But an options contract is about the FUTURE sale value of an item.. What's hard to believe was that the price WAS so low today, not that if you bought it at the posted price, and sold it slightly under "yesterday's" sale price, you'd still make a profit...
with the growing number of faster and faster transactions, timestamps get less and less trustable as the clock error on each computer becomes faulty (clock drift of 1 microsecond or less CAN make a difference between cancelling or not cancelling a transaction with the number of transactions and such)
It would be however, illegal for knoppix to put such a file on a cd they redistributed, which was the main point. it's legal for YOU, as the owner of ntfs, to copy this driver to another medium for YOUR use. It's NOT however, ok to distribute this file with gpl code. As for NTFSDOS pro, the software is marketed as a file-recovery tool, which makes it useful to Microsoft(as it might prevent users migrating servers off Windows because such a crucial tool was not available and they lost files...), and the company develops win32 software(which means they most likely licensed the ntfs.sys driver, or paid enough microsoft tax not to be bothered by microsoft lawyers unless they make a BLATANT mistake) knoppix could distribute the reaktos part, but not the nfts.sys driver, and that would mean knoppix would have to get a way to read this on your computer. Either you would copy it to floppy, add the file to the knoppix iso yourself before burning, or it would be available on a mounted(not-ntfs) partition. But in short, while YOU can do something, doesn't mean you can always ask someone to do it for you... In this case, knoppix cannot distribute the ntfs.sys except to people who already have it... And since versioning is also an issue(there are several versions of ntfs) they would also need to distribute several versions to satisfy everyone. FIRE, LNX-BBC and other "rescue" linux distros would be a better fit for the ntfs.sys driver inclusion in many cases.
I doubt reiserfs invented this concept, but reiserfs is a released software that has been designed, among other things, for database-in-the-filesystem-through-plugins. It's such a small world
Since the poster wants to make backups, why is he investigating drive imaging software?
He's looking for bare metal backup recovery... Legato Backup exec might do the trick Depending if your ntfs system uses encryption, a good knoppix cd might be all that's needed however
I'm not sure about the partitionable part, but IBM has had a directory server in several products for some time now. It also has hooks for db2 IIRC. Don't remember links to notes however.
I'd like to qualify your "why it was secure" with a "Just what the heck are you trying to !@# secure?" "Oh, THAT!" "Well you're going to need 132112300000 things to go right" The key/cert pair management, etc... are complex issues dependant on the situation. Now most embedded systems tend to be used by even more diverse clients than other systems, and have "hands off" requirements, as well as storage requirements to make openssl,gnutls,etc... run for their collective mommies. Most embedded systems use small, flash-based devices for storage. Considering some of those factors, here's a few points: 1) writing often isn't such a good idea, flash has rewrite-contraints built into it... 2) writing a lot of data isn't that a good idea, as flash isn't as big as HD yet, and more expensive per byte. 3) ssl/tls is a great idea, but a lot of it is meant to secure Internet traffic, not all embedded devices are connected to the great Net, and using different trust roots means you have to specify them in the flash somehow. Keep in mind that the end-user might have to do so, or some other integrator higher up in the vendor-chain. 4) If you keep 3 in mind, and your vendor decides not to issue your device its own signing keys to minimize traffic(say it issues each device the public keys to validate transactions, but hardwires signing to a key trusted to a certificate it keeps off your network. Now imagine those keypairs are compromised, you would have an embedded system hardwired to trust a compromised key... Talk about a scary notion... 5) Security in ssl/tls is based on the computational complexity of the math involved, and computing power is usually at a premium in embedded systems(your watch would have a hard time cracking a ssl transaction of more than a few kbytes, trust me) 6) going back to the "What are you trying to secure?" question, most embedded systems designers don't always know what the ssl will be used to secure, so their assumptions may or may not be valid in a particular case, and that may hamper security...
Since the customer is so focused on spending money, an OSS solution wouldn't even be noticed, even if it's just as capable as the commercial solution.
