The fact is that the AUP with the ISP is between your neighbor and their ISP not between you and the ISP. The neighbor is the one violating it if they share with you. Your Bears ticket analogy is close but not spot on. An improved analogy would be that the Bears provide you with a ticket to watch 1 game from 1 addressed seat in the stadium. Now the ticket agreement probably states that it is non-transferable. So the way to run afoul of it would be to leave at half time and give the ticket to your friend. This way you are consuming no more resources than those allocated to you (1 seat) just as I would not be if I were sharing my wifi as I could still only download at 6Mbit and upload at 384k.
Cable providers put no limits in their AUP on the size of a family or the number of guests you can have over so I find it hard to swallow that 1 dozen geeks watching football with PDAs and laptops is OK but me and my wife and our 2 kids and our 1 neighbor is not.
But I do agree that any AP that has had ANY security implemented WEP-64bit for example should be left alone because the owner has put out the no trespassing sign just as you wouldn't walk on your neighbor's lawn if they put a fence up around their yard.
Ahh but here's the nuance. Linksys routers ship with an ESSID of 'Linksys' so when I go to my grandparents' place I attach to their router named 'Linksys' it automatically gets added to my favorites list. I then go to a client's place where I whip out my laptop and begin taking notes of our meeting. Assuming in this setting that there were an open AP named 'Linksys' and there were no other suitable APs Windows would automatically associate. It doesn't do any checking around ok this is Linksys@12:23:34:45:56 so I shouldn't connect because its not the same Linksys that I was talking to last time when it was added to the favorites.
IANAL but I do realize there is a difference of intent in these cases but intent is very difficult to establish and the courts have not been very forgiving WRT people who's networks have downloaded naughty things pr0n, music, videos their conculsion has been lately that if you are the one that owns the account unless you can come up with a better suspect you are guilty. The result is that people have become very protective of their wifi. Personally I use WPA which while not perfect gives me some feeling of security and if I were to find a chronic abuser would give me cause to have him/her arrested as it would be clear that they did not accidently associate.
I too thought this for a long time and while true the mission of NASA has changed during the 60's. In its infancy the mission of the group was to develop rocket and space travel technology hence using test pilots and any idiot that would strap himself to several tons of liquid explosives. Today that mission has changed to one of exploration IN space. I do think NASA is too conservative about the risks associated with being an astronaut I do applaud them for trying to complete their mission safely
The only unsigned driver I have ever seen was for an old Voodoo board.
Wow I must be using the wrong kids of hardware as my film scanner has unsugned drivers, the Omega ATI drivers are unsigned, my MD player has unsigned drivers
The last time I met anyone who was using custom hardware was around 1985-6, a sound board that plugged into a C-64.
I guess you haven't been an engineering student for a while, when I was a senior (2004) we developed a USB device which clearly would have had custom drivers I shouldn't have to sacrifice HD video playback for this or pay MS loads of cash to get the driver signed
If you can't use your old hardware with Vista, then don't run Vista. New hardware shipping with Vista will be able to run it.
So if my old hardware doesn't work because someone decided to not include the driver in Vista and the company decided not to pay to get their driver signed I should pay even more money to buy a Vista compatable device??? An example of this is my $300 35mm Minolta film scanner which I mentioned above in the unsigned driver part.
As a security-conscious programmer with a lot of corporate development history, I support Vista's blocking of non-signed drivers 100%. It's actually the first time I've agreed with Microsoft's plans and features since suffering the pains of Windows 3.1 development and support.
I don't disagree with the notion of signed drivers only but with the notion that I can run unsigned drivers but it cripples my DRM
Maybe it's time for the idealists to get real about security issues. They see DRM as preventing them from experimenting; the vast majority of government, corporate, and home users either don't care or see it as a benefit that provides more protection from crackers, viruses, rootkits, etc. Even OpenSuSE has a similar enforcement option for verifying binaries, and I doubt it'll be too long before bigger commercial OS vendors do the same.
Perhaps before getting to worrying about kernel mode drivers doing naughty things on their systems corporate, government IT departments should properly secure PCs so that every user isn't an Administrator.
Fight a battle you have a chance to win, and stop dreaming that unsigned platforms have a future. Without someone certifying that a platform is secure, businesses are going to stop using them. Eventually client nodes that aren't certified won't be able to do much useful, either.
--George Orwell
...
There is no reason for such an artificial blockage of client access, and that worries me a hell of a lot more than whether a couple dozen hackers can run custom drivers for their own hardware. Why would such a hacker go through the pain of Win32 driver development instead of Linux drivers anyhow?
