The USF is not an "access fee", it's a tax. Companies like FreeConference do benefit from access fees, which is the settlement mechanism present in virtually all calls you make and receive. Carriers charge each other access fees to transport a call through the network. When AT&T hands off a call to a local exchange carrier (LEC), the LEC gets a small piece of the bill they collect from their customer. This is how it has worked at least since the telecom reforms of 1996. Just about any call you make on the public switched telephone network generates access fees for all the entities that handle your call. However, if all those entities are AT&T, AT&T doesn't complain about it. When they have to hand off the call to an independent, entrepreneurial LEC, they scream bloody murder.
USF is entirely different. This is a tax, not a tarif, and although some rural LECs benefit from that, that money does NOT flow to conference service providers.
The free conference providers do not "eat on the government's dime". They eat into AT&T's profits. Boo hoo. Unless you're an AT&T shill you should not bemoan this.
The FCC merely established a ceiling for the tariffs that rural telephone companies can collect, but otherwise did not close any "loophole".
Sadly, the IEEE did not do its research when publishing this blatant promotion for Speek.
The free conference companies absolutely do NOT receive money from the Universal Service Fund, either directly or indirectly. In fact, they collect taxes from end users that contribute to this fund.
Free conference companies make money indirectly from access fees, which are paid to the rural telephone company via tariffs, the very mechanism that underpins our entire public switched telephone network. There is nothing nefarious, or even remotely illegal about this. In fact, in its recent ruling the FCC made it explicitly clear that this practice is legitimate.
The term “traffic pumping” is used by companies that compete with the free conference providers to attempt to put this practice in a negative light. In fact, anyone that hopes to receive a telephone call (e.g. almost every business that has a telephone number) engages in “traffic pumping”.
Who is opposed to the free conference providers? The long distance companies (who operate their own high-cost conference services), Speek (who offers a competing service), and anyone else who charges more money for less service. The simple fact is that if the free conference services have successfully commoditized what was once a high cost service.
For some reason they changed the Windows version so you need to use Shift-Alt instead of Alt. You can get the old behavior back by editing about:config and changing ui.key.contentAccess to 4
It's important to distinguish between application software, where MS consistently makes high quality stuff, and operating systems, where their reputation isn't so stellar.
I think most people that use Visual Studio will tell you it is one of the best.
It's axiomatic that the more money you spend for reliability the more likely you are to have some kind of failure. Our fancypants Dell PowerVault RAID enclosures are constantly giving us trouble, yet the machines with just a single IDE drive keep on ticking for years and years.
Slashdot Mirror
I read the article and commented on it. The "facts" there are incorrect.
I work for FreeConference
The USF is not an "access fee", it's a tax. Companies like FreeConference do benefit from access fees, which is the settlement mechanism present in virtually all calls you make and receive. Carriers charge each other access fees to transport a call through the network. When AT&T hands off a call to a local exchange carrier (LEC), the LEC gets a small piece of the bill they collect from their customer. This is how it has worked at least since the telecom reforms of 1996. Just about any call you make on the public switched telephone network generates access fees for all the entities that handle your call. However, if all those entities are AT&T, AT&T doesn't complain about it. When they have to hand off the call to an independent, entrepreneurial LEC, they scream bloody murder.
USF is entirely different. This is a tax, not a tarif, and although some rural LECs benefit from that, that money does NOT flow to conference service providers.
The free conference providers do not "eat on the government's dime". They eat into AT&T's profits. Boo hoo. Unless you're an AT&T shill you should not bemoan this.
The FCC merely established a ceiling for the tariffs that rural telephone companies can collect, but otherwise did not close any "loophole".
Sadly, the IEEE did not do its research when publishing this blatant promotion for Speek.
The free conference companies absolutely do NOT receive money from the Universal Service Fund, either directly or indirectly. In fact, they collect taxes from end users that contribute to this fund.
Free conference companies make money indirectly from access fees, which are paid to the rural telephone company via tariffs, the very mechanism that underpins our entire public switched telephone network. There is nothing nefarious, or even remotely illegal about this. In fact, in its recent ruling the FCC made it explicitly clear that this practice is legitimate.
The term “traffic pumping” is used by companies that compete with the free conference providers to attempt to put this practice in a negative light. In fact, anyone that hopes to receive a telephone call (e.g. almost every business that has a telephone number) engages in “traffic pumping”.
Who is opposed to the free conference providers? The long distance companies (who operate their own high-cost conference services), Speek (who offers a competing service), and anyone else who charges more money for less service. The simple fact is that if the free conference services have successfully commoditized what was once a high cost service.
For some reason they changed the Windows version so you need to use Shift-Alt instead of Alt. You can get the old behavior back by editing about:config and changing ui.key.contentAccess to 4
By Grapthar's Hammer they shall be avenged!
You blame ASP for the page loading slowly? You could blame IIS instead, but my money's on the slashdot effect, to which no platform is immune.
It's important to distinguish between application software, where MS consistently makes high quality stuff, and operating systems, where their reputation isn't so stellar.
I think most people that use Visual Studio will tell you it is one of the best.
It's axiomatic that the more money you spend for reliability the more likely you are to have some kind of failure. Our fancypants Dell PowerVault RAID enclosures are constantly giving us trouble, yet the machines with just a single IDE drive keep on ticking for years and years.
If you start the command interpreter with the /F:ON option then you can use ctrl-F for command line completion