Re: Linux before Linus (May 20)
I believe your assessment of the Alexis de Tocqueville Institution’s intimation that Linus cheated is correct. In any argument the lowest blow is the
personal attack. The anti-Linux group is having hard time crushing the upstart so they may be resorting to personal criticism. If you cant knock Linux, knock Linus.
By the way, I though it interesting that your commentary about the report on Linux/Linus/Alexis had Microsoft’s paid fud surrounding the text. Are the ads context sensitive or purely random?
Scott White
Re: Linux before Linus (May 20)
I just read your article on and I think you missed the point, especially in the last paragraph.
Prentice Hall does not have any chance of even getting to court on these allegations from that book. They own the copyright on Minix, wich was written by Andrew Tannenbaum. Tannenbaum himself got up today and posted a text on his Web site that dismiss this idea. Here is the link: http://www.cs.vu.nl/~ast/brown
Also the credibility of the author of the report, and of the whole Alexis de Toqueville institute is very debatable. The same text shows the lack of interest about the facts and the lack of integrity of the author.
Also if you look at the other reports of the Alexis de Toqueville Institute, you will see a trend wich is very clearly anti open-source. Also this “”think tank”” as you call it is very secretive about the people who fund it, which isn’t a good sign in terms of credibility.
Be more careful next time. And thanks for reading this far.
Guillaume Ferland
Re: Pulver: CRTC shouldn’t treat voice like phone (May 18)
Mr. Pulver calls his company a phone-service company, but doesn’t want to accept the responsibilities incumbent in providing telephone service, particularly providing 911 ID and location information. I realize this is not easy to do, but the last thing I need is for someone in my home or place of business to not be able to call for help if they or someone else is sick or injured, or finds a fire, or needs the police.
VoIP is not an application as Mr. Pulver claims. It is a technology that is used to encode and decode voice for transmission from one location to another, as are analogue and digital landline and cellular telephone networks. Connecting to the local PSAP with caller ID and ALI are applications. Mr. Pulver and other VoIP providers are at the stage the cellular companies were a few years ago when they were unable to provide that application, and they may as well bite the bullet now and start working on how to do it instead of how to avoid it.
Let’s avoid the automobile situation of a couple of decades ago when the U.S. government decreed that gasoline mileage and safety must be improved. The Japanese companies hired thousands of engineers to do it, the Americans hired thousands of lawyers to fight it, and guess who won and is still winning.
Jim Couprie
Re: Best in show (May 17)
I liked your article. You are on the right track definitely. As a customer of both Telus and Fido let me put it this way: Telus is expensive, non responsive and essentially a rip off. Fido I am sure has caught Telus and now they are trying to get even. I was a customer of ClearNet before and watched the service go into the toilet after Telus took over.
I have a Telus plan which costs $75 per month plus extras — the average bill used to be around $150. My number is my business (I am a network consultant) so I got City Fido, call forwarded my Telus number and have been happy ever since. In fact, so happy I purchased a second City Fido for personal use.
Now I am afraid Telus is going to ruin it all. I sincerely hope someone puts them out of business one day. If you have a few hours I can tell you about the horror stories of trying to get service from Telus whether it be cell phone, land line or DSL.
Michael Mills
Re: Best in show (May 17)
As I understand the situation, Microcell and Rogers both use GSM while Telus supports both analogue plus CDMA. Either way, that means Telus is incompatible with Microcell and Rogers is the only partner in Canada that would make economic sense.
Nigel Horspool
Re: Best in show (May 17)
Think about growth factors, customer acquisition costs and churn. If Telus can buy existing customers relatively cheaply, stake out a bigger share of the market as it grows and matures, and discourage churn through stabilizing pricing, it becomes a real win. You are correct, this is growth through consolidation and not through geographic expansion as was the case in the ClearNet deal. Rest assured that the “”synergies”” will be much higher, i.e. once customer conversion has been achieved, there will not be much need of Microcell management types.
As for consumers, it was unrealistic to think that Microcell would survive long term. Three major players in a market the size of Canada is about all that can be supported. You cannot honestly suggest that there is not fierce competition between the remaining three majors, can you?
Roger A.N. Watkiss
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