The reason that comes to mind is one where I am developing a driver for both platforms
There was a magical invention pioneered by lawyers to deal with just this situation and to rectify it while earning them millions. The name of this is "shareholder lawsuit" The CEOs of these places have a legal responsability to protect the investments made to the best of their abilities and in most cases that extends to making a buck any way then can. If the shareholders can demonstrate that the board/CEO acted with some other interest in mind the shareholders can recover (unfortunately) some of this cash.
Does this mean that the electrons being transmitted through copper (which for those bad at science are energy) are also taxable? What difference does it make if the energy is photons or electrons? Or are they already taxing the electronic energy and this is simply a measure to taxation equality?
Lets not forget about Sony's history with firmware upgrades especially as they relate to gaming hardware. When the PSP came out and I started reading about all the homebrew software for it I was really enthused and wanted one but those days quickly came to an end as Sony deployed new "features" in firmware upgrades and while they have delivered new software to users they also have locked down the device far beyond where it was when it was purchased in many user's cases.
For me the lesson is be ware of Sony products promising upgradable software as a venue for delivering more features.
Yes in fact I just installed Oracle 10g XE on Gentoo the other night its quite easy as there is a ebuild that is close to making it into the tree. Once that happens all the user will have to do is download the Oracle 10g archive and `emerge oracle-xe`. Now working in a corporate Linux environment I know Gentoo isn't really corporate friendly but your original point that Oracle doesn't install well on anything except RedHat is pure nonsense
Not to nit but gasoline and diesel fuel is well over 100 years old and those "oil weenies who don't work for their money" actually produce far more products that impact your daily life than just the fuel in your car. The petro-chemical industry makes products that are deeply involved in the production of plastics.
I'm a student and I have a legal copy of Windows 2003 Server which I use for my MSFT based courses. Everytime I install it I have to call the product activation folks and explain that I need to activate the copy and that I only have 1 copy installed. What I want to know is why I can't "deactivate" a copy of Windows xxx so that my license key can be used to activate a new copy on a different host. If it can turn your server into a brick if you fail to activate in 30 days it should certainly be able to turn your server into a brick if you "deactivate" it. Come on MSFT make people's life better.
So let me get this straight we've gone from the "please click on my links so I can make money" model to "i get free advertising if you're an indecisive consumer". The problem I see is that if I happen to see an ad for a product I'm interested in I may click the link, checkout the web site, check out a few more similar sites, mull it over for a night then possibly buy something. T
his all works properly as long as I use the same PC to make the actual purchase and don't have all cookies set to be session cookies. Otherwise if I do have cookies set to be session cookies or if I'm shopping at night and go in and end up making the purchase at work the advertiser has just gotten a free sale while the site that hosted the ad hasn't gotten a penny.
I hope Google can figure out a way to center the balance because if I can figure out this scheme I'm sure someone more devious can come up with one much much better.
While Speakeasy has good customer service and I would like to have them in my area, their residential DSL packages don't come with an SLA either. Though this seems like one of those you get what you pay for situations. CHEAP DSL = CRAPSHOOT of course YMMV.
Yes, the link is here . I thought it was a scam at first but this page from the FTC links to them. Both my fiance and I have taken advantage of this and it works like a charm.
While I object to the notion that you must bundle things in order to sell them. I think that having OEMs bundle any legitimately licensed OS with the box may cut down on piracy.
With growing pressure from the US and other countries around the world about their lack of IP controls this may be more of a benefit than one would think.
My only concern would be a forced tie in with a non-free vendor. If they are allowed to bundle any OS this may really help the likes of [k]Ubuntu.
Email sender authentication is not the problem. That has been solved many times by many different people. Between PGP, GPG, and the Microsoft esque DigitalID there are no shortage of digital IDs. Now I fully agree that the micropayment __idea__ is intended to limit people abusing this to send authenticated junk. Although the USPS essnetially does the same thing and I have to say that before I got off the credit card mailing list I got 2 of thsoe for every piece of legit mail.
The moral of the story is that as long as the cost of postage digital or physical is insignificant in relation to the money made though sales people and businesses will be willing to pay if it gets them more customers.
The other problem as has been pointed out before is that this is open to phishing 1.1 where phishing attacks get attempt to spoof Goodmail too. While that's probably prohibitively difficult to do its probably not that hard to make it look like it is authentic.