An OSS community wouldn't be noticed, an OSS solution presented by an integrator or other consultant who is paid for the privilege would. Not paying for software doesn't mean you don't pay for knowledge, that's the worse kind of FUD.
I think the biggest problem to Kylix's adoption is that it competes squarely with vim and emacs. Most Linux ahem "zealots" use those as IDE's. The language of Kylix was never that important(notice how JBuilder for linux is in the same boat as kylix in terms of releases), the platform however was. And trying to sell something to people who already have religious wars over something might be misconstrued as a bad business plan
Indeed, dynamic dns providers(like dtdns.com) can provide the forward dns part of the equation. On that note, enom as a registrar has dynamic dns capability so it might save some people some steps.
reverse dns is a lot tougher.
Economic theory says you agree with their policy if you buy their products in sizable numbers(under capitalism: if they make money, they're right).
Hopefully, they'll realize they're wrong before they fade away fast enough to take away from the public domain whatever innovations they promised by filing their patents.
Of course, the "intent" of the law was to provide monetary incentive for people to innovate and give back to the commons. Yet intent is never protected by the laws...
However I'm sure a case would be made that the limited monopoly granted by the patent expires at some date defined by law, and "the people" owns everything at that point... Pity "the people" can't be recognized as a debtor of companies that file patents and bankrupt less than (I believe in Canada it's 17 years, except for pharmaceuticals) 17 years after filing the patent. Of course, "the people" would take money away from "the employees of the late firm" and be bad guys.
--
Sometimes it doesn't pay to get out of your bed of ignorance in the morning.
I too object to "not changing the laws because that's the way they've always been", I just don't see a greater advantage in changing the laws without a clear advantage to changing them. The reason is depressingly simple: cost.
Cost in time and money for people to know them.
The minor ones that impact daily routines are the ones people will object to know them. How many people do you know change passwords regularly because they've been thaught to? How many people remember the law of 20 or 30 years ago, and can't understand how it's changed? How long is it taking for our southern neighbours to adjust to say, a change to the metric system? Now try this on a 2-5 year scale.
I can't think of a better reason to improve the laws(right now so few people are involved in the laws that affect them, that the laws are only improved for the lawyers, but that's not because the laws change or not), and stabilize them. Then only change them again when the circumstances that underlie them change as well... But we go back to the current system, in all but name.
I certainly think we should have each our turn participating in the legislature though. Something like jury duty, choose x random number of people(err joe and jane six-pack), call them judiciary advisors, and have them review the laws that go to parliament, or better yet, have them write and collate the laws that the other legislative boards approve.
Give exemptions for new parents or something, and new entrepreneurs(not taking care of your company when it starts can kill it), but apart from that, only take the same excuses for non-participation as for jury duty.
In the process, our laws might represent us a little bit more, and our lawyers just a little less. We might also know more about laws(have a legal secretary in each committee so they can research relevant bits of jurisprudence, etc... but no other law professionals around.)
To use an analogy, in countries where military service is compulsory, everyone knows HOW to use a gun.
In this system, everyone would know what is involved in picking a law, writing it, and getting it to pass.
Why change speed limits often? If you go to someplace only once, and are used to moving faster, you might miss the sign and get a ticket... What's the advantage, more ticket money?
If what you want to change is the responsiveness of the system you need two things:
1) new blood in the system, the people in place have worked hard using the system, and have every interest in working it for extra perqs
2) get new input from outside the system, say if more computer professionals were involved in software laws, we might have very different ones.
I'm not a lawyer myself, but the local law here doesn't state anything about legalese being a condition of law.
An ambiguous law would be stricken down however, as that would be contrary to the interests of the whole judicial system as a whole.
However, law being like most fields, if you say something in an unambiguous manner to a lawyer, you're using legalese.
Just like you can't speak about object-oriented programming clearly, without making distinctions between say multiple and single inheritance(and the layman would say "Inheritance?").
