However, power companies have been pushing for new plant construction, but environmental regulations and local approvals are next to impossible to get. As a result the only construction that occurs is to replace obsolete capacity, let alone to increase capacity to match increased demand.
That's part and parcel with capitalism: companies go out of business.
Indeed, it is that capacity for creative destruction that gives capitalism it's power and its benefits. For instance, Southwest and JetBlue are both doing fabulously well relative to their fellow airlines. Neither could have gotten to this point without deregulation (Southwest would have still been a small regional airline and JetBlue wasn't even a glimmer in someone's eye). Why are they successful? They identified what the core of the business is (getting people from point A to point B) and, in their own ways, came up with a better way to do it than anybody else (in Southwest's case, not heavily unionizing, picking one aircraft and using it for everything, and cutting non-essential services to their customers while cutting the prices). It's not surprising that their competitors, with byzantine, adversarial labor relations, too much overhead, and extremely complex networks couldn't compete.
But then they start to show glimmers of possible failure (which everyone could see coming), and, because they're job machines and have wealthy shareholders, both parties fall over themselves to bail them out.
The best thing to do is to let them fail. What then happens? You get a shitload of planes, hangars, and airport berths on the market. Some of those are obsolete (indeed, Southwest has the newest fleet in the airline industry; their average plane is about 7 years old, versus 25 years for a few airlines), but a lot are saleable. The demand for air travel hasn't gone away; investors will be lining up to buy the planes to start new airlines and coming up with new ways of doing business.
A similar thing is happening with telecom. Investors are snapping up the fiber from bankrupt telcos at fractions of the original cost and using those networks to offer remote backup services and enable (eventually) new broadband technologies. New businesses, with smarter management, are taking over assets of those who failed and improving things.
California deregulated enough to cause the problems, but not enough to actually allow an efficient market to develop. It's also questionable whether it's possible to get a sufficiently efficient market in electricity.
And that's probably the root cause. Since the 60's, there's been minimal power plant construction in the Northeast (and what there has been has been simply replacement of infrastructure). Combine that with gigantic increases in demand (growing population with more appliances and so forth) and you've got a bad situation. This is akin to say Comcast thinking that they can serve all the Northeast's cable modem users (who are KaZaa addicts) with a single OC-3 to one backbone point, and the routers and switches are Linksys purchased from Best Buy.
Yeah, have you heard of the Cape Cod Wind Farm? It's one of the few places on the East Coast where you can do wind power, but since the Kennedys and a bunch of other wealthy left wingers live on the Cape, they can't get the fucking thing built because the residents can't say, "We think wind power is a great idea, but this wind farm will ruin the views of the water."
That one was comparatively minor. Only NYC was really affected (though it was severe for them). The '65 outage took out everything from Canada to DC, IIRC, including Boston.
Uh... sawfish (which was part of GNOME from the early days until Havoc Pennington hijacked GNOME and made metacity the default wm), which should still be usable with GNOME (I used it for a while with GNOME 2.2 until I had a RAM module fail and GNOME got dog-slow) allows you to adjust the stacking of windows to achieve always on top.
This is far from a new feature (though it may be new to metacity, the shittiest excuse for a window manager since twm).
Davis apparently ran a fraudulent campaign, specifically as regards the expected budget deficit. From other posts in this story, he spent the campaign claiming that the deficit would be $10-12 billion, and claiming that his opponent's claim of $25 billion was wildly exaggerated. There are plausible allegations that he conspired to keep the reports of the actual deficit (which was announced to be $30 billion and is now estimated at $38 billion) unreleased until after the election. In this case, the logic behind the recall is that, had all the facts been known, Davis would not have won.
As one who recently went from GNOME 2 to plain-ol' Sawfish, I have to say that applets are overrated. For newstickers, I just keep Opera running on a spare workspace. For xmms control, keyboard bindings are the way for me...
But by the same token, when it doesn't get pre-empted, that's a huge ratings benefit. NFL games are the best lead-ins yet devised; one need only look at the ratings of 60 Minutes to see that. Especially if the NFL games run to 7:10 or 7:15, in which case you're basically stuck on Fox or CBS for the evening (assuming that they simply move the rest of the night back by 15 minutes).
However, part of taking risks is knowing that you sometimes have to STICK WITH IT for a while, and not just by not cancelling it.
They did stick with it... 5 years of Futurama and 3 years or so of Family Guy. If ABC even had the cojones to put Futurama on, they would have seen the ratings and cancelled it before 8 episodes (which I realize is 1 season on the BBC...).
I'm going to shortly be sending large amounts of email. Specifically, I'll be selling subscriptions to a football (NFL for now... I'm seriously looking at doing English Premiership, Bundesliga, Serie A, and La Liga) picks. Now, is this acceptably opt-in:
Customer uses paypal or some other online payment service where the email address of the account is exposed.
I send a mail to that address to confirm... if that address sends back that they wish to subscribe with a different address, then...