When it comes to new technology Verizon seems the most reluctant to offer its full benefits to its customers. So in keeping with that tradition I fully expect that they will implement this. The catch will be that you will have to be in an area not already serviced by Verizon. Not low signal, absolutely no signal. And you will only be able to use the phone features not any of the data services on the phone.
Seems like this is headed the same way as bluetooth. Hopefully Cingular and T-Mobile will get it right
I think copyright is a good thing as it protects me as the inventor but I think there needs to be a production test associated with copyright and with patents. I believe patents should expire at the rate of advance of tech for that industry. For example the computer insustry has an obsolescence rate of ~ 5 years, whereas other industries expericence obsolescence much less frequently.
With respect to copyright I'm ok with giving people exclusive rights to reproduce a work for as long as they wish, but I think in the copyright case that 2 years after the work goes out of print that copyright should only require attribution to the original creator. That way if I am continuously printing a book I am covered, if I only do a small run every 2 years I am covered but if I have no more interest in producing the work I still get credit for the work but others are free to reproduce it at will.
I believe this is why most GPS in car nav systems have a click through disclaimer every time it starts saying that while these are valid directiosn they are not necessarily the best/fastest/safest way from A -> B and that you use them at your own peril.
This is what happens when people rely too much on nifty gadgets and stop using basic skills like map reading. The map may sill take you down this road but from what I've seen people get all googlyeyed in front of any video display and lose basic reasoning skill, like that which would prompt somoene to fidgit with the GPS for a minute and find an alternate route as this one seems undrivable.
I think you forgot one factor to degrade GPS accuracy...dead batteries. While I can certainly see the fun in lojacking teenagers I don't see some 15 year old running arround yelling "dude I got my new Goofy phone". This seems like its just an extension of Nextel's GPS features which btw Sprint/NEXTEL is the servcie provider for Disney.
This doesn't solve the problem of parents not parenting as kids can/will turn the phone off or detach the battery if they don't want to be tracked. Also the parents who can't be bothered to talk to their kids at dinner and think this is the solution would have to be interested enough to check where their kid is. I think you need to either trust that they are where they say they are in which case they deserve to be left alone or they aren't trustworthy enough and they deserve to be grounded until they learn that you aren't screwing around and they will be caught if they misbehave. Not necessarily every time but often enough to make the risk of getting caught too high for the reward if you get away with it.
In order to pay them their money now she needs to have more money available now. To do this the biggest expensce she has assuming she's actually paying for MIT is college. Now if they were smart they would make an offer much like student loans where she pays nothing til she's out of college then some sum of money which now seems trivial but by nature is atleast twice what the pay it now (patent pending) settlement is.
This way they would get a lot more people to agree to a settlement that looks like little money and is far far off (4 yrs) you don't look like loan sharks and you make much bigger proffits off the settlements in the end.
Out of curiousity don't most corporate to person settlements take years to payout?
It seems that as soon as you add the words internet or software people just lose any sence they had. If you asked someone if you could patent having cash registers at the front of the store instead of having someone follow you around charging you as you take things off the shelf they would tell you there is no way you could patent that. But now if you have some software in a virtual store that computes your bill once you've finished selecting which items you want that's patentable.
This country really needs to come to terms with the technology it has invented and realize how few differences there are between this new tech and the business methodology from the brick and mortar establishments it is based on.
It seems to me that this is the free market at work and I'll explain why:
We have a service that is sought after by the residents and business people of NO , and we have a provider who is willing to distribute it at a given price. Now granted that price is free and it was at roughly 0 cost to them as the equipment was donated but none the less they are providing a service that the people are after at a price the people like.
Here comes Bell South, etc... who used to have a bunch of customers in NO before a natural disaster wiped them out. They obviously want that business back but replacing all the infrastructure they lost is extremely expensive so they have a dilema. Do we: 1)take a profit hit, piss off stock holders and possibly lose our jobs or 2)lobby against the people currently providing the service for free, colletc our monopoly and restore service when it becomes convenient and not too expensive.
Government should absolutely step in and provide this service IF the people want it, if a private company can provide a more compelling offer people are free to switch to it. In an ideal world once there is no more demand for gov't to provide the service the tax payers could defund it and the network would revert to its emergency only status.
Another analogy for this is roads, there weren't many paved roads before the gov't started building them should the contry have been forced to stand by and wait for private enterprise to build the roads? NO! Should private enterprise be forbidden from building toll roads? NO! if the privately owned roads are better (use any definition of better you like here) then they will get more use than the publicly owned ones. The same will happen with internet access in NO.
