If the "popular consensus" turns against me (as with the black men lynched by white mobs), then you're right, my rights do come out of the barrel of a gun, or by whatever other means I can defend them. Sometimes the gov't does this for me, but other times not.
1. Cable companies do not have monopolies in most areas today. Competitive franchises are being awarding in cities across America. Ameritech (the midwest phone company) has a couple hundred competitive franchises I think. 21st Century is wiring the Chicago lakefront with competitive cable. The days of monopoly are soon over.
2. "Cable" is not the service. TV channels, internet, phone, and perhaps more broadly entertainment, are. Cable companies have competition in all areas. Look at the millions of DBS dishes sold recently. Once the (gov't imposed) restrictions on carrying local channels is lift, I expect that market to explode.
Sure, AOL has to pay for access (at a legally mandated discount rate). So what? Cable modems flop, AOL cancels their service as customer switch to other connection methods, then AT&T is still left holding the bag. AOL wants the best of both worlds. They want to be in a position to get access to cable if that technology takes off, without any of the downside risk if it flops.
It's a good thing we don't have pure democracy. No matter what the "majority" might think, it still can't vote to simply sieze someone's property. That's why we are a republic. The rights of the minority are protected against the tyranny of the majority - sometimes.
Did it ever occur to you that cable is so lame precisely because it is so heavily regulated by the gov't? Gov't regulated monopolies and gov't provided services are routinely bashed for their inefficiency (the Post Office, anyone?) The answer is usually more competition, not more regulation.
It's good that few cities now give their cable companies an exclusive franchise. Competitors can come in. DSL competes with cable modems. DBS with cable TV. That's what will improve service, not regulation.
The government built the roads, so they make the rules. And if you wanna drive on them, you've got to let anyone who wants to park in your garage and sleep in your house. That's about what your "logic" boils to.
This is just the latest in a long series of postings that are highly favorable to the AOL position in the cable broadband open access area. I've traded emails with various slashdot folks who always deny they have a bias, but isn't it odd that they so rarely post anything that actually supports AT&T in this one?
How about this guys:
-- The existing cable infrastructure is obsolete and needs serious upgrades to make it work with high speed data.
-- This upgrade will cost many billions and will entail tremendous amounts of risk. Cable modems and cable telephony could fall flat in favor of DSL or some future technology, leaving AT&T holding the bag on billions in invested capital.
-- AOL is a multi-mega billion company that could easily afford to throw a couple bil AT&T's way in order to help pay for this and have some skin in the game. How much you wanna bet AT&T would be glad for some investment like this and would open their lines in return
-- Telephone companies have been forced to resell local loops, but those same companies are also getting let into the LD business are part of the deal. AT&T would get nothing in return for having to open up its line.
I sure wish slashdot would get their tongues out of AOL's butt.
It's truly possible this company is a joke: a company set up to expose the fallacies that underly the net stock phenomenon. It's easy to say that LinuxOne has no product and no history of operations, but heck, neither does Transmeta:-) And Red Hat itself is a dinky little company, with little hope of earning enough money to justify it's mega market cap anytime in the forseeable future. What's Red Hat's FMV? Almost $6 billion. Their annual revenue - not profits here, mind you, but revenue - is only $17 million based on annualizing their third quarter. This just does not add up. Yet everyone is applauding Red Hat and bashing LinuxOne.
I'm not saying anything bad about Red Hat as a company, which I admire in many ways. But let's face it, they are young, they aren't making money, their revenues are small, and their market cap is unbelievable.
If Red Hat is worth $6 billion, would you think almost any Linux company is worth a few hundred mil? There's no reason not to cash in, really.
It's too bad for your theory that the percentage of people with serious disabilities who are working has actually declined slightly since the passage of the ADA.
The idea behind the ADA is a good one, the implementation flawed. The gov't classifies over 40 million people as disabled, which is clearly a joke and which makes light of people with real disabilities: the paralyzed, those with missing limbs, the blind and deaf.
As a compassionate society, we should want to care for the less fortunate. As it works out, the ADA has mostly been for whiny people without bona fide disabilities suing over their sex addiction and stuff. While few of these prevail at trial, the cost of litigation is substantial. Often it's cheaper to settle.
And let's face it, money spent by private businesses to meet ADA mandates is a tax. If the gov't had passed a multi-billion income tax increase to fund wheelchair ramps, elevators, etc, there would have been a revolt. But by simply mandating that businesses pay for it, people never knew what hit them. We should be honest about the real costs this program to the taxpayer.
My solution:
- Restrict ADA to bona fide disabilities - Make sure it is presented as charity, not as a matter of civil rights. - Apply some realistic benefit/cost tests - Focus on the actual needs of the disabled, versus BS technical and legal requirements.
