There's a big difference between "official content" (government-owned material) and political activity. It is already illegal for a member of Congress or of the Administration to conduct politics from their government office. Political office holders have separate locations for "campaign offices". What Capuano was talking about was the posting of official content on non-government web sites, like YouTube.
Non-official communications, like blogging, is not impacted by this at all. There is no attack on freedom of speech.
Chicagoboyz is a right wing site that is looking to discredit Pelosi, even if it means lying about what the leadership has planned.
Worse than that. Yes, it does adjust QoS, but it's also for billing.
I'm very familiar with DPI; I have gotten the nondisclosed (since expired; it's been a long time!) pitch from a leading vendor. And it showed up on the Internet anyway in the form of a keynote address given at a 2005 IEC conference by vulture capitalist Rod Randall, whose portfolio company is heavy into DPI and bought that vendor. His key phrase was "don't get Skyped" -- DPI can block VoIP.
The idea is that they can look past the headers of the application layer, right into the user data, and scrute out what you're doing. Then they can block the traffic, pass it, give it QoS, or generate a billing record.
DPI is widely deployed on mobile data networks today. Read their terms of service: Most are very limiting. They can enforce with DPI (and block encrypted packets if need be). The DPI pitch notes that SMS is much more expensive than email, so you can use it to track emails sent and bill for them, even if they don't touch that network's servers.
In the real world that's called wiretapping, but on the internet it's legal. DPI goes way, way beyond web-visit-tracking like what Phorm is doing. It totally destroys the open Internet. The entire network neutrality thing is really about DPI; people just don't all know it yet.
The 700 MHz spectrum is indeed interesting; it's next to cellular 800 MHz, and does penetrate buildings better.
However, now that the FCC auction is over, you can forget about anything good coming of it in most areas. Verizon bought the biggest share of licenses, ATT the second-largest share; between them, they have pretty much every major license in the top markets. Their main interest seems to be keeping away competitors: A newcomer might challenge them on both price and service. So paying $15M between themselves to keep away newcomers will allow them to charge more -- the "corner the market" value probably being more than $15B. And, more importantly, it lets them maintain extremely tight restrictions on what applications can be run on their networks (usually limited by contract and deep packet inspection to email and web browsing). BTW, the "open" requirement on the C-block means that any vendor's device can be used on the network, but Google's request to require it to be open to any application was not made part of the rules. So you can have any web browser you want.
This is a really stupid proposal. It is like the lottery, which promises big payoffs but is really a tax on people who are bad at math. Most people lose. If there were mega-prizes for science, then people would have to decide whether to go for the big prize, knowing that there's a >99% chance of getting zilch, or doing something more likely to pay the bills. Do we want to turn science, normally a cooperative exercise, into a casino game?
On the other hand this idea will go over well among the flat earth crowd. They don't do science, but they think high-stakes prizes are the only way to get out of the trailer park.
No, he was right -- Linux sucks as a desktop system. Good server system, bad desktop system.
Not that I haven't been trying and hoping for better since, uh, Yggdrasil came out in 1993 or so. It's not as if I haven't tried a LOT of distros. Trouble is, THEY'RE ALL LINUX. And Linux is not just a "free" OS, it's Unix. And Unix's the uber-geek OS, written by programmers for programmers. (chmod octal bitmaps? Right.) Powerful but not intended to be easy. More of a boys' club "seekrit password" approach -- no wonder nobody has time to join the Masons and learn their boys' club secrets any more!;-) And the apps it brings are aimed at a certain type of user. Not the same as the Windows audience.
So to make a long story short,
- Linux has poor driver support (because Linus hates blobs, so many vendors don't cooperate, and the unstable ABI breaks drivers) so lots of desktop iron doesn't work in various distros, even if it works on other distros. For instance no distro works all of the peripherals on my laptop, but individual distros work different ones. Just no mix-and-match, because drivers aren't portable as in Windows.
- Linux apps have poor GUI consistency. Often opening the GUI brings up defaults instead of current settings, even losing current (working) ones when that should show you current settings. And some GUIs are just dialog boxes to put in unexplained text parameters (-j013 -T3),a sin Windows developers NEVER do. Linux setup still ends up (way too often) being about editing dot files in vi. Compare GRASS (Linux/Unix) with MapInfo (Windows), for instance. Help? man pages are a grad student puzzle: Provide no examples, and not a shred more information than necessary, formatted for an LA-36 DECwriter.
- Linux apps are rarely complete. The last 20% takes 80% of the time, after all, and free software developers get bored. Others copy the easy stuff, do some vanity work, call it a new project, and leave it incomplete.
- Linux weenies (including too many Slashdoters) are largely insufferable. Ask for help and you're likely to get insulted, or told to just write your own code, or decipher the source. Users are not coders. But Linus wrote Linux for coders to have fun with. I don't object to their fun. But I need a system that lets me be productive, and my work is not writing Linux code! There are more users like me than there are programmers.
- Windows XP doesn't suck much! Hell, the system I'm on now has been up, I think, over a month, and I really should take it down to install some patches. Some MS apps (IE, OE) really do suck, and invite security problems, but I don't use them. The kernel's not bad at all, nor is the GUI, the print subsystem (far better than Linux), the sound subsystem (far better than Linux), or the networking (different issues from Linux', but pretty stable if you're careful). Plus laptops get good power conrol/sleep/hibernate support. And the truth is, writing code for users, vs. writing for people like yourself (programmers), is an art, which both Apple and Microsoft have learned (okay, MS copies Apple), but which simply doesn't interest the Free Software community too much (except for some application groups like Mozilla, but they had a head start).
- Too many important desktop apps aren't on Linux. Real users often need specific vertical-market apps, which usually go only to Windows. The tyranny of market share, to be sure, but a motivating factor for real users. Server software developers, in contrast, often think Linux first, or assume it's necessary.
I'm a huge cheapskate and would love to use Linux. I actually PAID MORE for Mandrive Powerpack for a family member than I paid for Windows. But it's not suitable for my day-to-day use, even though it's still my favorite distro. Windows seems like a daft choice for most servers, but Linux is at least two years away from being ready for the destktop -- and so it has been for 15 years.
If you knew New Hampshire, you wouldn't ask about blacker voters... the equivalent cultural divide, what's left of it, is more like French vs. English.
But I do not think that in this case Diebold is responsible. I am rather familiar with the state and could pretty much predict the outcome, once the pattern was seen. Clinton did best in cities with a conservative cultural heritage -- white-ethnic mill towns and places where working-class Massachusetts white voters have moved to. Manchester, Nashua, and Salem are good examples. Think Dunkin' Donuts places. Obama did best in places with more of a Starbucks cultural bent, including white-collar cities like Concord, Keene and Portsmouth and the western side of the state. Hand counting is done in the smaller towns, which are mostly Obama places. Actually, a lot of those towns are mainly Republican (McCain) places, but the Democrats there are more Obama fans.
