Protect them from what, exactly? Not having lavish profits? I think we need to protect the public from the SBC's screwing them over in order to keep that basic 'ability to call an ambulance'. Personally I'd be in favor of an FCC order requiring every ILEC to offer a ~$5/mo 'emergency only' service, *and* that this counts as 'having service' for getting DSL from a third party on the line. That would solve quite a few problems, in fact.
Ah, but are you sure it is the third part DSL providers fault if they have problems? I'd tend to suspect that the telco that is being forced to lease their lines is prviding the worst wires and services they can get away with for the lines being serviced by their competitors. This has pretty much always been the case in the US, no matter how loudly the Bells might claim otherwise.
Maybe we will be lucky and someday the ILEC's (wether they all merge back together or not) will be forced into backruptcy, and will have to auction off their copper plants to someone that will use them to provide decent service.
And yes, people are turning to VoIP and cell, but that still leaves one up shit creek without a paddle for broadband - you get to choose from either your monoply cable company, your monopoly phone company or (and this is if you are very *lucky* - imagine that) get to choose DSL from a third party, but run over wires controlled by the monoply phone company, from who you are *required* to purchase phone service anyway to qualify, wether you want it or not)
Anytime one is forced to pay for something one doesnt want in order to pay for something one does want, and no one else in the market is allowed to sell the items seperately, is a piss-poor situation, and usually means there is an abusive monopoly involved.
Unfortunately the breakup of AT&T only gave choice for long distance. The local bells never competed with each other for wired service - each one had its own slice of the geographic monopoly pie.
Better only one set of wires get run, and then everyone shares them equally under fair regulations. But the corporate monolights that the baby bells have become and/or been taken over by are greedy, and dont like to share.
Yes Im sure they mention the contact but I'm sure they dont mention the hefty termination fee. And if you are allowed to terminate the contact without the termination fee if they raise their rates, then that is good - I'm not sure if you are saying that or not, but I'd be surprised if it was true - I'm sure the contract (do you even get to *read* the actual contract before agreeing/being bound to it? - if not I'm sure that alone might be sufficient to render it void) is written in sufficiently weaslly terms so as to allow the telco to do whatever they want. In any case I dont and never will sign up for any phone service that takes away my right to switch to a different provider, or that forces me to give them money for nothing if I do so, so this has no direct bearing on me, it just adds fuel to my disgust for abusive monopolies in general, and SBC in particular.
And I answered your bit about the lines not being subsidized seperately - maybe not directly, but they had a government-granted monopoly giving them guaranteed customers and profits - pretty much everyone needed a phone line, and they had only one choice. And the rural plants were only installed *after* they had a good profit base built up in more dense areas.
And yes I think the wireless companies are just as bad, but for wireless there isnt any situation where only *one* company has exclusive control over a required resource. And many companies do offer a pre-paid option with no contract. Multiple wireless companies can compete on an equal footing, and the ones that serve their customers better succeed - which is not the case for any CLEC competing with an ILEC - there are a hundred ways that ILEC's and and do impede the CLEC from being able to provide good service. And the ILEC's of course have an unspoken agreement not to compete - at least for local wired service. The only cases where you'd have a choice between ILEC's without having to move is in the vary rare case when a small independent ILEC decided to move into a nearby larger ILEC's territory - you'll never see an overlap in the 'big telcos' wired coverage areas.
And as far as power lines and gas lines, yes they are also geographic monopolies (and I hate having no choice), but they are both very heavily regulated. The ILEC's want to use (or have used, in some cases) the tiny little bit of competition that has begun with the 1998 act, as an excuse to get out of the regulation, so that they can kill the barely-off-the-ground competitors before they have a chance to get enough customers to build their own infrastructure (assuming that would ever be possible, considering the rights-of-way problems, reluctance to allow a second copper plant to be installed, and other barriers in their way)
To be honest, the installed copper plant *is* a natural geographic monopoly, just like power and gas lines, and ought to continue to be regulated as such. Mandatory open access, fair access to all. Personally I think structural seperation is the way to go, but Im not holding my breath. It would allow the 'switched services' part of the ILEC's to be subject to less regulation, and it would give the new 'copper loop' part motivation to sell loops on a fair basis. But those with monopoly power will use their last breath to fight anything that would ever have a chance of causing them to lose it.
