"You say that the regulations haven't stopped them from upgrading their network and training technicians in your area, then you go on to say how frustrated you are that you can't get DSL installed."
The problem is not the availability of lines, it's the pricing and the lack of willingness from Qwest to deploy DSL service to its customers. They obviously had the investment capital to introduce the service into the area but are now refusing to follow through with it by providing adequate support and installation and deployment of service. The exact numbers aren't handy, but this is a low income area and most families aren't going to be able to afford DSL as it is currently priced. It's obviously a case of trying to get reality to fit your fiscal plans, instead of vice/versa. If they would drop the premium price for line usage(generally around 39$US per month on top of regular phone service which costs 29$US)they would open up the market substantially to an influx of funds which would provide them with the money to invest in capital, whether human or actual materials such as training individuals to perform maintenance work or deployment of lines and then more lines, access and coverage. At least, that's one solution, but it keeps the power at a single place which means that it's probably not an ideal solution. The opportunity for monopolistic consumer abuse would continue to be viable, and I doubt there would be much hesitation to "stick it to you" in another way. It's not my fault, or any other consumer's fault, that Qwest and other companies thought that DSL was going to supply an immediate money tap, but with everything else you probably need to let the product mature and charge a fair price for it before you start seeing a large flow of funds.
"The phone network is going to remain a monopoly because there's no good way to split it up."
Agreed, however there still needs to be open discourse about the different ways in which someone could open up the market. The Bells and other companies which hold monopolies in metropolitan regions are never going to be happy with any sort of regulation. However, it's good to make sure we have consumer advocates speaking out for consumer interests like with the June 18th committee meeting regarding the reassessment of the 1996 Telecommunications Act. If you sit by with complacency, nothing is going to happen. More consumer rights advocates need to be contacted to let people know there is a problem that needs to be solved.
"Competition is going to come from other sources, such as cable, wireless, and satalite."
And there's something to stop these companies from gouging prices and doing exactly what Qwest, Ameritech, et al have been doing? This isn't a problem with single companies scattered over wide distances. This has to do with the way the business of providing useful and necessary tools to the public has been handled by business with the money to spare defending themselves in court from petty things like violating acts passed in congress and monopolizing large metropolitan areas and sticking fat bills to consumers who have done nothing wrong but attempt to purchase a service at a fair price.
Me:Maybe use it under some incarnation of the GPL? You:Huh? Unless you have some actual way GPL might have some relation to DSL, quit throwing out buzzwords out of context.
"The phone compaines have been told by law that they have to open up their networks. This has discouraged the phone companies from spending the money to upgrade their networks. They also haven't been hired and trained enough people to install all the lines that are required for DSL in many areas."
This hasn't stopped Qwest here in New Mexico from upgrading and installing lines. They have a complete monopoly over the copper here in Albuquerque which provides POTS to about 600,000 people. What a lack of proper regulation has done is allow Qwest to completely deny its responsibility, as the sole wire-running company here, to provide adequate support for its customers' needs. Qwest does not need to be broken up, per-se, but they need to be required to provide the services they advertise. They are definately turning over a profit. Maybe they need to get their act together in Denver to provide affordable DSL service to a market that's willing to pay a fair price.
I have yet to be able to get my DSL from them up and running, after three months of waiting. I have a useless modem sitting atop my case, and a compact disc with necessary software that was broken during shipping. Along with that, they have been screwing up everyone's bills, charging their wireless customers up to $600 per minute, and charging me a whopping $353 on my last phone bill(I don't make long distance calls).
Our rights as consumers are limited in that if one company isn't providing a service well enough, we are free to switch to another provider. However in this instance, and in many other instances, there's no place else to go. Some situations require government intervention, and most likely DSL is going to end up having to be something that is regulated.
That's an interesting point, and it's fiscally responsible, but isn't the point to have the program not screw up in the first place? The OS shouldn't crash, especially in a situation where the damage caused would be enough to file a size-able claim.
That's good in theory, but when you have application packages that install a wide variety of libraries and required portions of the program in different locations, or which go around and edit your configuration files, you ought to have some way of automatically cataloging what files were added, and what files were changed(and in what way) without having to fish through install scripts or hundreds of makefiles in a source package.
This has been one of my biggest gripes in using anything with an autonomous installation mechanism. We all know that Windows machines can operate under the heavy load of junk and poorly formatted configuration files and dirty system registries. The case is not so simple with a Linux box, especially with a person like me who only has about 5 hours of spare time a day(only a fraction of which I ever really have free to use my computer). It's not quite enough time to go about and map all my.files and figure out which one a given package has skewed to the point where after I remove what files I know to have been installed into a package X breaks, or I can't use PPP anymore(both cases have happened).
