors have to meet. And, now and then, some of those requirements show a serious lack of understanding of the way that computers work.
-h-
And why is the guy afraid to be retested?
He's not.
The USPTO and IP Australia would appear to disagree with you. Do a search.
-h-
Heck, if he had been paying attention he would have realized that "Windows" isn't a registered Trademark, but that "Microsoft Windows" is instead.
As has been posted elsewhere in this topic, "Windows" is a registered trademark, not only in the US, but all over the world (including in Australia, where the dispute took place). "Microsoft Windows" is also trademarked. Oh, and Microsoft isn't the only company that has registered the trademark "Windows". Even Kimberly Clark (the paper products company) has one. Windows toilet paper, maybe?
I think that it's kind of funny that all of the amateur lawyers used to spring up to tell us all about having to defend a trademark to be able to keep it - but suddenly they're silent now. I guess that barratry is more fun and esoteric to talk about than trademark defense. It can't possibly be hypocricy!
-h-
Microsoft has a trademark on the term "Microsoft Windows" because they were denied a trademark on the term "Windows."
Really? From the USPTO:
Word Mark WINDOWS
Goods and Services IC 009. US 021 023 026 036 038. G & S: Computer programs for use in automobiles, namely, computer programs for monitoring automobile performance, for mapping and navigation, for electronic mail and wireless communications, for maintaining personal directories, contact lists, address and telephone number lists; operating system programs and utilities; computer programs for wallet-sized personal computers, namely, personal information manager programs with calendars, contact information files and to do lists; programs for facilitating voice, text and pen input; access programs for global communication networks; computer programs for accessing global communication networks and displaying content therefrom; and computer programs for use with hand-held computers, namely, operating system and utility programs; a full line of business application programs for use with hand-held computers. FIRST USE: 19840000. FIRST USE IN COMMERCE: 19840000
Mark Drawing Code (1) TYPED DRAWING
Serial Number 75980682
Filing Date October 10, 1996
Current Filing Basis 1A
Original Filing Basis 1B
Published for Opposition April 28, 1998
Registration Number 2565965
Registration Date April 30, 2002
Owner (REGISTRANT) Microsoft Corporation CORPORATION WASHINGTON One Microsoft Way Redmond WASHINGTON 980526399
Attorney of Record WILLIAM O. FERRON JR
Prior Registrations 1872264;1875069;1989386;2005901;AND OTHERS
Type of Mark TRADEMARK
Register PRINCIPAL-2(F)
Live/Dead Indicator LIVE
And from IP Australia:
Word: WINDOWS
Image:
Lodgement Date: 23-APR-1992
Registered From: 23-APR-1992
Acceptance Advertised: 04-APR-1996
Registration Advertised: 21-NOV-1996
Sealing Date: 04-NOV-1996
Renewal Due: 23-APR-2012
Class/es: 9
Status: Registered/Protected
Kind: n/a
Type of Mark: Word
Endorsement
Owner/s: Microsoft Corporation
a Washington corporation
One Microsoft Way
Redmond
Washington 98052-6399
UNITED STATES OF AMERICA
Address for Service: Davies Collison Cave
GPO Box 3876
SYDNEY
2001,NSW
Goods & Services
Class: 9 Computer systems software, computer systems software and programmers reference and users manuals sold as a unit
-h-
Umm ok this shit makes zer0 sense.
Windows is not trademarked, ok?
Oh no, I'm replying to an AC!
