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Technology Stocks : The *NEW* Frank Coluccio Technology Forum -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Crossy who wrote (31386)	9/17/2009 7:02:33 PM
From: Maurice Winn	1 Recommendation Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 46821

The problems you describe are real enough and my daily frustrations are with governments and badly run companies. Long ago I learned that life was always going to be less than perfect for me, so yes, I do have a good dose of fatalism. But not nihilism. And certainly not defeatism. I thrash around to overcome the problems where I think I can, vote with my feet and wallet where possible. So it's not defeatist fatalism. The biggest problem is the government one. In their attempts to fix problems, they create bigger ones. First they force monopolies, such as Telecom by excluding others, then they try to fix the problems they have created with competition laws and bureaucrats to run them... It goes around into a Gordian Knot and ends up hopelessly tangled. Network Effect does indeed exist in my world and I plan to use it where possible - Zenbu Networks is a network and people use it because it is a network. Being on it has great advantages. <Concepts like "market power" appear to be lost on you. Network effects do not exist in your world either.> If some "monopoly" is enjoying huge profits from market power, rents and network effect, then others will hunt around for leakage and ways to compete to get a piece of the action. Ma Bell might still exist and does in the sense that most people are stuck at the end of twisted pair copper wires. That monopoly was long ago exhausted with prices being as high as they could possibly go. People chose not to have a phone to avoid the high costs. They'd use a phone box or a neighbour's phone or something. Then they started getting cellphones. Now, lots of people don't bother with a land line. There is no monopoly I can think of that is or was a real monopoly in any worrying sense, other than government abuse of power which is a major one. IBM, Microsoft, Intel, Standard Oil, Ma Bell, maybe General Motors, perhaps Carnegie steel, are so-called monopolies which I can think of. Not one of them was even close to what I would call a worrying monopoly or even a true monopoly. The favourite of recent years, enjoying market power, network effect and rent was Microsoft. But they always had all sorts of competition and their prices were low compared with the value they provided to me. Now, Microsoft is making heaps, but they are way past their peak. Google is eroding their business. EeePC with Linux and Gmail was fine for me running on Wi-Fi not Telecom's extorquerationate oligopoly network, with no Microsoft in sight. "Happy exploitation" is found in the government sector. Wall Street executives make more money, but they have to compete and get fired [Lehman Brothers] if they get it wrong and shareholders lose their money. I don't see how net neutrality is desirable. It would lead to netilepsy if some packets are not preferred over others. There needs to be a mechanism to deny service to packets when the net is busy. A denial of service attack by millions or billions of people and devices clicking SEND to try to get their packets into a jammed up system would be a catastrophe. Epilepsy is like that in brains. Netilepsy would not be any more fun than epilepsy. Yes, like a road, but not at all crazy: <Think about the crazy idea of a toll road, where they would charge me more if I transport wheat, or furniture or iron ore. Just crazy and unacceptable to most of us. > I'm proposing just that, a congestion toll so that valuable cargoes go through fast and low value cargoes self-select to not travel at the expensive time. So wheat and furniture and urgent trips to the airport and hospital might go through, but iron ore and a jaunt downtown for lunch might not. Prices have the effect of deciding what really needs doing and what doesn't. Yes, you are right, government is again the problem - gaining access to that public infrastructure and right of way is very hard work and expensive. Governments have little incentive to do things well and profitably <Getting the cost down to gain access to public infrastructure (duct, sewers) is of prime importance. In Europe, Portugal enacted some far-reaching frameworks to facilitate just that, with the effect that FTTH is indeed deployed cheaper than in most other plaecs. Listening to many presentations, the biggest cost factor in urban FTTH is civic engineering and related work. Requiring all major construction projetcs to bury duct is just one important component along such lines to plan for future FTTH infrastructure > Getting council approval for a cellphone tower was a nightmare. Now that base stations are small and inconspicuous, there is less Luddite hysteria. Vector, CityLink, Velocity and others already have fibre. Until that fibre is properly used, there seems little point in rolling out more to people who don't really need it [as shown by their unwillingness to pay the price demanded]. Mqurice