Standard passports are already coming through with RFID. They can be read from up to 60 feet away. True, the standard government-issue reader has a much shorter range, but 60 feet has been demonostrated. The bad guys (those who set off bombs when Americans go by the trap, for instance) know how to do that. The new passport will probably be readable for a block or so, if an airport reader can go 20 feet.
Verizon's main interest in the 700 MHz auction is to keep it from spawning major new competitors, especially ones with a different business model, particularly ones that rhyme with "kugel".
There's been some discussion of LTE vs. UMB. LTE comes from the GSM world, and UMB from the CDMA world, but they're more similar than alike, and not at all like GSM *or* CDMA. LTE and UMB are based on OFDMA technology, more akin to mobile WiMAX. So it'll be a "forklift upgrade" for Verizon, unlike the CDMA-2000 transition. The GSM world's 3G technology is WCDMA. Since it's a forklift upgrade, it has not caught on very much; the GSM players are mostly stretching old-fashioned 2G GSM and will jump to LTE.
Puffery is puffery. Let's set the record straight.
The Internet is all about shared resources. Between any two j-random users, there are typically 15-30 hops, all shared.
DSL is an unshared resource from the subscriber to the DSLAM. Then there's a link from the DSLAM to the upstream router. THAT is shared, as is everything upstream. I've personally worked on DSLAMs that had a single T1 (1.5 Mbps) feeding over 90 customers. It worked well enough.
Cable is a shared resource all the way. It usually has about 40 Mbps downstream and 5 to 30 Mbps upstream. Because of the way cable channels were set up in the US (FCC rule), upstream bandwidth is very scarce, so cable companies are pretty parsimonious with it. But they've been reducing the number of subscribers per node, so the net capacity one hop away is typically no worse than DSL. It just moves the bottleneck a bit closer to the subscriber. In practice, the actual cable segment rarely blocks anything; the limit is either in the cable modem's rate limiter (what plan did you pay for?) or upstream (the rest of the way). Cable technology is evolving and cable companies are gradually increasing the amount of fiber optics in their networks.
FiOS is a shared resource too. It just starts with a lot more capacity in the shared link. But then it can still hit the very same blockages one hop away, same as with DSL. Think of a fire hose feeding a garden hose. FiOS is a firehose, but the Internet is often a garden hose, and Verizon.net itself is often the limit. I know people who've done side-by-side comparisons (even have both) and don't see FiOS being better than Comcast in practice.
Judaism and Islam are to Christianity as McDonalds are to Hinduism -- both have cows.
Judaism is a national religion, aimed at one people alone. It is based on its own set of law (behavior, not faith; in this case called Torah), and does not actually require any Faith (though it offers plenty of opportunities for those who want it). Its scripture is in Hebrew and subject to much diversity of interpretation. There is no concern about an afterlife -- it's all about this one.
Islam is a catholic (small-c, meaning intended for all) religion. It is based on its own set of law (Koran), and is again not about Faith per se. Its scripture is in Arabic and has some diversity of interpretation. It's about both this life and the afterlife, but mostly the former.
Christianity is a catholic religion. It is based on Faith per se. Its goal is to achieve a proper afterlife -- it's based on Hellenic death cults, with elements of Hebrew scripture "interpreted" rather creatively. Of course they think they understand the "Old Testament" but they generally mine it to find evidence of their obsessions. There is much diversity of interpretation among the many Christian sects, little within most.
All three respect Abraham, but very, very differently.
Actually, they very well might fire him for having an affair with a subordinate. That is usually seen as an explicit violation of company rules, and, in business, is often seen as a serious violation. It may, for instance, lead to favoritism, and influence promotions or management decisions. Or it can be seen as somewhat coercive. I'm pretty sure the Pentagon takes it seriously too, among all levels of the military. Bonking a peer or someone outside of your chain of command is one thing; bonking down the chain is something else entirely.
They're not liable because a different federal law (ECPA) explicitly protects ISPs from responsibility for things posted by their subscribers. That is somewhat similar to protection granted to common carriers, but it's separate, and does not make ISPs common carriers.
FiOS uses a technology called Passive Optical Network (PON), which means that one strand of fiber is divided passively among up to 32 subscribers. There's one box that does 4:1 and one that does 8:1 between the subscriber and the optical terminal. It's not terribly flexible; they have to guess what the ultimate penetration might be and then lay out enough to get there, with splitters all over the place up on the poles.
When someone subscribes, they run a drop fiber to the home and mount an Optical Network Terminal (ONT) on the side of the house. THAT marks a subscriber. The stuff on the pole doesn't; that merely marks a "home passed", a place where somebody has the ability to become a subscriber.
I do know someone who has both FiOS and cable modem service. He's a well-known ubergeek, and can afford both; it gives him redundancy and the ability to compare the two. A cable executive might even want a second link to his house, to see what the competition's up to.
I tried out the beta, to see how it looks. I am a hard-core paid-version Eudora user, and have found nothing that comes close to the real thing.
Basically, it's Thunderbird. It just has a Eudora label. It does however snarf the Eudora icon from the desktop, and make itself default mailer, so be forewarned.
It finds existing Thunderbird mail folders and settings, not Eudora's, and acts like the Bird. I have multiple POP servers, and by default it puts their mail into separate folders, not the way Eudora handles it. It also lacks certain Eudora features that distinguish it from other programs. It doesn't have a "delete from server" setting per message (nice for killing spam). It doesn't seem to have Eudora-style labels. It doesn't have lots of folder windows open.
I hope those gaps get filled in; I may end up using my trusty Eudora 7 (which btw has great search features) for a long time to come.
> Not that I'm disagreeing with you, but do you have any links to sources that explain how this is due to the Cheney-Rove regime?
It was a series of FCC decisions. You can follow the history on their web site, How this links to the regime: The FCC is appointed, technically, by the President. Three of the seats can belong to one party; the minority party gets two. So after Bush was appointed, a couple of holdover commissioners resigned early and a couple of seats opened up. The minority votes generally are suggested by the House and Senate leadership. Bush appointed:
1) Michael Powell. Son of Colin, but not half as sharp, he was a lawyer with good party creds and a big inherited name, so he got the chairmanship. He really liked the Bells, but he also liked gadgets and wireless hacks.
2) Kathleen Abernathy. Proof that they still believe in slavery, her job was to echo Powell 100% of the time.
3) Kevin Martin. Husband of Dick Cheney's personal adjutant Cathy, he and Powell hated each other, though both were pro-Bell; he lacked Powell's interest in supporting technology industries at all, other than Bell suppliers.
4) Michael Copps. One of the two Democrats, the Michigander was close to House party leaders and very close to the National Council of Catholic Bishops and while pro-competition in general, he also joined the bluenose chorus for censorship.
5) Jonathan Adelstein. A Democrat from South Dakota appointed while Tom Daschle, IIRC his former boss, still was in the Senate.
