The claim that only 3 countries use imperial is misleading - I'm curious as to how many countries are in a halfway house stage. What do I mean? Officially metric but plenty of things (both offical and matter of daily use) imperial.
For example in the UK you have:
Speed limits (still mph) Road signs (distances still miles) Lots of food/drink (e.g. milk sold in 4 pint containers, have to be labelled 2.273 liters but still referred to as pints and also have pint amount on label) Petrol is priced by the liter but everyone refers to their car's mpg etc.
However there is also no need to ever undock with one PLEX never mind 74. You can apply them to you account (ie use the item to add 30 days to your subscription) from anywhere in the game. Yes he dies trying to get to the main trading hub in the game however he could have gone to any other station in the system and had no problems. Also he was an absolute fool for flying in a very fragile ship when another group had declared war on him (thus was able to be attacked even in the main trading hub system without interference).
I don't think the big deal with the Kindle (or rather with the eInk display used by the Kindle, the Sony reader and the Bookeen CyBook) is that its screen looks like paper its that the power consumption is so low and it doesn't strain your eyes like an lcd. I have had a palm and a couple of sony clies that I used to use to read ebooks and whilst I had no problems with reading on an lcd the fact that I could (if I was lucky) read for maybe a couple of hours before the battery started to give out was a major problem. With my CyBook I can read probably half a dozen books before I hit that point. Also there is less strain on my eyes. I don't think of the display as being like paper (although a lot of people who have seen mine have commented on that).
I read a lot and the fact I currently have 665 books on my CyBook is a hell of a lot more convenient than having 665 physical books. Also as people have noted already there are some publishers (primarily Baen via their Webscriptions and Free Library) that realise that people wont pay the same price as a hardback book for the electronic version. However people will pay if its cheaper (say few bucks) and convenient (no need to hunt through assorted torrent sites to find one that has a copy of the book you are looking for). There are a number of authors whose books I've only discovered because I either read one of their books for free or had one of their books bundled with books from authors I was already interested in.
Well you haven't provided enough information to really answer the question - the answer is dependant on your needs. I'll let you know what I'm planning to buy and why.
I've been reading eBooks since about 1999, and have used a Palm PDA, two different Sony Clies (one still being used) and a Nokia N95 mobile phone (also still being used) for portable reading devices. In addition I also use pc's for reading them.
My choice of reader is based on how I have purchased eBooks in the past. I have a library of somewhere around 500 books, purchase from Baen or from their free library.
Due to various computer problems I've had to rebuild my library either because I've gotten a new reader or gotten a new pc on a number of occasions. I had no problems downloading them even though it may have been years since I purchased the books.
I don't know how purchases made from Amazon for the Kindle but from what I understand if you purchased an ebook from Amazon more than a year ago you are no longer able to download it. Going by my expereince with previous readers this is definitely a downside for the Kindle.
Similarly I have used numerous different devices to read the eBooks I've purchased so anything that has a purchasing mechanism that employs any form of DRM is also a downside.
I'm also based in the UK so the wireless side of the Kindle is useless to me.
The prices for books from their own stores are also more expensive than elsewhere.
Given that I now have a backup reader (in the form of my mobile phone) I'm planning on picking up the re-badged Bookean reader to be sold by NAEB (mentioned further up in this discussion). This reader sued the same eInk display as both the the Sony & Amazon devices, lacks the keyboard (which I wouldn't use) and is cheaper. It is DRM free and I don't need to worry about having problems being able to put my library on there.
Few of us can remember any incidences in recent time when, say google.com or amazon.com or live.com was offline
Actually I can remember when amazon was last offline - at least their login system - about a month ago. I'd setup an amazon wishlist for family to know what I wanted for my birthday however my dad was having trouble getting to amazon, he was unable to login. When I tried (different machine, different isp etc) I was able to connect to amazon.co.uk I was unable to login either and the same problem occured on amazon.com, amazon.fr and amazon.de.
In addition for people to have mistrust the service they want doesn't have to be down, it just needs to be unreachable. As such services are used by more and more people who have less and less technical knowledge the end user doesn't care if the reason they can't reach amazon is their ISP having dns problems, amazon being unavailable or their pet rabbit has chewed through their modem cable - all that matters is they can't reach it with the new-fangled interweb thingy so they'll go to the local store instead.