--
Any unambiguous specialized discourse is undistinguishable from Jargon.
kerberos might be a bit admin-intensive(and you mentioned you were trying to convince your admin),
therefore I recommend you look at http://srp.stanford.edu/ which might do what you require
It even has windows-based binary client versions of ftp for those that require them.
By the way, as far as I know, America is the only country whose citzens pledge allegience to a FLAG.
Like previous posts in this thread... The flag represents the country, it's MADE for that... You could pledge to the seal of the united states too, since that's also pretty unique(that eagle in a circle?)
That's why it's a diplomatic incident when a new flag is made that looks too much like another country's flag(that's probably why new flags are pretty rare). You couldn't pledge to the constitution per se, because to do that, you'd have to hold the constitution to pledge it(and anyone could substitute any other document in a book cover that says "the consitution of the united states"). We pledge to unique, recognizable, preferrably transportable symbols... I doubt you're the only republic who pledges that way actually. Perhaps anyone from a non-monarchic country would care to comment? (When Quebec seperates, we'll see how that goes, but until then, mum from me about pledging on snow owls)
I have a dumb question though, with all the vitriol that this thread and the court case generated, why not just figure out (by yourselves) what it means to be an American(yes that means you have to agree with a reasonable majority, as defined by your consitution, so on and so forth), and pledge to be Americans, and respect what it means... All this thread underscored was that a lot of Americans either forgot, or disagree about the meaning of the pledge and/or how important/mandatory it was... Being that grade school is where natives learn about their countries in most school systems, I can see such a pledge as being useful(some americans might learn something from the pledge after all) why not just make it something you can agree on(heck it might help Others understand better what you are about... and less like big noisy neighbours who like to practice shotgun in the direction of other people's houses without their consent...)
Just my 0.02CAD
While your example is very interesting testimony, I`d like to point out that the article talks about using.11g wireless and voip for Intra-organisation telephony, you`re talking about the use of the technology to reach extra-organisation people, unless you do have coworkers in NZ, DE, JP, etc...
I do find it interesting how there is a lot of people talking about how VOIP is going to affect telephony, and telecom regulation... When this is a great example of resistance to exploitation(intra-organisation mobile comms are certainly the best cash cows for most telecom companies). None of the articles I`ve seen before this one mentions this aspect
excellent answer to the parent post, I'd just add that his dynamic system has one glaring point where it might cause much harm.
Laws aren't static just because the conservatives like them... They are also static because we`re supposed to KNOW all of them(ignorance of the law is no defense, etc...) They exist to delineate the border between my face, and the next person`s foot, from a legal standpoint. If the other person can get the law changed, before I can remove my face, I`d rather live in a country with laws that aren`t more fluid than the laws of physics...
Apparently now emitting an idea, is a crime. There goes protected speech, and thoughtcrime is a reality. George Orwell was just 20 years too early. From there there is not that far to outlawing voting for the opposition. USA citizens should have brought their government to heel when they had the chance(the constitution gave them that power) but now they would have to collectively each commit a crime(a terrorist crime no less) to exert their own constitutional rights... From there, how far to outlawing a repeal of a politician? I guess Arnold's election scared all the politicians with thoughts of "he ain't one of us"...
You do realize that depending on the "Threat" for some people your remedy is worse(i.e. more trouble) than the actual threat, unless it actually leads to litigation...
On a completely different perspective, lots of "security" has been focused against defending against "something" but until you identify that something, you ain't that much further ahead. Case in point being internal security threats(actual employees abusing actual access required by their jobs to do unauthorized things... That's also a part of security. Most people who like firewalls forget how important WHO you are defending against is also just as important... Not just what their ip is, but their skills, mindset and goals...
Several ipv6 numbering schemes come to mind that change only partly, when changing networks. That would be a better example, I think, than the mobile ip techniques you mention.
of course, it would be great if we could tunnel phone numbers, but I predict phone companies would charge more for a tunnel than for a whole landline.