In the interest of fairness, I believe that in any case where someone is recieving money for some piece of software they have authored, there should be some way to remove the program without breaking the system.
You can't ask a normal person to go about trying to find what configuration files a given package has disturbed, or what libraries it has upended or added. And installing development libraries causes whole new realms of problems.. But I think it's obvious where I'm going with this.
Making sure anyone has the opportunity to use a stable operating system platform is the main reason I want to get into linux development..:D
What do you know about community service? It's not like he has to go pick up weeds for 8 hours a day for 30 days or anything. The guy is probably going to sit in a library teaching little kids about the evils of corporate infrastructure and how his act of civil disobedience was only one fight in the cause of Free LIscensing and Open Source software..
Hmmmmm.. I'm not so sure about that. The only thing that irks me, is that I have NO IDEA what this kid did to get him suspended for 10 days. Has anyone read that article, or asked anyone what he did? In the article, the superintendant says he does not want to discuss what he did. I'm guessing that it was probably an embarassingly small infraction.
But this is simply another example of the demonizing of tech-savvy people as culprits of unspeakable digital horrors. The lack of understanding of the medium has made the common public much too scared of those who have better access to the digital medium than they do. This is finally a realm where to excell, all you need is access to a computer, free time, and the ability to read.. So alot of people who have been denied power in other parts of reality in the past, like 13 year old children or invalids, etc. are able to excell, and the fear they generate from a heavy understanding of the subject of computers is incomprehensible to me.
So now a child is dead, and I'll be the last one to place direct blame on the school superintendant for it. However, this does not excuse the fact that the very people learning how to advance computers are thought of as dangerous criminals, because their moms and dads don't understand the technology well enough to feel comfortable buying from l.l.bean online with a credit card.
I can't even begin to imagine the amounts of problems we would likely encounter trying to inhabit the moon of a gas giant so many times(~200 IIRC)larger than our earth. An earth sized satellite, moving in orbit around the gas giant, would be perpetual darkness for half of the orbit around the planet, while in perpetual full daylight for the other half of it's orbit around the giant, and the actual measured time when these two states would occur would change as the planet itself orbits around the solar body. Lets not forget ejections from a possibily volatile gas-giant, and the amount of space crap that would bombard a planet(and the moons, which we would be looking to inhabit)of that size. However, for professional aesthetes such as myself, it would be worth any risk--for the part of the satellite's orbit where the lighted side of the planet would be facing it--to watch planet-rise! But that's assuming that the satellite has a revolution as well as an orbit, and that might not be the case(look at OUR moon).
Uhm, you mean Albuquerque, and having lived here for most of my life, I'd have to say that it's really not that bad, as long as you're over 21.. otherwise, there's nothing to do besides go to school at UNM and work for one of the many burgeoning computer tech businesses popping up all over town.. oh, wait.. I guess it's not that bad after all. I bid you, come eat your words.;)
I'm glad I saved myself the humiliation of having to find out from the site's creators(or someone else, I guess)that this was an april fools joke.. I don't pay attention to what day of the month it is, so it took me a few minutes of reading for the pieces to fall into place..
In my opinion, he offers a very weak point. A better solution, as far as I'm concerned, is simple education. The majority of slashdot readers I think probably do not listen only to the news they want to hear, most are educated enough to fetch a diverse range of viewpoints(isn't that what things like THIS comment system are supposed to provide?).. Granted, if someone wanted only to read news about a certian subject, and only from one paradigm, they could do this, but they could make the choice to do that over any other medium as well.
I admit that the net DOES make it quite a bit easier to accomplish this, but this is why we need to--instead of focusing on Sunstein's proposition of forcing other viewpoints on people, and basically manufacturing how they think--and educating people TO think. A person who understands the value of comparative reasoning is more likely to seek out varied opinions on a subject than someone who is taught HOW to think.
Personally, I thought that the point of using places such as Slashdot and CNN together was to get "the full picture", since obviously it's not available anywhere else. This was a very informative interview, especially for someone like me who has no technologically educated political representatives(probably has something to do with living in a state which is primarily rural), and let me understand that there are in fact people in government who aren't just trying to screw me over and gain the support of lobbyists.
Boucher is keeping it real on the streets of Virginia. Word.
This is as good of an idea--for those who hate dealing with system configurations and device incompatibilities--as PPC-Linux on an iMac(or at least, so I've heard....). I would buy a PSX-2 without hesitation if there was an available GNU/Linux port.
Sorry, Indrema, but it's a CONSOLE.. Where are your games?
Slashdot Mirror
"You say that the regulations haven't stopped them from upgrading their network and training technicians in your area, then you go on to say how frustrated you are that you can't get DSL installed."
