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The Courts Government News

U.S. DOJ Moves To Block MCI/Sprint Merger 121

Posted by timothy from the do-not-collect-$200 dept.
Janthkin writes: "It seems the U.S. isn't going to allow MCI and Sprint to merge after all, so they WON'T be creating 'a telecommunications and Internet giant, one that would carry more data traffic than any other carrier and that would have left the U.S. long-distance market with only two major competitors instead of three.' (Text from the Standard story here). CNN coverage here." The U.S. side of the merger is not completely ruled out, but this seems a strong blow against it.
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U.S. DOJ Moves To Block MCI/Sprint Merger More

U.S. DOJ Moves To Block MCI/Sprint Merger

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  • Re:WorldCom is poised to become a monopoly (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward
    Just FYI, Bernie Ebbers was a PE major in college :)

  • Re:Large companies are the new government (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward
    (Rant Mode On)

    Be scared: in Britain big companies are already more powerful than the government, because it's illegal to slander them but legal to slander the government. Or maybe 'slander' is the wrong word to use, but that's basically the situation. Those of us who remember the 'What's Wrong With MacDonalds' court case (sorry, don't know of any useful links re that) live in fear of a Gibson-esque world full of 'Free Economic Zones' instead of states/countries whatever.

    Governments must ensure that businesses are forced to answer to the same rules, and accept the same annoyances, as the rest of us. Economy is great, but economy with no social conscience is a sure-fire path to an anti-utopian world.

    (Rant mode off)

  • Re:If you only count phones. (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward
    Try counting these phones:

    I work for a company that is also merging with another, translation, being swallowed, by a Baby Bell. Hint, it rhymes with HORIZON.

    It also sucks to know that the company that I work for has taken it upon itself to sue one of my favorite web sites, 2600.com for 'patent and copyright infringement'. However it's nothing compared to what that east coast bell is going to do to us.

    1) cubicle size is based solely on salary band, nice way to keep people feeling good about themselves.

    2) bonuses are given to salespeople only, no longer to techs like me, even though I make sure that those bonehead salespeople have machines that work so they can sell-Sell-SELL!!

    3)Their kind of wisdom has already struck, right after the merger was announced and jobs went on the line, they fired everyone in the finance dept lacally, but kept the managers/directors since they had been doing such a good job.

    Mark my words, in 5, no 10 years we will be back to ONE phone company, providing long distance, local, and highspeed wireless internet access. Divestiture will happen again, but next time will the govt be smart like Judge Jackson from the M$ case was? this isnt a direct quote but it went something like this: "No subsequent entity of said broken company is allowed to re-merge, again, EVER.

    The phone industry grew in leaps and bounds because of Ma Bell getting the axe, let's keep it that way.

    -posted anonymously for my own protection, as well

  • Forgot to post anonymously, eh tiger?

  • UUNET (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward

    The only problem now is that WorldCom is really starting to get its hooks into UUNET (we were fairly separate until recently). Thus you have ISP techies being treated like telco monkeys.

    As a result of this a lot of very experienced people who have been with UUNET for a couple of years are leaving UUNET. This isn't limited to the US either - its happening where ever UUNET has a presence. UUNET HR is sufficently crap that no one is being hired to replace them.

    UUNET is starting to suck big time from an employee point of view - a lot of people are only staying on for share options (which stop being worth anything next year)

  • Yea, it's only for a very short distance, but MCI/Worldcom runs the MAEs. Does that not count as carrying the traffic. At least part of the way? There must be half a dozen MAEs, of which two, MAE-East and MAE-West, carry up to 2 or 3 gig per second each, IIRC. So, the MAEs, plus all the long haul services of Worldcom might just get them near 50%.
  • My point is that the government is not always the people anymore

    Not always? Try never. Anybody who thinks otherwise is, IMO, naive.
  • I don't think the bean counters or shareholders read that study, nor do they give a rat's ass about your socialist crap. basically, it doesn't even really matter if the employees really are or aren't more productive, even in the short term. It's all in how the market perceives the company's health and efficiency, it's all in PR and spin. And if you can make the case for a 10% price increase in your stock by publicly sacrificing a chunk of your workforce - even if it's really a BAD thing for the company, the perception drives the stock prices, and the stock prices drive the board members.

    I'm not FOR longer workweeks. I have a family with kids too. I'm just trying to point out why things happen the way they do, and who is running things in this country.

    If it ain't broke, fix it 'til it is!
  • You may call it mismanagement. From your perspective, it was. But from the bean counters' perspective, it was trimming fat. If you aren't working 55 hours, you're not pulling your weight. What's so hard about that?

    Yes, there are more subtle and elegant ways to improve employee productivity. But sometimes, cracking the whip is what gets the investors' jizz spurting.

    If it ain't broke, fix it 'til it is!
  • sure, give them 56k modems, but make them use crappy lines that only support 33k connections, and disconnect at random.

    Punk-ass bitches.

    If it ain't broke, fix it 'til it is!
  • seems to me that there's relatively lots of competition in telecom. sure they have uunet but so what? internet 2 is coming and there are alot of players there. plus sprint is wireless! what's the big deal?

    --
    J Perry Fecteau, 5-time Mr. Internet
    Ejercisio Perfecto [nai.net]: from Geek to GOD in WEEKS!
  • These large companies will in the very near future be as powerful, if not eventually totally replacing, individual governments, because they have one ability governments don't have: the legal right (ie. no war necessary) to expand worldwide.

    in the comic book, grendel [hytti.uku.fi], this is exactly what happenned. i remember reading it a few years back and thinking to myself, "this could really happen!". and if you listened to ralph nader's acceptance speech [votenader.com] this weekend, you might believe it's already happenning!



    --
    J Perry Fecteau, 5-time Mr. Internet
    Ejercisio Perfecto [nai.net]: from Geek to GOD in WEEKS!

