1) the Android set-up doesn't actually use a keyboard: just dots, which you're supposed to join in the same order. 2) I believe that there are patents around the randomising idea.
I'm certainly aware of this issue on my Android phone. The fact that you're supposed to keep your finger on the screen as you join the dots means that there's often a pretty clear track, even if you have clean hands. And you can tell the order in which tracks were made if you have one which crosses over another.
I quite like the technology, but it's good to be reminded of the possible dangers. I'll keep wiping mine once I've logged in.
Seconded: the Google translation is poor, and the original French is clear. It's not talking about 47% of software used by Sony, but by enterprises in France.
Yes, it is illegal, and not just in the UK - this is quite common in Europe, I believe. If you look at the Neuros forum pages, you'll see that they're intending to disable broadcast capability. They may well do this in firmware.
A fair enough point, but (as I'm sure kc8kgu knew), once things are compiled, it becomes much less simple to identify a hacker's signature. A decent compiler will compile all the above examples to the same code. I don't buy "enough flair gets through to the machine language" for short code fragments, I'm afraid. A good optimising compiler is a good obfuscator, too. I wonder if anyone's done any studies on exactly how much personal style you need to exert in order for it to turn up at a) the assembler level or b) the machine code level?
Whatever you think of the politics of the announcement, it was first made public in The Eagle, which is still a local pub in Cambridge, and worth a visit if you're in town. It's a little over-commercialised (it was a major hang-out for USAF folks in WWII, and gets more than its fair share of tourists), but it's still a good pub.
I'd like to suggest that moderation and meta-moderation pages are free. If not, you immediately remove a significant reason for bothering to moderate or meta-moderation. I tend to spend a few minutes a day moderation each day - say 250 days a year. Use up 1/4 of my pages? I don't think so!
If you keep these two functions free, then we can maintain the value added by the community, and people will continue to contribute, because they fill feel that they are benefiting. We currently avoid the tragedy of the commons, because we can all contribute, and all benefit - let's not lose that.
If we want to be even more sophisticated, how about allowing people to trade in a certain amount of karma for a certain number of pages? Maybe 10 karma points = $5? That would encourage people to contribute more intelligently, and add more value.
I've had some commercial dealings around software which had been GPLed, and from my experience in the world out there, OSS licenses really scare companies, both big and small. I believe that the LPGL is a great half-way house, in that it allows people to create software that makes the most of the platform and libraries which are already available, without necessarily "tainting" (this it the word used whenever I've been involved with license discussions) the code that, in the end, the company wants to sell, and make money from. Although I'd like to see more sofware being free, I think that driving the platform will produce more software full stop, and some of it will be free, which is a start.
The LGPL allows commercial activities on a non-commercial platform, and encourages commercial companies to feed back improvements into the LGPLed code which will improve the quality of the platform. Wine is a major project, and if it moves to LGPL, this should help the license, and by extension, the platform, as well as the availability of software. I'd definitely vote "yes".
"...members of Osama bin Laden's Al Qaeda network, posing as computer programmers, were able to gain employment at Microsoft" - so, you can "pose" as a computer programmer, and get to modify M$'s source, can you? You don't actually have to be a programmer?
Also, I liked "According to Desler [an M$ spokesman], Microsoft has rigorous processes in place during the development of Windows to ensure the security and integrity of source code." Well, it's worked so far, hasn't it? Maybe they're just talking about how difficult it is to add intentional bugs. That, I can believe.
The very suggestion that M$ needs help adding "trojans, trapdoors, and bugs in Windows XP," is the laughable bit here.
Elvish is close enough that I can read it based on my knowledge of Anglo-Saxon and Middle English. Having said that, I've got several other languages, too, so they may be swaying me!
Other good background is Malory's "Arthur" (Le Morte D'Arthur?), which is pretty much readable by a modern audience, and is a good romp through most of the Arthurian myths that you know and love - lots of magic, knights, and the rest. Much of the original Arthurian legends can be traced to "Layamon's Brut", which was an early pseudo-history of Britain, and it not easy to read if you're not into Middle English, though there are some good translations of parts of it. Of course, once your Middle English and Anglo-Saxon are up to speed, you'll be able to read Elvish with no problems (it's what Tolkein based the language on).