The ILEC's like to claim copper is obsolete, but they dont seem to want to invest in anything new without the guaranteed cash-cow profits that the copper plant gives them. Wether 'fiber is the future' or not is irrelevant. Right now copper is the present, and without being able to use that copper (that was paid for many times over by either the govertnment or captive customers of the 'old' phone company(ies)), the odds of there ever being real competition doesnt stand a chance.
And as far as my not knowing anything about it, think again - I worked as the Network Engineer for a regional dialup ISP for 8 years, and as such interacted with multiple ILEC's and CLEC's at both the administrative and technical levels for services ranging from individual copper lines, straight T1, channelized T1, on up to DS3 over fiber. I dont have any homework to do - I've been there already.
Even if the government didnt directly subsidize in terms of money, they were subsidized indirectly by having a government enforced monopoly - if you wanted or needed phone service, you *had* to get it from 'the phone company', and you had to pay what they charged for it.
The courts properly recognized this, but the remedy (the breakup of AT&T) only fixed the problem in terms of long distance service, and for local service is just created more smaller geographic monopolies. You can tell this by the relative prices of each - long distance is either damn cheap or even free, yet basic hard-wired phone service will set you back at least $40/mo - and thats assuming you can convince them to sell you basic service, and not pressure you into going with one of their 'bundles'.
Somewhere back there these (then) smaller monopolies agreed to 'compete' with each other, but that never materialized. I'm aware of no location where you can choose between, for example, Verizon and SBC for your local service.
The smaller 'baby bells' also eventually grew up and did the corporate mating dance, so now instead of either several dozen geographic monopolies, or one hulking one, we have a small handfull, which are each just as bad as one, yet can more effectivly 'pretend' that there is competition in their market.
A good reason to avoid SBC if you can - they dont like the fact that the FCC allows competitors, so they use 'termination fees' to discourage you from exercisizing that choice. Of course, most people don't find out about the termination fees until *after* they've already signed up and realized that there is a better choice.
In fact, if there is a year contract, and SBC raises its prices, I would consider that to be *them* breaking the contract, and consider it no longer binding, but Im sure their crafty lawyers wrote language in the contract that says you agree they can raise their prices to whatever they want. Again, most dont find out until its too late.
Heres another question - did you actually *sign* anything? If so then the contact isnt binding anyway, at least not any term requirement - probably 'you agree to our terms if you continue using our service' is only valid if you have the choice to no longer agree and stop using the service. If I was ever in that situation and decided I wanted to leave I'd do so, and when they tried to bill me the outrageous termination fee I'd take them to court over it. Of course, I'm informed enough to never agree to any sort of contact like that in the first place, so we'll never get to see the outcome of that.
Maybe someone at the FCC will get smart and as well as requiring SBC to allow people to get DSL without forcing them to get phone from SBC, prohibit termination/disconnect fees too. The only reason the ILEC's 'own' the copper plants is becuase they were able to pay for them over dozens of years with guaranteed incoming from captive customers. The copper should belong to the people, NOT the monopoly telco's, and be regulated as such,
The problem is that if you live in SBC-monopoly territory, you cant get DSL from *anyone* without getting phone service from DSL.
And the only reason SBC can force this on you is that they currently have exclusive control over the existing copper wiring in the ground, wiring that was paid for by the guaranteed captive customers that the Bell's that SBC bought out received, and government subsidy. So those copper lines should be *public* property, and any company or individual should have the right to use them, in exchange for a *reasonable* fee to cover their maintenance.
Oh really? What non-Microsoft application is able to load and interpret MS-Word created 'DOC' files with anything approaching 100%? Which ones are available for non-MS OS platforms?
The point is that the format (MS's, that is) is *proprietary*, not openly and publically documented, which means if you want to write software that supports it, you either have to use an MS-supported binary only function library, or you are SOL.
Assuming OpenDoc is what I think it is, anyone anywhere, including freelancers, corps, can write software that supports it, and doesnt have to get anyones permission or license to do so.