From the USPTO:
Word Mark WINDOWS
Goods and Services IC 009. US 021 023 026 036 038. G & S: Computer programs for use in automobiles, namely, computer programs for monitoring automobile performance, for mapping and navigation, for electronic mail and wireless communications, for maintaining personal directories, contact lists, address and telephone number lists; operating system programs and utilities; computer programs for wallet-sized personal computers, namely, personal information manager programs with calendars, contact information files and to do lists; programs for facilitating voice, text and pen input; access programs for global communication networks; computer programs for accessing global communication networks and displaying content therefrom; and computer programs for use with hand-held computers, namely, operating system and utility programs; a full line of business application programs for use with hand-held computers. FIRST USE: 19840000. FIRST USE IN COMMERCE: 19840000
Mark Drawing Code (1) TYPED DRAWING
Serial Number 75980682
Filing Date October 10, 1996
Current Filing Basis 1A
Original Filing Basis 1B
Published for Opposition April 28, 1998
Registration Number 2565965
Registration Date April 30, 2002
Owner (REGISTRANT) Microsoft Corporation CORPORATION WASHINGTON One Microsoft Way Redmond WASHINGTON 980526399
Attorney of Record WILLIAM O. FERRON JR
Prior Registrations 1872264;1875069;1989386;2005901;AND OTHERS
Type of Mark TRADEMARK
Register PRINCIPAL-2(F)
Live/Dead Indicator LIVE
Among others...
-h-
Due to a new highly instable vendor system dragging me out of bed at 2AM - 5AM repeatedly...
Instable? Unpossible!
One of the previous posters suggested that the difference between having a degree and not having one is $10,000 a year.
I know that one point does not a sample make, but I agree. Prior to spending five years at my local state university, I made about $40,000 managing the tech support call center for a (at the time) major computer manufacturer (following 10 years in the US Navy). I took five years off, worked part time for about $20K per year and ended up as an electrical engineer at $58K per year. After three years, I'm at $72K+. And, as a kicker, I've also started a small electronics company with revenues of around $100k - and after a year, it's breaking even. For my case, the total cost of school was actually less than zero - the GI bill paid for it. From just a pure money point of view, I gave up $100K over five years, but with the increase in salary, bonuses and options, I've made that back in three.
Interestingly (to me, anyway), almost all of the EEs who graduated with me are all working in their field and doing pretty well. I guess that there were about 30 of us in my class - maybe half went on to get their MSc - and 27 of them are working as EEs, the other three are working on their Ph.Ds. And we didn't go to any kind of prestigious school - but it was a traditional school, if that matters.
-h-
Even more interesting, some states, including Idaho (my home state) do not tax income that is not made within the state. So, when I was stationed in Rhode Island and California, I did not pay income tax to either of those states. But since I did not make my money in Idaho, I didn't pay them, either.
When I was in California between 1992 and 1996, the legislature passed a law defining what qualified a person as a resident of California. If I recall correctly, the criteria were any two of home ownership, driver's license and (I think) a certain time of continuous residence. The net result was that most military members would end up being California residents (according to California) and would have to pay income tax, even if their official state of residence was elsewhere (and where they were also paying income tax). The DoD pounced on that very quickly and it was successfully challenged in court.
-h-
That company would be Philips. They own the patents along with another company...Sony.
Pretty much everybody has missed the point of the interview, probably because both the question and the answer were a little vague (I'm giving the benefit of the doubt).
Witacre's position is that if Google is going to be a service provider, then they should have to pay SBC for the use of the pipe. The question grouped MSN, Vonage and Google together. What do they have in common? MSN and Vonage are both ISPs and Google is breaking into the market. So Witacre's position is that if any of them want to use SBC's pipe to get customers to the Internet, then SBC wants payment for that. And, to me, that seems reasonable.
Sure, the phone company got breaks from the government in the form of utility easements, but they still had to put up the capital for the infrastructure. And, yes, for many services, they have a guaranteed monopoly, but that is balanced by pretty close government oversight. Phone service is pretty cheap, all things considered.
Quite honestly, what Witacre said is pretty reasonable - if MSN, Google, et al, want to compete with SBC in the Internet business using the same pipe, then SBC want them to pay to get access to the pipe.
Interestingly, I have Qwest DSL service. Qwest is also my ISP and the ISP service is broken out seperately from the DSL service. I could have chosen one of several other ISPs for my service - Qwest carries the signal and the ISP provides the service. The ISP pays Qwest for access to the pipe - it doesn't seem any different than what Witacre is saying in his interview.
-h-
Subscription based licensing will encourage the release of products that don't suck.