The first version of the APSL had these problems, which were sufficient to prevent it from being Free Software.
The APSL required you to publish modifications even if the code was not distributed.
The APSL required you to notify Apple of any use or release (other than use for R&D purposes).
The APSL allowed Apple to revoke the license if a patent or copyright claim was filed against Apple.
Those three issues were rectified some time ago. The FSF considers the APSL to be free but not GPL-compatible, for the same reason that the Netscape Public License is GPL-incompatible: it requires that you give Apple rights to all works you derive from it, but Apple is under no such obligation to you.
If anything, ISP's should push people away from P2P.
My personal view is that the ToS should not prohibit anything, but instead give you a certain amount of TX (ie upload) bytes (maybe allow unlimited uploads to hosts on the ISP's network), and either (at your option) drop all uploads or charge you extra for everything above that, with no service degradation.
I really think that that approach would solve a number of the problems (both real and perceived) with the Internet. First of all, it's an absolutely permissive ToS. If you want to start your own webhosting provider, you could try and run it off your DSL line (but be prepared to pay for the transfers). If you want to run an IRC server, ditto. At the same time, now viruses and worms have a real economic cost to the infected host; if one's computer is trojaned and turned into a zombie spewing out huge numbers of spam, your connection dies for the remainder of the month, or you end up paying through the nose to your ISP. After Mr. Smith gets a bill from his ISP for $300 for being a spam zombie, two things happen: a) Mr. Smith educates himself on running a firewall, scanning for trojans, etc. b)_Mr. Smith begins agitating his representatives for greater legal repercussions against spammers and zombieware makers.
If a significant number of ISPs used this approach, illegal downloading of movies through the P2P networks would likely cease. A decent DivX rip is around a gig. If the breakpoint is, say, 5 GB a month, then you've got 5 uploads before the guy running KaZaa is paying per upload. What with various Universities' recent move towards bandwidth throttling of traffic that looks like P2P traffic, US cable/DSL ISPs have become the main providers of files for the networks. Cutting down on the impulse to share files, would thus increase the amount of leeching on those networks which would presumably have deleterious consequences for those networks.
By taking the settlement money, you've settled your claim with Microsoft. If you don't think this is a fair settlement, then don't take it and pursue your own case.
Slashdot Mirror
However, power companies have been pushing for new plant construction, but environmental regulations and local approvals are next to impossible to get. As a result the only construction that occurs is to replace obsolete capacity, let alone to increase capacity to match increased demand.
OOG break OPEN SOURCE CD over NIAGRA MOHAWK power grid!
That's part and parcel with capitalism: companies go out of business.
Indeed, it is that capacity for creative destruction that gives capitalism it's power and its benefits. For instance, Southwest and JetBlue are both doing fabulously well relative to their fellow airlines. Neither could have gotten to this point without deregulation (Southwest would have still been a small regional airline and JetBlue wasn't even a glimmer in someone's eye). Why are they successful? They identified what the core of the business is (getting people from point A to point B) and, in their own ways, came up with a better way to do it than anybody else (in Southwest's case, not heavily unionizing, picking one aircraft and using it for everything, and cutting non-essential services to their customers while cutting the prices). It's not surprising that their competitors, with byzantine, adversarial labor relations, too much overhead, and extremely complex networks couldn't compete.
But then they start to show glimmers of possible failure (which everyone could see coming), and, because they're job machines and have wealthy shareholders, both parties fall over themselves to bail them out.
The best thing to do is to let them fail. What then happens? You get a shitload of planes, hangars, and airport berths on the market. Some of those are obsolete (indeed, Southwest has the newest fleet in the airline industry; their average plane is about 7 years old, versus 25 years for a few airlines), but a lot are saleable. The demand for air travel hasn't gone away; investors will be lining up to buy the planes to start new airlines and coming up with new ways of doing business.
A similar thing is happening with telecom. Investors are snapping up the fiber from bankrupt telcos at fractions of the original cost and using those networks to offer remote backup services and enable (eventually) new broadband technologies. New businesses, with smarter management, are taking over assets of those who failed and improving things.
California deregulated enough to cause the problems, but not enough to actually allow an efficient market to develop. It's also questionable whether it's possible to get a sufficiently efficient market in electricity.
And that's probably the root cause. Since the 60's, there's been minimal power plant construction in the Northeast (and what there has been has been simply replacement of infrastructure). Combine that with gigantic increases in demand (growing population with more appliances and so forth) and you've got a bad situation. This is akin to say Comcast thinking that they can serve all the Northeast's cable modem users (who are KaZaa addicts) with a single OC-3 to one backbone point, and the routers and switches are Linksys purchased from Best Buy.
Yeah, have you heard of the Cape Cod Wind Farm? It's one of the few places on the East Coast where you can do wind power, but since the Kennedys and a bunch of other wealthy left wingers live on the Cape, they can't get the fucking thing built because the residents can't say, "We think wind power is a great idea, but this wind farm will ruin the views of the water."