King's College - Turing's College
on
Looking At Turing
·
· Score: 5, Interesting
I went to King's College Cambridge, where Turing has the computer room named after him, and where, like one of the college's other famous sons, Rupert Brooke, he is certainly remembered, and respected. Cryptonomicon and Turing: The Enigma are both excellent reads, but we should remember the three places where his name really should live on: first, the Turing Test (for AI), second, in the Turing Machine, and third, in the the Church-Turing hypothesis.
Alan wasn't the first scientist to be gay - though he was one of the first high-profile scientists to die at least partly as the result of his sexuality. I'm not sure whether he would have made a good poster child (as our US cousins would put it), but he was a fascinating person, and a great one. He was certainly one of the founders of our community - I wonder how he would feel about it now?
In 1997, there was a legal case about how the Shetland Times was unhappy about the Shetland News linking to its site. I believe that KPMG is a UK-registered company (my browser doesn't render their site either), and although Scottish law has significant differences to English law, I'd be surprised if a court would find in KPMG's favour (should KPMG push the point). The Shetland case was considered a landmark case at the time, and revolved around our old friend, copyright law. As such, it may be that KPMG are trying to make a different point, but I think they're going to have difficulties if they push this one.
My first guess is that XStore didn't do enough due diligence, or if they did, then they ignored what they found out. Even if they did some, it may well be that Microtest is liable - what's scary will be how _much_ they're liable for. This may well turn into a very interesting test case - will XStore have to publish all the code they've changed? Will they have to pay damages? Possibly most worrying for a commercial software company (which they seem to be) is that if they've done their own development (or paid for development in the sense that they bought the product), then the Intellectual Property that they thought they owned may end up having to be made available to everyone. It'll be a very interesting case if someone decides to prosecute.
I'll certainly be buying a copy, as this is a subject that I find very interesting. There are a whole bunch of people out there with skills in running projects - whether they are money-generating or not - who the community could be using better. That's not to blame the community - these people have to put themselves forward, and show how they can add value to a project. They also need to understand how the community, and the community's philosophy, works. I've been flamed before for suggesting that non-coders should be allowed to be involved in OSS projects, with the suggestion that if you're not good enough to code, you're not good enough to be involved. I don't think that this is right - and there are people out there (including me) who have coded, but realise that their skills lie elsewhere, and that the way they can best further the projects that they care about is to offer the skills that they do have. It's not as if we tell the documentation teams that they shouldn't be involved!
So, how do we go about doing this? There are places where projects hang out - sourceforge, for instance - but I'm not sure that they are a good place to look for non-coders. I'd like to see projects who realise that they could use organisational help (wouldn't the code lead like to spend more time coding? Of course they would, in most cases!) looking for help - but I don't know where they should look. Functionality priorisation, tester recruitment, visibility improvement, strategic focus, project communications - all things that at least some projects could probably use.
So - how do we move forward? Maybe people like me need to make it clear how our skills may be able to help important projects, and hope that the people running them can make use of us. Maybe we need our own forum (hmm - maybe not!). I'd love to hear other suggestions.
More information seems to be appearing (or I didn't find it on my original search): there's a technical discussion (pdf) with more information. Seems to be based on compartmentalisation: "The key concept of our trusted operating system is the compartment. Services and applications on the machine are run within separate compartments."
This is the place to go for more information on the product. Quite a lot of technical information, including kernel information. It seems that it's intended to be installed over RedHat in a "layered installation" - diagrams included, as well as performance data.
A search on HP's site yields a training course which has been available for around a month. The name of the product seems to be "HP-LX".
Here are some of the issues listed on the page:
secure administration model
lockdown
process containment (compartmentalization)
file system protection (MAC)
auditing.
So I presume that these will all be central to the new product. It seems fairly sensible - and it will be interesting to find out the details of exactly what they've implemented, and how.
I'll come out with it, then: sometimes they might not feel _good_ enough to contribute code. I was a competent engineer, but never brilliant, and my coding has slipped since I moved into management - I just don't have the time to write much anymore. But I'd like to be more involved, and just because I can't write low-level code at a good enough standard to contribute doesn't mean that I can't review design, features (and sometimes even code) and take an overview, or be involved in other ways.
Again, I think that we should look to involve people outside the tight coding community, and make the most of the skills they (we!) have to offer, if those people _believe_. And I, for one, do.