Their pricing scheme lately has been that since the FCC allows them to charge with less distinction for switch-related fees, they tend to make that as much as possible, the greatest part of any given fee, for new products, a new product made almost entirely of switching, like phone tunneling is, would likely end up extremely expensive
Last I checked, that was a definition of a cartel, all the providers agree to pretend to compete, but the service stays the same, the prices go up, and so do their profits.
You can't really mandate competition in a field with high access requirements(if you, unhappy with phone service, can start a phone company in six months, and get all your friends to switch, THEN the phone companies will actually compete) but I predict you the companies we have now(the ones there for the big bucks) won't be there anymore... You'll get something closer to dial-up isps in most places... A bunch of 10000-or-less customer providers, many of which resell services from an aggregator.
I've some experience of this procedure, and generally it works seamlessly. Furthermore, it seems to stimulate the market (both for the telcos and the handset vendors), rather than damage it.
It surprises me therefore, that the carriers are fighting this so hard...
It doesn't surprise me... As most companies nowadays, anything that gives the customers any kind of leverage against a supplier giving flat-out bad service(or no service at all) "threatens the very existence of the company."
Mostly because most business plans don't include any serious intent to provide "service" just cash in for equipment needs. Have you ever taken notice of how much employee churn there is in a call center?
That's usually because any employee not willing to work overtime for free gets a black mark in their file in such places...
In fact, I wonder if the fact that cell number portability requires training for call center agents isn't the reason the companies object to this so strongly...
Most employees get treated like replaceable drones... And for those who outsource, the first outsourcer that gets trained on any new procedures, can charge more...
Oddly enough, Microsoft DOES provide its source code(the shared source thing), just under unfavorable enough terms they might not qualify for bidding in Massachusetts.
Is that a bad thing? Does a government dictating the conditions of a particular set of bids by suppliers new in any way? No, in this case, open source falls under the same criteria as many other bids: inspectability of supplied goods. How is that bad in any way?
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But an options contract is about the FUTURE sale value of an item.. What's hard to believe was that the price WAS so low today, not that if you bought it at the posted price, and sold it slightly under "yesterday's" sale price, you'd still make a profit...
with the growing number of faster and faster transactions, timestamps get less and less trustable as the clock error on each computer becomes faulty (clock drift of 1 microsecond or less CAN make a difference between cancelling or not cancelling a transaction with the number of transactions and such)
It would be however, illegal for knoppix to put such a file on a cd they redistributed, which was the main point.
it's legal for YOU, as the owner of ntfs, to copy this driver to another medium for YOUR use. It's NOT however, ok to distribute this file with gpl code. As for NTFSDOS pro, the software is marketed as a file-recovery tool, which makes it useful to Microsoft(as it might prevent users migrating servers off Windows because such a crucial tool was not available and they lost files...), and the company develops win32 software(which means they most likely licensed the ntfs.sys driver, or paid enough microsoft tax not to be bothered by microsoft lawyers unless they make a BLATANT mistake)
knoppix could distribute the reaktos part, but not the nfts.sys driver, and that would mean knoppix would have to get a way to read this on your computer. Either you would copy it to floppy, add the file to the knoppix iso yourself before burning, or it would be available on a mounted(not-ntfs) partition. But in short, while YOU can do something, doesn't mean you can always ask someone to do it for you... In this case, knoppix cannot distribute the ntfs.sys except to people who already have it... And since versioning is also an issue(there are several versions of ntfs) they would also need to distribute several versions to satisfy everyone.
FIRE, LNX-BBC and other "rescue" linux distros would be a better fit for the ntfs.sys driver inclusion in many cases.
I doubt reiserfs invented this concept, but reiserfs is a released software that has been designed, among other things, for database-in-the-filesystem-through-plugins.
It's such a small world
Since the poster wants to make backups, why is he investigating drive imaging software?
