This is much like the relationship that TV networks have with local affiliates. The networks pay the affliates to broadcast their shows, even though its the network that creates and produces them.
One could make the argument that it should be the other way around, but I'm guessing that in the case of TV at least, the networks need the local affiliates more than the local affiliates need the networks (possibly because the networks don't own their own broadcast facilities?), so as a result, the payola flows in the unexpected direction.
the providers are the ones marketing broadband as T1 speeds for the home
I dunno about that one. The ads I've seen for DSL and cable modems here in Philadelphia advertise it as being "X times faster than dialup", "really fast" and "always on" without really getting into specifics. While it is true that all these services are capped at sub-T1 speeds, I don't think its fair to say they are marketing a "poor man's T1" to the masses.
They rushed their services to market without building an infrastructure to support it if it got popular
But how much are you willing to pay for broadband? Most people won't shell out $100 a month for it. If the cable companies turned every broadband connection into the equivalent of a T1 or T3, you'd certainly be paying a lot more than $40-$50 a month for it. Would you be willing to pay that kind of money for a "real" internet connection?
At least for some people in Verizon's territory, there can be alternatives. If I wanted to, I could disconnect my landline phone, use Comcast for Internet access and get a cell phone from Cingular with good reception in my area. Hopefully as cable modems become more widespread, it may become more possible for (at least) residential customers who use dialup to dump Verizon for landline phones and use some kind of cellular alternative.
As I've said before, the only way Verizon is gonna improve service (and aside from their lack of DSL support, its pretty good), is if people start patronizing companies which can provide equivalent products and services.
if they were to put a law through the UN or any other international body, there might be some validity to the law
Not exactly, the implementation of UN Resolutions is up to the member states. They only carry weight if the member states choose to enforce them. The UN itself has no sovereignty over anyone (thankfully). If you want two or more countries to obey the same law, your best shot is a treaty ratified amongst the countries involved, but even then, that requires the countries to honor the law they passed.
This happens in a laissez-faire economy as well, when rock-solid monopolies form.
True, but even a monopoly will eventually have to care about its customers or its business will be suffer negative effects. Some examples:
Companies moving servers from MS to Linux/Unix (a small but growing number right now, but MS is shitting in its pants to stop it)
People dropping standard phones and using wireless phones instead
People switching from Cable TV to satellite
Granted, it took awhile for these competing technologies to develop, but still, they will force monopoly companies to improve service to make it worthwhile for customers to stay with them. One could argue that they would not have been developed if the monopoly provider of the service had been "good enough" so that there would be no desire for a customer to switch in the first place.
You're absolutely right about government getting involved in running services such as telecom. The lack of a profit motive will ensure that the phone and power networks in developing countries will never evolve to a reliable, stable and usable state. Of course, there are other, more significant problems as well in these countries. The government's running of the phone and power company is most likely a major distraction to its need to solve these other more pressing issues. By privatizing these entities, more resources can be focused on improving things like education, roads, sewage, etc.
they promised not to copy-protect CDs in exchange for a "royalty" on blank CD media.
This is not entirely correct. The royalty applies only to blank audio and video tapes. It does not apply to blank CD-Rs sold in the USA. Canada, however, does impose a tax on CD-R media.
As someone who does database coding for PHP nearly everyday, I must say the ADO interface that can be found here has been a godsend. It makes it so easy to create database independent code with minimal overhead. Of course, this package is open source:)
Their not necessarily metering just charging you more for more bandwidth.
That's not a bad thing. Metering not only ensures cable companies keep their costs down (figuring the worst downloaders will either buy the cheapest service and download at slow speeds, or they will buy the most expensive service and pay their cost), it also ensures indirectly that people with smaller budgets can get access to broadband, since presumably these people would buy the cheapest service.
Any lawyers interested in a nice big class action suit?
This reminds me of when a bunch of idiots sued Blockbuster video because they were too lazy to return their tapes on time. Each member of this class got about $18-$22 credited to their Blockbuster accounts, which essentially cost Blockbuster nothing.
Of course, if people do sue, the cable companies will then raise their rates to cover legal fees, court costs, settlement payouts, etc. In essence, the consumers would be suing "themselves." The only way to protest any kind of metering (if it happens, I highly doubt it will) is to simply cancel the service. Companies don't listen to anything but the almighty buck. You can whine and complain all you want but they won't care until you stop the gravy train.
I will incur excess charges that I would not have had, you would be actively using my lines, not passively and I would be directly charged for it.