In the commercial world, you have people who are, to some extent, both inside and outside projects, with little power other than negotiation, and who are often looking not just at technical, but also external issues - Product Management. I'm not saying that we should turn the OSS movement over to middle managers (aargh, run away!), but the role of a Product Manager is an interesting,and often very useful one. Typically, they keep everything together, calm egos, make sure that documentation, testing, engineering, PR and all the other bits get seen to, and have the overall responsibility for making it all happen - getting a release out of the door. Their role is both more and less than project managers, and they typically (in the commercial world) sit on the interface between "customers" and "engineers", taking an overview of what features are most important IRL, etc..
What sprung to my mind when I started thinking about this is that Linus is a very fine Product Manager, in some ways, in that he takes a broader view than just a technical one. He's also a Project Manager, in that he has great technical input (may his guru-ness continue for ever), but he does more than that, too.
So, the question that springs to mind is - what place (if any) is there for Product Manager-type role within OSS projects? Don't forget - and I'll say it again - I'm not advocating handing over OSS to Middle Management. But there are people with good skills out there who maybe don't want to code on the projects that they really care about (maybe it's too deep for them, maybe they haven't got the time, whatever), but have real skills and experience to bring to bear. Can we use them? Should we?
I know that I'm going to be flamed for this post, but I really believe that as we move into the mainstream, we need to look beyond just code, and take a broader view. This is _one_ way - and maybe not even a very good way, but one _suggestion_ of a way as to how we might do that. We believe (I hope) that we can take the best bits of processes and systems, and make a bigger whole than the commercial world tends to - here's one piece we might "borrow". Or maybe not.
Oh, and BTW, yes, I'm a Product Manager. See - I'm "out" now.
I'm an (ex-)techie who's in the third (and final) year of a distance learning MBA from the UK's Open University. For the last 21 months or so, I've been in management - working in Product Management on the interface between the engineers and the real world.
I decided to take an MBA for a number of reasons. Basically, I'd come to the realisation that although I was a competent software engineer, I was never going to excel at it. I was self-taught, and not driven or brilliant enough to make it to the excellence in engineering. I was also getting frustrated with being told "put this in, take this out" by managers who I really didn't reckon had a clue _why_ they were saying what they were saying. So, I took the plunge, and decided to take a broader view - which meant moving into management.
Of course, I could have moved into management without going with an MBA - good software companies are always keen to find people who can talk to techies and customers - but I was very aware that I really didn't have the frameworks to talk to people outside the discipline in which I'd trained. How do marketing people look at the world? How do finance people calculate future gains? What about HR, Operations, Strategy? I'm genuinely interested to make a difference to the business I'm in, and knowing how it works, and how different types of people think it works, can only help.
So, I'm taking an MBA, and I have to say that it's been very useful. I _can_ see the wider picture, but at the same time, I'm still in a position to talk to the tech folks and, I hope, retain their respect. They know that I've been there, and despite their ragging that I've moved into Marketing, at least I can appreciate their point of view, which can be very helpful.
Conclusions? As a "straight techy", I'm not sure how useful an MBA would have been to me, but as a manager who thinks tech, it has been, and continues to be, absolutely invaluable. Think about why you might do it, and what you might gain, and if it makes sense for you, and you have the time and resources to apply yourself, then go for it.
I assume that based on this judgement, van Eck phreaking (as featured in Cryptonomicon, and elsewhere) would also be considered illegal. I'm not up on US law, and don't know what difference there is considered to be between going into someone's home and someone's computer, but using van Eck (which isn't "in development", it's there now) to see what people are doing on their screens would seem to be similar to me. Are there any legal references to van Eck phreaking?
I presume that wiretaps are needed for phone-lines, but is that for speech only, or data as well? Echelon, and all the fun ways of looking at data, can get their information from lots of different places, and this, of course, is only one of them.
I think that what may help change adoption will be people getting used to easy, and dedicated, access to broadband from work. Here in the UK, broadband is being very slow in roll-out as British Telecom controls all the exchanges, and cable is taking its time. But it's been a while since we've had a jump in modem speed, and if broadband can get going before someone thinks of a way of increasing it again, it's got a chance.
Of course, cost needs to come down, too../ters are willing to pay that bit extra, but why should most people bother? I can't see my mother-in-law being interested - she's quite happy to press the "Internet" button, to wait for the strange noises to stop and then send her mail. If there were only a few pounds (dollars) in it, then she'd probably go for broadband, but until then? I think that the early adopters (that's us, people) are going to end up footing the bill for now, which is somewhat different to the modem case, because although we helped bring down the cost of modems by allowing them to become consumer items (and standard in new PCs), it's the infrastructure that we're paying for this time.