Actually while many publishers do publish ebooks at the same price as print books there is at least one exception. Baen lets you buy its latest hardcover with at least 3 other books that haven't been e-published before (which normally ends up being 6 or 7 books) for only $15. Yes you have no choice over what those books are but even if you are only interested in the hard back it is still probably cheaper than the paper version. These books are also available a couple of weeks before the print versions.
In addition they also provide a large number of ebooks totally free both on the net and on cd's that come with certain hard covers. These cd's have a copyright message that basically states they can be copied and redistributed how you like but they can't be sold.
The point is that most other book publishers use the same arguments that the music industry are using with regards to online copying, insisting on encripted, closed system for distribution etc. however here is a case where those arguements are prooved false with figures to back up those claims.
Yes some of these books are early books in series, others are stand alone books or even entire series. Indeed of the two books where detailed figures are given one (Mother of Demons) is (IIRC) a stand alone novel and the other (1632) was originally planned as a stand alone novel and a sequel has only now been produced due to demand.
Some people may have come across Baen's Free Library where complete electroic versions of books can be downloaded for free. Eric Flint posted an article yesterday that shows that if anything his sales increased rather than decreased after some of his books were made available as free downloads. The url for the article is
As I understand (and remember from the last time the Authors Guild complained) the problem is not that Amazon are selling the used books but that when someone does a search for a book and go to the page specifically for that book it shows the book you have searched for complete with picture, rrp and amazon price and below that details of any second hand copies.
If amazon had the second hand books seperate (e.g. as a separate category) I think the Authors Guild would have a lot less of the problem. Their point is that people who search for a book on Amazon because they are planning to buy it and are happy to pay full price (and thus pay the royalty to the author) are seeing the second hand copy and buying that instead.
If you walked into a bricks and mortar bookshop and asked for a particular book you would expect to be offered the new, full price copy rather than a second hand one even if the shop had both unless you specifically asked for a second hand copy.
According to their website, UK company Techtronics (www.techtronics.com) supplied 2 Sony FX1 players to NASA which had been modified to be multi-region. These players were also delivered by Atlantis.
From what I understand the 'Audio CD-R' are more expensive because they include a fee that goes towards a copyright group in the same way as blank tapes. Its not to make more money (directly) from the sale of the CD-R discs but to supposedly offset losses from piracy.
Kithran
Re:Thousands of Free Books! or Project Gutenberg
on
Free Books Online
·
· Score: 2
The point is that the Project Gutenburg books are those where the copyright has expired. The Baen free library contains books by their current authors primarily to provide readers who have read any other books by a particular author or in a particular series an opportunity to read the book for free and decide if they would be interested in buying more by that author or in that series.
Have a look at the authors then have a look for them at Amazon or somewhere similar. One of the authors (David Weber) made he top ten for sci-fi last year at Amazon. Some of his books (including one that is in the free library) are now being reprinted in the UK as well. While Baen is almost certainly not considered a major publisher they only produce science fiction and fantasy turning out roughly five books a month.
Another Baen initative was Webscriptions where you could get 4 or 5 books a month online for only $10 - and these were their latest releases. This scheme has now been going for over a year and shows every sign of continuing.
One thing I wonder about, though, is books. What if a novel equivalent of napster appeared (please excuse the pun:-)? How would authors make money then? Through publicly reading their works? I don't think so. I can't think of a mechanism whereby authors could continue to make cash, which is why I would be much more scared of the internet if I were a novelist rather than a musician.
One publisher that I know of is seriously looking at how to publish books in an electronic format without having problems with piracy and still paying authors royalties. Check out www.baen.com.
They sell books in groups of 4 or 5 for $10 and their costs are low enough that the authors get resonable royalties. Costs for consumers are low enough that people are happy to pay the price (and people after copies tend to get told to go buy one)
Yes Microsoft have made a mistake that has effectively led to them giving away money. However my feeling is until Microsoft start paying compensation for bugs in their programs (which after all are in theory due to a programmer making a mistake) they should just swallow the loss. If they were to provide refunds or free upgrades to (for example) people running MS Exchange Server 5.0 (which cannot be configured to prevent spmmaers abusing it to send junk e-mail without paying to upgrade to 5.5) people will have a lot more sympathy for their current plight.