That there is no currently popular open format is a testament to MS' current illegal monopoly control of this market.
The article was making the point that the oil they could recover from the shale was profitable enough at $30 a barrel to make it worth the effort. Oil being at a *higher* price per barrel only serves to make extracting it *more* profitable. It would only be if oil was worth signifigantly *less* than $30 per barrel that it wouldnt be worth extracting it from the shale.
Yates said. "As we look to the future, and all of these data types become increasingly intertwined, locked-in formats like OpenDocument are not well suited...
Someone needs to explain to MS what 'lock-in' means. (Or at least, ensure that any audience they spout this drivel at understands it - although it does seem like the decision-makers in MA understand)
Using OpenDoc does not in any way shape or form lock-in the choice of software used to manipulate it, unlike in the MS World, where using MS-Word 'DOC' format *does* lock-in one to using MS software only.
PDF would only be suitable for a document being pulished to read and not for edit, obviously.
And as far as Adobe controlling it, if I produce a pdf with the current version of ghostscript, I can read it with the current version of xpdf - Adobe cant change that. Sure, they could change the format that *their* software produces so that it could only be read by their own software, but that would also break a *lot* of other software, and I doubt they are going to do that.
As far as editing, yes it was OASIS I was thinking of. And if theyve got their standard finalized, thats good. Hopefully it wont take too long to catch on.
There may be free 'viewer applications' for MS-Word files *for Windows* but not so much for non-MS OS platforms. I dont advocate using any specific application's file format for distributing documents - rather a generic format than anyone can (and has) written software to read.
Documents to be distributed to the public by the government should be stored in a non-proprietary format, so that *ANYONE* can write software for any platform that is capable of reading it, without having to pay any license fees. PDF may well be suitable, it is surely better than *any* specific word-processor format. (MS or otherwise)
Documents stored internally within a government organization should be stored in a standard non-proprietary format which supports editing, and definititely not in a proprietary closed format which is properly usable only by products having a single maker (such as MS products). If such a format exists, its surely relatively unknown. I'm dimly aware of Oo participating in some sort of group that was attempting to define such a format.
Yeah but its easy enough to make a backup.. In fact.. Hrm.. Your corner hardware store is going to need some new tech at its key-copy counter.. (At least for the non-geeks that need their keys copied)
The thing is, you *do* have permission to copy copyrighted material, even that which certain organizations that end in *IAA would like to lock up with DRM - you have the right to time shift, media shift, excerpt, make backups, etc, regardless of wether they give you permission or not. But DRM lets them physically *prevent* you from excersicing these rights, which is why DRM is so objectionable.
What was called copyright way back should have been called 'sellright' or 'publishright' - and should only protect against false authorship claim, and against actually selling (eg for money) copies unless you were the rightholder. It wouldnt have hurt to make the whole thing non-transferrable and non-assignable too - eg the actual author/artist of a work holds permanent rights, even if he contracts with a publisher to actually distribute and sell copies on his behalf.
Of course, they will never use any DRM which can have any Open implementation, becuase anyone would be free to implement it and add or remove whatever features they wanted in their implementation, including an option to allow use that the persons issuing the DRM'ed content would want to prohibit. The only way that any 'Open' DRM would ever succeed is if the DRM-pushers are too ignorant to realize that.
One thing I do like about your thinking is that if that was made law, Microsoft would have to be completely and totally abolished - not only do they attempt, but that have succeeded at various levels.
"Press F5" ??? After a few moments of thought, it occured to me that F5 must be the 'reload page' key in *your* specific choice (assuming you actually made a conscious choice and didnt just use whatever came on the hardware you bought) of browser/OS platform.
It sounds like you assume that everyone else uses that same platform, or that there are no other platforms, or that every platform uses that same command/keypress functions that yours does, or perhaps that "press F5" is universally understood to *mean* 'reload page'.
Just a hint - none of those assumptions is accurate, and some of them might cause others to assume a certain bigotry and/or ignorance on your part.
While I dont think companies should be allowed to succeed in getting access restricted to publically-funded data, I don't quite go so far as to suggest that those that attempt to do so shouldnt be allowed to continue to exist.