This is where the perspective changes. To me, I am passively using what appears to be a "free" resource. To you, I am actively abusing your phone line and adding to your cost. In the purest terms, I would be stealing your money. That's exactly how the cable company sees things.
How do you know the cable company incurs no costs of people stealing illegal cable? Even if it doesn't involve the use of a "cheat box", that is, someone rigs the cable lines outside their house on a utility pole or something like that, how can you say it costs the cable company $0? Comcast obviously thinks its costing them something, which is why they are going after these thieves. Besides, how is it fair to all the people who are paying for the premium content to know that Comcast isn't doing anything to prevent thieves from getting it for free? What if everyone decided to steal cable TV? The cable company wouldn't be making any money in this case so they would just as easily close up shop since there is no profit to be made.
I believe that if its on my land, I should be able to use it as I see fit.
Ok, say you have a 900 MHz (or better) cordless phone and we are neighbors. If I were to modify my own 900 MHz phone so that it could use your base station (because the range of your base station reaches into my property, so if I follow your logic, I can use it as I see fit), I guess you wouldn't mind me making all sorts of long distance calls using your phone service.
Likewise, say you have a 802.11b base station and I drive by your house and use my laptop to get into your network, you also wouldn't mind that I use your internet connection to do all sorts of bad things in your name because the signal from your base station also reaches into my property (namely, my car and my laptop).
Re:Go to Africa. Learn what poor means.
on
The Almighty Buck
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· Score: 2
I don't agree with you about "no freedom" and "very poor quality of life". The citizens of many African countries have better personal freedoms than people in Western Countries.
I must apoligize because that part of my original comment applied to countries like Cuba and Saudi Arabia, and not necessarily just the countries of Africa. But still, we both know that there are way too many people in the USA who have no clue about how great things are here. I still would like to see those people go spend a week in any 3rd world country, especially some two-bit dictatorship, so that they come back with a true appreciation of all the opportunities and privileges we have here.
Re:Go to Africa. Learn what poor means.
on
The Almighty Buck
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· Score: 2
We as Americans are vaguely aware that we are better off that most people in the world
You are so right. I can't stand it when my fellow Americans complain about how "life sucks" and whine about how they don't get what they want. I've even heard people complain about their lack of "freedom" in this country. Those people make me sick.
The USA is one of the few countries where someone with nothing can become rich and powerful. Anyone who is lucky enough to be born here or who was able to move here legally needs to be aware of this fact. Although the latter already probably realize it. If I had my way, I would force any American who has gripes about the USA to go spend a week in a third world country where there is no freedom, no wealth, and very poor quality of life so that they can appreciate everything they have in this country.
But why shouldn't a "global" treaty apply to the entire globe uniformly? If we have to reduce our emissions by some ridiculous amount, why shouldn't the rest of the world have to reduce their's by the same amount?
And there's no way I believe those figures. Have you ever been to eastern Europe or to Mexico? There is so much smog, soot, and god knows what else in the air there... there is no way that the USA can be more polluted than those places. First hand observations overrule any statistic any day.
And I would add that there are very good reasons Kyoto was rejected.
For one thing, it doesn't go after any polluting countries. China, India, Mexico and the rest of the Third World, the industries of which do not have the same kind of environmental regulations that we have in the USA and the West, are all exempt from any pollution reduction requirements of the the treaty.
As far as I'm concerned, Bush has a horrible record as far as treaties go (KYOTO anyone?)
You are wrong, Kyoto was rejected (S. 98, 1997) by the Senate while Clinton was president. On top of that, the vote was 95-0. So to say that Bush alone is pushing for the rejection of Kyoto in the USA is wrong.
Re:Slashdot: News for thieves. Like ethics matter.
on
What Free Cable?
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· Score: 2
Kinda like how you can splice your phone line and add extra wall plugs even tho the phone co would be happy to send a tech out to wire a simple plug for $50+
But you aren't really gaining new services by doing this. An extra phone jack will allow you use a phone in another room, but it will not allow you to use phones in separate rooms for separate calls. Therefore, you aren't stealing from the phone company if you add a phone jack to your house.
A friend of mine who works for HP told me that on average, each deskjet cartridge costs $5 to make, and they are sold for $12 wholesale. A lot of the cost of those cartridges seems to be markup at the retail level.
IMHO This whould only exacerbate this problem. Look at how many formerly unionized, American manufacturing jobs have shipped to Mexico. On the other side of the coin, consider how many Japanese car companies set up shop in the USA using non-union labor, more and more "Japanese" cars are being made in places like Ohio and Kentucky by non-union USA workers. Each of these plants has vehemently rejected unionization as a means of "preserving" their jobs.