Powell did a few things quickly. He clarified/changed the rules on CLEC reciprocal compensation, so they didn't get much money for handling ISPs any more. That hurt dial-up. He revoked a rule requiring the unbundling of remote-terminal DSL, making many suburban homes off-limits to competitive DSL providers. And in 2003, the Big One, the Triennial Review, wherein he substantially reduced how much had to be unbundled to competitive providers. He also initiated a proceeding -- which at the time seemed wild-ass outrageous and impassible -- to revoke the 1980 Computer II decision, which had flat-out made the Internet possible by requiring phone companies to provide "basic" service to others on the same grounds they provided it to their own affiliated "enhanced" services (like ISPs).
After Powell left, Martin (who replaced Abernathy with his own slave, Debbie Tate) further clamped down on competition, and finally approved the revocation of Computer II and its related common carriage obligations in general. That started the "network neutrality" debate, since Computer II had previously assured it. He has heel-dragged on unlicensed wireless enhancements. And he's furthered the Powell agenda to reduce the number of wireless carriers, allowing and even encouraging Verizon and (now called) ATT to buy their competitors.
These are White House loyalist appointees with very close ties to Dick, not independent agents, even though technically it's an independent agency.
For something as important today as the Internet, it's surprisingly fragile and primitive. It's amazing we've gotten this far; it's not clear that "more of the same" can happen.
One obvious problem, at least in the United States, is the "last mile" or if you prefer "first mile" problem. In maybe half of homes it's a cable/ILEC (old monopoly phone company) duopoly. Most of the rest can get cable or telco DSL. A fair share can't get either yet. FCC statistics are intentionally deceptive about this, counting ZIP codes that have even one "broadband" subscriber as being served, even if most of the area isn't. And their 200 kbps downstream definition of "broadband" is pathetic.
DSL is a mid-life kicker for old copper. Passive Optical Network-style fiber, as in FiOS, is also questionable as a long-term goal; like ADSL, it too is highly assymetric, and it's really too expensive. (I think Verizon is doing it mainly for political show, and will slow down. Besides, FiOS is bundled with Verizon Online, with its onerous rules and likelihood of draconian censorship in the mid-term future.)
Still, I think it's premature to count out cable technology. Hybrid Fiber-Coax is an evolutionary path to bring optical fiber to the home. A decade ago, it was first being rolled out with maybe 1000 homes per node (optical transition node, where a strand of fiber turned to coax) and up to three analog coax amplifiers on the coax side. Modern builds have maybe 50-100 homes/node and no amplifiers. Thus far fewer users share the same capacity. DOCSIS 3.0, now being tested (CableLabs is very strict on compatibility certification), uses more than one 6 MHz TV channel at a time in order to boost download speeds. And while upstream is still a bottleneck, DOSCIS 2.0 tripled upstream efficiency over the original cable modems; as each DOCSIS 1.x modem is phased out, overall capacity can increase. There are also tricks for boosting upstream on a point basis by using the spectrum above 900 MHz as well as below 42 MHz, while cable companies can also just drop off fiber at a location that really needs it (not a house, but a business or multiple-dwelling-unit site).
Next glitch: The protocols themselves. TCP/IP is from the 1970s, and while it's amazing how far it's gotten, it is really not designed for today's applications. IPv6 is the wrong approach -- tastes crappy, more filling. We really need an all-new protocol stack; it's not obvious how to phase it in though, or get consensus on a replacement. Remember TCP/IP happened because the government financed it for its own internal use (ARPAnet) and Berkeley produced open source code for it, so it became a de facto standard for multivendor corporate networks too. (This during the 1980s when OSI was supposed to be the standard, and most companies used their vendors' proprietary network technologies like DECnet, IPX, SNA and Wangnet.)
Plus there's the business issue: It's hard to make money providing Internet service. The early public ISPs were subsidized by the 1990s stock bubble. Telco/cable duopolies are potentially profitable (actually, telcos may still be losing money at it, though cable does better) but pure ISPs have a tricky time meeting demand with the kind of prices people want. Since there is usually no price feedback, users have no incentive to not do things that cost their ISP a lot of money (streaming HDTV, lots of big DVD downloads, etc., especially from distant sources). ISPs prefer the proverbial little old lady who just uses the computer to check email and stock prices a few times a week.;-)
France is an example of how different public policy decisions produce different outcomes.
France is pursuing, roughly, the public policy that the US adopted in the mid-1990s: Unbundle the local loop, permit competitive interconnection, encourage competition for services over the incumbent's old wire. That was, in fact, the gist of the Telecom Act of 1996.
In 2001, the Cheney-Rove regime's new FCC executed an about-face. They decided that the Bells were to be the winners, And their competitors were not to be. Furthermore, the Bells saw the Internet as the real enemy, not local telephone competitors per se, so they were allowed to execute their strategy to knock off the ISPs while replacing it with their own marginal substitutes. The last stage, which has not yet happened, is to remove "neutrality" from their networks, replacing Internet access with a set of "broadband services" of their own, like kickback-selected shopping, censored "news", and pay-per-view "media" access. That could never happen with real competition. The FCC's excuse is that there's cable, and a duopoly is "enough" competition, especially with the imaginary "third pipe" that never really appears in any useful way.
France, in contrast, stayed the course. There are multiple ISPs sharing the old FT wire. So advances in DSL technology meant advances in available speeds, and reductions in DSLAM prices and backbone ISP rates meant reductions in DSL charges. It's not exactly peaches and cream for FT, but it's great for the economy as a whole.
Nate at Ars Technica is being either an ignoramus or an arse, let's be blunt. He doesn't know jack about DPI. I can tell, because I do know... What Nate did is talk to two vendors who sell sort-of-deep packet inspection. Basically, they sell traffic shaping. While that's a function that DPI can be used for, it's only the easy tip of the DPI iceberg. Traffic shaping can be done with much less "deep" inspection than many boxes can perform, and really is adequate with lower-level shaping. I don't mind selling different qualities of service, for an open fee; I object to reading the payload of packets and doing something with my private data, be it assigning bandwidth, blocking it, or saving it for their commercial or other use.
Nate did not, for instance, watch Rod Randall's 2005 IEC presentation, which featured the tag line http://www.iec.org/online/iforums/iec_3/choose.asp . Randall's portfolio includes Bytemobile, which acquired Proquent's DPI box. It does a lot more than Nate talked about. It can go deep inside the payload of the layer 7 protocol and figure out what's going on. In 2002, when I got the Pitch from them (my NDA is up), it ran at 600 Mbps. The key market was mobile players -- they were already allowed to sell "walled garden" data services, and this was a very big wall.
For instance, one application is to monitor for email traffic (POP and SMTP). It can then log and create charging records for every email message that passes on the wire. Not that uses the ISP's server, but that goes on the wire. The pitch -- Randall makes this in his show -- is that wireless providers sell SMS for about a dime a message, and email by kilobyte is tons cheaper, so they should charge a dime for each email. VoIP competes with their phone calls, so it should be blocked or at least billed by the call.
But it gets worse. AT&T has made noise about charging for the value of ecommerce transactions. So if you make an online purchase, they'd get a fee for using their wire. Hell, Visa already does, for using their card, so AT&T wants to get their cut too, just for using their wire.