The problem is not the availability of lines, it's the pricing and the lack of willingness from Qwest to deploy DSL service to its customers. They obviously had the investment capital to introduce the service into the area but are now refusing to follow through with it by providing adequate support and installation and deployment of service. The exact numbers aren't handy, but this is a low income area and most families aren't going to be able to afford DSL as it is currently priced. It's obviously a case of trying to get reality to fit your fiscal plans, instead of vice/versa. If they would drop the premium price for line usage(generally around 39$US per month on top of regular phone service which costs 29$US)they would open up the market substantially to an influx of funds which would provide them with the money to invest in capital, whether human or actual materials such as training individuals to perform maintenance work or deployment of lines and then more lines, access and coverage. At least, that's one solution, but it keeps the power at a single place which means that it's probably not an ideal solution. The opportunity for monopolistic consumer abuse would continue to be viable, and I doubt there would be much hesitation to "stick it to you" in another way. It's not my fault, or any other consumer's fault, that Qwest and other companies thought that DSL was going to supply an immediate money tap, but with everything else you probably need to let the product mature and charge a fair price for it before you start seeing a large flow of funds.
"The phone network is going to remain a monopoly because there's no good way to split it up."
Agreed, however there still needs to be open discourse about the different ways in which someone could open up the market. The Bells and other companies which hold monopolies in metropolitan regions are never going to be happy with any sort of regulation. However, it's good to make sure we have consumer advocates speaking out for consumer interests like with the June 18th committee meeting regarding the reassessment of the 1996 Telecommunications Act. If you sit by with complacency, nothing is going to happen. More consumer rights advocates need to be contacted to let people know there is a problem that needs to be solved.
"Competition is going to come from other sources, such as cable, wireless, and satalite."
And there's something to stop these companies from gouging prices and doing exactly what Qwest, Ameritech, et al have been doing? This isn't a problem with single companies scattered over wide distances. This has to do with the way the business of providing useful and necessary tools to the public has been handled by business with the money to spare defending themselves in court from petty things like violating acts passed in congress and monopolizing large metropolitan areas and sticking fat bills to consumers who have done nothing wrong but attempt to purchase a service at a fair price.
Me: Maybe use it under some incarnation of the GPL?
You: Huh? Unless you have some actual way GPL might have some relation to DSL, quit throwing out buzzwords out of context.
Sorry, my failed attempt at some humor.. lol
Eric
"The phone compaines have been told by law that they have to open up their networks. This has discouraged the phone companies from spending the money to upgrade their networks. They also haven't been hired and trained enough people to install all the lines that are required for DSL in many areas."
This hasn't stopped Qwest here in New Mexico from upgrading and installing lines. They have a complete monopoly over the copper here in Albuquerque which provides POTS to about 600,000 people. What a lack of proper regulation has done is allow Qwest to completely deny its responsibility, as the sole wire-running company here, to provide adequate support for its customers' needs. Qwest does not need to be broken up, per-se, but they need to be required to provide the services they advertise. They are definately turning over a profit. Maybe they need to get their act together in Denver to provide affordable DSL service to a market that's willing to pay a fair price.
I have yet to be able to get my DSL from them up and running, after three months of waiting. I have a useless modem sitting atop my case, and a compact disc with necessary software that was broken during shipping. Along with that, they have been screwing up everyone's bills, charging their wireless customers up to $600 per minute, and charging me a whopping $353 on my last phone bill(I don't make long distance calls).
Our rights as consumers are limited in that if one company isn't providing a service well enough, we are free to switch to another provider. However in this instance, and in many other instances, there's no place else to go. Some situations require government intervention, and most likely DSL is going to end up having to be something that is regulated.
Maybe use it under some incarnation of the GPL?
That's an interesting point, and it's fiscally responsible, but isn't the point to have the program not screw up in the first place? The OS shouldn't crash, especially in a situation where the damage caused would be enough to file a size-able claim.
-TRiFIXION
That's good in theory, but when you have application packages that install a wide variety of libraries and required portions of the program in different locations, or which go around and edit your configuration files, you ought to have some way of automatically cataloging what files were added, and what files were changed(and in what way) without having to fish through install scripts or hundreds of makefiles in a source package.
.files and figure out which one a given package has skewed to the point where after I remove what files I know to have been installed into a package X breaks, or I can't use PPP anymore(both cases have happened).
:D
This has been one of my biggest gripes in using anything with an autonomous installation mechanism. We all know that Windows machines can operate under the heavy load of junk and poorly formatted configuration files and dirty system registries. The case is not so simple with a Linux box, especially with a person like me who only has about 5 hours of spare time a day(only a fraction of which I ever really have free to use my computer). It's not quite enough time to go about and map all my
In the interest of fairness, I believe that in any case where someone is recieving money for some piece of software they have authored, there should be some way to remove the program without breaking the system.