Corecomm was/is certainly a CLEC, and was providing you service over SBC-owned copper. Thats the act of 1996. But trust me SBC was sharing that copper only begrudgingly, and dragged their feet as much as possible.
Long distance in the US is a thriving competitive market - rates very greatly - if you dial 1-plus on a line that isnt subscribed, you can pay over 95c a minute. Or you can shop around and get 4c or less a minute, or with some plans, unlimited for zip. The 1010 codes are an option - you can always choose to subscribe your dial-1 service on your standard wired line to a specific provider. Yes, there are some less scrupulous providers - but the point is, you *have* a choice - in fact you have a lot of them. Before the AT&T breakup - you had no choice - you got AT&T, period. And perhaps you werent old enough to remember, but it was expensive as hell. Surely never approaching 4/c minute, or god forbid an unlimited plan.
And if you can get regular wired phone service for $20/mo, then either its thru a CLEC, or its through the ILEC, but the only reason you can get it is becuase of the competition from the CLECs, which the incumbents would love to kill off. Try going to an area thats not served by any competitive providers - you'll pay closer to $50/mo for that line, and thats without any callerID, waiting, voicemail, etc.
And while you make very little "long distance", others make a lot - each customer should be able to choose the type of plan that works for them - some happen to like paying a flat $20 to never have to worry about 'the meter running'. Why do you accept paying even $20/month for local calls, when you'd be charged that even if you made no calls?
Personally I feel the concept of measured 'long distance' should be abolished, and all calls should be considered 'local', and you pay a flat monthly. charge. I guess effectively most VoIP plans do that (and they do it for less than many ILEC's charge for basic local service, yet still manage to include voicemail, callerID, call waiting, 3-way calling, and some features such as call filters that are unheard of from the old carriers)
Anyway, if you've been raped by long distance providers then maybe you just arent a savvy enough customer to make the right choice for you - but be happy you have choices. If there were no choices, the monopoly carrier would rape you anyway, and you wouldnt be able to switch to another. If the monopoly carrier is the best choice for you, so be it - but consider that if they are able to offer those rates when they have to compete with other providers, and dont have 100% of the market - why werent they offering them when they did have 100% of the market?
Already lived? Which incumbent RBOC/ILEC in the US was ever forced to seperate themselves into one company providing only copper loops, and one providing dialtone/switched services, with the one with the copper required to provide access to that copper to all companies providing switched services on an equal basis?
If you are talking about the AT&T breakup, it never required that - all it did was eliminate the long distance monopoly (and we are reaping the benefit of that today - long distance service in the US is now so competitive you can even get it for free under certain conditions), and it created a bunch of new smaller geaographic monopolies for local wired service - eg, it didnt go far enough - the new 'RBOCs' still had/have captive customers for their basic local wired service - the 1996 act helped a little, and the ILEC(RBOC)s have done everything they could to dodge the requirements of that, and are now using lobbyists to kill the few parts of that that might enable true competition someday - the new comers should *NOT* have to build their own entire copper plant from house to house - the existing plant should not belong to the incumbents - yes, they built it, but only with cash from captive customers they had exclusive access to via government-granted monopolies. The copper plants in the ground should either be owned by all, by the government, or at the very least a neutral organization that is *not* allowed to provide switched services.
I read an article by an RBOC shill that whinged that the old copper plant sucked - if thats the case then why do the RBOC's still fight to the very last for exclusive control over it? Becuase they know that in the current market with the current technology, the copper plant is the key to getting enough customers (again, this is all about wired telco service, none of this applies to wireless/sattelite/etc) to be competitive to ever hope to have a chance to be able to 'innovate' the new technologies - and they want to ensure that they have exclusive monopoly control over those too.
This is a wet dream for individuals and you are griping about it. This is exactly what I'd love to see in the US - the Incumbent bells seperated from their monopoly control over the existing wired infrastructure that was paid for by captive customers under their guaranteed monopoly status, so that it is available on an equal basis to many service providers (of dialtone, internet, whatever), who can them compete on even footings. Unfortunately, it seems like the US FCC is going the other way here, which will kill off any chance competition had before it even got off the ground.