And it gets worse. They can decide what web sites are okay and which ones aren't. Others have already mentioned the Great Firewall of China. DPI lets its user tilt performance, so, for instance, Fox News gets better results than CNN, or Hollywood Fred's web site gets better performance than Barack's, John's, or Hillary's. This is all legal today for ISPs to do.
And it gets worse. Since DPI detects applications, it can block any new application -- leaving innovation in the hands of the phone companies who control the wire. After all, if it doesn't recognize the application, it must go to the lowest category, either blocked or relegated to what Randall calls "hobo class". Think modem speed, on a noisy line.
I do suggest reading Data Foundry's comments; author Scott McCollough is one of the best communications lawyers out there. He notes that the Ts and Cs of many "broadband" services give the wire owner the ownership rights on packets passing over their wire. No privacy -- so if you're a lawyer, you technically have waived your lawyer-client privilege by using their network! DPI makes this practical -- they can monitor emails for certain keywords, addresses, etc., even if it's not using their servers.
DPI is the tool for replacing Internet access with a "broadband" data service that is more like 1982's Compuserve, which charged by the hour and surcharged by the minute based on what application you ran (CB Simulator, email, etc.). It will happen if current (as of 2006) US rules, which kick independent ISPs off of ILEC DSL networks, are retained. It cannot happen if open competition for ISP services is restored, because the public wouldn't buy such a service if there were a choice. That's why the Bells got their buddies at the FCC to remove common carrier status from the telephone company networks.
Not only would it not work, but recall nitrous oxide's other chemical properties.
It's a nitrogen compound. Lots of explosive potential. Indeed it can be made by carefully heating ammonium nitrate (see McVeigh, Timothy). But if you apply too much heat, the nitrous oxide can blow up too (see Oklahoma City). How you'd get that stuff to survive a bullet-ride intact is a bit of a mystery to me.
Thanks for bringing up his point about auctions, and money. Yes, Kneuer's view was that the 700 MHz auction would simultaneously a) solve the problem, if there is one, and b) raise $$$ for the government, but b was more important than a. This goes to the way FCC auctions work. In the 1995-1996 PCS auctions, there were spectrum caps in place, limiting how much any one buyer could have. This guaranteed multiple "winners". Since the old 800 MHz cellular licenses were 25 MHz and the big PCS A and B licenses were 30 MHz, no one could hold both in the same market -- that would be 55 MHz, and the cap was 45. This made it possible for Sprint to get its almost-nationwide footprint, and made the old AT&T Wireless (bought from McCaw, which had a few cities) almost a national player.
Under the Rethugs, the cap was lifted. This allows Verizon Wireless and ex-Cingular (ATTM) to outbid any new players for new spectrum. It's worth more to those incumbents to keep others off the air (help maintain pricing) than those frequencies are worth to a new entrant. In the 2006 AWS auction, with no caps, Verizon bought out huge amounts of spectrum, which they need almost as much as Libya needs more sand. SpectrumCo (now d/b/a Pivot), mostly owned by the top cable chains, was the only big new entrant, and they're just adding the fourth component (wireless) for their "quadruple play" against VZ and ATT. In the Kneuer view, this is ideal, because bidding-to-bank as VZ is doing raises the total auction revenue for the government. The value of the spectrum to the public? Totally irrelevant. It's Michael Quill politics: The Public Be Damned.
Summary: Kneuer makes a total idiot of himself, but remains generally calm. He is reciting Cheney-Rove talking points, not actually discussing the issue in any meaningful way. He declares American broadband policy to be a success. He also sets up a straw man argument, that any kind of network neutrality rule would be regulating the "rates, terms and conditions" of Internet access. And he simply assumes that regulating "rates, terms and conditions" (a phrase he repeats over and over) is Bad. This is to be taken on faith, and when the crowd doesn't get it his way (because they're not members of the Orthodox Chicago School of Economics Church of Untrammeled Monopoly Power), he just repeats himself.
He has to leave for the airport by the end of his talk. I wish the taxi had followed his model of deregulation. "Me and my boy Tiny here gotta inspect yer luggage. We have to take care of it, you know, so nothing happens between here and the airport. Hmmm, nice computer you have. You wouldn't want that to fall and have an accident. Let's see, that'll be $100. for safe passage. And gee, your plane leaves in an hour and a half. You do want to make that plane, right? That'll be a $50 fee for rapid delivery. And no, don't get off the taxi, because Tiny and I are going to Deliver this stuff, whether it's to you or not. We gotta pay for this nice taxi, you know. It ain't cheap maintaining a 1994 Plymouth on these streets." Yep, that's what he wants, the transport operator to take a cut of the goods. To (his term) "encourage investment".
If somebody has to develop in-house software, they don't want to have to re-invent the wheel. They want to concentrate on the unique needs of their employer. So open source provides a huge code base to work from, rather than start from scratch or depend on the behavior of closed-source proprietary systems. The goal is to get the job done, not to sell the code, so sharing code (GPL culture), or taking it from a gift culture (BSD), simplifies the job, with no conflicts of interest.
Bear in mind that the Supreme Court has not approved software patents at all.
The existence of software patents goes back to a Court of Appeals-level ruling which allowed patents in the case of machinery (patentable) that included software, as much new equipment (seen the specs on a new car lately?) does. That sort of makes sense. But it was taken to mean that a general-purpose computer running software is such a machine, so software patents are written with language that mentions that it is running on a computer. Without running on a computer, it's more obviously not patentable.
This goes well beyond the spirit of the original ruling, but the USPTO takes the money and approves pretty much anything that comes before it, apparently assuming that the courts exist to strike down patents. This leaves us with the Supreme Court to make the final ruling.
In the recent Teleflex case, which struck down the Court of Appeals' previous standard for obviousness (which was very hard to meet; the new standard of obviousness is more, uh, obvious), the Court ruling actually stated that they have not decided the issue of whether or not software can be patented. It was an explicit clue that the issue is open, and ruling was in effect a dope-slap for the Court of Appeals for the DC Circuit, which had been the patent trolls' friend for years. Microsoft knows this, and as a result the powder in their patent arsenal is looking rather damp.
It's not clear what role he will really have. These "strategic" positions may be important, or they may be what we used to call "special projects". That was the term used at a certain large company I once worked for... when a manager was relieved of his duty. These senior-level guys don't get fired. It never happens. Their "special project" typically means being quietly invited to find a new job elsewhere.
Novell's headquarters hasn't been in Utah for several years now. After the merger with Cambridge Technology Partners, the combined firm set up its official HQ at the latter's Waltham, MA location.
It is true that presidential candidate W. Mitt Romney has built a Mormon Temple (the only one northeast of Maryland; a temple is much bigger than a normal church) near his house in Belmont, a town adjacent to Waltham. But other than Mitt and his many kids, there aren't a lot of Mormons near Novell HQ.
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There's a big difference between "official content" (government-owned material) and political activity. It is already illegal for a member of Congress or of the Administration to conduct politics from their government office. Political office holders have separate locations for "campaign offices". What Capuano was talking about was the posting of official content on non-government web sites, like YouTube.