  • you have dealt with a real monopoly until you've dealt with snet. they charge for anything they can pull out of their ass! one time i relieved myself while i was talking on the phone and next month there was a $7.50 PISSING CHARGE ON THE BILL!!! i shit you not (pardon the pun)!

    --
    J Perry Fecteau, 5-time Mr. Internet
    Ejercisio Perfecto [nai.net]: from Geek to GOD in WEEKS!
  • With this latest Justice Department move, I'm guessing that we'll soon hear rumors that Sprint is receiving offers to move to British Columbia :-)
  • And from the perspective of the workers, they're being asked to give their employers 15 hours of work a week for free.

    I'm a capitalist. I *HATE* working for free. If WorldCom can't succeed without the employees giving it free gifts it's being mismanaged. REAL businesses don't need handouts.
  • IANAL, but AFAIK it depends on the state you live in; I don't recall that it's a federal issue. Many state governments post their laws online, although your best bet is to have a lawyer find out for you.

    Sadly, I don't qualify for overtime, but on the bright side, my contract is rapidly coming back up and this company would probably die without me and one or two other guys. ;)
  • MCI no longer exists in name. What used to be MCIWorldCom is now simply WorldCom.

    The MCI part of the name was dropped around the time when WorldCom started the new Generation D campaign.

  • Coming from the other side (I was working at WorldCom before the MCI merger, and after), let me tell the other side of the story.

    MCI was bought because it was a good deal -- the company was hemorraging money, as reflected by the dismal stock price, and was absolutely the most corporate of coporations. Especially when compared to the WorldCom culture. When the deal was inked, I believe one of the terms was that the MCI name would be retained, since the company had spent so much money on branding.

    Unfortunately, the branding that the company spent money on was one of 9pm calls from pushy salespeople that were more annoying that successful.

    One of the first things Bernard Ebbers did once the deal went through was to sell off 5 of the 8 corporate jets that MCI owned. Yes there were fairly significant layoffs, especially around the MCI water coolers. There was a reason for this. The WorldCom departments equivalent to MCI departments tended to be 50-60% of the size. There was a LOT of deadweight. Where my department was handled by 4 people and 1 executive, the MCI department had more than twice those numbers.

    Now, I'm no longer with WorldCom, so I'm not "in the know", but I happen to believe that the main purpose of the Sprint deal is for their wireless. Those of you worried about WorldCom becoming a colossus of data lines, remember that UUNET is a part of WorldCom. Most of the Internet traffic goes over the UUNET network. Sorry, but WorldCom would give up the Sprint network in a heartbeat if it meant getting Sprint's wireless network. WorldCom doesn't have a wireless network right now (other than SkyTel).

    If you're worried about long-distance competition, don't. You're wasting your time. WorldCom is already moving to "any-distance" phone service, i.e. a voice call is a voice call is a voice call, regardless of where it goes. Whether around the corner or around the world. The overhead of charging per-minute fares is quickly overshadowing the the going per-minute rates (10 cents down to 8 cents, down to 5 cents). Access charges, network overhead, etc have eaten the profit down to 10% of a 5 cent a minute call.

    The AC above complaints don't make me cringe. Yes, there would be layoffs in a WorldCom/Sprint merger. There always are! That's one of the advantages of mergers! (Think "synergies", read "layoffs") Only, it would not be like the MCI merger, because, by and large, Sprint employees aren't as woefully inept as MCI employees tended to be. Sprint has remained competitive because of this reason. Now, there is an advantage to Sprint joining with WorldCom, because they can join their most successful functions -- data and wireless -- and make a powerfull post-millenial company, rather than an AT&T knockoff.

    I'm not posting anonymously, because I think the WorldCom/Sprint deal would be great. I'm not just an ex-employee, I'm also a stock holder! :) So I'd take my words with however much salt you desire -- but I stand by them.
    (No, not from options, from the regular way of getting a broker to buy them)

  • that's great, until Esrey sells off each sprint mbu one by one... how secure does your job feel now? mine doesn't feel so safe.

    Anonymous NOC fella.
  • You're fooling yourself. You'd just get called twice as much by the same people.
  • It may be that the law just makes it difficult to start a competitor, not impossible. But I do know that I only have one choice here in Minnesota, so the AT&T breakup didn't give me any choices in local service.
  • actually, the harm comes only after a company which has acquired a monopoly begins to use its control to stifle competition in its own AND ADJOINING business sectors.

    This is what the DoJ says, but I just don't buy it. Having a large market share is certainly an advantage, but it is not an insurmountable advantage, and other firms can position themselves to have equal advantages. Furthermore, the exertion of such influence is not without cost. Microsoft can probably take over any one product if it spends enough money, but there is no guaruntee that they'll make money in the process. And if they don't make money, they are essentially just giving away a product below cost, which is a boon to consumers.

    Furthermore, if the start integrating buggy features into their OS, consumers will get pissed eventually and switch to another OS. Yes, it will take a lot of aggravation before most consumers will switch, but that just reflects the enourmous value the market places on standardization.

    I think you're right about the changes in the information age, although I think you're overstating the case. High-tech ventures are more susceptible to integration, since most high-tech assets are intangible and easily combined, but there will still be competition in similar markets. In part this is because contrary to antitrust conventions, markets are not atomic and clearly defined. Every company fills a niche in the marketplace, but the niches overlap. If I don't like a product, I can usually get pieces of the functionality I get from that product from a variety of other products. SO while every narrowly-defined business may become a monopoly, each business will still have to fight to retain customers who inhabit overlapping market niches.

    Microsoft will probably never drive Apple or Sun out of business entirely, because each has a core constitutency that wants what Apple or Sun offer. But outside of Apple's core constituency are many users who would be happy on either Mac or Windows. It is for those users that Microsoft and Apple compete. But even if Microsoft gets all of them, Apple still has a base of customers that are not likely to ditch Apple for any reason.