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Protect them from what, exactly? Not having lavish profits? I think we need to protect the public from the SBC's screwing them over in order to keep that basic 'ability to call an ambulance'. Personally I'd be in favor of an FCC order requiring every ILEC to offer a ~$5/mo 'emergency only' service, *and* that this counts as 'having service' for getting DSL from a third party on the line. That would solve quite a few problems, in fact.
Ah, but are you sure it is the third part DSL providers fault if they have problems? I'd tend to suspect that the telco that is being forced to lease their lines is prviding the worst wires and services they can get away with for the lines being serviced by their competitors. This has pretty much always been the case in the US, no matter how loudly the Bells might claim otherwise.
Maybe we will be lucky and someday the ILEC's (wether they all merge back together or not) will be forced into backruptcy, and will have to auction off their copper plants to someone that will use them to provide decent service.
And yes, people are turning to VoIP and cell, but that still leaves one up shit creek without a paddle for broadband - you get to choose from either your monoply cable company, your monopoly phone company or (and this is if you are very *lucky* - imagine that) get to choose DSL from a third party, but run over wires controlled by the monoply phone company, from who you are *required* to purchase phone service anyway to qualify, wether you want it or not)
Anytime one is forced to pay for something one doesnt want in order to pay for something one does want, and no one else in the market is allowed to sell the items seperately, is a piss-poor situation, and usually means there is an abusive monopoly involved.
Unfortunately the breakup of AT&T only gave choice for long distance. The local bells never competed with each other for wired service - each one had its own slice of the geographic monopoly pie.
Better only one set of wires get run, and then everyone shares them equally under fair regulations. But the corporate monolights that the baby bells have become and/or been taken over by are greedy, and dont like to share.
Yes Im sure they mention the contact but I'm sure they dont mention the hefty termination fee. And if you are allowed to terminate the contact without the termination fee if they raise their rates, then that is good - I'm not sure if you are saying that or not, but I'd be surprised if it was true - I'm sure the contract (do you even get to *read* the actual contract before agreeing/being bound to it? - if not I'm sure that alone might be sufficient to render it void) is written in sufficiently weaslly terms so as to allow the telco to do whatever they want. In any case I dont and never will sign up for any phone service that takes away my right to switch to a different provider, or that forces me to give them money for nothing if I do so, so this has no direct bearing on me, it just adds fuel to my disgust for abusive monopolies in general, and SBC in particular.
And I answered your bit about the lines not being subsidized seperately - maybe not directly, but they had a government-granted monopoly giving them guaranteed customers and profits - pretty much everyone needed a phone line, and they had only one choice. And the rural plants were only installed *after* they had a good profit base built up in more dense areas.
And yes I think the wireless companies are just as bad, but for wireless there isnt any situation where only *one* company has exclusive control over a required resource. And many companies do offer a pre-paid option with no contract. Multiple wireless companies can compete on an equal footing, and the ones that serve their customers better succeed - which is not the case for any CLEC competing with an ILEC - there are a hundred ways that ILEC's and and do impede the CLEC from being able to provide good service. And the ILEC's of course have an unspoken agreement not to compete - at least for local wired service. The only cases where you'd have a choice between ILEC's without having to move is in the vary rare case when a small independent ILEC decided to move into a nearby larger ILEC's territory - you'll never see an overlap in the 'big telcos' wired coverage areas.
And as far as power lines and gas lines, yes they are also geographic monopolies (and I hate having no choice), but they are both very heavily regulated. The ILEC's want to use (or have used, in some cases) the tiny little bit of competition that has begun with the 1998 act, as an excuse to get out of the regulation, so that they can kill the barely-off-the-ground competitors before they have a chance to get enough customers to build their own infrastructure (assuming that would ever be possible, considering the rights-of-way problems, reluctance to allow a second copper plant to be installed, and other barriers in their way)
To be honest, the installed copper plant *is* a natural geographic monopoly, just like power and gas lines, and ought to continue to be regulated as such. Mandatory open access, fair access to all. Personally I think structural seperation is the way to go, but Im not holding my breath. It would allow the 'switched services' part of the ILEC's to be subject to less regulation, and it would give the new 'copper loop' part motivation to sell loops on a fair basis. But those with monopoly power will use their last breath to fight anything that would ever have a chance of causing them to lose it.