Non-official communications, like blogging, is not impacted by this at all. There is no attack on freedom of speech.
Chicagoboyz is a right wing site that is looking to discredit Pelosi, even if it means lying about what the leadership has planned.
Worse than that. Yes, it does adjust QoS, but it's also for billing.
I'm very familiar with DPI; I have gotten the nondisclosed (since expired; it's been a long time!) pitch from a leading vendor. And it showed up on the Internet anyway in the form of a keynote address given at a 2005 IEC conference by vulture capitalist Rod Randall, whose portfolio company is heavy into DPI and bought that vendor. His key phrase was "don't get Skyped" -- DPI can block VoIP.
The idea is that they can look past the headers of the application layer, right into the user data, and scrute out what you're doing. Then they can block the traffic, pass it, give it QoS, or generate a billing record.
DPI is widely deployed on mobile data networks today. Read their terms of service: Most are very limiting. They can enforce with DPI (and block encrypted packets if need be). The DPI pitch notes that SMS is much more expensive than email, so you can use it to track emails sent and bill for them, even if they don't touch that network's servers.
In the real world that's called wiretapping, but on the internet it's legal. DPI goes way, way beyond web-visit-tracking like what Phorm is doing. It totally destroys the open Internet. The entire network neutrality thing is really about DPI; people just don't all know it yet.
The 700 MHz spectrum is indeed interesting; it's next to cellular 800 MHz, and does penetrate buildings better.
However, now that the FCC auction is over, you can forget about anything good coming of it in most areas. Verizon bought the biggest share of licenses, ATT the second-largest share; between them, they have pretty much every major license in the top markets. Their main interest seems to be keeping away competitors: A newcomer might challenge them on both price and service. So paying $15M between themselves to keep away newcomers will allow them to charge more -- the "corner the market" value probably being more than $15B. And, more importantly, it lets them maintain extremely tight restrictions on what applications can be run on their networks (usually limited by contract and deep packet inspection to email and web browsing). BTW, the "open" requirement on the C-block means that any vendor's device can be used on the network, but Google's request to require it to be open to any application was not made part of the rules. So you can have any web browser you want.
This is a really stupid proposal. It is like the lottery, which promises big payoffs but is really a tax on people who are bad at math. Most people lose. If there were mega-prizes for science, then people would have to decide whether to go for the big prize, knowing that there's a >99% chance of getting zilch, or doing something more likely to pay the bills. Do we want to turn science, normally a cooperative exercise, into a casino game?
On the other hand this idea will go over well among the flat earth crowd. They don't do science, but they think high-stakes prizes are the only way to get out of the trailer park.
No, he was right -- Linux sucks as a desktop system. Good server system, bad desktop system.
;-) And the apps it brings are aimed at a certain type of user. Not the same as the Windows audience.
Not that I haven't been trying and hoping for better since, uh, Yggdrasil came out in 1993 or so. It's not as if I haven't tried a LOT of distros. Trouble is, THEY'RE ALL LINUX. And Linux is not just a "free" OS, it's Unix. And Unix's the uber-geek OS, written by programmers for programmers. (chmod octal bitmaps? Right.) Powerful but not intended to be easy. More of a boys' club "seekrit password" approach -- no wonder nobody has time to join the Masons and learn their boys' club secrets any more!
So to make a long story short,
- Linux has poor driver support (because Linus hates blobs, so many vendors don't cooperate, and the unstable ABI breaks drivers) so lots of desktop iron doesn't work in various distros, even if it works on other distros. For instance no distro works all of the peripherals on my laptop, but individual distros work different ones. Just no mix-and-match, because drivers aren't portable as in Windows.
- Linux apps have poor GUI consistency. Often opening the GUI brings up defaults instead of current settings, even losing current (working) ones when that should show you current settings. And some GUIs are just dialog boxes to put in unexplained text parameters (-j013 -T3),a sin Windows developers NEVER do. Linux setup still ends up (way too often) being about editing dot files in vi. Compare GRASS (Linux/Unix) with MapInfo (Windows), for instance. Help? man pages are a grad student puzzle: Provide no examples, and not a shred more information than necessary, formatted for an LA-36 DECwriter.
- Linux apps are rarely complete. The last 20% takes 80% of the time, after all, and free software developers get bored. Others copy the easy stuff, do some vanity work, call it a new project, and leave it incomplete.
- Linux weenies (including too many Slashdoters) are largely insufferable. Ask for help and you're likely to get insulted, or told to just write your own code, or decipher the source. Users are not coders. But Linus wrote Linux for coders to have fun with. I don't object to their fun. But I need a system that lets me be productive, and my work is not writing Linux code! There are more users like me than there are programmers.
- Windows XP doesn't suck much! Hell, the system I'm on now has been up, I think, over a month, and I really should take it down to install some patches. Some MS apps (IE, OE) really do suck, and invite security problems, but I don't use them. The kernel's not bad at all, nor is the GUI, the print subsystem (far better than Linux), the sound subsystem (far better than Linux), or the networking (different issues from Linux', but pretty stable if you're careful). Plus laptops get good power conrol/sleep/hibernate support. And the truth is, writing code for users, vs. writing for people like yourself (programmers), is an art, which both Apple and Microsoft have learned (okay, MS copies Apple), but which simply doesn't interest the Free Software community too much (except for some application groups like Mozilla, but they had a head start).
- Too many important desktop apps aren't on Linux. Real users often need specific vertical-market apps, which usually go only to Windows. The tyranny of market share, to be sure, but a motivating factor for real users. Server software developers, in contrast, often think Linux first, or assume it's necessary.
I'm a huge cheapskate and would love to use Linux. I actually PAID MORE for Mandrive Powerpack for a family member than I paid for Windows. But it's not suitable for my day-to-day use, even though it's still my favorite distro. Windows seems like a daft choice for most servers, but Linux is at least two years away from being ready for the destktop -- and so it has been for 15 years.
If you knew New Hampshire, you wouldn't ask about blacker voters... the equivalent cultural divide, what's left of it, is more like French vs. English.
But I do not think that in this case Diebold is responsible. I am rather familiar with the state and could pretty much predict the outcome, once the pattern was seen. Clinton did best in cities with a conservative cultural heritage -- white-ethnic mill towns and places where working-class Massachusetts white voters have moved to. Manchester, Nashua, and Salem are good examples. Think Dunkin' Donuts places. Obama did best in places with more of a Starbucks cultural bent, including white-collar cities like Concord, Keene and Portsmouth and the western side of the state. Hand counting is done in the smaller towns, which are mostly Obama places. Actually, a lot of those towns are mainly Republican (McCain) places, but the Democrats there are more Obama fans.
Standard passports are already coming through with RFID. They can be read from up to 60 feet away. True, the standard government-issue reader has a much shorter range, but 60 feet has been demonostrated. The bad guys (those who set off bombs when Americans go by the trap, for instance) know how to do that. The new passport will probably be readable for a block or so, if an airport reader can go 20 feet.