    The same is true in most markets-- few if any companies provide identical products. Each company specializes in ways that no other company does, and a merger of any two of these firms is likely to serve both niches poorly, and open up those niches to better-tailored competitors.
  • OK, so you've told me that there were programs in the 80's that you liked better than the programs that Microsoft has now. So what?

    No program is "objectively better" than any other. All programs have good and bad features, and it is up to the individual to decide which mix of features, price, performance, convenience, and stability is best for him. You don't feel that Microsoft products meet your needs.

    That's all well and good, but it says nothing about the economics of the situation. The fact that you dislike their products doesn't mean that they are "objectively" inferior. You have an opinion that they are inferior. Other people disagree. But whether you like MS products or not has no bearing on whether they are a monopoly.

    As for the frivolous lawsuit, I agree that those are bad. But the solution to that is tort reform, not launching an antitrust case against them 10 years later. Certainly suing people for specious reasons is sleazy, but an overly-litigous tort system is not a defining feature of capitalism either. It is therefore not an indictment of the free market (or an argument for antitrust law) that sleazy lawsuits occur.
  • Perhaps your copy of the Constitution is different than mine, but I don't remember anything in there about "Congress shall have the power to prevent the formation of private monopolies." Which clause exactly requires the Feds to prevent the formation of monopolies?

    Secondly, what is a "predatory monopoly?" Since AT&T and numerous smaller firms are still in the market, what harm comes from having these two firms merge? And even if all three of them merged, what is to stop an upstart competitor from entering the market and challenging the established player?

    Antitrust regulation is not in the Consitution. It is in legislation passed only since the 1890's. They are bad laws and do little to encourage competition. No government intervention is needed for competition to occur. The government need only keep its hands off and let the firms in the marketplace compete for the business of consumers. Historically, antitrust laws have been used by lesser competitors to stifle their more able competitors. The latest example is the Microsoft case. But there have been dozens of such examples over the last hundred years. There are very few examples where antitrust law has clearly benefitted anyone other than the competitors of the company being prosecuted.
  • OK, but you are talking about local service, not long distance. Local service is a monopoly by law-- telephone regulations before the breakup of Ma Bell essentially gave them an exclusive monopoly over the local phone market. Today, that big monopoly has simply been broken up into a bunch of little monopolies-- you still only have one choice of local phone service in most parts of the country.

    What needs to happen is that the laws giving the Baby Bells advantages over rivals needs to be repealed. This does not require antitrust law, nor does it require lawyers. It merely requires an act of Congress to rewrite the laws that are screwing us over in the first place.
  • they can't grow to the point where they threaten the public good.

    How exactly is the public good threatened by a larger long distance carrier?
  • I dont think any of us want a return to the 1880's when huge businesses (standard oil anyone?) ran the country, and the government was merely a front for those businesses. Big business is too powerful as it is already.

    Could you please present your evidence that in 1880 Standard Oil ran the country?

    Standard Oil got the market position it did because it was really really efficient at what it did. Under their leadership, the price of oil dropped dramatically, leading to more oil at better prices for consumers. Its market share peaked in about 1890 at about 85%, and it had dropped to about 65% by the time it was broken up in 1910.

    If they were such a big, bad, monopoly, how did they lose such a big chunk of their market share to competitors *before* they were broken up? And if they lost market share before hand, is it not likely that competitors would have continued to gain market share after the ruling?

    The story about "robber barons" taught in high school is a myth. Yes, there was some corruption, and yes, some companies had a large market share. But most industries were highly competitive, and there were almost none (including the oil market) where one firm was able to wipe out all competition.

    The same is true today. Most antitrust enforcement, including this decision, the Microsoft case, the Staples-Office Depot merger, and others, will help only these companies' competitors, at the expense of the consumer. The history of antitrust is full of examples of governments breaking up successful companies simply because they have driven some competitors out of business by offering a better product at a lower case. That's not how capitalism is supposed to work.
  • Gosh! After the lenient early 90s that saw such monstrosities as MSNBC emerge from the muck, it's good to see the DOJ remembering its duties again. They let AOLTimeWarner merge, of course, but at least they're paying attention. A few more breakups and it will almost feel like the Roosevelt/Taft days again. Well, maybe not....

    The Patent & Trademark Office could take a few pointers from the DOJ.

  • They have to, without question, deal with and support unions.

    Yeah, it was a real shame when companies had to stop paying the police to beat kill union members and their family members in the middle of the street.

    A real blow to the free-market economy. Why can't the government just stay out of it?...
  • Something that you may not have thought of is this:
    Last week when I was talking to a rep from UUnet I was pleased to hear that even if MCI/Sprint do merge, they will only keep the UUnet portion of Internet sales. All of the Sprint ISPs and backbone lines will be sold off to smaller and, possibly, new companies. This isn't making less competition. This is giving more power to the competition and creating new competitors. Why would the US turn this down then?

    Here's my thought:
    Just like personal income tax, my understanding is that businesses pay a higher percentage if they make more money (Graduated Tax). This means that even if the same revenue is made be 4 smaller companies, the US government will make less money compared to Sprint making that same profit in one company.

    This is a disappointment as far as I can see it. With UUnet as the most reliable ISP on the planet and Sprint doing all lf this research in multi-frequency digital optical signals, I would expect progress to come a lot faster with the merger. So once again we see greed standing in the way of progress.

    There's my 2 cents.
    Dissenter

  • I don't know about by law... I have a choice of two companies for local service.
  • Hi,
    Some git has been impersonating me again. I'm sorry guys.

    Please don't moderate me down too much.

    sorry.

    --
    Jon.
  • Consumers definition of capitalism is different than corporate's definition. The goal of capitalism in the corporate eyes is to eventually be a monopoly.
  • The Sprint/Worldcom merger would of been bad. They would of controlled 60%-70%, all the backbone access points to Europe and Africa and a good chuck of the access points to Asia, and on top of that a huge chunk of the wireless market as well. AT&T may be leading in the market, but it doesn't mean that one should automatticly let all the other companies do as they damn well please. It was to stop this merged company from becoming a royal pain in everyone's ass.
  • this one is easy...
    disclamer i work for radio shack..

