Linux Dealt a rest BLOW by Apple !!!!!!! 2456

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It gets *much* stickier!

One area that is a serious problem is the relationship to "Universal Service", where big users subsidize a ubiquitous network to improve their own ability to utilize the network, and in the long run make it "universal" rather than a mechanism for clbutt division. It's good for business and good for society...

But one of the biggest political obstacles is Alaska's Senator Ted Stevens, who lately has come in for a lot of ridicule (mostly from people who don't actually have half the acuity that our "Uncle Ted", as Alaskans know him, does). Do *not* underestimate the technical comprehension of Ted Stevens. He is 80 something years old and sometimes the way he says things is difficult to understand, but trust that he is virtually *always* about 10 layers deeper into it than the level he is willing to talk about.

Convincing Stevens that Network Neutrality has more benefits than detriments is essential. He has little problem with letting big business do business (he is a Republican, after all). And he has been, for decades, the champion of bringing telecommunications services to *every* American. He understands subtleties of Universal Service that even those of us with a telecom background are hard pressed to keep up with!

Note that I deleted virtually all of the examples of how a telecom might abuse the system, but keep in mind that those are *valid* points, and would in fact reduce the benefit of Universal Service as applied to the Internet. That is the message that needs to be made clear to politicians, because it will have an overall negative effect on business, not the positive one that only the largest telecommunications companies would see. (Ted Stevens has been *well* acquainted with the management of large telecommunications companies for at least 20 years that I know of. They *do* have his ear. He needs to hear the other side, in a way that demonstrates it is indeed an overall loss, not a gain.)

Exactly!

It was the best that I have seen.

Not likely. No telecom has ever demonstrated half the smarts that Microsoft could bring to bear on sales and marketing. ;-)

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