I just want to point out that if you use ad banners (a thoroughly dispicable practice, IMO) on your personal site, it might indeed count as "commercial". I link to Amazon through their associates program. Am I commerical too? Who knows.
There is definitely a legal interpretation that the ABM treaty is no longer in effect due to the fact that the other party to the treaty - the Soviet Union - no longer exists. In fact, President Clinton negotiated a series of amendments to the ABM treaty. (These are not related to the current negotiations over the US deploying a limited missle defense). These amendments explicitly name Russia as the successor state to the Soviet Union for the ABM treaty. However, Clinton has not submitted this treaty to the Senate because he knows it will not be ratified. When you hear things about Congress delaying votes on the CTBT, various appointees, UN dues, etc. remember that part of that is because Clinton has refused to submit various treaties - such as the ABM modifications and the so-called Kyoto protocol - that he has signed and is implementing via executive order to the Senate for official ratification. He knows full well that the Senate, for example, voted 95-0 in a non-binding vote to reject the Kyoto treaty. Ah, the games people play.
I'm sure this will get moderated to flamebait, but I really believe it so...
While there is certainly a lot of problems with the US Congress, at least they are elected, unlikely the incompetent, power hungry bozos that run ICANN. Esther Dyson? You're killing me. To say nothing of the possible illegality of their working with the White House to lobby for more funds. I'd much rather have a democratic body running things than some nameless, faceless bureaucratic cabal.
I seem to recall that B&N developed a plan for an internet bookstore and deliberately didn't implement it. They didn't think it would be profitable. But more importantly they thought that if someone did come in and start an online bookstore that was successful, B&N could simply implement their plan and crush the rival with their superior brand name and financial resources. Obviously they were wrong about that. Though the fact that their site is simply a lame ripoff of amazon surely doesn't help.
This story may be apocryphal and I don't remember where I heard it.
Intelligent writers have been talking about this for years. One I particularly like is Steve Talbott, who publishes the NETFUTURE newsletter. He was also the article of a very well regarded book on the subject called "The Future Does Not Compute". I disagree with much of what he says (particularly his New Age nature worshiping), but it's always a good read. Especially important are the writings on computers in education.
The following essays he's written should give you a feel for the flavor of NETFUTURE:
Re:Good, but too derivative of Mars
on
Antarctica
·
· Score: 1
I liked Antartica, rereading it right after I finished reading it the first time, but I found too many plot elements derivative of the Mars Trilogy (which I also reread right after finishing it).
One reviewer (Evelyn C. Leeper) referred to the book as "White Mars".
Interestingly, there is a forthcoming book called White Mars written by Brian Aldiss, which is supposedly his response to the Robinson Mars trilogy.
Threats of cyberterrorism are so overblown it is ridiculous. It should come as no surpise that the people most pushing this are military types angling for more funding and more powers of everyone (no strong crypto, tap everything, etc) under the guise of stopping "terrorists". If you want to read the truth, then stop by and visit the Crypt Newsletter.
BTW: Speaking of Jane's, there's a nice reference to "Jane's Market Forces" in Ken MacLeod's latest "The Sky Road". Another great in-joke that is one reason MacLeod is damn near the best thing going is science fiction today.
Free lancers often would sell the same piece - such as a travel feature - to several papers. If they no longer own the rights, they won't be able to do this.
The dumb dunces that filed this lawsuit may have won the battle, but they lost the war. Major newspapers like the Chicago Tribune no longer accept freelance work unless copyright is assigned to the paper. That's right, you have to sign over your work lock, stock, and barrel to them. Expect this to become common practice in the industry before long.
There are two components to a "loss": an accounting net loss and a cash net loss. A company might lose money for accounting purposes, but still not be losing that much cash on the operating side. (For example, because much of their loss is caused by non-cash compensation expense, or amortization of goodwill).
Now a company like Red Hat is probably burning cash at an amazing rate in order to build up their business. To keep this up, they need to get more money through financing activities such as selling bonds or stock. Hence the IPO. They tell the investors that they plan to use the money to invest in the business, which at some future date will result in incoming cash flows from operations that more than make up the invested cash and/or allow them to service their debt. So long as they can keep getting people to invest money in their company, they can keep running losses.
Unfortunately, with many corporate buyers, if it's not an officially supported platform, they won't touch it. The MIS types aren't interested in hearing about binary compatibility. They want the OS name on the side of the box, on the web site, etc.
Slashdot Mirror
If the "popular consensus" turns against me (as with the black men lynched by white mobs), then you're right, my rights do come out of the barrel of a gun, or by whatever other means I can defend them. Sometimes the gov't does this for me, but other times not.