I don't think this will have much (if any) bearing on the case against Demon in the UK - afterall this is a US court case.
I think it will have useful implications where board owners have a disclaimer which clearly states they can edit messages if they are informed of a problem but perform no other checking. IIRC part of the problem with the Demon case was them not removing the messages when somone complained about them. Please note I am not saying the messages in the Demon case were libelous or not, just that part of the problem revolved around lack of action on their part after being informed of the problem.
In the public hearing it was stated that there is a law "so-called Rule 56, which requires that that material prior art, of which the applicant is aware, be disclosed to the Office." It was said that they understand that it may be hard to comply to this rule. I looked through the patent but I could not find any references to prior art. Maybe someone else knows where these types of things are posted (if they are disclosed)? It was said that most patent submissions include (on average) about 4 documents of prior art.
Now I may be wrong but IIRC MS Office uses this technique to work out what year a two digit year field should be translated to. I wonder if any of the documents for this application were word-processed on MS Word....
The main thrust of the anti-spam argument is nothing to do with the subject. It is instead to do with the _methods used_ to distribute the spam. The fact that the vast majority of spam is sent by abusing security holes and using another persons mail server to send out your spam. This can cause serious problems to the victims. I don't think anyone on/. would argue against a law that specifically stated "You are not allowed to break into a private property and install quake on some of their pc's so you could have a network game". All exisiting anti-spam legislation makes it illegel to do things like:
Forge headers (e.g. pretend you were someone else. Probably a crime of some sort if you tried it with a paper letter).
Use misleading subjects (e.g. You have won $1 million when the mail is actually saying buy this product, again probably a crime)
Use a third party's server without their permission (Again noone would complain if the post office refused to deliver letters without stamps).
and so on. Please note the common trend - none of these laws make any reference to the _content_ of the message just how it was transmitted. None of the laws say (for example) "you are not allowed to send messages advertising adult web sites".
The bottom line is spam is content neutral.
Kithran
Re:Why are metered local calls "stupid"?
on
ISP War in the UK
·
· Score: 1
Maybe I'm being dim here, but why are metered local calls "stupid"? If you're calling from one line to another on the same exchange, then there's an argument that you're not using any of the telco's resources and so should be charged a flat rate.
And thats the point - calls to my ISP _are_ on the same exchange and at the moment they are flat rate. This has been the case for about 4 years. Despite this the cable company (Cable & Wireless) are now trying to remove the flat rate calls but only to business numbers. If it costs them (effectively) nothing to offer unmetered calls to residential customers why can't they continue to allow it for people wishing to call business customers?
I agree calls to the 0845 pop's should be charged but I see no reason why people should continue to pay for calls to their local exchange - especially when the call starts and terminates within the same teleco's lcoal equipment.
Kithran
Some uk teleco's are trying to scrap 'free' calls
on
ISP War in the UK
·
· Score: 1
Some UK teleco's (mainly cable companies) originally offered free calls to other local cable users as a way of attracting customers from BT. This lead to a number of ISP's setting up on cable company lines to allow their subscribers a flat fee access to the internet. However the general consolidation of cable companies in the UK has lead to just 2 or 3 being left and they are now trying to phase out the free calls to business customers (and conincidently push their own ISP's) which will be a bad thing for internet access in the UK.
Freedom of speach should not come into the arguement for banning spam at all. The biggest problem with spam is not a matter of content (I don't care if a piece of unsolicited email I recieve is trying to sell me something or just telling me the bombing of serbia is wrong). Instead the problem is that the majority of the costs relating to spam are bourne by the recipient rather than the sender.
I'm sure you'd have a problem if every other day someone knocked on your door and tried to sell you something and then charged you 5 cents for the priveledge whether you had any interest in the product or not. Or if you want a different analogy suppose you were charged 5 cents every time a representative of an election candidate knocked on your door to ask for your vote - especially if it was for an election you couldn't even vote in?
Please have a look at the actual details on the case.