    1) did she buy the phone at radio shack? the answer, doesnt matter.. just go to an radio shack, buy an phone, and have them call sprint, an get sprint to switch her phone# to the new phone. at that time have them, upgrade to monthly billing...

    2) the snot-head radio shack sales person didnt what to help did they? well, you when to a mall store didnt you? dont go to a bizy store. the snot-head sales ppl willnt help.. they just want to make quick sale.

    if this doesnt work get the sprints regonal sales rep. #, they can fix it..

    sprint is just discontuing there prepay. it just wasnt making all that much for them... yes, she will have to buy an new phone.. no i dont know way she just has to... (look im not payed to think, just sale crap)

    and if all else fails, do not by any means, tell them i told you to do this! really i dont need the heat..

    nmarshall
    #include "standard_disclaimer.h"
    R.U. SIRIUS: THE ONLY POSSIBLE RESPONSE
  • This does seem to exclude customer support, hardware maintenace, system administration type
    duties (that one might be harder to argue), etc.
    It seems to primarily apply to programmers - so
    that job I had for $20,000 a year (w/ 3 years
    experience) where they apparently expected 60+
    hours weeks w/ no overtime is going to be seriously screwed when their employees wise up.
  • HEy, just as long as they don't stop running those ads of Sela Ward jumping and dancing aronud in a black catsuit.

  • I wonder which phone company can get me one of those

    Any of them, as soon as they are damn good and ready!

    "I will gladly pay you today, sir, and eat up

  • Thankfully, i think that is changing. If i remember correctly in NY you can or will be able to pick your local carrier as well. Monopolies suck, just look at the cable industry. I had a 100/month cable bill, and i didn't really have many services. Std cable and a cable modem.
  • Thats why i think mergers should be outlawed all together. If you can't survive on your own in the market, you don't deserve to.
  • MCI Worldcom is not one company, it's a collection of seperate companies squashed togather. Maybe someday they will be one company, but not now. How many IP backbones do they have? How many FrameRelay backbones do they have? (7 from what I recall reading somewhere). How many long distance backbones do they have? Sprint, at least, seems to have built most of what they have from the ground up, in a way that seems to be reasonably connected togather.

    I, at least, don't want my traffic going over 4 backbones, managed by 4 different groups of people, and be told that I'm dealing with "one" company.
  • We are all lucky, there are still some sanity left in the government. Mega-corps like AOL/TW and Sprint/Mci are not good for the customers, or the general public. I dont think any of us want a return to the 1880's when huge businesses (standard oil anyone?) ran the country, and the government was merely a front for those businesses. Big business is too powerful as it is already.
  • I guess they didn't 'donate' enough money to politicians.
    ----------------------------------
  • If you're worried about long-distance competition, don't. You're wasting your time. WorldCom is already moving to "any-distance" phone service, i.e. a voice call is a voice call is a voice call, regardless of where it goes. Whether around the corner or around the world. The overhead of charging per-minute fares is quickly overshadowing the the going per-minute rates (10 cents down to 8 cents, down to 5 cents). Access charges, network overhead, etc have eaten the profit down to 10% of a 5 cent a minute call.

    Hey, man, I think I finally am catching on. If companies can charge a premium for wireless communications, then it makes sense that the prices for land-based (long-distance) calling from your wirebound home phone should be all the cheaper. I mean, there's broadband cable access to the internet now, which is faster (well, in theory) than 56k modems over copper lines. If/when wireless broadband is sufficently fast (someone quote me a current baud, please), then kiss the market for 56k's goodbye. Wireless T1's for everybody! How exciting; we certainly do have a new communications era on our hands.

  • You are right about the Constitution (and Bill of Rights) having no prohibition on monopolies. But you are wrong about the need for controls on corporations which seek monopolies... actually, the harm comes only after a company which has acquired a monopoly begins to use its control to stifle competition in its own AND ADJOINING business sectors.

    I would agree, however, that the latter has been true only historically, in the "industrial age." In our new "information age," although not enough folks realize this yet, the new communication structure will result in completely different markets (following the completely different societal development). The new conditions:

    • All businesses sufficiently small in scope will tend to become monopolies. Another way of thinking about this is that businesses will cooperate, a bit like the medieval guilds, so that they can be addressed (by sellers/suppliers and by buyers/customers) as a single entity.
    • Each monopoly will be toppled if it either abuses suppliers/sellers (by forcing prices down too low), or overcharges buyers.

    Monopolies will arise because only a highly efficient organizational structure can survive in an efficient communication structure; they will be toppled because the "barrier to entry" in the information age is largely communications/computing power, and the price of this will continue to follow Moore's law for quite a time to come. So setting up a company will become cheaper and cheaper; therefore, if anyone is stupid enough to make it worthwhile for a potential competitor to undercut the existing organization, competition will arise and very quickly the old organization will collapse.

  • You are mistaken; you can learn all about what actually happened in a real, concrete situation (instead of what ought to have happened according to abstract theory) by examining the domination of MS over the past 2 decades (almost). Let me point out a few facts to you, okay? Then if you still want to argue, it will be a good argument, and I'd love to learn something new.

    In the early 80's, IBM asked MS (Gates et al) to deliver an OS for its new product, the PC. Gates basically took over an existing system (CPM) from its developer, who was smart in software development, but unfortunately not in any business sense. Btw, contrary to prevailing opinion, this was not the beginning of personal computing, which had been around for a couple of years, dominated by Radio Shack because their's were more "user-friendly." Radio Shack made two serious mistakes: it attempted to control the software market (by refusing to sell better, competing products made by third parties in their convenient stores), and ignored backwards compatibility when offering new hardware models (thereby alienating buyers/users).