The ILEC's like to claim copper is obsolete, but they dont seem to want to invest in anything new without the guaranteed cash-cow profits that the copper plant gives them. Wether 'fiber is the future' or not is irrelevant. Right now copper is the present, and without being able to use that copper (that was paid for many times over by either the govertnment or captive customers of the 'old' phone company(ies)), the odds of there ever being real competition doesnt stand a chance.
And as far as my not knowing anything about it, think again - I worked as the Network Engineer for a regional dialup ISP for 8 years, and as such interacted with multiple ILEC's and CLEC's at both the administrative and technical levels for services ranging from individual copper lines, straight T1, channelized T1, on up to DS3 over fiber. I dont have any homework to do - I've been there already.
Even if the government didnt directly subsidize in terms of money, they were subsidized indirectly by having a government enforced monopoly - if you wanted or needed phone service, you *had* to get it from 'the phone company', and you had to pay what they charged for it.
The courts properly recognized this, but the remedy (the breakup of AT&T) only fixed the problem in terms of long distance service, and for local service is just created more smaller geographic monopolies. You can tell this by the relative prices of each - long distance is either damn cheap or even free, yet basic hard-wired phone service will set you back at least $40/mo - and thats assuming you can convince them to sell you basic service, and not pressure you into going with one of their 'bundles'.
Somewhere back there these (then) smaller monopolies agreed to 'compete' with each other, but that never materialized. I'm aware of no location where you can choose between, for example, Verizon and SBC for your local service.
The smaller 'baby bells' also eventually grew up and did the corporate mating dance, so now instead of either several dozen geographic monopolies, or one hulking one, we have a small handfull, which are each just as bad as one, yet can more effectivly 'pretend' that there is competition in their market.
A good reason to avoid SBC if you can - they dont like the fact that the FCC allows competitors, so they use 'termination fees' to discourage you from exercisizing that choice. Of course, most people don't find out about the termination fees until *after* they've already signed up and realized that there is a better choice.
In fact, if there is a year contract, and SBC raises its prices, I would consider that to be *them* breaking the contract, and consider it no longer binding, but Im sure their crafty lawyers wrote language in the contract that says you agree they can raise their prices to whatever they want. Again, most dont find out until its too late.
Heres another question - did you actually *sign* anything? If so then the contact isnt binding anyway, at least not any term requirement - probably 'you agree to our terms if you continue using our service' is only valid if you have the choice to no longer agree and stop using the service. If I was ever in that situation and decided I wanted to leave I'd do so, and when they tried to bill me the outrageous termination fee I'd take them to court over it. Of course, I'm informed enough to never agree to any sort of contact like that in the first place, so we'll never get to see the outcome of that.
Maybe someone at the FCC will get smart and as well as requiring SBC to allow people to get DSL without forcing them to get phone from SBC, prohibit termination/disconnect fees too. The only reason the ILEC's 'own' the copper plants is becuase they were able to pay for them over dozens of years with guaranteed incoming from captive customers. The copper should belong to the people, NOT the monopoly telco's, and be regulated as such,
(IANAL)
The problem is that if you live in SBC-monopoly territory, you cant get DSL from *anyone* without getting phone service from DSL.
And the only reason SBC can force this on you is that they currently have exclusive control over the existing copper wiring in the ground, wiring that was paid for by the guaranteed captive customers that the Bell's that SBC bought out received, and government subsidy. So those copper lines should be *public* property, and any company or individual should have the right to use them, in exchange for a *reasonable* fee to cover their maintenance.
http://www.outblaze.com/index.php
Oh really? What non-Microsoft application is able to load and interpret MS-Word created 'DOC' files with anything approaching 100%? Which ones are available for non-MS OS platforms?
The point is that the format (MS's, that is) is *proprietary*, not openly and publically documented, which means if you want to write software that supports it, you either have to use an MS-supported binary only function library, or you are SOL.
Assuming OpenDoc is what I think it is, anyone anywhere, including freelancers, corps, can write software that supports it, and doesnt have to get anyones permission or license to do so.
That there is no currently popular open format is a testament to MS' current illegal monopoly control of this market.