The company I work for serves telephone and Internet customers in one state from switching facilities in another. We aren't a long distance carrier.
Two things:
1. Cable companies do not have monopolies in most areas today. Competitive franchises are being awarding in cities across America. Ameritech (the midwest phone company) has a couple hundred competitive franchises I think. 21st Century is wiring the Chicago lakefront with competitive cable. The days of monopoly are soon over.
2. "Cable" is not the service. TV channels, internet, phone, and perhaps more broadly entertainment, are. Cable companies have competition in all areas. Look at the millions of DBS dishes sold recently. Once the (gov't imposed) restrictions on carrying local channels is lift, I expect that market to explode.
Sure, AOL has to pay for access (at a legally mandated discount rate). So what? Cable modems flop, AOL cancels their service as customer switch to other connection methods, then AT&T is still left holding the bag. AOL wants the best of both worlds. They want to be in a position to get access to cable if that technology takes off, without any of the downside risk if it flops.
It's a good thing we don't have pure democracy. No matter what the "majority" might think, it still can't vote to simply sieze someone's property. That's why we are a republic. The rights of the minority are protected against the tyranny of the majority - sometimes.
Why do you think that Internet connections cannot cross a state line without a long distance carrier license? This is clearly false.
Did it ever occur to you that cable is so lame precisely because it is so heavily regulated by the gov't? Gov't regulated monopolies and gov't provided services are routinely bashed for their inefficiency (the Post Office, anyone?) The answer is usually more competition, not more regulation.
It's good that few cities now give their cable companies an exclusive franchise. Competitors can come in. DSL competes with cable modems. DBS with cable TV. That's what will improve service, not regulation.
The government built the roads, so they make the rules. And if you wanna drive on them, you've got to let anyone who wants to park in your garage and sleep in your house. That's about what your "logic" boils to.
This is just the latest in a long series of postings that are highly favorable to the AOL position in the cable broadband open access area. I've traded emails with various slashdot folks who always deny they have a bias, but isn't it odd that they so rarely post anything that actually supports AT&T in this one?
How about this guys:
-- The existing cable infrastructure is obsolete and needs serious upgrades to make it work with high speed data.
-- This upgrade will cost many billions and will entail tremendous amounts of risk. Cable modems and cable telephony could fall flat in favor of DSL or some future technology, leaving AT&T holding the bag on billions in invested capital.
-- AOL is a multi-mega billion company that could easily afford to throw a couple bil AT&T's way in order to help pay for this and have some skin in the game. How much you wanna bet AT&T would be glad for some investment like this and would open their lines in return
-- Telephone companies have been forced to resell local loops, but those same companies are also getting let into the LD business are part of the deal. AT&T would get nothing in return for having to open up its line.
I sure wish slashdot would get their tongues out of AOL's butt.
It's truly possible this company is a joke: a company set up to expose the fallacies that underly the net stock phenomenon. It's easy to say that LinuxOne has no product and no history of operations, but heck, neither does Transmeta :-) And Red Hat itself is a dinky little company, with little hope of earning enough money to justify it's mega market cap anytime in the forseeable future. What's Red Hat's FMV? Almost $6 billion. Their annual revenue - not profits here, mind you, but revenue - is only $17 million based on annualizing their third quarter. This just does not add up. Yet everyone is applauding Red Hat and bashing LinuxOne.
I'm not saying anything bad about Red Hat as a company, which I admire in many ways. But let's face it, they are young, they aren't making money, their revenues are small, and their market cap is unbelievable.
If Red Hat is worth $6 billion, would you think almost any Linux company is worth a few hundred mil? There's no reason not to cash in, really.
It's too bad for your theory that the percentage of people with serious disabilities who are working has actually declined slightly since the passage of the ADA.
The idea behind the ADA is a good one, the implementation flawed. The gov't classifies over 40 million people as disabled, which is clearly a joke and which makes light of people with real disabilities: the paralyzed, those with missing limbs, the blind and deaf.
As a compassionate society, we should want to care for the less fortunate. As it works out, the ADA has mostly been for whiny people without bona fide disabilities suing over their sex addiction and stuff. While few of these prevail at trial, the cost of litigation is substantial. Often it's cheaper to settle.
And let's face it, money spent by private businesses to meet ADA mandates is a tax. If the gov't had passed a multi-billion income tax increase to fund wheelchair ramps, elevators, etc, there would have been a revolt. But by simply mandating that businesses pay for it, people never knew what hit them. We should be honest about the real costs this program to the taxpayer.
My solution:
- Restrict ADA to bona fide disabilities
- Make sure it is presented as charity, not as a matter of civil rights.
- Apply some realistic benefit/cost tests
- Focus on the actual needs of the disabled, versus BS technical and legal requirements.