He's looking for bare metal backup recovery...
Legato Backup exec might do the trick
Depending if your ntfs system uses encryption, a good knoppix cd might be all that's needed however
I'm not sure about the partitionable part, but IBM has had a directory server in several products for some time now. It also has hooks for db2 IIRC. Don't remember links to notes however.
I'd like to qualify your "why it was secure" with a "Just what the heck are you trying to !@# secure?" "Oh, THAT!" "Well you're going to need 132112300000 things to go right" The key/cert pair management, etc... are complex issues dependant on the situation. Now most embedded systems tend to be used by even more diverse clients than other systems, and have "hands off" requirements, as well as storage requirements to make openssl,gnutls,etc... run for their collective mommies. Most embedded systems use small, flash-based devices for storage. Considering some of those factors, here's a few points:
1) writing often isn't such a good idea, flash has rewrite-contraints built into it...
2) writing a lot of data isn't that a good idea, as flash isn't as big as HD yet, and more expensive per byte.
3) ssl/tls is a great idea, but a lot of it is meant to secure Internet traffic, not all embedded devices are connected to the great Net, and using different trust roots means you have to specify them in the flash somehow. Keep in mind that the end-user might have to do so, or some other integrator higher up in the vendor-chain.
4) If you keep 3 in mind, and your vendor decides not to issue your device its own signing keys to minimize traffic(say it issues each device the public keys to validate transactions, but hardwires signing to a key trusted to a certificate it keeps off your network. Now imagine those keypairs are compromised, you would have an embedded system hardwired to trust a compromised key... Talk about a scary notion...
5) Security in ssl/tls is based on the computational complexity of the math involved, and computing power is usually at a premium in embedded systems(your watch would have a hard time cracking a ssl transaction of more than a few kbytes, trust me)
6) going back to the "What are you trying to secure?" question, most embedded systems designers don't always know what the ssl will be used to secure, so their assumptions may or may not be valid in a particular case, and that may hamper security...
I think the biggest problem to Kylix's adoption is that it competes squarely with vim and emacs.
Most Linux ahem "zealots" use those as IDE's. The language of Kylix was never that important(notice how JBuilder for linux is in the same boat as kylix in terms of releases), the platform however was. And trying to sell something to people who already have religious wars over something might be misconstrued as a bad business plan
what about pedestrians? wouldn't we need a dashboard and a device too?
Indeed, dynamic dns providers(like dtdns.com) can provide the forward dns part of the equation. On that note, enom as a registrar has dynamic dns capability so it might save some people some steps. reverse dns is a lot tougher.
Economic theory says you agree with their policy if you buy their products in sizable numbers(under capitalism: if they make money, they're right).
Hopefully, they'll realize they're wrong before they fade away fast enough to take away from the public domain whatever innovations they promised by filing their patents.
Of course, the "intent" of the law was to provide monetary incentive for people to innovate and give back to the commons. Yet intent is never protected by the laws...
However I'm sure a case would be made that the limited monopoly granted by the patent expires at some date defined by law, and "the people" owns everything at that point... Pity "the people" can't be recognized as a debtor of companies that file patents and bankrupt less than (I believe in Canada it's 17 years, except for pharmaceuticals) 17 years after filing the patent. Of course, "the people" would take money away from "the employees of the late firm" and be bad guys.
--Sometimes it doesn't pay to get out of your bed of ignorance in the morning.
I too object to "not changing the laws because that's the way they've always been", I just don't see a greater advantage in changing the laws without a clear advantage to changing them. The reason is depressingly simple: cost.
Cost in time and money for people to know them.
The minor ones that impact daily routines are the ones people will object to know them. How many people do you know change passwords regularly because they've been thaught to? How many people remember the law of 20 or 30 years ago, and can't understand how it's changed? How long is it taking for our southern neighbours to adjust to say, a change to the metric system? Now try this on a 2-5 year scale.