That one was comparatively minor. Only NYC was really affected (though it was severe for them). The '65 outage took out everything from Canada to DC, IIRC, including Boston.
Uh... sawfish (which was part of GNOME from the early days until Havoc Pennington hijacked GNOME and made metacity the default wm), which should still be usable with GNOME (I used it for a while with GNOME 2.2 until I had a RAM module fail and GNOME got dog-slow) allows you to adjust the stacking of windows to achieve always on top.
This is far from a new feature (though it may be new to metacity, the shittiest excuse for a window manager since twm).
BRING BACK SAWFISH! BRING BACK SAWFISH!
Davis apparently ran a fraudulent campaign, specifically as regards the expected budget deficit. From other posts in this story, he spent the campaign claiming that the deficit would be $10-12 billion, and claiming that his opponent's claim of $25 billion was wildly exaggerated. There are plausible allegations that he conspired to keep the reports of the actual deficit (which was announced to be $30 billion and is now estimated at $38 billion) unreleased until after the election. In this case, the logic behind the recall is that, had all the facts been known, Davis would not have won.
As one who recently went from GNOME 2 to plain-ol' Sawfish, I have to say that applets are overrated. For newstickers, I just keep Opera running on a spare workspace. For xmms control, keyboard bindings are the way for me...
There's BBC America also. Coupling and Manchild are both exceptionally excellent.
But by the same token, when it doesn't get pre-empted, that's a huge ratings benefit. NFL games are the best lead-ins yet devised; one need only look at the ratings of 60 Minutes to see that. Especially if the NFL games run to 7:10 or 7:15, in which case you're basically stuck on Fox or CBS for the evening (assuming that they simply move the rest of the night back by 15 minutes).
They did stick with it... 5 years of Futurama and 3 years or so of Family Guy. If ABC even had the cojones to put Futurama on, they would have seen the ratings and cancelled it before 8 episodes (which I realize is 1 season on the BBC...).
D'oh! Preview before posting... that'll learn me not to post to /. while drunk...
Were all the orders from Georgia?
cue "Duelling Banjos"...
Re: opt-in email
I'm going to shortly be sending large amounts of email. Specifically, I'll be selling subscriptions to a football (NFL for now... I'm seriously looking at doing English Premiership, Bundesliga, Serie A, and La Liga) picks. Now, is this acceptably opt-in:
Is that a sufficiently strong opt-in process?
The classic instance of that approach:
Put an ad in classified sections for a guaranteed method of getting rich on the stock market:
I suppose you could make even more money by patenting that business model, though...
Is it just me, or is your .sig a tribute to goatse?
Uh... follow the links...
The first version of the APSL had these problems, which were sufficient to prevent it from being Free Software.
Those three issues were rectified some time ago. The FSF considers the APSL to be free but not GPL-compatible, for the same reason that the Netscape Public License is GPL-incompatible: it requires that you give Apple rights to all works you derive from it, but Apple is under no such obligation to you.
Sir: I have patented that business model. I shall be suing you forthwith.
My personal view is that the ToS should not prohibit anything, but instead give you a certain amount of TX (ie upload) bytes (maybe allow unlimited uploads to hosts on the ISP's network), and either (at your option) drop all uploads or charge you extra for everything above that, with no service degradation.
I really think that that approach would solve a number of the problems (both real and perceived) with the Internet. First of all, it's an absolutely permissive ToS. If you want to start your own webhosting provider, you could try and run it off your DSL line (but be prepared to pay for the transfers). If you want to run an IRC server, ditto. At the same time, now viruses and worms have a real economic cost to the infected host; if one's computer is trojaned and turned into a zombie spewing out huge numbers of spam, your connection dies for the remainder of the month, or you end up paying through the nose to your ISP. After Mr. Smith gets a bill from his ISP for $300 for being a spam zombie, two things happen: a) Mr. Smith educates himself on running a firewall, scanning for trojans, etc. b)_Mr. Smith begins agitating his representatives for greater legal repercussions against spammers and zombieware makers.
If a significant number of ISPs used this approach, illegal downloading of movies through the P2P networks would likely cease. A decent DivX rip is around a gig. If the breakpoint is, say, 5 GB a month, then you've got 5 uploads before the guy running KaZaa is paying per upload. What with various Universities' recent move towards bandwidth throttling of traffic that looks like P2P traffic, US cable/DSL ISPs have become the main providers of files for the networks. Cutting down on the impulse to share files, would thus increase the amount of leeching on those networks which would presumably have deleterious consequences for those networks.
Re: your sig...
"effect" can also be a verb, as in "Joe effected the change in policy." From Merriam-Webster:
There's the answer: make everybody pay for stuff they may (make that probably) not ever use. Yeah, there's the ticket.
Are you willing to pay an extra $5 per ticket?
By taking the settlement money, you've settled your claim with Microsoft. If you don't think this is a fair settlement, then don't take it and pursue your own case.