And for good measure, I'll throw in:
http://www.ecn.wfu.edu/~cottrell/wp.html
RTFA - no one said anything about mining. They drill down and extract the oil without ripping anything up.
The article was making the point that the oil they could recover from the shale was profitable enough at $30 a barrel to make it worth the effort. Oil being at a *higher* price per barrel only serves to make extracting it *more* profitable. It would only be if oil was worth signifigantly *less* than $30 per barrel that it wouldnt be worth extracting it from the shale.
Someone needs to explain to MS what 'lock-in' means. (Or at least, ensure that any audience they spout this drivel at understands it - although it does seem like the decision-makers in MA understand)
Using OpenDoc does not in any way shape or form lock-in the choice of software used to manipulate it, unlike in the MS World, where using MS-Word 'DOC' format *does* lock-in one to using MS software only.
PDF would only be suitable for a document being pulished to read and not for edit, obviously.
And as far as Adobe controlling it, if I produce a pdf with the current version of ghostscript, I can read it with the current version of xpdf - Adobe cant change that. Sure, they could change the format that *their* software produces so that it could only be read by their own software, but that would also break a *lot* of other software, and I doubt they are going to do that.
As far as editing, yes it was OASIS I was thinking of. And if theyve got their standard finalized, thats good. Hopefully it wont take too long to catch on.
There may be free 'viewer applications' for MS-Word files *for Windows* but not so much for non-MS OS platforms. I dont advocate using any specific application's file format for distributing documents - rather a generic format than anyone can (and has) written software to read.
Documents to be distributed to the public by the government should be stored in a non-proprietary format, so that *ANYONE* can write software for any platform that is capable of reading it, without having to pay any license fees. PDF may well be suitable, it is surely better than *any* specific word-processor format. (MS or otherwise)
Documents stored internally within a government organization should be stored in a standard non-proprietary format which supports editing, and definititely not in a proprietary closed format which is properly usable only by products having a single maker (such as MS products). If such a format exists, its surely relatively unknown. I'm dimly aware of Oo participating in some sort of group that was attempting to define such a format.
Yeah but its easy enough to make a backup.. In fact.. Hrm.. Your corner hardware store is going to need some new tech at its key-copy counter.. (At least for the non-geeks that need their keys copied)
The thing is, you *do* have permission to copy copyrighted material, even that which certain organizations that end in *IAA would like to lock up with DRM - you have the right to time shift, media shift, excerpt, make backups, etc, regardless of wether they give you permission or not. But DRM lets them physically *prevent* you from excersicing these rights, which is why DRM is so objectionable.
What was called copyright way back should have been called 'sellright' or 'publishright' - and should only protect against false authorship claim, and against actually selling (eg for money) copies unless you were the rightholder. It wouldnt have hurt to make the whole thing non-transferrable and non-assignable too - eg the actual author/artist of a work holds permanent rights, even if he contracts with a publisher to actually distribute and sell copies on his behalf.
Of course, they will never use any DRM which can have any Open implementation, becuase anyone would be free to implement it and add or remove whatever features they wanted in their implementation, including an option to allow use that the persons issuing the DRM'ed content would want to prohibit. The only way that any 'Open' DRM would ever succeed is if the DRM-pushers are too ignorant to realize that.
One thing I do like about your thinking is that if that was made law, Microsoft would have to be completely and totally abolished - not only do they attempt, but that have succeeded at various levels.
"Press F5" ??? After a few moments of thought, it occured to me that F5 must be the 'reload page' key in *your* specific choice (assuming you actually made a conscious choice and didnt just use whatever came on the hardware you bought) of browser/OS platform.
It sounds like you assume that everyone else uses that same platform, or that there are no other platforms, or that every platform uses that same command/keypress functions that yours does, or perhaps that "press F5" is universally understood to *mean* 'reload page'.
Just a hint - none of those assumptions is accurate, and some of them might cause others to assume a certain bigotry and/or ignorance on your part.
While I dont think companies should be allowed to succeed in getting access restricted to publically-funded data, I don't quite go so far as to suggest that those that attempt to do so shouldnt be allowed to continue to exist.