Oh, and for the original poster seeking help with outsourcing, fuck you, fuck your company and fuck the mother of your god.
The funniest thing about this story was...
on
The Story of "Nadine"
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· Score: 5, Insightful
I really hope that the author of the article implied sarcasm when he was "not worried" that the spam sender had a "privacy policy" registered with that TrustE or whoever the authority of the week happens to be. I can't believe people actually believe any site's privacy policy. Sure it says all the BS about how they won't sell your info, but of course it also says they can change it at their discretion, which is how they get around it. Call it the "Darth Vader" rule of contracts.
This reminds of a friend of mine who was outraged that her supposedly private email address (which she only gave to 3 friends and never posted it online anywhere) received spam. I told her it must have been her ISP that sold her email address to a spammer, if none of her friends indeed didn't give it out. She told me it couldn't have been them because it was "illegal" for the ISP to do that. Of course its "illegal"... doesn't mean they won't do it though!
IMHO, no privacy policy is worth the paper on which it is written (which is true because most are not printed out). No matter what any site's policy says, it is safe to assume that they can and will sell all of your personal information to the highest bidder (along with everyone else). We need to stop being naive enough to believe that companies actually care about our privacy. As long as its profitable for companies to sell information, it will always happen.
I hope I didn't come off as a troll, but this cynical view is based on many years of experience dealing with online and offline vendors. None of them has ever respected my privacy, and none ever will. But knowing this, I can adjust my buying habits to ensure my privacy isn't compromised too badly.
but I bet the tax payer has to dig yet deeper to pay for bailing out of the contract
You are most definitly correct. Oracle will most definitly sue CA for breach of contract. This will most likely lead to a multi-million dollar settlement which CA's taxpayers will have to pay. In the end, Oracle will make out like a bandit because they would have made the settlement money for doing nearly nothing, since breaking the contract no longer obliges Oracle to provide any goods/services.
This kind of BS has happened before, it will happen again. A few years back, Pennsylvania entered into a $200 million+ contract with an emissions testing company to inspect peoples' cars. When the administration changed, the commonwealth terminated the contract and ended up paying $80 million or so in breach of contract costs.
Slashdot Mirror
V-GER :)
Shouldn't it be the other way around?
This is much like the relationship that TV networks have with local affiliates. The networks pay the affliates to broadcast their shows, even though its the network that creates and produces them.
One could make the argument that it should be the other way around, but I'm guessing that in the case of TV at least, the networks need the local affiliates more than the local affiliates need the networks (possibly because the networks don't own their own broadcast facilities?), so as a result, the payola flows in the unexpected direction.
Anybody have more than four local UHF stations?
In many rural areas of the USA a lot of stations, even network affiliates, are UHF.
the providers are the ones marketing broadband as T1 speeds for the home
I dunno about that one. The ads I've seen for DSL and cable modems here in Philadelphia advertise it as being "X times faster than dialup", "really fast" and "always on" without really getting into specifics. While it is true that all these services are capped at sub-T1 speeds, I don't think its fair to say they are marketing a "poor man's T1" to the masses.
They rushed their services to market without building an infrastructure to support it if it got popular
But how much are you willing to pay for broadband? Most people won't shell out $100 a month for it. If the cable companies turned every broadband connection into the equivalent of a T1 or T3, you'd certainly be paying a lot more than $40-$50 a month for it. Would you be willing to pay that kind of money for a "real" internet connection?
At least for some people in Verizon's territory, there can be alternatives. If I wanted to, I could disconnect my landline phone, use Comcast for Internet access and get a cell phone from Cingular with good reception in my area. Hopefully as cable modems become more widespread, it may become more possible for (at least) residential customers who use dialup to dump Verizon for landline phones and use some kind of cellular alternative.
As I've said before, the only way Verizon is gonna improve service (and aside from their lack of DSL support, its pretty good), is if people start patronizing companies which can provide equivalent products and services.
if they were to put a law through the UN or any other international body, there might be some validity to the law
Not exactly, the implementation of UN Resolutions is up to the member states. They only carry weight if the member states choose to enforce them. The UN itself has no sovereignty over anyone (thankfully). If you want two or more countries to obey the same law, your best shot is a treaty ratified amongst the countries involved, but even then, that requires the countries to honor the law they passed.