1). The case took place in the UK under UK law (/. is not in the UK).
2). Demon were then informed that certain messages were held on their newspool which were slanderous. Someone would have to complain to Rob before the same situation could apply.
As an asside does anyone know if any other UK ISP was asked to remove the offending articles from their feeds and if so what their response was?
Well as I understand it local calls are unmetered in the US and the big question is why shouldn't they also be unmetered in the UK (and the rest of Europe). When British Telecom lost its monopoly and cable compnaies started offering telephony some (videotron & nynex IIRC) provided their subscribers unmetered calls as one of their benefits. The offer only applied when calling another subscriber with the same company and in the evenings but seemed to be popular with both the cable companies (it attracted many customers) and with the customers themselves.
It did not take long for ISPs to recognise the fact that if their lines were provided by the same cable company they would be able to attract a lot of subscribers. They charged slightly more than other ISPs but this meant they were able to afford to cope with the higher utilisation.
The important thing to remember is that while a call stays within the same local area and within the same teleco's equipment the costs for a local call are minimal.
Yes there are a number of 'free' ISPs in the UK and the number of subscribers are rapidly increasing. (Indeed I think Freeserve now have more users than AOL in the UK). There is still a big price differential between the UK & the US with regards to the cost of internet access.
These 'free' ISPs in the UK are just no mothly fee - you still pay for the phone call to connect (indeed that is how these ISPs are funded they and the teleco split the revenue from calls). Given the fact the cheapest phone calls you are likely to find will be 1 pence per minute the bills soon mount up.
I'm lucky enough to be with a teleco who provides unmetered calls to other customers of the same teleco - including my ISP and I pay 12 pounds a month for my net access. With a 'free' ISP that would equate to 20 hours a month. While that would be enough for light use (say email and a little casual surfing) as soon as you start making large downloads or spending more time online the savings with the unmetered model get more and more pronounced.
I'd be interested to know what sort of percentage of US internet users are online for less than 20 hours a month....
One of my favourite games at the last Ambercon UK I went to was based on A New Hope, complete with Benedict as Obi Wan and pattern swords replacing light sabres.
Slashdot Mirror
The claim that only 3 countries use imperial is misleading - I'm curious as to how many countries are in a halfway house stage. What do I mean? Officially metric but plenty of things (both offical and matter of daily use) imperial.
For example in the UK you have:
Speed limits (still mph)
Road signs (distances still miles)
Lots of food/drink (e.g. milk sold in 4 pint containers, have to be labelled 2.273 liters but still referred to as pints and also have pint amount on label)
Petrol is priced by the liter but everyone refers to their car's mpg
etc.
However there is also no need to ever undock with one PLEX never mind 74. You can apply them to you account (ie use the item to add 30 days to your subscription) from anywhere in the game. Yes he dies trying to get to the main trading hub in the game however he could have gone to any other station in the system and had no problems. Also he was an absolute fool for flying in a very fragile ship when another group had declared war on him (thus was able to be attacked even in the main trading hub system without interference).
Kithran
I don't think the big deal with the Kindle (or rather with the eInk display used by the Kindle, the Sony reader and the Bookeen CyBook) is that its screen looks like paper its that the power consumption is so low and it doesn't strain your eyes like an lcd. I have had a palm and a couple of sony clies that I used to use to read ebooks and whilst I had no problems with reading on an lcd the fact that I could (if I was lucky) read for maybe a couple of hours before the battery started to give out was a major problem. With my CyBook I can read probably half a dozen books before I hit that point. Also there is less strain on my eyes. I don't think of the display as being like paper (although a lot of people who have seen mine have commented on that).
I read a lot and the fact I currently have 665 books on my CyBook is a hell of a lot more convenient than having 665 physical books. Also as people have noted already there are some publishers (primarily Baen via their Webscriptions and Free Library) that realise that people wont pay the same price as a hardback book for the electronic version. However people will pay if its cheaper (say few bucks) and convenient (no need to hunt through assorted torrent sites to find one that has a copy of the book you are looking for). There are a number of authors whose books I've only discovered because I either read one of their books for free or had one of their books bundled with books from authors I was already interested in.