    The first killer-ap was Visicalc (the Harvard Business School was teaching a paper-based technique called "spreadsheets," allowing their graduates to examine "what-if" scenarios. These were a big deal, and Visicalc was simple software that allowed anyone (who could get a PC that ran it) to make a spreadsheet.

    When IBM offered the first PC it sent teams of salespersons around to all its corporate customers to try to force them on us. At the time, I fought them off on the grounds that back then, they could not make their PC's communicate with their mainframes anyway (so their "leverage" argument had no grounds), and their WP software (only Wordstar) was inferior to what was available for other PC's. My department bought hardware that was technically inferior, but did connect to the data on the mainframe, and allowed us to prepare superior text files using greatly superior tools. (Since the files were ASCII, they could be transmitted without rekeying when the next generation of IBM-PC software became available.)

    I then watched in total bemusement over the next decade or so as corporate PC's across the land were taken over by wave after wave of inferior WP software (by then I was a consultant rather than managing one department). First, there was Wordstar (because it was the only thing PC's could run). Then, Multimate took over -- and this was the version of Multimate that (you won't believe this!) was memory-page based, so that if you, for example, searched for a phrase to change it, the software loaded the first (printer-defined) page of the text and searched that page for the phrase, then if it didn't find it, loaded the next (printable) page and searched that, then... You get the picture. Even the software I'd used 3 years earlier (on non-IBM clone) was at least designed to allow a search to search the whole text! When I asked why Multimate was used, executives explained they had asked their hardware (mainframe) gurus what to use, and this was their answer. Their decision as to what software to use was based solely on the mainframe guys' choice, since they were supposedly going to "maintain" or support this software. (You KNOW that never happened!)

    The point is that time after time, inferior products (such as MS's Powerpoint) took over from perfectly decent products (such as Freelance), based on irrational grounds. Let's look at these two presentation packages, for example. You know which one "won" the competition for desktop space, of course. But did you know that Freelance actually allowed you to create a "standalone" presentation -- you could put the result on a disk and any DOS machine could view it. With Powerpoint, you had to include a Window's accessory to run its "standalone" presentation, and it could (of course) only run on a machine that had Windows. Worse, Freelance really was an "inegrated" product -- that is, you could create a file in its suite's WP package and then see it as a presentation package -- and even go "backwards" into the WP version again to revise it. Powerpoint claimed to be part of an "integrated" package, but it turned out that the only sense in which that was true is that one used the same keystrokes in all the packages to do similar things.

    So far I've only explained how objectively inferior products kept being chosen over superior products because of hype or marketing. That's not "wrong," of course, although it should make you uneasy. Now let's examine another case: I've been using the same software package for WP since the mid-80's. It's terrific, innovative, endlessly customizable, and I use it now for HTML generation (and will use it for XML and XHTML). But one feature it had was that you could (if you chose) have it automatically fix misspelled words -- type "teh" and see "the" in the blink of an eye, for example. In fact, you could load its "pers.spl" spelling dictionary just like any other file and put in your own shorthand (like MS will become Microsoft automatically), and you could load other named similar dictionaries to add to your shorthand lists (and you could have the code replaced automatically by whole phrases, even). Okay, you're familiar with this feature, you say; MS has it in Word. Yeah, but XyWrite had this feature in the mid-80's -- and then they released a tiny little upgrade version that didn't have it! I asked the local user's group why they'd removed the automatic spell-check/replace feature (you could optionally turn it off, after all)??? Turns out, MS had decided to put this feature in Word and threatened the XyWrite company with a lawsuit if they didn't take it OUT of their product!!!

    No, of course they could not have WON that suit. The whole point is that they had the money to tie up XyWrite (which never charged as much for their superior product, being content to make a reasonable profit and focus on software development rather than marketing hype) in court, and XyWrite did not have the money to fritter away in court. MS knew this. They used their "extra" money (the money gained by being a monopoly in OS) to threaten other competitors with their ability to hire lawyers.

    Now, go ahead and tell me why this is not destructive.

  • Thanks, I'll do that if she didn't get it at Radio Shack and can't use the other idea.
  • Thanks, I'll have her try this immediately, if she can (I don't know where she got her phone).

  • I can't believe you actually said that "no program is 'objectively better' than any other." Maybe this is one of those many cases where I am "talking to fools," in which case I shouldn't even bother. But you're participating on /., which gives you some credibility, so I'll give it one more try:

    • Programs which have fewer errors (bugs) are 'objectively better' than programs which have many errors. That's why, when I used to teach programming, I graded some students' work as better than others (i.e., gave them higher grades on exercises).
    • Given similar features, programs which have consistent user interfaces are better than programs which do not. Similarly, programs with a more intuitive user interface are better than those with an arbitrary user interface.
    • Programs which have been tested (or, currently, since most programmers today are basically incompetent and never test their modules -- don't even program in modules, in fact -- programs which "go through extensive quality assurance tests") and, thus, are reliable, are better than programs which are not reliable. Btw, reliable means that it does the same thing (under similar circumstances) each time you invoke a routine.

    This is not an exhaustive list. Try reading some of the books about programming (any language!) recommended by /. on its home page (lower right corner). Btw, just out of curiosity, why do you think people write books about how to program better if there's no such thing as "better?"

    I'm curious as to how far this "everything is just an opinion" routine extends... Do you think the operation of gravity is optional in your case (I assume you're Californian; maybe the earthquakes have confused you?)? Do the laws of thermodynamics work in your vicinity -- even when you're not thinking about them?

  • I wonder if you could help me help one of my poorer, marginalized, non-techie acquaintances? She lives in an SRO (single-room occupancy) hotel in New York with an archaic MANUAL telephone switchboard. After the newest owners took over, and they began to convert "empty" rooms to luxury hotel units (so they could charge $140/night instead of an average $100/week), her incoming telephone service "mysteriously" deteriorated. After a frantic attempt to get her new landlord have staff clean up their act (duh!), she wised up enough to buy herself a cellular phone.