This happens in a laissez-faire economy as well, when rock-solid monopolies form.
True, but even a monopoly will eventually have to care about its customers or its business will be suffer negative effects. Some examples:
Granted, it took awhile for these competing technologies to develop, but still, they will force monopoly companies to improve service to make it worthwhile for customers to stay with them. One could argue that they would not have been developed if the monopoly provider of the service had been "good enough" so that there would be no desire for a customer to switch in the first place.
You're absolutely right about government getting involved in running services such as telecom. The lack of a profit motive will ensure that the phone and power networks in developing countries will never evolve to a reliable, stable and usable state. Of course, there are other, more significant problems as well in these countries. The government's running of the phone and power company is most likely a major distraction to its need to solve these other more pressing issues. By privatizing these entities, more resources can be focused on improving things like education, roads, sewage, etc.
they promised not to copy-protect CDs in exchange for a "royalty" on blank CD media.
This is not entirely correct. The royalty applies only to blank audio and video tapes. It does not apply to blank CD-Rs sold in the USA. Canada, however, does impose a tax on CD-R media.
As someone who does database coding for PHP nearly everyday, I must say the ADO interface that can be found here has been a godsend. It makes it so easy to create database independent code with minimal overhead. Of course, this package is open source :)
Their not necessarily metering just charging you more for more bandwidth.
That's not a bad thing. Metering not only ensures cable companies keep their costs down (figuring the worst downloaders will either buy the cheapest service and download at slow speeds, or they will buy the most expensive service and pay their cost), it also ensures indirectly that people with smaller budgets can get access to broadband, since presumably these people would buy the cheapest service.
Any lawyers interested in a nice big class action suit?
This reminds me of when a bunch of idiots sued Blockbuster video because they were too lazy to return their tapes on time. Each member of this class got about $18-$22 credited to their Blockbuster accounts, which essentially cost Blockbuster nothing.
Of course, if people do sue, the cable companies will then raise their rates to cover legal fees, court costs, settlement payouts, etc. In essence, the consumers would be suing "themselves." The only way to protest any kind of metering (if it happens, I highly doubt it will) is to simply cancel the service. Companies don't listen to anything but the almighty buck. You can whine and complain all you want but they won't care until you stop the gravy train.
Gee, instead of leaving this tracking device in my desk, I'll take it with me when I decide to do something wrong
Yea, carry it with you while you are stealing illegal cable :)
I will incur excess charges that I would not have had, you would be actively using my lines, not passively and I would be directly charged for it.
This is where the perspective changes. To me, I am passively using what appears to be a "free" resource. To you, I am actively abusing your phone line and adding to your cost. In the purest terms, I would be stealing your money. That's exactly how the cable company sees things.
How do you know the cable company incurs no costs of people stealing illegal cable? Even if it doesn't involve the use of a "cheat box", that is, someone rigs the cable lines outside their house on a utility pole or something like that, how can you say it costs the cable company $0? Comcast obviously thinks its costing them something, which is why they are going after these thieves. Besides, how is it fair to all the people who are paying for the premium content to know that Comcast isn't doing anything to prevent thieves from getting it for free? What if everyone decided to steal cable TV? The cable company wouldn't be making any money in this case so they would just as easily close up shop since there is no profit to be made.
I believe that if its on my land, I should be able to use it as I see fit.
Ok, say you have a 900 MHz (or better) cordless phone and we are neighbors. If I were to modify my own 900 MHz phone so that it could use your base station (because the range of your base station reaches into my property, so if I follow your logic, I can use it as I see fit), I guess you wouldn't mind me making all sorts of long distance calls using your phone service.
Likewise, say you have a 802.11b base station and I drive by your house and use my laptop to get into your network, you also wouldn't mind that I use your internet connection to do all sorts of bad things in your name because the signal from your base station also reaches into my property (namely, my car and my laptop).
I don't agree with you about "no freedom" and "very poor quality of life". The citizens of many African countries have better personal freedoms than people in Western Countries.
I must apoligize because that part of my original comment applied to countries like Cuba and Saudi Arabia, and not necessarily just the countries of Africa. But still, we both know that there are way too many people in the USA who have no clue about how great things are here. I still would like to see those people go spend a week in any 3rd world country, especially some two-bit dictatorship, so that they come back with a true appreciation of all the opportunities and privileges we have here.
We as Americans are vaguely aware that we are better off that most people in the world
You are so right. I can't stand it when my fellow Americans complain about how "life sucks" and whine about how they don't get what they want. I've even heard people complain about their lack of "freedom" in this country. Those people make me sick.