Corecomm was/is certainly a CLEC, and was providing you service over SBC-owned copper. Thats the act of 1996. But trust me SBC was sharing that copper only begrudgingly, and dragged their feet as much as possible.
Long distance in the US is a thriving competitive market - rates very greatly - if you dial 1-plus on a line that isnt subscribed, you can pay over 95c a minute. Or you can shop around and get 4c or less a minute, or with some plans, unlimited for zip. The 1010 codes are an option - you can always choose to subscribe your dial-1 service on your standard wired line to a specific provider. Yes, there are some less scrupulous providers - but the point is, you *have* a choice - in fact you have a lot of them. Before the AT&T breakup - you had no choice - you got AT&T, period. And perhaps you werent old enough to remember, but it was expensive as hell. Surely never approaching 4/c minute, or god forbid an unlimited plan.
And if you can get regular wired phone service for $20/mo, then either its thru a CLEC, or its through the ILEC, but the only reason you can get it is becuase of the competition from the CLECs, which the incumbents would love to kill off. Try going to an area thats not served by any competitive providers - you'll pay closer to $50/mo for that line, and thats without any callerID, waiting, voicemail, etc.
And while you make very little "long distance", others make a lot - each customer should be able to choose the type of plan that works for them - some happen to like paying a flat $20 to never have to worry about 'the meter running'. Why do you accept paying even $20/month for local calls, when you'd be charged that even if you made no calls?
Personally I feel the concept of measured 'long distance' should be abolished, and all calls should be considered 'local', and you pay a flat monthly. charge. I guess effectively most VoIP plans do that (and they do it for less than many ILEC's charge for basic local service, yet still manage to include voicemail, callerID, call waiting, 3-way calling, and some features such as call filters that are unheard of from the old carriers)
Anyway, if you've been raped by long distance providers then maybe you just arent a savvy enough customer to make the right choice for you - but be happy you have choices. If there were no choices, the monopoly carrier would rape you anyway, and you wouldnt be able to switch to another. If the monopoly carrier is the best choice for you, so be it - but consider that if they are able to offer those rates when they have to compete with other providers, and dont have 100% of the market - why werent they offering them when they did have 100% of the market?
Already lived? Which incumbent RBOC/ILEC in the US was ever forced to seperate themselves into one company providing only copper loops, and one providing dialtone/switched services, with the one with the copper required to provide access to that copper to all companies providing switched services on an equal basis?
If you are talking about the AT&T breakup, it never required that - all it did was eliminate the long distance monopoly (and we are reaping the benefit of that today - long distance service in the US is now so competitive you can even get it for free under certain conditions), and it created a bunch of new smaller geaographic monopolies for local wired service - eg, it didnt go far enough - the new 'RBOCs' still had/have captive customers for their basic local wired service - the 1996 act helped a little, and the ILEC(RBOC)s have done everything they could to dodge the requirements of that, and are now using lobbyists to kill the few parts of that that might enable true competition someday - the new comers should *NOT* have to build their own entire copper plant from house to house - the existing plant should not belong to the incumbents - yes, they built it, but only with cash from captive customers they had exclusive access to via government-granted monopolies. The copper plants in the ground should either be owned by all, by the government, or at the very least a neutral organization that is *not* allowed to provide switched services.
I read an article by an RBOC shill that whinged that the old copper plant sucked - if thats the case then why do the RBOC's still fight to the very last for exclusive control over it? Becuase they know that in the current market with the current technology, the copper plant is the key to getting enough customers (again, this is all about wired telco service, none of this applies to wireless/sattelite/etc) to be competitive to ever hope to have a chance to be able to 'innovate' the new technologies - and they want to ensure that they have exclusive monopoly control over those too.
This is a wet dream for individuals and you are griping about it. This is exactly what I'd love to see in the US - the Incumbent bells seperated from their monopoly control over the existing wired infrastructure that was paid for by captive customers under their guaranteed monopoly status, so that it is available on an equal basis to many service providers (of dialtone, internet, whatever), who can them compete on even footings. Unfortunately, it seems like the US FCC is going the other way here, which will kill off any chance competition had before it even got off the ground.
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http://isp-planet.com/politics/2002/structural_se