The reason for this is that long distance is one area of telecom where there is real competition. LD competition was actually already underway with competition from MCI, etc. before the 1984 breakup of AT&T. The only thing that really changed was that that you could change your permanent LD provider, so all you had to dial was 1 just like always. Before the breakup you had to dial an access number to route your call though a competing LD company. Big deal.
As far as I'm concerned, the breakup had no effect on local phone service whatsoever, other than spawn a bunch of name changes. The regional bells are still monopolies, and they still own the phone lines. Real competition in phone service will never come until the regional bells no longer own the lines, and that will probably never happen.
I think the best we can hope for is that wireless technology renders the phone monopolies obsolete.
If I thought that tough spam laws would simply end with tough spam laws, I could support it. But history has proven that anytime you open the door to government regulation, the government will generally take a mile when the original intent was only an inch.
Most laws are well intended, but many end up either too broad or get passed with sneaky "riders" attached to them. We have enough laws in America already. I'm sure I break quite a few of them every day.
I think people should think long and hard before they start supporting these anti-spam laws, we might end up with more attempts at regulation on the Internet (and other technology-related things) than we bargained for. And we definitely don't need any of this stuff passing with DMCA-like riders attached to them.
Spam sucks. No doubt about it. But I have ways of dealing with it. Just keep the government out of my Internet. Please!
As for Atlanta, my dad has a book about Atlanta from the early 60's, when 75 was just a few lanes, not the 12+ lane thing it is now...and it was still bumper to bumper traffic.
IIRC, I-75 didn't exist through Atlanta until the early 70's. The major North-South highway at the time was US 41.
There are some excellent radio stations out there that aren't top40. I would especially like to capture live internet streams of stations like KEXP (http://www.kexp.org).
You can capture the internet streams with your computer. If you are using Linux you can use vsound. It's a command line utility that will capture any audio coming from your soundcard. You can schedule it with cron. If you are using Windows, you can use Total Recorder which does the same thing, but has a GUI and a built-in scheduler, but costs money.
If you have ridden on NYC subway (I'm assuming this is the subway you're thinking of) during the last 10 years or so, you would know that it is totally free of graffiti.
Yes, I know that they were once covered in graffiti. How did the they get rid of of it? In addition to increasing security at layup yards, they simply started taking cars out of service and cleaning them as soon as the first "tag" was painted on the car. Graffiti "artists" want their work to be seen, and as soon as they realized their work would never be seen, they had no more incentive paint the cars.
I think there may be a fourth type who still likes to purchase authentic albums complete with the liner notes, artwork, and uncompressed audio.
For some reason downloaded music feels like a cheap knockoff to me, even if it is rightly paid for. It's just not the real thing. Sure, I'll rip the songs right away to mp3 for convenience, mostly for playing on my computer, but I like having the "real" copy.
But, this is coming from someone who still buys vinyl records (yes they still make them... mostly indie labels).
Maybe the real problem here is that at 35 I'm already an old fart.
I can only tell you that our company has always outsourced our programming to American companies and consultants, while we retain our support and administration in-house.
I can't imagine what it would be like if we started outsourcing our programming work to third world countries. It's difficult enough sometimes to get American programming types to understand what you want, or why things aren't working correctly in plain english, let alone try to deal with people through significant language/cultural barriers. Projects can get pretty costly when pieces have to be done over again and again because the programmers didn't quite get what you meant the first time around.
I think American companies who try to cut costs by outsourcing to third world countries are going to get exactly what they pay for.
This is not meant to be a slight against programmers in other countries, but programming is a service, not a product. I think that it is ultimately less costly to purchase services from within your own country (or even city/state) wherever possible even if it appears to be more expensive on the surface.
Some companies understand this. Some don't. The companies that don't will suffer eventually.
Slashdot Mirror
3 cent long distance minutes.
The reason for this is that long distance is one area of telecom where there is real competition. LD competition was actually already underway with competition from MCI, etc. before the 1984 breakup of AT&T. The only thing that really changed was that that you could change your permanent LD provider, so all you had to dial was 1 just like always. Before the breakup you had to dial an access number to route your call though a competing LD company. Big deal.
As far as I'm concerned, the breakup had no effect on local phone service whatsoever, other than spawn a bunch of name changes. The regional bells are still monopolies, and they still own the phone lines. Real competition in phone service will never come until the regional bells no longer own the lines, and that will probably never happen.
I think the best we can hope for is that wireless technology renders the phone monopolies obsolete.
If I thought that tough spam laws would simply end with tough spam laws, I could support it. But history has proven that anytime you open the door to government regulation, the government will generally take a mile when the original intent was only an inch.
Most laws are well intended, but many end up either too broad or get passed with sneaky "riders" attached to them. We have enough laws in America already. I'm sure I break quite a few of them every day.
I think people should think long and hard before they start supporting these anti-spam laws, we might end up with more attempts at regulation on the Internet (and other technology-related things) than we bargained for. And we definitely don't need any of this stuff passing with DMCA-like riders attached to them.
Spam sucks. No doubt about it. But I have ways of dealing with it. Just keep the government out of my Internet. Please!
As for Atlanta, my dad has a book about Atlanta from the early 60's, when 75 was just a few lanes, not the 12+ lane thing it is now...and it was still bumper to bumper traffic. IIRC, I-75 didn't exist through Atlanta until the early 70's. The major North-South highway at the time was US 41.
There are some excellent radio stations out there that aren't top40. I would especially like to capture live internet streams of stations like KEXP (http://www.kexp.org).
You can capture the internet streams with your computer. If you are using Linux you can use vsound. It's a command line utility that will capture any audio coming from your soundcard. You can schedule it with cron. If you are using Windows, you can use Total Recorder which does the same thing, but has a GUI and a built-in scheduler, but costs money.
If you have ridden on NYC subway (I'm assuming this is the subway you're thinking of) during the last 10 years or so, you would know that it is totally free of graffiti.
Yes, I know that they were once covered in graffiti. How did the they get rid of of it? In addition to increasing security at layup yards, they simply started taking cars out of service and cleaning them as soon as the first "tag" was painted on the car. Graffiti "artists" want their work to be seen, and as soon as they realized their work would never be seen, they had no more incentive paint the cars.
I think there may be a fourth type who still likes to purchase authentic albums complete with the liner notes, artwork, and uncompressed audio. For some reason downloaded music feels like a cheap knockoff to me, even if it is rightly paid for. It's just not the real thing. Sure, I'll rip the songs right away to mp3 for convenience, mostly for playing on my computer, but I like having the "real" copy. But, this is coming from someone who still buys vinyl records (yes they still make them... mostly indie labels). Maybe the real problem here is that at 35 I'm already an old fart.
I can only tell you that our company has always outsourced our programming to American companies and consultants, while we retain our support and administration in-house.
I can't imagine what it would be like if we started outsourcing our programming work to third world countries. It's difficult enough sometimes to get American programming types to understand what you want, or why things aren't working correctly in plain english, let alone try to deal with people through significant language/cultural barriers. Projects can get pretty costly when pieces have to be done over again and again because the programmers didn't quite get what you meant the first time around.
I think American companies who try to cut costs by outsourcing to third world countries are going to get exactly what they pay for.
This is not meant to be a slight against programmers in other countries, but programming is a service, not a product. I think that it is ultimately less costly to purchase services from within your own country (or even city/state) wherever possible even if it appears to be more expensive on the surface.
Some companies understand this. Some don't. The companies that don't will suffer eventually.