Kithran
Well you haven't provided enough information to really answer the question - the answer is dependant on your needs. I'll let you know what I'm planning to buy and why.
I've been reading eBooks since about 1999, and have used a Palm PDA, two different Sony Clies (one still being used) and a Nokia N95 mobile phone (also still being used) for portable reading devices. In addition I also use pc's for reading them.
My choice of reader is based on how I have purchased eBooks in the past. I have a library of somewhere around 500 books, purchase from Baen or from their free library.
Due to various computer problems I've had to rebuild my library either because I've gotten a new reader or gotten a new pc on a number of occasions. I had no problems downloading them even though it may have been years since I purchased the books.
I don't know how purchases made from Amazon for the Kindle but from what I understand if you purchased an ebook from Amazon more than a year ago you are no longer able to download it. Going by my expereince with previous readers this is definitely a downside for the Kindle.
Similarly I have used numerous different devices to read the eBooks I've purchased so anything that has a purchasing mechanism that employs any form of DRM is also a downside.
I'm also based in the UK so the wireless side of the Kindle is useless to me.
The prices for books from their own stores are also more expensive than elsewhere.
Given that I now have a backup reader (in the form of my mobile phone) I'm planning on picking up the re-badged Bookean reader to be sold by NAEB (mentioned further up in this discussion). This reader sued the same eInk display as both the the Sony & Amazon devices, lacks the keyboard (which I wouldn't use) and is cheaper. It is DRM free and I don't need to worry about having problems being able to put my library on there.
Kithran
Actually I can remember when amazon was last offline - at least their login system - about a month ago. I'd setup an amazon wishlist for family to know what I wanted for my birthday however my dad was having trouble getting to amazon, he was unable to login. When I tried (different machine, different isp etc) I was able to connect to amazon.co.uk I was unable to login either and the same problem occured on amazon.com, amazon.fr and amazon.de.
In addition for people to have mistrust the service they want doesn't have to be down, it just needs to be unreachable. As such services are used by more and more people who have less and less technical knowledge the end user doesn't care if the reason they can't reach amazon is their ISP having dns problems, amazon being unavailable or their pet rabbit has chewed through their modem cable - all that matters is they can't reach it with the new-fangled interweb thingy so they'll go to the local store instead.
Kithran
Actually while many publishers do publish ebooks at the same price as print books there is at least one exception. Baen lets you buy its latest hardcover with at least 3 other books that haven't been e-published before (which normally ends up being 6 or 7 books) for only $15. Yes you have no choice over what those books are but even if you are only interested in the hard back it is still probably cheaper than the paper version. These books are also available a couple of weeks before the print versions.
In addition they also provide a large number of ebooks totally free both on the net and on cd's that come with certain hard covers. These cd's have a copyright message that basically states they can be copied and redistributed how you like but they can't be sold.
Kithran
The point is that most other book publishers use the same arguments that the music industry are using with regards to online copying, insisting on encripted, closed system for distribution etc. however here is a case where those arguements are prooved false with figures to back up those claims.
Yes some of these books are early books in series, others are stand alone books or even entire series. Indeed of the two books where detailed figures are given one (Mother of Demons) is (IIRC) a stand alone novel and the other (1632) was originally planned as a stand alone novel and a sequel has only now been produced due to demand.
Kithran
Some people may have come across Baen's Free Library where complete electroic versions of books can be downloaded for free. Eric Flint posted an article yesterday that shows that if anything his sales increased rather than decreased after some of his books were made available as free downloads. The url for the article is
http://www.baen.com/library/palaver6.htm
Kithran
As I understand (and remember from the last time the Authors Guild complained) the problem is not that Amazon are selling the used books but that when someone does a search for a book and go to the page specifically for that book it shows the book you have searched for complete with picture, rrp and amazon price and below that details of any second hand copies.
If amazon had the second hand books seperate (e.g. as a separate category) I think the Authors Guild would have a lot less of the problem. Their point is that people who search for a book on Amazon because they are planning to buy it and are happy to pay full price (and thus pay the royalty to the author) are seeing the second hand copy and buying that instead.
If you walked into a bricks and mortar bookshop and asked for a particular book you would expect to be offered the new, full price copy rather than a second hand one even if the shop had both unless you specifically asked for a second hand copy.