    I think she works as some kind of barely-trained night nurse, but she is an independent, so her clients all have to know her phone number. She has been using the same telephone number (with the 917 area code which around here means "beeper" or "cell-phone") for two years, since June '98. Just a few days ago, she got a letter from Sprint PCS, claiming they are about to close their pre-paid phone card service (which she had to use, of course), but offering to let her trade up to an "account limit" service.

    The problem is, Sprint PCS is claiming that not only do they have to change her phone number, but that they "don't have the technical capacity" to put a message on her old line, other than that "the number is no longer in service!" She called several times to ask different customer service operators about this, they all say the same thing, and she is in tears over it.

    I told her I would try to look into it for her. Is there any possibility Sprint PCS had to give up this service for an upcoming merger, and the line is going to another company? Could this poor woman somehow buy her old number from the other company?

    Yesterday I called the FCC, and they said they didn't have jurisdiction, but it sounded like an issue for the NY Public Services Commission. When I called them, their initial routing message claims they no longer have jurisdiction over either cellular or pre-paid phonecard services. We're left with the Better Business Bureau (duh...), or the NYS Attorney General's office (if some crime were committed). Is it really possible that this service, so essential to the livelihood of the few very poor persons in this country who depend on a telephone service and have no other access to it, is really unregulated?

    Any information or assistance would be greatly appreciated!

  • Okay. So, now we have AOL/Time Warner jumping in bed, you can see that ever major provider can see the future. Cisco is going full force telephony with the IP Phones they're going to release in a few months. That means that the battle is on, and everyone is going to want to merger to pool resources in the tought battle ahead.
    - enter the DOJ

    Hey, we want to become all powerful, err... keep people from getting screwed.



    kick some CAD [cadfu.com]
  • In no other industry is a 55 hour week considered normal by anyone, much less mandatory.

    Nonsense. Law, Medicine, Catering, Farming.
    --

  • Oh phuleeeze - not another "bad government for enforcing the laws" rant.

    Establishing a monopoly through merger != Corporate Progress

  • Actually quite the opposite:
    The European Commision disaproved the merger, even after the company withdrew their proposal.
    (So they can't just resubmit their proposal to the EC but have to make something new, should they descide to go ahead with their merger)

    "Wie immer sind alle Angaben ohne Gewähr"

  • I don't think this can be regulated with any kind of world body - you'd just end up with the UN of commerce, which would more than likely end up as completely ineffectual.

    There are no ready solutions to this problem. This is why I said:

    This scares me.

    It still does.
    tsf.


  • I'm not sure if I'm the one kidding myself - big business will always have money, and there's nothing politicians like more than money - it's their livelyhood. They won't get re-elected without a large campaign fund, and no matter what anyone says, the easiest way to get lots of money is to make a few 'concessions' to business - they'll make it worth the governments' while.

    My point is that the government is not always the people anymore - look at the DMCA for example. This was a law put in place by corporations for corporations, and look at the consequences now. Perhaps you should look a little past the rosy democratic society you think you live in, and check out the real world.

    tsf.
  • At least here in the States...

    This is a major part of the problem. The US is just one country - and while the laws may be fairly strict there, there's always going to be somewhere else a company can set up shop without having to worry about this.

    There's only so much one government can do.

    tsf.

  • Some time ago the brazilian government sold their telecommunications company (was a monopoly) to several private companies, and also permitted that new companies were formed to compete.

    MCI bought the majority of the state company (Embratel) and Sprint owned shares of their (only as of now) competitor. When the merger was announced, there were many discussions about legality of this situation and if, being Sprint not the owner but just a (not major) shareholder, competition would be compromised.

    The final decision was to force Sprint to sell their shares, as I believe has alreaqdy been done... but I am not quite sure of that.


    --
    Marcelo Vanzin
  • It sure is US West. But you bring grim news... I think Charter Communications recently promised to bring DSL there (are they the ones that are affiliated with wyoming.com?) I guess I'd better wait before rejoicing.

  • As an employee of MCIWorldcom, I have to say that I'm rather pleased that this latest attempt by Bernie Ebbers to maintain his little Ponzi Scheem has failed. Worldcom has created an atmosphere of Fear Uncertainty and Doubt amongst its employees that is reaching absurd levels.

    I've been with MCI for a bit over a decade, and I can tell you that it was a completely different place before Worldcom came to pillage the company. Right now, I'm looking for the right opportunity to exit, like many other people. There are groups I know of with 30%+ turnover if you take it at an annual rate.

    Screw Bernie. He thinks because people are stupid enough to believe that by printing stock certificates, he is creating something of value. Can any of you think of a single product or service that has come from this Borg-like entity called Worldcom?

    I thought not.

    Z

  • Because Deutche Telekom is going to buy it. Then we'll get to hear the government whine about that.
  • There are no bad mega-corps in Ethiopia, so that must be why Ethiopia is, well, broken. And why America is doing rather well.

    There are no Grape-Nuts factories in Ethiopia either. Maybe that's why Ethiopians are starving and we are all driving solid gold Cadillacs.

    Mmmmm, grape nuts.


    My mom is not a Karma whore!

  • As a recent graduate, I feel I am qualified to offer my two cents on this matter.... I can, with a large degree of confidence, inform you that the going rate for recent graduates from top-tier universities in any engineering field (yes, even civil) is well over $40,000 per year... and that's in one of the cheapest cities in which to live - Houston!

    I myself got a degree in a "lowly" major (i.e.: neither of my majors was engineering-related), and I will be making in excess of $40,000/year for a tech company where I plan not to work more than 45 hours per week, as a general rule.

