We do NOT have deregulation in Alberta, Canada: instead, the wholesaling capacity was semi-privatized (all sellers/buyers MUST use it) as "Alberta Power Pool" which still basically regulates prices. Calling this situation an open market is ridiculous. It's true that the existing generation facilities were sold off, as well as at least the Calgary public power corporation (now Enmax) which now provides hundreds of millions of dollars worth of profits and CEO wages by over-charging Calgarians for power. Still, even calling Enmax de-regulation is a bit absurd since its sole shareholder is the City of Calgary...
The Alberta Supernet is nothing but corporate welfare worth $193 million to Microsoft, Cisco and the other in the consortium.
Will they use free software? Of course not, despite (ostensibly) being a ``public'' endeavor.
The stated goal is to provide broadband to schools, libraries and hospitals (all public) in the province. For $193 million, what do Albertans get (ignoring, please, whether you think schools, hospitals and/or libraries should be publically funded)?
Practically nothing; the government will not own the infrastructure resulting and the schools, libraries and hospitals will have to pay for their access anyway! Plus, Alberta recently privatized the formerly-government-run telephone system (AGT, now Telus), the bandwidth from which could almost certainly have helped connect nearly all of the schools, libraries and hospitals in the province.
The real issue is Microsoft's mis-prioritization of marketshare and profits over the usefulness of the software to the end user.
This isn't Microsoft's fault; they are a company in a capitalist system. Participants in a capitalist economy are rewarded based solely on their profit, not usefulness or innovations. I don't pretend it's good, but blaming Microsoft for maximizing their profit is just dumb.
Yes, hardware and software are different. No, the hardware specs shouldn't be open-source (although I don't see how opening the source would be bad; presumably the company would find more people to use their chips.). However, patents are almost always bad; in this case, thanks to the patenting of the chips, any similar chips which are released will likely get a hard look by numerous patent lawyers, thus doing the opposite thing that the patents were intended to do: increase innovation.
Slashdot Mirror
...which really says a lot about what a shitty transportation system we've designed than anything else.
We do NOT have deregulation in Alberta, Canada: instead, the wholesaling capacity was semi-privatized (all sellers/buyers MUST use it) as "Alberta Power Pool" which still basically regulates prices. Calling this situation an open market is ridiculous. It's true that the existing generation facilities were sold off, as well as at least the Calgary public power corporation (now Enmax) which now provides hundreds of millions of dollars worth of profits and CEO wages by over-charging Calgarians for power. Still, even calling Enmax de-regulation is a bit absurd since its sole shareholder is the City of Calgary...
The Alberta Supernet is nothing but corporate
welfare worth $193 million to Microsoft, Cisco
and the other in the consortium.
Will they use free software? Of course not,
despite (ostensibly) being a ``public''
endeavor.
The stated goal is to provide broadband to
schools, libraries and hospitals (all public)
in the province. For $193 million, what do
Albertans get (ignoring, please, whether you
think schools, hospitals and/or libraries should
be publically funded)?
Practically nothing; the government will not own
the infrastructure resulting and the schools,
libraries and hospitals will have to pay for their
access anyway! Plus, Alberta recently privatized
the formerly-government-run telephone system
(AGT, now Telus), the bandwidth from which could
almost certainly have helped connect nearly
all of the schools, libraries and hospitals in
the province.
See more:
http://mike-warren.com/articles/supernet.html
This isn't Microsoft's fault; they are a company in a capitalist system. Participants in a capitalist economy are rewarded based solely on their profit, not usefulness or innovations. I don't pretend it's good, but blaming Microsoft for maximizing their profit is just dumb.
Yes, hardware and software are different. No,
the hardware specs shouldn't be open-source (although I don't see how opening the source would be bad; presumably the company would find more people to use their chips.). However, patents are almost always bad; in this case, thanks to the patenting of the chips, any similar chips which are released will likely get a hard look by numerous patent lawyers, thus doing the opposite thing that the patents were intended to do: increase innovation.