The USA is one of the few countries where someone with nothing can become rich and powerful. Anyone who is lucky enough to be born here or who was able to move here legally needs to be aware of this fact. Although the latter already probably realize it. If I had my way, I would force any American who has gripes about the USA to go spend a week in a third world country where there is no freedom, no wealth, and very poor quality of life so that they can appreciate everything they have in this country.
So, why should they REDUCE?
But why shouldn't a "global" treaty apply to the entire globe uniformly? If we have to reduce our emissions by some ridiculous amount, why shouldn't the rest of the world have to reduce their's by the same amount?
And there's no way I believe those figures. Have you ever been to eastern Europe or to Mexico? There is so much smog, soot, and god knows what else in the air there... there is no way that the USA can be more polluted than those places. First hand observations overrule any statistic any day.
And I would add that there are very good reasons Kyoto was rejected.
For one thing, it doesn't go after any polluting countries. China, India, Mexico and the rest of the Third World, the industries of which do not have the same kind of environmental regulations that we have in the USA and the West, are all exempt from any pollution reduction requirements of the the treaty.
As far as I'm concerned, Bush has a horrible record as far as treaties go (KYOTO anyone?)
You are wrong, Kyoto was rejected (S. 98, 1997) by the Senate while Clinton was president. On top of that, the vote was 95-0. So to say that Bush alone is pushing for the rejection of Kyoto in the USA is wrong.
Kinda like how you can splice your phone line and add extra wall plugs even tho the phone co would be happy to send a tech out to wire a simple plug for $50+
But you aren't really gaining new services by doing this. An extra phone jack will allow you use a phone in another room, but it will not allow you to use phones in separate rooms for separate calls. Therefore, you aren't stealing from the phone company if you add a phone jack to your house.
A friend of mine who works for HP told me that on average, each deskjet cartridge costs $5 to make, and they are sold for $12 wholesale. A lot of the cost of those cartridges seems to be markup at the retail level.
Labor union for IT/IS workers... Good idea.
IMHO This whould only exacerbate this problem. Look at how many formerly unionized, American manufacturing jobs have shipped to Mexico. On the other side of the coin, consider how many Japanese car companies set up shop in the USA using non-union labor, more and more "Japanese" cars are being made in places like Ohio and Kentucky by non-union USA workers. Each of these plants has vehemently rejected unionization as a means of "preserving" their jobs.
Oh, and for the original poster seeking help with outsourcing, fuck you, fuck your company and fuck the mother of your god.
I really hope that the author of the article implied sarcasm when he was "not worried" that the spam sender had a "privacy policy" registered with that TrustE or whoever the authority of the week happens to be. I can't believe people actually believe any site's privacy policy. Sure it says all the BS about how they won't sell your info, but of course it also says they can change it at their discretion, which is how they get around it. Call it the "Darth Vader" rule of contracts.
This reminds of a friend of mine who was outraged that her supposedly private email address (which she only gave to 3 friends and never posted it online anywhere) received spam. I told her it must have been her ISP that sold her email address to a spammer, if none of her friends indeed didn't give it out. She told me it couldn't have been them because it was "illegal" for the ISP to do that. Of course its "illegal"... doesn't mean they won't do it though!
IMHO, no privacy policy is worth the paper on which it is written (which is true because most are not printed out). No matter what any site's policy says, it is safe to assume that they can and will sell all of your personal information to the highest bidder (along with everyone else). We need to stop being naive enough to believe that companies actually care about our privacy. As long as its profitable for companies to sell information, it will always happen.
I hope I didn't come off as a troll, but this cynical view is based on many years of experience dealing with online and offline vendors. None of them has ever respected my privacy, and none ever will. But knowing this, I can adjust my buying habits to ensure my privacy isn't compromised too badly.
but I bet the tax payer has to dig yet deeper to pay for bailing out of the contract
You are most definitly correct. Oracle will most definitly sue CA for breach of contract. This will most likely lead to a multi-million dollar settlement which CA's taxpayers will have to pay. In the end, Oracle will make out like a bandit because they would have made the settlement money for doing nearly nothing, since breaking the contract no longer obliges Oracle to provide any goods/services.
This kind of BS has happened before, it will happen again. A few years back, Pennsylvania entered into a $200 million+ contract with an emissions testing company to inspect peoples' cars. When the administration changed, the commonwealth terminated the contract and ended up paying $80 million or so in breach of contract costs.