    My engineering friends received offers ranging from $45,000/year to $70,000/year at jobs that will not require them to sell their souls. Those willing to give up their first born took jobs paying up to $100,000 per year. And yes, these are 21-and-22-year-olds.

    Engineering students with degrees from good four-year universities and decent grades (say 3.0 GPA or higher) don't really have to settle for anything less nowadays.

    Just my two cents...

  • It's good to hear that government agencies are against this merger. The idea of a decent company like Sprint merging with a really really bad company like MCI Worldcom (of course, this is personal opinion). That and this sort of merger would create a company almost similar to that of AT&T back in the early 80s. Then we'd be hearing about two major companies with all sorts of anti-competitive practices =).
  • Sprint is done as an independent entity, thats certain.

    DT has its eyes on the US market, and Sprint is going to be their way in if MCI is blocked.

  • Re:55 Hours a week? (Score:2)

    by Anonymous Coward
    For the record, I am the same AC who posted before.

    I have no objections to working long hours. I have objections to those long hours being mandated. In my previous job at an Internet start-up, I was routinely putting in 60- and 70-hour weeks--management at one point had to order me to stop coming into the office for a couple of days.

    What I object strongly to is corporate management demanding a 55-hour workweek because they'd laid off a third of the critical staff. That's not "trimming the fat". That's called mismanagement. Management has a responsibility to accurately assess the work required for a task to be completed, and to either (a) bring on the staff required to do the job or (b) refuse to accept the job, on the basis that it cannot be done with the available manpower.

    What WorldCom did is it took an organization which was running very efficiently, and chopped a third of the people from that group--and then complained because the remaining two-thirds couldn't do the same amount of work as the original body.

    I have no objection to working my hands to the bone. But if I'm going to do it, it had damn well better not be because corporate management decided to play Is There A God? with headcount and wound up screwing themselves over by firing the people who were most essential to making delivery dates.
  • I'm tired of dealing with phone companies. They're one of the few commercial (non government) entities who really could care less about their customers

    ... Which would mean that the companies do care about their customers.

    Get it right people! It's "couldn't care less", otherwise there is the implication that they do care...
  • The NYTimes is reporting [nytimes.com] that the two companies have withdrawn the merger papers. They say they might refile at some point but the conditions imposed by the European Union and this intent to block by the DoJ didn't make it worthwhile.

    There was a good story in the NYTimes earlier this week about the conditions and possible sell-offs that would have had to result had this gone through, the slicing and dicing of the combined company would have been pretty brutal.
  • Try contacting your congressman, they or someone on their staff may be interested enough in getting your vote to drop a letter to the telco. It might work even better if you mention the poor lady's story is being followed on a "popular internet news site" and maybe set up a quickie little page on Geocities. I don't live in NY, but if a couple NY Slashdot readers were to also write letters of support I think it would get your representative's attention pretty quick. They love doing things for voters when it doesn't cost them anything.

  • Re:... (Score:2)

    by jawad ( 15611 )
    That's Bell Atlantic Mobile & PrimeCo, not MCI/Sprint.

    http://www.verizonwireless.com/ [verizonwireless.com]
  • > In no other industry is a 55 hour week considered normal by anyone, much less mandatory.

    There are studies around relating productivity to hours worked, and they do not in general favor "overtime" as a way for businesses/departments to get ahead.

    In an unrelated field where I previously worked, I think the stats said that you got the most done if you worked 50 hours, but it was only a bit more than what you got done if you only worked 40 (i.e., it gave the peak output, but was already below the peak efficiency). If you worked 60 hrs/wk, you actually got less done than if you only worked 40 (and of course, much less in average output/hr).

    Does anyone know of a study of this type that is specific to the IT field?

    --
  • Thanks for the nice quotes.

    > who regularly exercise discretion and judgment;

    Ah-ha! Who's ever had a job where your boss didn't try to tell you how to do your work?

    > work which is intellectual and varied in character, the accomplishment of which cannot be standardized as to time;

    A good one to cast back into your PHB's teeth whenever s/he says you're taking too long. We seem to have it on Legislative Authority that it is not possible to predict how long an IT project will take.

    --
  • Actually.. they only have that 'right' because governments (in other words, the poeple) allow it.
    Don't kid yourself.
  • If they'll spin off the disputed wireless assets instead.

    This would have an interesting effect of renewing competition in the wireless arena, at the expense of a landline consolidation.

    would it be better? I don't know, but it would sure be interesting.
    --
  • The government blocks many different things. That's the whole point of a government. When we live as citizens within the control of that government, we agree that they are allowed to block certain activities. These are generally known as laws.

    In the case of this merger, the government has a pretty large law to follow: the Constitution. Only Congress can grant monopoly power, and the government is charged with the job of making sure monopolies are kept in check.

    Now, this role has changed over the past 200 years. At one point, nobody took this Constitutional clause very seriously. Later on, it was taken very seriously. Today, it primarily focuses on predatory monopolies.

    What's the point of this? It's the government's job (at least within the United States). They will always check corporate progress and encourage competition (at least they should).

    To give you an idea of what REALLY blocking corporate progress would mean, consider this example. The government creates its own telecommunications backbone, undercharges ISPs (by using tax dollars) and runs the competitors out of business. Then, it allows this company to take on the bloat of most of the other government institutions. That's blocking corporate progress.
  • 55 hours a week? Is that considered hard time in Kansas City? I live in Boston and that is what everyone around here does, for about the same money, in a city that is much more expensive.

    11 hour days are too much, just simply too much.

    Assuming a rather (I think anyways) average 7 hour sleep cycle, that leaves 17 hours a day, 11 hours of that spent at work translates into 6 hours for living, wow, with a workweek like that you really are becomming your job.

    And before you start saying I'm lazy, I've put in 96 hours a week for a month or so in my last job. I think work weeks are too long, life is meant for living, not simply working.