Kithran
According to their website, UK company Techtronics (www.techtronics.com) supplied 2 Sony FX1 players to NASA which had been modified to be multi-region. These players were also delivered by Atlantis.
Kithran
From what I understand the 'Audio CD-R' are more expensive because they include a fee that goes towards a copyright group in the same way as blank tapes. Its not to make more money (directly) from the sale of the CD-R discs but to supposedly offset losses from piracy.
Kithran
The point is that the Project Gutenburg books are those where the copyright has expired. The Baen free library contains books by their current authors primarily to provide readers who have read any other books by a particular author or in a particular series an opportunity to read the book for free and decide if they would be interested in buying more by that author or in that series.
Kithran
Have a look at the authors then have a look for them at Amazon or somewhere similar. One of the authors (David Weber) made he top ten for sci-fi last year at Amazon. Some of his books (including one that is in the free library) are now being reprinted in the UK as well. While Baen is almost certainly not considered a major publisher they only produce science fiction and fantasy turning out roughly five books a month.
Another Baen initative was Webscriptions where you could get 4 or 5 books a month online for only $10 - and these were their latest releases. This scheme has now been going for over a year and shows every sign of continuing.
Kithran
One thing I wonder about, though, is books. What if a novel equivalent of napster appeared (please excuse the pun:-)? How would authors make money then? Through publicly reading their works? I don't think so. I can't think of a mechanism whereby authors could continue to make cash, which is why I would be much more scared of the internet if I were a novelist rather than a musician.
One publisher that I know of is seriously looking at how to publish books in an electronic format without having problems with piracy and still paying authors royalties. Check out www.baen.com.
They sell books in groups of 4 or 5 for $10 and their costs are low enough that the authors get resonable royalties. Costs for consumers are low enough that people are happy to pay the price (and people after copies tend to get told to go buy one)
Kithran
Yes Microsoft have made a mistake that has effectively led to them giving away money. However my feeling is until Microsoft start paying compensation for bugs in their programs (which after all are in theory due to a programmer making a mistake) they should just swallow the loss. If they were to provide refunds or free upgrades to (for example) people running MS Exchange Server 5.0 (which cannot be configured to prevent spmmaers abusing it to send junk e-mail without paying to upgrade to 5.5) people will have a lot more sympathy for their current plight.
Kithran
I don't think this will have much (if any) bearing on the case against Demon in the UK - afterall this is a US court case.
I think it will have useful implications where board owners have a disclaimer which clearly states they can edit messages if they are informed of a problem but perform no other checking. IIRC part of the problem with the Demon case was them not removing the messages when somone complained about them. Please note I am not saying the messages in the Demon case were libelous or not, just that part of the problem revolved around lack of action on their part after being informed of the problem.
Kithran
In the public hearing it was stated that there is a law "so-called Rule 56, which requires that that material prior art, of which the applicant is aware, be disclosed to the Office." It was said that they understand that it may be hard to comply to this rule. I looked through the patent but I could not find any references to prior art. Maybe someone else knows where these types of things are posted (if they are disclosed)? It was said that most patent submissions include (on average) about 4 documents of prior art.
Now I may be wrong but IIRC MS Office uses this technique to work out what year a two digit year field should be translated to. I wonder if any of the documents for this application were word-processed on MS Word....
Kithran
The main thrust of the anti-spam argument is nothing to do with the subject. It is instead to do with the _methods used_ to distribute the spam. The fact that the vast majority of spam is sent by abusing security holes and using another persons mail server to send out your spam. This can cause serious problems to the victims. I don't think anyone on /. would argue against a law that specifically stated "You are not allowed to break into a private property and install quake on some of their pc's so you could have a network game". All exisiting anti-spam legislation makes it illegel to do things like:
Forge headers (e.g. pretend you were someone else. Probably a crime of some sort if you tried it with a paper letter).
Use misleading subjects (e.g. You have won $1 million when the mail is actually saying buy this product, again probably a crime)
Use a third party's server without their permission (Again noone would complain if the post office refused to deliver letters without stamps).
and so on. Please note the common trend - none of these laws make any reference to the _content_ of the message just how it was transmitted. None of the laws say (for example) "you are not allowed to send messages advertising adult web sites".