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The fact is that the AUP with the ISP is between your neighbor and their ISP not between you and the ISP. The neighbor is the one violating it if they share with you. Your Bears ticket analogy is close but not spot on. An improved analogy would be that the Bears provide you with a ticket to watch 1 game from 1 addressed seat in the stadium. Now the ticket agreement probably states that it is non-transferable. So the way to run afoul of it would be to leave at half time and give the ticket to your friend. This way you are consuming no more resources than those allocated to you (1 seat) just as I would not be if I were sharing my wifi as I could still only download at 6Mbit and upload at 384k.
Cable providers put no limits in their AUP on the size of a family or the number of guests you can have over so I find it hard to swallow that 1 dozen geeks watching football with PDAs and laptops is OK but me and my wife and our 2 kids and our 1 neighbor is not.
But I do agree that any AP that has had ANY security implemented WEP-64bit for example should be left alone because the owner has put out the no trespassing sign just as you wouldn't walk on your neighbor's lawn if they put a fence up around their yard.
Ahh but here's the nuance. Linksys routers ship with an ESSID of 'Linksys' so when I go to my grandparents' place I attach to their router named 'Linksys' it automatically gets added to my favorites list. I then go to a client's place where I whip out my laptop and begin taking notes of our meeting. Assuming in this setting that there were an open AP named 'Linksys' and there were no other suitable APs Windows would automatically associate. It doesn't do any checking around ok this is Linksys@12:23:34:45:56 so I shouldn't connect because its not the same Linksys that I was talking to last time when it was added to the favorites.
IANAL but I do realize there is a difference of intent in these cases but intent is very difficult to establish and the courts have not been very forgiving WRT people who's networks have downloaded naughty things pr0n, music, videos their conculsion has been lately that if you are the one that owns the account unless you can come up with a better suspect you are guilty. The result is that people have become very protective of their wifi. Personally I use WPA which while not perfect gives me some feeling of security and if I were to find a chronic abuser would give me cause to have him/her arrested as it would be clear that they did not accidently associate.
How dare you use that slur against white people :)
I too thought this for a long time and while true the mission of NASA has changed during the 60's. In its infancy the mission of the group was to develop rocket and space travel technology hence using test pilots and any idiot that would strap himself to several tons of liquid explosives. Today that mission has changed to one of exploration IN space. I do think NASA is too conservative about the risks associated with being an astronaut I do applaud them for trying to complete their mission safely
I hate to point this out but many commerical products prohibit publicly disclosed benchmarks for example these folks
The only unsigned driver I have ever seen was for an old Voodoo board.
...
Wow I must be using the wrong kids of hardware as my film scanner has unsugned drivers, the Omega ATI drivers are unsigned, my MD player has unsigned drivers
The last time I met anyone who was using custom hardware was around 1985-6, a sound board that plugged into a C-64.
I guess you haven't been an engineering student for a while, when I was a senior (2004) we developed a USB device which clearly would have had custom drivers I shouldn't have to sacrifice HD video playback for this or pay MS loads of cash to get the driver signed
If you can't use your old hardware with Vista, then don't run Vista. New hardware shipping with Vista will be able to run it.
So if my old hardware doesn't work because someone decided to not include the driver in Vista and the company decided not to pay to get their driver signed I should pay even more money to buy a Vista compatable device??? An example of this is my $300 35mm Minolta film scanner which I mentioned above in the unsigned driver part.
As a security-conscious programmer with a lot of corporate development history, I support Vista's blocking of non-signed drivers 100%. It's actually the first time I've agreed with Microsoft's plans and features since suffering the pains of Windows 3.1 development and support.
I don't disagree with the notion of signed drivers only but with the notion that I can run unsigned drivers but it cripples my DRM
Maybe it's time for the idealists to get real about security issues. They see DRM as preventing them from experimenting; the vast majority of government, corporate, and home users either don't care or see it as a benefit that provides more protection from crackers, viruses, rootkits, etc. Even OpenSuSE has a similar enforcement option for verifying binaries, and I doubt it'll be too long before bigger commercial OS vendors do the same.
Perhaps before getting to worrying about kernel mode drivers doing naughty things on their systems corporate, government IT departments should properly secure PCs so that every user isn't an Administrator.
Fight a battle you have a chance to win, and stop dreaming that unsigned platforms have a future. Without someone certifying that a platform is secure, businesses are going to stop using them. Eventually client nodes that aren't certified won't be able to do much useful, either.