Because if the product sucks, nobody will renew the subscription.
The EDA software that I rely on to electrically simulate memory modules is sold on a subcription basis - and it's thousands of dollars a year for a single license! It has bugs. It has a poor user interface. I receive patches and upgrades at least once a month. I could switch to the competitor's product, but then I'd be forced to convert all of my libraries and databases to their format - and that product is no more reliable than the one that I'm using.
The two different software packages are used by nearly every PCB and IC manufacturer in the world. Everybody pays their yearly "maintenance" fee for a software package that constantly needs upgrading - and is constantly a year or two behind the industry standards, forcing users to create shortcuts and workarounds to get the job done.
The products suck, but everybody renews because there's no other choice. Now, if the buy-in price was low and the yearly license fees made up the difference, then perhaps there would be a case for that sort of licensing. But in the case of the tools that I use, the buy-in is many tens of thousands of dollars and the yearly fees are several thousand. And a major version upgrade is nearly as expensive as an original license. So, I'm suspicious of the idea that subscription-based licensing will improve software quality.
-h-
George W. Bush is secretly patented for breakthroughs in stupidity and frequent mispronunciation of the word nuclear.
Actually, the patent was disallowed because of previous art from Dwight D. Eisenhower, John F. Kennedy, LBJ, Gerald Ford and Bill Clinton.
-h-
At least SFO doesn't have the Taco Bell Arena. My poor BSU Broncos...the Smurf Turf was cool...
-h-
I guess that I don't get it - you're arguing some theoretical idea with a guy who has both years of practical and theoretical experience. I know how ping stealing works and I've been involved in real-life exercises attempting to take advantage of it. The bottom line is that by the time you know enough about the environment and the target of interest to make ping stealing practical, you already know enough about the target to make ping stealing unnecessary - and that's in a surface ship. In a submarine, the target solution becomes clear even sooner because of the submarine's superior ability to passively exploit the different sonic layers in the ocean.
Also, bear in mind that active ranges in the ocean, on a good day, are maybe 20 miles using the most powerful, newest, low power sonars. Typical ranges are substantially less than that. Tactical passive ranges, however, are easily a hundred miles and more, depending on the target and water conditions. SURTASS and fixed passive arrays have much greater ranges.
To elaborate on the ping stealing problem, yes, you know the bearing from which the transmission comes, but you don't know the range. You may know the bearing from which the echo comes, but you don't know the range. If you don't know the range, you don't know if the transmission is arriving via direct path, bottom bounce or convergence zone transmission paths. Likewise, you don't know which transmission path the echo has taken. Is the target moving toward you or away from you? Without knowing the course and speed of the transmitting platform, you can't evaluate dopler effects of the echo. So, the best that you can do is tell that the target is on a line of bearing some distance from you. But you already know at least that from passive sonar. And through less than half an hour of target motion analysis, you can determine range, bearing, course and speed of the target, without using active sonar at all!
And, again, a fixed active array would almost immediately become useless as a tactical or strategic asset because it would be a piece of cake to avoid! Besides, there are no fixed tactical or strategic active sonar arrays out there anyway, so it makes the whole argument moot.
There are different sorts of sonar. How powerful were the ones your ships were using? Levels > 160dB can kill many things.
You're telling me? Of course there are different sorts of sonar! My ship had the most powerful surface sonar in the Navy - it was capable of producing sound intensities in excess of 200dB (one meter from the transducer). Could it kill? No. Could it injure? Not really - it would make your ears hurt, but not make you deaf. Actually, the sonar system was one of our defenses against attacks from divers when we were in port - it was obviously very uncomfortable to be in the water when the active sonar was pinging.
While I am not a sub/military/sonar guy, I think that submarines can use active sonar pulses from fixed sonar arrays.
Clearly you're not a sub/military/sonar guy. Fixed sonar arrays are almost entirely passive. Think about it - a fixed active array is like waving a flag to say "Don't come over here!" As soon as it goes active, it becomes worthless.