I can't think of a better reason to improve the laws(right now so few people are involved in the laws that affect them, that the laws are only improved for the lawyers, but that's not because the laws change or not), and stabilize them. Then only change them again when the circumstances that underlie them change as well...
But we go back to the current system, in all but name.
I certainly think we should have each our turn participating in the legislature though. Something like jury duty, choose x random number of people(err joe and jane six-pack), call them judiciary advisors, and have them review the laws that go to parliament, or better yet, have them write and collate the laws that the other legislative boards approve.
Give exemptions for new parents or something, and new entrepreneurs(not taking care of your company when it starts can kill it), but apart from that, only take the same excuses for non-participation as for jury duty.
In the process, our laws might represent us a little bit more, and our lawyers just a little less. We might also know more about laws(have a legal secretary in each committee so they can research relevant bits of jurisprudence, etc... but no other law professionals around.)
To use an analogy, in countries where military service is compulsory, everyone knows HOW to use a gun.
In this system, everyone would know what is involved in picking a law, writing it, and getting it to pass.
Why change speed limits often? If you go to someplace only once, and are used to moving faster, you might miss the sign and get a ticket... What's the advantage, more ticket money?
If what you want to change is the responsiveness of the system you need two things:
1) new blood in the system, the people in place have worked hard using the system, and have every interest in working it for extra perqs
2) get new input from outside the system, say if more computer professionals were involved in software laws, we might have very different ones.
I'm not a lawyer myself, but the local law here doesn't state anything about legalese being a condition of law.
An ambiguous law would be stricken down however, as that would be contrary to the interests of the whole judicial system as a whole.However, law being like most fields, if you say something in an unambiguous manner to a lawyer, you're using legalese.
Just like you can't speak about object-oriented programming clearly, without making distinctions between say multiple and single inheritance(and the layman would say "Inheritance?").
--Any unambiguous specialized discourse is undistinguishable from Jargon.
kerberos might be a bit admin-intensive(and you mentioned you were trying to convince your admin), therefore I recommend you look at http://srp.stanford.edu/ which might do what you require It even has windows-based binary client versions of ftp for those that require them.
By the way, as far as I know, America is the only country whose citzens pledge allegience to a FLAG.
Like previous posts in this thread... The flag represents the country, it's MADE for that... You could pledge to the seal of the united states too, since that's also pretty unique(that eagle in a circle?)
That's why it's a diplomatic incident when a new flag is made that looks too much like another country's flag(that's probably why new flags are pretty rare). You couldn't pledge to the constitution per se, because to do that, you'd have to hold the constitution to pledge it(and anyone could substitute any other document in a book cover that says "the consitution of the united states"). We pledge to unique, recognizable, preferrably transportable symbols... I doubt you're the only republic who pledges that way actually. Perhaps anyone from a non-monarchic country would care to comment? (When Quebec seperates, we'll see how that goes, but until then, mum from me about pledging on snow owls)
I have a dumb question though, with all the vitriol that this thread and the court case generated, why not just figure out (by yourselves) what it means to be an American(yes that means you have to agree with a reasonable majority, as defined by your consitution, so on and so forth), and pledge to be Americans, and respect what it means... All this thread underscored was that a lot of Americans either forgot, or disagree about the meaning of the pledge and/or how important/mandatory it was... Being that grade school is where natives learn about their countries in most school systems, I can see such a pledge as being useful(some americans might learn something from the pledge after all) why not just make it something you can agree on(heck it might help Others understand better what you are about... and less like big noisy neighbours who like to practice shotgun in the direction of other people's houses without their consent...) Just my 0.02CAD
While your example is very interesting testimony, I`d like to point out that the article talks about using .11g wireless and voip for Intra-organisation telephony, you`re talking about the use of the technology to reach extra-organisation people, unless you do have coworkers in NZ, DE, JP, etc...