--George Orwell
There is no reason for such an artificial blockage of client access, and that worries me a hell of a lot more than whether a couple dozen hackers can run custom drivers for their own hardware. Why would such a hacker go through the pain of Win32 driver development instead of Linux drivers anyhow?
The reason that comes to mind is one where I am developing a driver for both platforms
There was a magical invention pioneered by lawyers to deal with just this situation and to rectify it while earning them millions. The name of this is "shareholder lawsuit" The CEOs of these places have a legal responsability to protect the investments made to the best of their abilities and in most cases that extends to making a buck any way then can. If the shareholders can demonstrate that the board/CEO acted with some other interest in mind the shareholders can recover (unfortunately) some of this cash.
Does this mean that the electrons being transmitted through copper (which for those bad at science are energy) are also taxable? What difference does it make if the energy is photons or electrons? Or are they already taxing the electronic energy and this is simply a measure to taxation equality?
Lets not forget about Sony's history with firmware upgrades especially as they relate to gaming hardware. When the PSP came out and I started reading about all the homebrew software for it I was really enthused and wanted one but those days quickly came to an end as Sony deployed new "features" in firmware upgrades and while they have delivered new software to users they also have locked down the device far beyond where it was when it was purchased in many user's cases.
For me the lesson is be ware of Sony products promising upgradable software as a venue for delivering more features.
Yes in fact I just installed Oracle 10g XE on Gentoo the other night its quite easy as there is a ebuild that is close to making it into the tree. Once that happens all the user will have to do is download the Oracle 10g archive and `emerge oracle-xe`. Now working in a corporate Linux environment I know Gentoo isn't really corporate friendly but your original point that Oracle doesn't install well on anything except RedHat is pure nonsense
Not to nit but gasoline and diesel fuel is well over 100 years old and those "oil weenies who don't work for their money" actually produce far more products that impact your daily life than just the fuel in your car. The petro-chemical industry makes products that are deeply involved in the production of plastics.
I'm a student and I have a legal copy of Windows 2003 Server which I use for my MSFT based courses. Everytime I install it I have to call the product activation folks and explain that I need to activate the copy and that I only have 1 copy installed. What I want to know is why I can't "deactivate" a copy of Windows xxx so that my license key can be used to activate a new copy on a different host. If it can turn your server into a brick if you fail to activate in 30 days it should certainly be able to turn your server into a brick if you "deactivate" it. Come on MSFT make people's life better.
So let me get this straight we've gone from the "please click on my links so I can make money" model to "i get free advertising if you're an indecisive consumer". The problem I see is that if I happen to see an ad for a product I'm interested in I may click the link, checkout the web site, check out a few more similar sites, mull it over for a night then possibly buy something. T
his all works properly as long as I use the same PC to make the actual purchase and don't have all cookies set to be session cookies. Otherwise if I do have cookies set to be session cookies or if I'm shopping at night and go in and end up making the purchase at work the advertiser has just gotten a free sale while the site that hosted the ad hasn't gotten a penny.
I hope Google can figure out a way to center the balance because if I can figure out this scheme I'm sure someone more devious can come up with one much much better.
While Speakeasy has good customer service and I would like to have them in my area, their residential DSL packages don't come with an SLA either. Though this seems like one of those you get what you pay for situations. CHEAP DSL = CRAPSHOOT of course YMMV.
I guess once you've given nice a shot you could move on to killall -KILL 1. That'll show any misbehaving system who's boss.
Yes, the link is here . I thought it was a scam at first but this page from the FTC links to them. Both my fiance and I have taken advantage of this and it works like a charm.
With growing pressure from the US and other countries around the world about their lack of IP controls this may be more of a benefit than one would think.
My only concern would be a forced tie in with a non-free vendor. If they are allowed to bundle any OS this may really help the likes of [k]Ubuntu.
Email sender authentication is not the problem. That has been solved many times by many different people. Between PGP, GPG, and the Microsoft esque DigitalID there are no shortage of digital IDs. Now I fully agree that the micropayment __idea__ is intended to limit people abusing this to send authenticated junk. Although the USPS essnetially does the same thing and I have to say that before I got off the credit card mailing list I got 2 of thsoe for every piece of legit mail.
The moral of the story is that as long as the cost of postage digital or physical is insignificant in relation to the money made though sales people and businesses will be willing to pay if it gets them more customers.
The other problem as has been pointed out before is that this is open to phishing 1.1 where phishing attacks get attempt to spoof Goodmail too. While that's probably prohibitively difficult to do its probably not that hard to make it look like it is authentic.
