On Thu, Aug 19, 2010 at 3:08 PM, Mike Miller <mbmiller+l at gmail.com<mbmiller%2Bl at gmail.com> > wrote: > On Thu, 19 Aug 2010, r j wrote: > > > Everything shared openly with the masses eventually has so many laws > > and rules attached to it it becomes useless or ineffective. > > Television? Telephone? Cell phones? Are they not working? You might > not like everything about how thye work, but all of them are working > better now than they ever did. > > Therefore, I think you are completely wrong. > > Mike > I think his point is not that they don't work -- they do, better than ever as you point out -- but that they're kind of stagnant because the laws and rules attached to them don't let them evolve much. Where's my web/TV integration? Why can't I tell my TV to show me where all my family members' phones are on a GPS map? Why can't I have a device on my phone line that works with my cell phone to seamlessly switch between cell and land line as I deem appropriate? Probably stupid examples because I'm going off the top of my head, but the point is that all of this stuff is technologically possible but has to jump through too many hoops to be feasibly offered to the public. Sure, some of it is single-industry providers wanting to protect their turf or whatever, but then why doesn't a startup that doesn't have that baggage jump in to fill the gap? The rules (which often are constructed with the help of big-corp lobbyists to make it difficult for new entrants to jump into a regulated market) often make something like that very hard, if not impossible. I think that's more along the lines of what Ron meant, and why a technology that could be used to bypass regs, providers, and everything else standing in the way of innovation (i.e. his wimax scenario) is so attractive. It's certainly attractive to me, anyway! -Harry -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://mailman.mn-linux.org/pipermail/tclug-list/attachments/20100819/c056e3d4/attachment.htm