Verizon's main interest in the 700 MHz auction is to keep it from spawning major new competitors, especially ones with a different business model, particularly ones that rhyme with "kugel".
There's been some discussion of LTE vs. UMB. LTE comes from the GSM world, and UMB from the CDMA world, but they're more similar than alike, and not at all like GSM *or* CDMA. LTE and UMB are based on OFDMA technology, more akin to mobile WiMAX. So it'll be a "forklift upgrade" for Verizon, unlike the CDMA-2000 transition. The GSM world's 3G technology is WCDMA. Since it's a forklift upgrade, it has not caught on very much; the GSM players are mostly stretching old-fashioned 2G GSM and will jump to LTE.
Puffery is puffery. Let's set the record straight.
The Internet is all about shared resources. Between any two j-random users, there are typically 15-30 hops, all shared.
DSL is an unshared resource from the subscriber to the DSLAM. Then there's a link from the DSLAM to the upstream router. THAT is shared, as is everything upstream. I've personally worked on DSLAMs that had a single T1 (1.5 Mbps) feeding over 90 customers. It worked well enough.
Cable is a shared resource all the way. It usually has about 40 Mbps downstream and 5 to 30 Mbps upstream. Because of the way cable channels were set up in the US (FCC rule), upstream bandwidth is very scarce, so cable companies are pretty parsimonious with it. But they've been reducing the number of subscribers per node, so the net capacity one hop away is typically no worse than DSL. It just moves the bottleneck a bit closer to the subscriber. In practice, the actual cable segment rarely blocks anything; the limit is either in the cable modem's rate limiter (what plan did you pay for?) or upstream (the rest of the way). Cable technology is evolving and cable companies are gradually increasing the amount of fiber optics in their networks.
FiOS is a shared resource too. It just starts with a lot more capacity in the shared link. But then it can still hit the very same blockages one hop away, same as with DSL. Think of a fire hose feeding a garden hose. FiOS is a firehose, but the Internet is often a garden hose, and Verizon.net itself is often the limit. I know people who've done side-by-side comparisons (even have both) and don't see FiOS being better than Comcast in practice.
That's a clever but totally wrong answer.
Judaism and Islam are to Christianity as McDonalds are to Hinduism -- both have cows.
Judaism is a national religion, aimed at one people alone. It is based on its own set of law (behavior, not faith; in this case called Torah), and does not actually require any Faith (though it offers plenty of opportunities for those who want it). Its scripture is in Hebrew and subject to much diversity of interpretation. There is no concern about an afterlife -- it's all about this one.
Islam is a catholic (small-c, meaning intended for all) religion. It is based on its own set of law (Koran), and is again not about Faith per se. Its scripture is in Arabic and has some diversity of interpretation. It's about both this life and the afterlife, but mostly the former.
Christianity is a catholic religion. It is based on Faith per se. Its goal is to achieve a proper afterlife -- it's based on Hellenic death cults, with elements of Hebrew scripture "interpreted" rather creatively. Of course they think they understand the "Old Testament" but they generally mine it to find evidence of their obsessions. There is much diversity of interpretation among the many Christian sects, little within most.
All three respect Abraham, but very, very differently.
Actually, they very well might fire him for having an affair with a subordinate. That is usually seen as an explicit violation of company rules, and, in business, is often seen as a serious violation. It may, for instance, lead to favoritism, and influence promotions or management decisions. Or it can be seen as somewhat coercive. I'm pretty sure the Pentagon takes it seriously too, among all levels of the military. Bonking a peer or someone outside of your chain of command is one thing; bonking down the chain is something else entirely.
They're not liable because a different federal law (ECPA) explicitly protects ISPs from responsibility for things posted by their subscribers. That is somewhat similar to protection granted to common carriers, but it's separate, and does not make ISPs common carriers.
FiOS uses a technology called Passive Optical Network (PON), which means that one strand of fiber is divided passively among up to 32 subscribers. There's one box that does 4:1 and one that does 8:1 between the subscriber and the optical terminal. It's not terribly flexible; they have to guess what the ultimate penetration might be and then lay out enough to get there, with splitters all over the place up on the poles.
When someone subscribes, they run a drop fiber to the home and mount an Optical Network Terminal (ONT) on the side of the house. THAT marks a subscriber. The stuff on the pole doesn't; that merely marks a "home passed", a place where somebody has the ability to become a subscriber.
I do know someone who has both FiOS and cable modem service. He's a well-known ubergeek, and can afford both; it gives him redundancy and the ability to compare the two. A cable executive might even want a second link to his house, to see what the competition's up to.
I tried out the beta, to see how it looks. I am a hard-core paid-version Eudora user, and have found nothing that comes close to the real thing.
Basically, it's Thunderbird. It just has a Eudora label. It does however snarf the Eudora icon from the desktop, and make itself default mailer, so be forewarned.
It finds existing Thunderbird mail folders and settings, not Eudora's, and acts like the Bird. I have multiple POP servers, and by default it puts their mail into separate folders, not the way Eudora handles it. It also lacks certain Eudora features that distinguish it from other programs. It doesn't have a "delete from server" setting per message (nice for killing spam). It doesn't seem to have Eudora-style labels. It doesn't have lots of folder windows open.
I hope those gaps get filled in; I may end up using my trusty Eudora 7 (which btw has great search features) for a long time to come.
> Not that I'm disagreeing with you, but do you have any links to sources that explain how this is due to the Cheney-Rove regime?
It was a series of FCC decisions. You can follow the history on their web site, How this links to the regime: The FCC is appointed, technically, by the President. Three of the seats can belong to one party; the minority party gets two. So after Bush was appointed, a couple of holdover commissioners resigned early and a couple of seats opened up. The minority votes generally are suggested by the House and Senate leadership. Bush appointed:
1) Michael Powell. Son of Colin, but not half as sharp, he was a lawyer with good party creds and a big inherited name, so he got the chairmanship. He really liked the Bells, but he also liked gadgets and wireless hacks.
2) Kathleen Abernathy. Proof that they still believe in slavery, her job was to echo Powell 100% of the time.
3) Kevin Martin. Husband of Dick Cheney's personal adjutant Cathy, he and Powell hated each other, though both were pro-Bell; he lacked Powell's interest in supporting technology industries at all, other than Bell suppliers.
4) Michael Copps. One of the two Democrats, the Michigander was close to House party leaders and very close to the National Council of Catholic Bishops and while pro-competition in general, he also joined the bluenose chorus for censorship.
5) Jonathan Adelstein. A Democrat from South Dakota appointed while Tom Daschle, IIRC his former boss, still was in the Senate.
Powell did a few things quickly. He clarified/changed the rules on CLEC reciprocal compensation, so they didn't get much money for handling ISPs any more. That hurt dial-up. He revoked a rule requiring the unbundling of remote-terminal DSL, making many suburban homes off-limits to competitive DSL providers. And in 2003, the Big One, the Triennial Review, wherein he substantially reduced how much had to be unbundled to competitive providers. He also initiated a proceeding -- which at the time seemed wild-ass outrageous and impassible -- to revoke the 1980 Computer II decision, which had flat-out made the Internet possible by requiring phone companies to provide "basic" service to others on the same grounds they provided it to their own affiliated "enhanced" services (like ISPs).