I do find it interesting how there is a lot of people talking about how VOIP is going to affect telephony, and telecom regulation... When this is a great example of resistance to exploitation(intra-organisation mobile comms are certainly the best cash cows for most telecom companies). None of the articles I`ve seen before this one mentions this aspect
excellent answer to the parent post, I'd just add that his dynamic system has one glaring point where it might cause much harm. Laws aren't static just because the conservatives like them... They are also static because we`re supposed to KNOW all of them(ignorance of the law is no defense, etc...) They exist to delineate the border between my face, and the next person`s foot, from a legal standpoint. If the other person can get the law changed, before I can remove my face, I`d rather live in a country with laws that aren`t more fluid than the laws of physics...
Apparently now emitting an idea, is a crime. There goes protected speech, and thoughtcrime is a reality. George Orwell was just 20 years too early.
From there there is not that far to outlawing voting for the opposition. USA citizens should have brought their government to heel when they had the chance(the constitution gave them that power) but now they would have to collectively each commit a crime(a terrorist crime no less) to exert their own constitutional rights... From there, how far to outlawing a repeal of a politician? I guess Arnold's election scared all the politicians with thoughts of "he ain't one of us"...
You do realize that depending on the "Threat" for some people your remedy is worse(i.e. more trouble) than the actual threat, unless it actually leads to litigation... On a completely different perspective, lots of "security" has been focused against defending against "something" but until you identify that something, you ain't that much further ahead. Case in point being internal security threats(actual employees abusing actual access required by their jobs to do unauthorized things... That's also a part of security. Most people who like firewalls forget how important WHO you are defending against is also just as important... Not just what their ip is, but their skills, mindset and goals...
Metropolitan areas are getting multiple local carriers now... Think million-plus people...
Several ipv6 numbering schemes come to mind that change only partly, when changing networks. That would be a better example, I think, than the mobile ip techniques you mention.
of course, it would be great if we could tunnel phone numbers, but I predict phone companies would charge more for a tunnel than for a whole landline.
Their pricing scheme lately has been that since the FCC allows them to charge with less distinction for switch-related fees, they tend to make that as much as possible, the greatest part of any given fee, for new products, a new product made almost entirely of switching, like phone tunneling is, would likely end up extremely expensive
Last I checked, that was a definition of a cartel, all the providers agree to pretend to compete, but the service stays the same, the prices go up, and so do their profits. You can't really mandate competition in a field with high access requirements(if you, unhappy with phone service, can start a phone company in six months, and get all your friends to switch, THEN the phone companies will actually compete) but I predict you the companies we have now(the ones there for the big bucks) won't be there anymore... You'll get something closer to dial-up isps in most places... A bunch of 10000-or-less customer providers, many of which resell services from an aggregator.
I've some experience of this procedure, and generally it works seamlessly. Furthermore, it seems to stimulate the market (both for the telcos and the handset vendors), rather than damage it.
It surprises me therefore, that the carriers are fighting this so hard...
It doesn't surprise me... As most companies nowadays, anything that gives the customers any kind of leverage against a supplier giving flat-out bad service(or no service at all) "threatens the very existence of the company."Mostly because most business plans don't include any serious intent to provide "service" just cash in for equipment needs. Have you ever taken notice of how much employee churn there is in a call center?
That's usually because any employee not willing to work overtime for free gets a black mark in their file in such places...
In fact, I wonder if the fact that cell number portability requires training for call center agents isn't the reason the companies object to this so strongly...
Most employees get treated like replaceable drones... And for those who outsource, the first outsourcer that gets trained on any new procedures, can charge more...
Oddly enough, Microsoft DOES provide its source code(the shared source thing), just under unfavorable enough terms they might not qualify for bidding in Massachusetts.
Is that a bad thing? Does a government dictating the conditions of a particular set of bids by suppliers new in any way? No, in this case, open source falls under the same criteria as many other bids: inspectability of supplied goods. How is that bad in any way?