The blind suffer and so are beyond criticism. Anyone who does so much be a heartless bastard or a bigot. Blah, blah, blah.
And yes, my web site is just about the most blind friendly one there can be. 99% of it is just black text on a white background.
I just want to point out that if you use ad banners (a thoroughly dispicable practice, IMO) on your personal site, it might indeed count as "commercial". I link to Amazon through their associates program. Am I commerical too? Who knows.
It's sitting on my filing cabinet, unread as of yet, but I've seen a couple people on the Internet criticize it as not up to Egan's normal standard.
There is definitely a legal interpretation that the ABM treaty is no longer in effect due to the fact that the other party to the treaty - the Soviet Union - no longer exists. In fact, President Clinton negotiated a series of amendments to the ABM treaty. (These are not related to the current negotiations over the US deploying a limited missle defense). These amendments explicitly name Russia as the successor state to the Soviet Union for the ABM treaty. However, Clinton has not submitted this treaty to the Senate because he knows it will not be ratified. When you hear things about Congress delaying votes on the CTBT, various appointees, UN dues, etc. remember that part of that is because Clinton has refused to submit various treaties - such as the ABM modifications and the so-called Kyoto protocol - that he has signed and is implementing via executive order to the Senate for official ratification. He knows full well that the Senate, for example, voted 95-0 in a non-binding vote to reject the Kyoto treaty. Ah, the games people play.
Here's a link to my review.
I'm sure this will get moderated to flamebait, but I really believe it so...
While there is certainly a lot of problems with the US Congress, at least they are elected, unlikely the incompetent, power hungry bozos that run ICANN. Esther Dyson? You're killing me. To say nothing of the possible illegality of their working with the White House to lobby for more funds. I'd much rather have a democratic body running things than some nameless, faceless bureaucratic cabal.
I seem to recall that B&N developed a plan for an internet bookstore and deliberately didn't implement it. They didn't think it would be profitable. But more importantly they thought that if someone did come in and start an online bookstore that was successful, B&N could simply implement their plan and crush the rival with their superior brand name and financial resources. Obviously they were wrong about that. Though the fact that their site is simply a lame ripoff of amazon surely doesn't help.
This story may be apocryphal and I don't remember where I heard it.
Intelligent writers have been talking about this for years. One I particularly like is Steve Talbott, who publishes the NETFUTURE newsletter. He was also the article of a very well regarded book on the subject called "The Future Does Not Compute". I disagree with much of what he says (particularly his New Age nature worshiping), but it's always a good read. Especially important are the writings on computers in education.
The following essays he's written should give you a feel for the flavor of NETFUTURE:
Why Timesaving Devices Don't Save Time
and
The Principle of Technological Deceit
One reviewer (Evelyn C. Leeper) referred to the book as "White Mars".
Interestingly, there is a forthcoming book called White Mars written by Brian Aldiss, which is supposedly his response to the Robinson Mars trilogy.
Threats of cyberterrorism are so overblown it is ridiculous. It should come as no surpise that the people most pushing this are military types angling for more funding and more powers of everyone (no strong crypto, tap everything, etc) under the guise of stopping "terrorists". If you want to read the truth, then stop by and visit the Crypt Newsletter.
BTW: Speaking of Jane's, there's a nice reference to "Jane's Market Forces" in Ken MacLeod's latest "The Sky Road". Another great in-joke that is one reason MacLeod is damn near the best thing going is science fiction today.
Free lancers often would sell the same piece - such as a travel feature - to several papers. If they no longer own the rights, they won't be able to do this.
The dumb dunces that filed this lawsuit may have won the battle, but they lost the war. Major newspapers like the Chicago Tribune no longer accept freelance work unless copyright is assigned to the paper. That's right, you have to sign over your work lock, stock, and barrel to them. Expect this to become common practice in the industry before long.
There are two components to a "loss": an accounting net loss and a cash net loss. A company might lose money for accounting purposes, but still not be losing that much cash on the operating side. (For example, because much of their loss is caused by non-cash compensation expense, or amortization of goodwill).
Now a company like Red Hat is probably burning cash at an amazing rate in order to build up their business. To keep this up, they need to get more money through financing activities such as selling bonds or stock. Hence the IPO. They tell the investors that they plan to use the money to invest in the business, which at some future date will result in incoming cash flows from operations that more than make up the invested cash and/or allow them to service their debt. So long as they can keep getting people to invest money in their company, they can keep running losses.
Unfortunately, with many corporate buyers, if it's not an officially supported platform, they won't touch it. The MIS types aren't interested in hearing about binary compatibility. They want the OS name on the side of the box, on the web site, etc.