After Powell left, Martin (who replaced Abernathy with his own slave, Debbie Tate) further clamped down on competition, and finally approved the revocation of Computer II and its related common carriage obligations in general. That started the "network neutrality" debate, since Computer II had previously assured it. He has heel-dragged on unlicensed wireless enhancements. And he's furthered the Powell agenda to reduce the number of wireless carriers, allowing and even encouraging Verizon and (now called) ATT to buy their competitors.
These are White House loyalist appointees with very close ties to Dick, not independent agents, even though technically it's an independent agency.
For something as important today as the Internet, it's surprisingly fragile and primitive. It's amazing we've gotten this far; it's not clear that "more of the same" can happen.
;-)
One obvious problem, at least in the United States, is the "last mile" or if you prefer "first mile" problem. In maybe half of homes it's a cable/ILEC (old monopoly phone company) duopoly. Most of the rest can get cable or telco DSL. A fair share can't get either yet. FCC statistics are intentionally deceptive about this, counting ZIP codes that have even one "broadband" subscriber as being served, even if most of the area isn't. And their 200 kbps downstream definition of "broadband" is pathetic.
DSL is a mid-life kicker for old copper. Passive Optical Network-style fiber, as in FiOS, is also questionable as a long-term goal; like ADSL, it too is highly assymetric, and it's really too expensive. (I think Verizon is doing it mainly for political show, and will slow down. Besides, FiOS is bundled with Verizon Online, with its onerous rules and likelihood of draconian censorship in the mid-term future.)
Still, I think it's premature to count out cable technology. Hybrid Fiber-Coax is an evolutionary path to bring optical fiber to the home. A decade ago, it was first being rolled out with maybe 1000 homes per node (optical transition node, where a strand of fiber turned to coax) and up to three analog coax amplifiers on the coax side. Modern builds have maybe 50-100 homes/node and no amplifiers. Thus far fewer users share the same capacity. DOCSIS 3.0, now being tested (CableLabs is very strict on compatibility certification), uses more than one 6 MHz TV channel at a time in order to boost download speeds. And while upstream is still a bottleneck, DOSCIS 2.0 tripled upstream efficiency over the original cable modems; as each DOCSIS 1.x modem is phased out, overall capacity can increase. There are also tricks for boosting upstream on a point basis by using the spectrum above 900 MHz as well as below 42 MHz, while cable companies can also just drop off fiber at a location that really needs it (not a house, but a business or multiple-dwelling-unit site).
Next glitch: The protocols themselves. TCP/IP is from the 1970s, and while it's amazing how far it's gotten, it is really not designed for today's applications. IPv6 is the wrong approach -- tastes crappy, more filling. We really need an all-new protocol stack; it's not obvious how to phase it in though, or get consensus on a replacement. Remember TCP/IP happened because the government financed it for its own internal use (ARPAnet) and Berkeley produced open source code for it, so it became a de facto standard for multivendor corporate networks too. (This during the 1980s when OSI was supposed to be the standard, and most companies used their vendors' proprietary network technologies like DECnet, IPX, SNA and Wangnet.)
Plus there's the business issue: It's hard to make money providing Internet service. The early public ISPs were subsidized by the 1990s stock bubble. Telco/cable duopolies are potentially profitable (actually, telcos may still be losing money at it, though cable does better) but pure ISPs have a tricky time meeting demand with the kind of prices people want. Since there is usually no price feedback, users have no incentive to not do things that cost their ISP a lot of money (streaming HDTV, lots of big DVD downloads, etc., especially from distant sources). ISPs prefer the proverbial little old lady who just uses the computer to check email and stock prices a few times a week.
France is an example of how different public policy decisions produce different outcomes.
France is pursuing, roughly, the public policy that the US adopted in the mid-1990s: Unbundle the local loop, permit competitive interconnection, encourage competition for services over the incumbent's old wire. That was, in fact, the gist of the Telecom Act of 1996.
In 2001, the Cheney-Rove regime's new FCC executed an about-face. They decided that the Bells were to be the winners, And their competitors were not to be. Furthermore, the Bells saw the Internet as the real enemy, not local telephone competitors per se, so they were allowed to execute their strategy to knock off the ISPs while replacing it with their own marginal substitutes. The last stage, which has not yet happened, is to remove "neutrality" from their networks, replacing Internet access with a set of "broadband services" of their own, like kickback-selected shopping, censored "news", and pay-per-view "media" access. That could never happen with real competition. The FCC's excuse is that there's cable, and a duopoly is "enough" competition, especially with the imaginary "third pipe" that never really appears in any useful way.
France, in contrast, stayed the course. There are multiple ISPs sharing the old FT wire. So advances in DSL technology meant advances in available speeds, and reductions in DSLAM prices and backbone ISP rates meant reductions in DSL charges. It's not exactly peaches and cream for FT, but it's great for the economy as a whole.
Nate at Ars Technica is being either an ignoramus or an arse, let's be blunt. He doesn't know jack about DPI. I can tell, because I do know... What Nate did is talk to two vendors who sell sort-of-deep packet inspection. Basically, they sell traffic shaping. While that's a function that DPI can be used for, it's only the easy tip of the DPI iceberg. Traffic shaping can be done with much less "deep" inspection than many boxes can perform, and really is adequate with lower-level shaping. I don't mind selling different qualities of service, for an open fee; I object to reading the payload of packets and doing something with my private data, be it assigning bandwidth, blocking it, or saving it for their commercial or other use.
p . Randall's portfolio includes Bytemobile, which acquired Proquent's DPI box. It does a lot more than Nate talked about. It can go deep inside the payload of the layer 7 protocol and figure out what's going on. In 2002, when I got the Pitch from them (my NDA is up), it ran at 600 Mbps. The key market was mobile players -- they were already allowed to sell "walled garden" data services, and this was a very big wall.
Nate did not, for instance, watch Rod Randall's 2005 IEC presentation, which featured the tag line http://www.iec.org/online/iforums/iec_3/choose.as
For instance, one application is to monitor for email traffic (POP and SMTP). It can then log and create charging records for every email message that passes on the wire. Not that uses the ISP's server, but that goes on the wire. The pitch -- Randall makes this in his show -- is that wireless providers sell SMS for about a dime a message, and email by kilobyte is tons cheaper, so they should charge a dime for each email. VoIP competes with their phone calls, so it should be blocked or at least billed by the call.
But it gets worse. AT&T has made noise about charging for the value of ecommerce transactions. So if you make an online purchase, they'd get a fee for using their wire. Hell, Visa already does, for using their card, so AT&T wants to get their cut too, just for using their wire.