The bottom line is spam is content neutral.
Kithran
Maybe I'm being dim here, but why are metered local calls "stupid"? If you're calling from one line to another on the same exchange, then there's an argument that you're not using any of the telco's resources and so should be charged a flat rate.
And thats the point - calls to my ISP _are_ on the same exchange and at the moment they are flat rate. This has been the case for about 4 years. Despite this the cable company (Cable & Wireless) are now trying to remove the flat rate calls but only to business numbers. If it costs them (effectively) nothing to offer unmetered calls to residential customers why can't they continue to allow it for people wishing to call business customers?
I agree calls to the 0845 pop's should be charged but I see no reason why people should continue to pay for calls to their local exchange - especially when the call starts and terminates within the same teleco's lcoal equipment.
Kithran
Some UK teleco's (mainly cable companies) originally offered free calls to other local cable users as a way of attracting customers from BT. This lead to a number of ISP's setting up on cable company lines to allow their subscribers a flat fee access to the internet. However the general consolidation of cable companies in the UK has lead to just 2 or 3 being left and they are now trying to phase out the free calls to business customers (and conincidently push their own ISP's) which will be a bad thing for internet access in the UK.
Kithran
Freedom of speach should not come into the arguement for banning spam at all. The biggest problem with spam is not a matter of content (I don't care if a piece of unsolicited email I recieve is trying to sell me something or just telling me the bombing of serbia is wrong). Instead the problem is that the majority of the costs relating to spam are bourne by the recipient rather than the sender.
I'm sure you'd have a problem if every other day someone knocked on your door and tried to sell you something and then charged you 5 cents for the priveledge whether you had any interest in the product or not. Or if you want a different analogy suppose you were charged 5 cents every time a representative of an election candidate knocked on your door to ask for your vote - especially if it was for an election you couldn't even vote in?
Kithran
Please have a look at the actual details on the case.
1). The case took place in the UK under UK law (/. is not in the UK).
2). Demon were then informed that certain messages were held on their newspool which were slanderous. Someone would have to complain to Rob before the same situation could apply.
As an asside does anyone know if any other UK ISP was asked to remove the offending articles from their feeds and if so what their response was?
Paul
Well as I understand it local calls are unmetered in the US and the big question is why shouldn't they also be unmetered in the UK (and the rest of Europe). When British Telecom lost its monopoly and cable compnaies started offering telephony some (videotron & nynex IIRC) provided their subscribers unmetered calls as one of their benefits. The offer only applied when calling another subscriber with the same company and in the evenings but seemed to be popular with both the cable companies (it attracted many customers) and with the customers themselves.
It did not take long for ISPs to recognise the fact that if their lines were provided by the same cable company they would be able to attract a lot of subscribers. They charged slightly more than other ISPs but this meant they were able to afford to cope with the higher utilisation.
The important thing to remember is that while a call stays within the same local area and within the same teleco's equipment the costs for a local call are minimal.
Kithran
Yes there are a number of 'free' ISPs in the UK and the number of subscribers are rapidly increasing. (Indeed I think Freeserve now have more users than AOL in the UK). There is still a big price differential between the UK & the US with regards to the cost of internet access.
These 'free' ISPs in the UK are just no mothly fee - you still pay for the phone call to connect (indeed that is how these ISPs are funded they and the teleco split the revenue from calls). Given the fact the cheapest phone calls you are likely to find will be 1 pence per minute the bills soon mount up.
I'm lucky enough to be with a teleco who provides unmetered calls to other customers of the same teleco - including my ISP and I pay 12 pounds a month for my net access. With a 'free' ISP that would equate to 20 hours a month. While that would be enough for light use (say email and a little casual surfing) as soon as you start making large downloads or spending more time online the savings with the unmetered model get more and more pronounced.
I'd be interested to know what sort of percentage of US internet users are online for less than 20 hours a month....
Kithran
One of my favourite games at the last Ambercon UK I went to was based on A New Hope, complete with Benedict as Obi Wan and pattern swords replacing light sabres.
Kithran