Now, you've touched tangentally on something called "ping stealing" that works a lot better in the movies than it does in real life. As the story goes, you can count the time between the active ping and the echo that you hear and tell how far away the target is. But you have to know where the active ping is coming from, you have to have a good idea of the bearing of the target and you have to be able to hear the echo. Suffice to say that any Sonar Tech in the Navy doing ping stealing is just playing a game.
By the way, there are a lot of mechanisms for sound to lose energy in water. Acoustic impedance mismatch as the sound passes through the dome window, heat loss as the sonic energy travels through the water, reflection loss as the energy bounces off particles in the water and, biggest of all, spreading loss. Spherical spreading loss goes as the square of the distance - the sound level drops dramatically as the "wave" spreads through the water. That's why the transmission is so loud to begin with - by the time the sound travels any appreciable distance, it has dropped in intensity by a lot!
This way submarines can use "active sonar" without being a source of the sound themselves. There are so many possible ways to use that sort of thing.
Many possibilities, but only a few implementations. Submarines do not rely on active sonar. Period. Most of the very best acoustic analysts come from the submarine service because they rely almost entirely on passive sonar for everything from strategic and tactical defense to navigation. That's just the way it is.
-h-
The quick answer is that if you don't like what you're being paid, look somewhere else. Or maybe that's the flip answer.
But if you look somewhere else and the pay isn't any better then maybe you're being paid what the market suggests. The Fortune 500 company that I work for does annual market surveys. Sometimes we get a raise, sometimes we don't. I went for four years with no raise. Last year was 6%, this year was nearly 20%. For my job (requires a BSEE and experience), I get paid a bit above average, just a bit. And if I went to the company across town, I'd get about the same thing.
Now, I happen to like my job and think that I get paid what I deserve, so I guess that I've got a rosy view of things, but I'd say that if you're upset about your pay enough that it weighs on your mind all the time, then maybe you're in the wrong job. Or maybe you just think about pay an inordinate amount. Tough to say. But, for the rank and file, pay usually reflects the market.
Oh yeah, getting aggravated about the executives is just an exercise in futility.
-h-
I can say that, after spending 10 years as a sonar tech on a surface ship in the US Navy, there are a lot of people writing a lot here about something that they don't know much about - and pretty much getting it wrong. Even in littoral waters, passive sonar is an effective asset, but for a final targeting solution, nothing beats the accuracy of active sonar.
Subs tend to not use active sonar for what ought to be obvious reasons. Surface ships don't use it as a primary sensor because it's relatively easy for the target to hide below the thermal layer. Even aviation assets don't use it for the number one reason that everyone else doesn't use it: once you ping the enemy, they know that you're coming.
But, once you've made the decision to attack, you've got to have a very accurate fix on the target. Active sonar does that. Active sonar is the sensor of last resort - once you start pinging, you've given away the fact that you know where the enemy is - and the enemy knows that, too. No ship, submarine or aircraft in any Navy cruises around with their active sonar blaring away - number one, it's like waving a big old flag saying "here I am" and number two, it's about impossible to sleep through if your berthing area is below decks. You won't go deaf, but you won't sleep, either.
Also, just as anectodal evidence, when we participated in exercises off of the Bahamas and Florida, we never suffered a dearth of dolphins swimming with the ship, even when we were actively pinging a target. The sonar would be going off like crazy and the dolphins would stay right with the bow of the ship. And in the Gulf of Oman, there didn't seem to be any shortage of whales, either, even though there were destroyers alongside of a repair tender operating low and mid frequency active sonar for maintenance.
So don't get the idea that the Navy is out there pounding the water with sonar - they're not. And based on what I've seen and read, I'm not even close to being convinced that sonar is negatively affecting the cetacean population.
-h-
Just because you can post doesn't mean that you should post.
It's no wonder that the rest of the world hates the US at times. Or perhaps, all the time...?
Yeah, ever since Switzerland became the 51st state...
-h-
Who actually think Wikipedia is going to replace various standard sources of knowledge...
/..
It has on
I'm just sayin'...
-h-