And it gets worse. They can decide what web sites are okay and which ones aren't. Others have already mentioned the Great Firewall of China. DPI lets its user tilt performance, so, for instance, Fox News gets better results than CNN, or Hollywood Fred's web site gets better performance than Barack's, John's, or Hillary's. This is all legal today for ISPs to do.
And it gets worse. Since DPI detects applications, it can block any new application -- leaving innovation in the hands of the phone companies who control the wire. After all, if it doesn't recognize the application, it must go to the lowest category, either blocked or relegated to what Randall calls "hobo class". Think modem speed, on a noisy line.
I do suggest reading Data Foundry's comments; author Scott McCollough is one of the best communications lawyers out there. He notes that the Ts and Cs of many "broadband" services give the wire owner the ownership rights on packets passing over their wire. No privacy -- so if you're a lawyer, you technically have waived your lawyer-client privilege by using their network! DPI makes this practical -- they can monitor emails for certain keywords, addresses, etc., even if it's not using their servers.
DPI is the tool for replacing Internet access with a "broadband" data service that is more like 1982's Compuserve, which charged by the hour and surcharged by the minute based on what application you ran (CB Simulator, email, etc.). It will happen if current (as of 2006) US rules, which kick independent ISPs off of ILEC DSL networks, are retained. It cannot happen if open competition for ISP services is restored, because the public wouldn't buy such a service if there were a choice. That's why the Bells got their buddies at the FCC to remove common carrier status from the telephone company networks.
Not only would it not work, but recall nitrous oxide's other chemical properties.
It's a nitrogen compound. Lots of explosive potential. Indeed it can be made by carefully heating ammonium nitrate (see McVeigh, Timothy). But if you apply too much heat, the nitrous oxide can blow up too (see Oklahoma City). How you'd get that stuff to survive a bullet-ride intact is a bit of a mystery to me.
Thanks for bringing up his point about auctions, and money. Yes, Kneuer's view was that the 700 MHz auction would simultaneously a) solve the problem, if there is one, and b) raise $$$ for the government, but b was more important than a. This goes to the way FCC auctions work. In the 1995-1996 PCS auctions, there were spectrum caps in place, limiting how much any one buyer could have. This guaranteed multiple "winners". Since the old 800 MHz cellular licenses were 25 MHz and the big PCS A and B licenses were 30 MHz, no one could hold both in the same market -- that would be 55 MHz, and the cap was 45. This made it possible for Sprint to get its almost-nationwide footprint, and made the old AT&T Wireless (bought from McCaw, which had a few cities) almost a national player.
Under the Rethugs, the cap was lifted. This allows Verizon Wireless and ex-Cingular (ATTM) to outbid any new players for new spectrum. It's worth more to those incumbents to keep others off the air (help maintain pricing) than those frequencies are worth to a new entrant. In the 2006 AWS auction, with no caps, Verizon bought out huge amounts of spectrum, which they need almost as much as Libya needs more sand. SpectrumCo (now d/b/a Pivot), mostly owned by the top cable chains, was the only big new entrant, and they're just adding the fourth component (wireless) for their "quadruple play" against VZ and ATT. In the Kneuer view, this is ideal, because bidding-to-bank as VZ is doing raises the total auction revenue for the government. The value of the spectrum to the public? Totally irrelevant. It's Michael Quill politics: The Public Be Damned.
Why take somebody else's word for it when you can watch the actual talk? Thanks to conference organizer Kevin Werbach:
k neuer-on-spectrum-policy-and-network-neutrality/
http://conversationhub.com/2007/06/27/video-john-
Summary: Kneuer makes a total idiot of himself, but remains generally calm. He is reciting Cheney-Rove talking points, not actually discussing the issue in any meaningful way. He declares American broadband policy to be a success. He also sets up a straw man argument, that any kind of network neutrality rule would be regulating the "rates, terms and conditions" of Internet access. And he simply assumes that regulating "rates, terms and conditions" (a phrase he repeats over and over) is Bad. This is to be taken on faith, and when the crowd doesn't get it his way (because they're not members of the Orthodox Chicago School of Economics Church of Untrammeled Monopoly Power), he just repeats himself.
He has to leave for the airport by the end of his talk. I wish the taxi had followed his model of deregulation. "Me and my boy Tiny here gotta inspect yer luggage. We have to take care of it, you know, so nothing happens between here and the airport. Hmmm, nice computer you have. You wouldn't want that to fall and have an accident. Let's see, that'll be $100. for safe passage. And gee, your plane leaves in an hour and a half. You do want to make that plane, right? That'll be a $50 fee for rapid delivery. And no, don't get off the taxi, because Tiny and I are going to Deliver this stuff, whether it's to you or not. We gotta pay for this nice taxi, you know. It ain't cheap maintaining a 1994 Plymouth on these streets." Yep, that's what he wants, the transport operator to take a cut of the goods. To (his term) "encourage investment".
And that's precisely where open source shines.
If somebody has to develop in-house software, they don't want to have to re-invent the wheel. They want to concentrate on the unique needs of their employer. So open source provides a huge code base to work from, rather than start from scratch or depend on the behavior of closed-source proprietary systems. The goal is to get the job done, not to sell the code, so sharing code (GPL culture), or taking it from a gift culture (BSD), simplifies the job, with no conflicts of interest.
Bear in mind that the Supreme Court has not approved software patents at all.
The existence of software patents goes back to a Court of Appeals-level ruling which allowed patents in the case of machinery (patentable) that included software, as much new equipment (seen the specs on a new car lately?) does. That sort of makes sense. But it was taken to mean that a general-purpose computer running software is such a machine, so software patents are written with language that mentions that it is running on a computer. Without running on a computer, it's more obviously not patentable.
This goes well beyond the spirit of the original ruling, but the USPTO takes the money and approves pretty much anything that comes before it, apparently assuming that the courts exist to strike down patents. This leaves us with the Supreme Court to make the final ruling.
In the recent Teleflex case, which struck down the Court of Appeals' previous standard for obviousness (which was very hard to meet; the new standard of obviousness is more, uh, obvious), the Court ruling actually stated that they have not decided the issue of whether or not software can be patented. It was an explicit clue that the issue is open, and ruling was in effect a dope-slap for the Court of Appeals for the DC Circuit, which had been the patent trolls' friend for years. Microsoft knows this, and as a result the powder in their patent arsenal is looking rather damp.
It's not clear what role he will really have. These "strategic" positions may be important, or they may be what we used to call "special projects". That was the term used at a certain large company I once worked for... when a manager was relieved of his duty. These senior-level guys don't get fired. It never happens. Their "special project" typically means being quietly invited to find a new job elsewhere.
Novell's headquarters hasn't been in Utah for several years now. After the merger with Cambridge Technology Partners, the combined firm set up its official HQ at the latter's Waltham, MA location.
It is true that presidential candidate W. Mitt Romney has built a Mormon Temple (the only one northeast of Maryland; a temple is much bigger than a normal church) near his house in Belmont, a town adjacent to Waltham. But other than Mitt and his many kids, there aren't a lot of Mormons near Novell HQ.