Slashdot Mirror
That's 13MB. Stupid spell check.
It's over 13KB: they're clueless. And you can't even move it to the SD card, as it's not Android 2.2 aware.
A couple of issues with this.
1) the Android set-up doesn't actually use a keyboard: just dots, which you're supposed to join in the same order.
2) I believe that there are patents around the randomising idea.
I'm certainly aware of this issue on my Android phone. The fact that you're supposed to keep your finger on the screen as you join the dots means that there's often a pretty clear track, even if you have clean hands. And you can tell the order in which tracks were made if you have one which crosses over another.
I quite like the technology, but it's good to be reminded of the possible dangers. I'll keep wiping mine once I've logged in.
Seconded: the Google translation is poor, and the original French is clear. It's not talking about 47% of software used by Sony, but by enterprises in France.
Yes, it is illegal, and not just in the UK - this is quite common in Europe, I believe. If you look at the Neuros forum pages, you'll see that they're intending to disable broadcast capability. They may well do this in firmware.
A fair enough point, but (as I'm sure kc8kgu knew), once things are compiled, it becomes much less simple to identify a hacker's signature. A decent compiler will compile all the above examples to the same code. I don't buy "enough flair gets through to the machine language" for short code fragments, I'm afraid. A good optimising compiler is a good obfuscator, too. I wonder if anyone's done any studies on exactly how much personal style you need to exert in order for it to turn up at a) the assembler level or b) the machine code level?
USB 2.0 support's coming - and you get a free hardware upgrade if you buy before the 31st of July.
Whatever you think of the politics of the announcement, it was first made public in The Eagle, which is still a local pub in Cambridge, and worth a visit if you're in town. It's a little over-commercialised (it was a major hang-out for USAF folks in WWII, and gets more than its fair share of tourists), but it's still a good pub.
I'd like to suggest that moderation and meta-moderation pages are free. If not, you immediately remove a significant reason for bothering to moderate or meta-moderation. I tend to spend a few minutes a day moderation each day - say 250 days a year. Use up 1/4 of my pages? I don't think so!
If you keep these two functions free, then we can maintain the value added by the community, and people will continue to contribute, because they fill feel that they are benefiting. We currently avoid the tragedy of the commons, because we can all contribute, and all benefit - let's not lose that.
If we want to be even more sophisticated, how about allowing people to trade in a certain amount of karma for a certain number of pages? Maybe 10 karma points = $5? That would encourage people to contribute more intelligently, and add more value.
I've had some commercial dealings around software which had been GPLed, and from my experience in the world out there, OSS licenses really scare companies, both big and small. I believe that the LPGL is a great half-way house, in that it allows people to create software that makes the most of the platform and libraries which are already available, without necessarily "tainting" (this it the word used whenever I've been involved with license discussions) the code that, in the end, the company wants to sell, and make money from. Although I'd like to see more sofware being free, I think that driving the platform will produce more software full stop, and some of it will be free, which is a start.
The LGPL allows commercial activities on a non-commercial platform, and encourages commercial companies to feed back improvements into the LGPLed code which will improve the quality of the platform. Wine is a major project, and if it moves to LGPL, this should help the license, and by extension, the platform, as well as the availability of software. I'd definitely vote "yes".
"...members of Osama bin Laden's Al Qaeda network, posing as computer programmers, were able to gain employment at Microsoft" - so, you can "pose" as a computer programmer, and get to modify M$'s source, can you? You don't actually have to be a programmer?
Also, I liked "According to Desler [an M$ spokesman], Microsoft has rigorous processes in place during the development of Windows to ensure the security and integrity of source code." Well, it's worked so far, hasn't it? Maybe they're just talking about how difficult it is to add intentional bugs. That, I can believe.
The very suggestion that M$ needs help adding "trojans, trapdoors, and bugs in Windows XP," is the laughable bit here.
Elvish is close enough that I can read it based on my knowledge of Anglo-Saxon and Middle English. Having said that, I've got several other languages, too, so they may be swaying me!
Other good background is Malory's "Arthur" (Le Morte D'Arthur?), which is pretty much readable by a modern audience, and is a good romp through most of the Arthurian myths that you know and love - lots of magic, knights, and the rest. Much of the original Arthurian legends can be traced to "Layamon's Brut", which was an early pseudo-history of Britain, and it not easy to read if you're not into Middle English, though there are some good translations of parts of it. Of course, once your Middle English and Anglo-Saxon are up to speed, you'll be able to read Elvish with no problems (it's what Tolkein based the language on).