When it comes to new technology Verizon seems the most reluctant to offer its full benefits to its customers. So in keeping with that tradition I fully expect that they will implement this. The catch will be that you will have to be in an area not already serviced by Verizon. Not low signal, absolutely no signal. And you will only be able to use the phone features not any of the data services on the phone.
Seems like this is headed the same way as bluetooth. Hopefully Cingular and T-Mobile will get it right
I think copyright is a good thing as it protects me as the inventor but I think there needs to be a production test associated with copyright and with patents. I believe patents should expire at the rate of advance of tech for that industry. For example the computer insustry has an obsolescence rate of ~ 5 years, whereas other industries expericence obsolescence much less frequently.
With respect to copyright I'm ok with giving people exclusive rights to reproduce a work for as long as they wish, but I think in the copyright case that 2 years after the work goes out of print that copyright should only require attribution to the original creator. That way if I am continuously printing a book I am covered, if I only do a small run every 2 years I am covered but if I have no more interest in producing the work I still get credit for the work but others are free to reproduce it at will.
I believe this is why most GPS in car nav systems have a click through disclaimer every time it starts saying that while these are valid directiosn they are not necessarily the best/fastest/safest way from A -> B and that you use them at your own peril.
This is what happens when people rely too much on nifty gadgets and stop using basic skills like map reading. The map may sill take you down this road but from what I've seen people get all googlyeyed in front of any video display and lose basic reasoning skill, like that which would prompt somoene to fidgit with the GPS for a minute and find an alternate route as this one seems undrivable.
I think you forgot one factor to degrade GPS accuracy...dead batteries. While I can certainly see the fun in lojacking teenagers I don't see some 15 year old running arround yelling "dude I got my new Goofy phone". This seems like its just an extension of Nextel's GPS features which btw Sprint/NEXTEL is the servcie provider for Disney.
This doesn't solve the problem of parents not parenting as kids can/will turn the phone off or detach the battery if they don't want to be tracked. Also the parents who can't be bothered to talk to their kids at dinner and think this is the solution would have to be interested enough to check where their kid is. I think you need to either trust that they are where they say they are in which case they deserve to be left alone or they aren't trustworthy enough and they deserve to be grounded until they learn that you aren't screwing around and they will be caught if they misbehave. Not necessarily every time but often enough to make the risk of getting caught too high for the reward if you get away with it.
In order to pay them their money now she needs to have more money available now. To do this the biggest expensce she has assuming she's actually paying for MIT is college. Now if they were smart they would make an offer much like student loans where she pays nothing til she's out of college then some sum of money which now seems trivial but by nature is atleast twice what the pay it now (patent pending) settlement is.
This way they would get a lot more people to agree to a settlement that looks like little money and is far far off (4 yrs) you don't look like loan sharks and you make much bigger proffits off the settlements in the end.
Out of curiousity don't most corporate to person settlements take years to payout?
It seems that as soon as you add the words internet or software people just lose any sence they had. If you asked someone if you could patent having cash registers at the front of the store instead of having someone follow you around charging you as you take things off the shelf they would tell you there is no way you could patent that. But now if you have some software in a virtual store that computes your bill once you've finished selecting which items you want that's patentable. This country really needs to come to terms with the technology it has invented and realize how few differences there are between this new tech and the business methodology from the brick and mortar establishments it is based on.
It seems to me that this is the free market at work and I'll explain why:
We have a service that is sought after by the residents and business people of NO , and we have a provider who is willing to distribute it at a given price. Now granted that price is free and it was at roughly 0 cost to them as the equipment was donated but none the less they are providing a service that the people are after at a price the people like.
Here comes Bell South, etc... who used to have a bunch of customers in NO before a natural disaster wiped them out. They obviously want that business back but replacing all the infrastructure they lost is extremely expensive so they have a dilema. Do we: 1)take a profit hit, piss off stock holders and possibly lose our jobs or 2)lobby against the people currently providing the service for free, colletc our monopoly and restore service when it becomes convenient and not too expensive.
Government should absolutely step in and provide this service IF the people want it, if a private company can provide a more compelling offer people are free to switch to it. In an ideal world once there is no more demand for gov't to provide the service the tax payers could defund it and the network would revert to its emergency only status.
Another analogy for this is roads, there weren't many paved roads before the gov't started building them should the contry have been forced to stand by and wait for private enterprise to build the roads? NO! Should private enterprise be forbidden from building toll roads? NO! if the privately owned roads are better (use any definition of better you like here) then they will get more use than the publicly owned ones. The same will happen with internet access in NO.