You can't ask a normal person to go about trying to find what configuration files a given package has disturbed, or what libraries it has upended or added. And installing development libraries causes whole new realms of problems.. But I think it's obvious where I'm going with this.
Making sure anyone has the opportunity to use a stable operating system platform is the main reason I want to get into linux development..
TRiFIXION
What do you know about community service? It's not like he has to go pick up weeds for 8 hours a day for 30 days or anything. The guy is probably going to sit in a library teaching little kids about the evils of corporate infrastructure and how his act of civil disobedience was only one fight in the cause of Free LIscensing and Open Source software..
Back to work!
Hmmmmm.. I'm not so sure about that. The only thing that irks me, is that I have NO IDEA what this kid did to get him suspended for 10 days. Has anyone read that article, or asked anyone what he did? In the article, the superintendant says he does not want to discuss what he did. I'm guessing that it was probably an embarassingly small infraction.
But this is simply another example of the demonizing of tech-savvy people as culprits of unspeakable digital horrors. The lack of understanding of the medium has made the common public much too scared of those who have better access to the digital medium than they do. This is finally a realm where to excell, all you need is access to a computer, free time, and the ability to read.. So alot of people who have been denied power in other parts of reality in the past, like 13 year old children or invalids, etc. are able to excell, and the fear they generate from a heavy understanding of the subject of computers is incomprehensible to me.
So now a child is dead, and I'll be the last one to place direct blame on the school superintendant for it. However, this does not excuse the fact that the very people learning how to advance computers are thought of as dangerous criminals, because their moms and dads don't understand the technology well enough to feel comfortable buying from l.l.bean online with a credit card.
It's time for humanity to grow up.
-TRiFIXION
Well, since RIAA(and MTV, VH1, et al)created the mainstream, I guess that's a necessary conclusion.
-TRiFIXION
I can't even begin to imagine the amounts of problems we would likely encounter trying to inhabit the moon of a gas giant so many times(~200 IIRC)larger than our earth. An earth sized satellite, moving in orbit around the gas giant, would be perpetual darkness for half of the orbit around the planet, while in perpetual full daylight for the other half of it's orbit around the giant, and the actual measured time when these two states would occur would change as the planet itself orbits around the solar body. Lets not forget ejections from a possibily volatile gas-giant, and the amount of space crap that would bombard a planet(and the moons, which we would be looking to inhabit)of that size. However, for professional aesthetes such as myself, it would be worth any risk--for the part of the satellite's orbit where the lighted side of the planet would be facing it--to watch planet-rise! But that's assuming that the satellite has a revolution as well as an orbit, and that might not be the case(look at OUR moon).
Just a little cosmological pondering..
Uhm, you mean Albuquerque, and having lived here for most of my life, I'd have to say that it's really not that bad, as long as you're over 21.. otherwise, there's nothing to do besides go to school at UNM and work for one of the many burgeoning computer tech businesses popping up all over town.. oh, wait.. I guess it's not that bad after all. I bid you, come eat your words. ;)
I'm glad I saved myself the humiliation of having to find out from the site's creators(or someone else, I guess)that this was an april fools joke.. I don't pay attention to what day of the month it is, so it took me a few minutes of reading for the pieces to fall into place..
In my opinion, he offers a very weak point. A better solution, as far as I'm concerned, is simple education. The majority of slashdot readers I think probably do not listen only to the news they want to hear, most are educated enough to fetch a diverse range of viewpoints(isn't that what things like THIS comment system are supposed to provide?).. Granted, if someone wanted only to read news about a certian subject, and only from one paradigm, they could do this, but they could make the choice to do that over any other medium as well.
I admit that the net DOES make it quite a bit easier to accomplish this, but this is why we need to--instead of focusing on Sunstein's proposition of forcing other viewpoints on people, and basically manufacturing how they think--and educating people TO think. A person who understands the value of comparative reasoning is more likely to seek out varied opinions on a subject than someone who is taught HOW to think.
Personally, I thought that the point of using places such as Slashdot and CNN together was to get "the full picture", since obviously it's not available anywhere else. This was a very informative interview, especially for someone like me who has no technologically educated political representatives(probably has something to do with living in a state which is primarily rural), and let me understand that there are in fact people in government who aren't just trying to screw me over and gain the support of lobbyists. Boucher is keeping it real on the streets of Virginia. Word.
This is as good of an idea--for those who hate dealing with system configurations and device incompatibilities--as PPC-Linux on an iMac(or at least, so I've heard....). I would buy a PSX-2 without hesitation if there was an available GNU/Linux port.
Sorry, Indrema, but it's a CONSOLE.. Where are your games?
-TRiFIXION