I went to King's College Cambridge, where Turing has the computer room named after him, and where, like one of the college's other famous sons, Rupert Brooke, he is certainly remembered, and respected. Cryptonomicon and Turing: The Enigma are both excellent reads, but we should remember the three places where his name really should live on: first, the Turing Test (for AI), second, in the Turing Machine, and third, in the the Church-Turing hypothesis.
Alan wasn't the first scientist to be gay - though he was one of the first high-profile scientists to die at least partly as the result of his sexuality. I'm not sure whether he would have made a good poster child (as our US cousins would put it), but he was a fascinating person, and a great one. He was certainly one of the founders of our community - I wonder how he would feel about it now?
In 1997, there was a legal case about how the Shetland Times was unhappy about the Shetland News linking to its site. I believe that KPMG is a UK-registered company (my browser doesn't render their site either), and although Scottish law has significant differences to English law, I'd be surprised if a court would find in KPMG's favour (should KPMG push the point). The Shetland case was considered a landmark case at the time, and revolved around our old friend, copyright law. As such, it may be that KPMG are trying to make a different point, but I think they're going to have difficulties if they push this one.
My first guess is that XStore didn't do enough due diligence, or if they did, then they ignored what they found out. Even if they did some, it may well be that Microtest is liable - what's scary will be how _much_ they're liable for. This may well turn into a very interesting test case - will XStore have to publish all the code they've changed? Will they have to pay damages? Possibly most worrying for a commercial software company (which they seem to be) is that if they've done their own development (or paid for development in the sense that they bought the product), then the Intellectual Property that they thought they owned may end up having to be made available to everyone. It'll be a very interesting case if someone decides to prosecute.
I'll certainly be buying a copy, as this is a subject that I find very interesting. There are a whole bunch of people out there with skills in running projects - whether they are money-generating or not - who the community could be using better. That's not to blame the community - these people have to put themselves forward, and show how they can add value to a project. They also need to understand how the community, and the community's philosophy, works. I've been flamed before for suggesting that non-coders should be allowed to be involved in OSS projects, with the suggestion that if you're not good enough to code, you're not good enough to be involved. I don't think that this is right - and there are people out there (including me) who have coded, but realise that their skills lie elsewhere, and that the way they can best further the projects that they care about is to offer the skills that they do have. It's not as if we tell the documentation teams that they shouldn't be involved!
So, how do we go about doing this? There are places where projects hang out - sourceforge, for instance - but I'm not sure that they are a good place to look for non-coders. I'd like to see projects who realise that they could use organisational help (wouldn't the code lead like to spend more time coding? Of course they would, in most cases!) looking for help - but I don't know where they should look. Functionality priorisation, tester recruitment, visibility improvement, strategic focus, project communications - all things that at least some projects could probably use.
So - how do we move forward? Maybe people like me need to make it clear how our skills may be able to help important projects, and hope that the people running them can make use of us. Maybe we need our own forum (hmm - maybe not!). I'd love to hear other suggestions.
For those in the UK (who may be unable to get through to the US), the UK Foreign office has issued a number: 020 7008 0000.
This is the place to go for more information on the product. Quite a lot of technical information, including kernel information. It seems that it's intended to be installed over RedHat in a "layered installation" - diagrams included, as well as performance data.
Here are some of the issues listed on the page:
- secure administration model
- lockdown
- process containment (compartmentalization)
- file system protection (MAC)
- auditing.
So I presume that these will all be central to the new product. It seems fairly sensible - and it will be interesting to find out the details of exactly what they've implemented, and how.I'll come out with it, then: sometimes they might not feel _good_ enough to contribute code. I was a competent engineer, but never brilliant, and my coding has slipped since I moved into management - I just don't have the time to write much anymore. But I'd like to be more involved, and just because I can't write low-level code at a good enough standard to contribute doesn't mean that I can't review design, features (and sometimes even code) and take an overview, or be involved in other ways.
Again, I think that we should look to involve people outside the tight coding community, and make the most of the skills they (we!) have to offer, if those people _believe_. And I, for one, do.
In the commercial world, you have people who are, to some extent, both inside and outside projects, with little power other than negotiation, and who are often looking not just at technical, but also external issues - Product Management. I'm not saying that we should turn the OSS movement over to middle managers (aargh, run away!), but the role of a Product Manager is an interesting,and often very useful one. Typically, they keep everything together, calm egos, make sure that documentation, testing, engineering, PR and all the other bits get seen to, and have the overall responsibility for making it all happen - getting a release out of the door. Their role is both more and less than project managers, and they typically (in the commercial world) sit on the interface between "customers" and "engineers", taking an overview of what features are most important IRL, etc..
What sprung to my mind when I started thinking about this is that Linus is a very fine Product Manager, in some ways, in that he takes a broader view than just a technical one. He's also a Project Manager, in that he has great technical input (may his guru-ness continue for ever), but he does more than that, too.
So, the question that springs to mind is - what place (if any) is there for Product Manager-type role within OSS projects? Don't forget - and I'll say it again - I'm not advocating handing over OSS to Middle Management. But there are people with good skills out there who maybe don't want to code on the projects that they really care about (maybe it's too deep for them, maybe they haven't got the time, whatever), but have real skills and experience to bring to bear. Can we use them? Should we?
I know that I'm going to be flamed for this post, but I really believe that as we move into the mainstream, we need to look beyond just code, and take a broader view. This is _one_ way - and maybe not even a very good way, but one _suggestion_ of a way as to how we might do that. We believe (I hope) that we can take the best bits of processes and systems, and make a bigger whole than the commercial world tends to - here's one piece we might "borrow". Or maybe not.
Oh, and BTW, yes, I'm a Product Manager. See - I'm "out" now.
I'm an (ex-)techie who's in the third (and final) year of a distance learning MBA from the UK's Open University. For the last 21 months or so, I've been in management - working in Product Management on the interface between the engineers and the real world.
I decided to take an MBA for a number of reasons. Basically, I'd come to the realisation that although I was a competent software engineer, I was never going to excel at it. I was self-taught, and not driven or brilliant enough to make it to the excellence in engineering. I was also getting frustrated with being told "put this in, take this out" by managers who I really didn't reckon had a clue _why_ they were saying what they were saying. So, I took the plunge, and decided to take a broader view - which meant moving into management.
Of course, I could have moved into management without going with an MBA - good software companies are always keen to find people who can talk to techies and customers - but I was very aware that I really didn't have the frameworks to talk to people outside the discipline in which I'd trained. How do marketing people look at the world? How do finance people calculate future gains? What about HR, Operations, Strategy? I'm genuinely interested to make a difference to the business I'm in, and knowing how it works, and how different types of people think it works, can only help.
So, I'm taking an MBA, and I have to say that it's been very useful. I _can_ see the wider picture, but at the same time, I'm still in a position to talk to the tech folks and, I hope, retain their respect. They know that I've been there, and despite their ragging that I've moved into Marketing, at least I can appreciate their point of view, which can be very helpful.
Conclusions? As a "straight techy", I'm not sure how useful an MBA would have been to me, but as a manager who thinks tech, it has been, and continues to be, absolutely invaluable. Think about why you might do it, and what you might gain, and if it makes sense for you, and you have the time and resources to apply yourself, then go for it.
I assume that based on this judgement, van Eck phreaking (as featured in Cryptonomicon, and elsewhere) would also be considered illegal. I'm not up on US law, and don't know what difference there is considered to be between going into someone's home and someone's computer, but using van Eck (which isn't "in development", it's there now) to see what people are doing on their screens would seem to be similar to me. Are there any legal references to van Eck phreaking?
I presume that wiretaps are needed for phone-lines, but is that for speech only, or data as well? Echelon, and all the fun ways of looking at data, can get their information from lots of different places, and this, of course, is only one of them.
I think that what may help change adoption will be people getting used to easy, and dedicated, access to broadband from work. Here in the UK, broadband is being very slow in roll-out as British Telecom controls all the exchanges, and cable is taking its time. But it's been a while since we've had a jump in modem speed, and if broadband can get going before someone thinks of a way of increasing it again, it's got a chance.
./ters are willing to pay that bit extra, but why should most people bother? I can't see my mother-in-law being interested - she's quite happy to press the "Internet" button, to wait for the strange noises to stop and then send her mail. If there were only a few pounds (dollars) in it, then she'd probably go for broadband, but until then? I think that the early adopters (that's us, people) are going to end up footing the bill for now, which is somewhat different to the modem case, because although we helped bring down the cost of modems by allowing them to become consumer items (and standard in new PCs), it's the infrastructure that we're paying for this time.
Of course, cost needs to come down, too.