    -- iCEBaLM
  • I *DO* work for a certain nameless long distance provider... and the employees are most certainly celebrating. =-)
  • Well cracking the whip and reducing headcount may be a great way to crank out some short term numbers that will get the investors rocks off. However it is hell on the employees, ever work in an understaffed IT dept? For a while after cuts picking up the slack and prodcutivity goes up but it doesn't take to long before moral really goes down, quality of work decreases and employees generally stop trusting and even begin resenting management.

    In no other industry is a 55 hour week considered normal by anyone, much less mandatory. If your motivated and want to work 50, 60, 70 hours a week fine do that, but chastise those people with a LIFE outside of work who only put in 40 hours a week as not pulling their weight, that's bullshit and you know it. Remember you are NOT your job.

  • Oh yea it kicks ass, if you really love your work. Alot of us here are "lifestyle geeks" we do this for fun as much as we do it for money. I'm sure I'm not the only one here who unwinds afterwork by reading through his home server log files or recompiling his kernel, or setting up a DHCP server just for fun in an apartment with only one workstation.
    The point is though managers shouldn't require it. Like I said earlier if you want to work from home or put 80 hrs in the office great go for it and fuck the unions, but that kind of overtime is only productive and efficient if people do it cuz they want to and they find their work rewarding.


  • Man....blocking a merger like this...next thing you know, they'll be trying to split up Microsoft.



    Wait a minute...
  • If you're 24 and making nearly $40k/year you have very very little to complain about.

    55 hours a week? Is that considered hard time in Kansas City? I live in Boston and that is what everyone around here does, for about the same money, in a city that is much more expensive.

    I don't always love my job either, but long workweeks aren't going to get any sympathy from me. Sounds like good ol' Worldcom just trimmed a little fat.

    -cwk.

  • you seem to be severely out of touch with regards to coder salaries

    No, you're severely out-of-touch with the 90% of the world that isn't in IT. I'm 24 and live in South Boston, and make more money than the 45-year-old steelworker next door who has a family and a mortgage and payments on a car. People like me are pushing people like him out of the neighborhood he grew up in, and when it "gets old," we'll move on, while he gets shoved into the distant suburbs. There's more than one perspective to be had here.

    Don't get me wrong, I'm 100% for capitalism. But too often people confuse being dealt a lucky hand with skill at playing cards.

    If management is making the job miserable, then hell yeah, GTFO of there. I'm not saying you should stay at a job that sucks. It's just that there are tons of people in less-rewarding fields with a lot more to worry about than the average 24-year-old who put in 55 or more hours per week and would be happy to clear $40,000 with full benefits. So I get a little sick of hearing people moan about "poor me" when the deal they have ain't so bad.

    -cwk.

  • Isn't it almost a moot point? Just how much *competition* is there in the market today? Certainly there are options, but how quickly are those options swallowing each other up?

    If there are only two or three giants, how does that impact the n companies left below them? When will they be forced to consolidate to stay in business, or simply crumble and sell out?

    Will what has happened to radio, print and tv happen to the Internet? Will 1/3 of the ISPs one day merely be subsidiaries of AOL? Will network providers secretly answer to Sprint?

    These are just wonderings I am having this evening.....

  • Why is the DOJ so quick on its feet against the telcos, but such a dawdle-dodo when it comes to Microsoft?
  • We only have one major carrier here, and trust me you don't want that to happen to you. They have very much a 'rape and run' attitude, where they charge out the ass for internet services that are cheap other places (normal ISDN is around 300 a month, IIRC) and don't even work properly because they haven't contributed anything to the backbone. We just recently got DSL in the state(not where I am, though), and that's only because the state governor has been bitching to them for ages. Everyone hates them.

    Of course, we WERE going to get cable modems, but the AT&T bastards bought TCI and scratched that plan. I think the DOJ should sentance all their executives to using 56k modems for the rest of their lives. Serve them right.
  • If it is not legal for a company to categorize an employee as exempt unless they are "in management or do work involving significant creativity and indepenence" then I'd sure love it if someone could post a URL or some other reference to the law that spells this out.

    The relevant law is the Fair Labor Standards Act. Unfortunately, it appears that they included a big fat exception specifically for computer workers. Otherwise, you might find this document [dol.gov] interesting. It mentions four classes of exempt employees: Executive, Administrative, Professional, and Outside Sales. For most of the people on Slashdot, the following definition about which professionals qualify for exemption is the most interesting:

    Professional Exemption

    Applicable to employees who perform work requiring advanced knowledge and education, work in an artistic field which is original and creative, work as a teacher, or work as a computer system analyst, programmer, software engineer, or similarly skilled worker in the computer software field; who regularly exercise discretion and judgment; who perform work which is intellectual and varied in character, the accomplishment of which cannot be standardized as to time; who receive a salary which meets the requirements of the exemption (except doctors, lawyers, teachers and certain computer occupations); and who do not devote more than 20% of their time to work other than that described above.

    The salary mentioned above means that:

    Subject to certain exceptions set forth in the regulations, in order to be considered "salaried", employees must receive their full salary for any workweek in which they perform any work without regard to the number of days or hours worked. This rule applies to each exemption that has a salary requirement (outside sales employees, and certain licensed or certified doctors, lawyers and teachers have no salary requirement. For certain computer-related occupations under the professional exemption, they need not be paid a salary if they are paid on an hourly basis at a rate not less than $27.63 per hour). The special requirements which apply to each category of employees are summarized below.

    The part about being paid in full for any week in which you work, regardless of the number of hours actually worked, is probably the most important thing here. IOW, if your employer can dock your pay for working part days (or apparently even part weeks!) you are not an exempt employee, unless you're an outside salesperson, doctor, lawyer, or teacher or a computer specialist paid hourly and earning at least $27.63 per hour.

    The big thing is that if you really want to know your rights as an employee, you should really take a careful look at the Department of Labor [dol.gov] web site.

  • 55 hours a week? Is that considered hard time in Kansas City? I live in Boston and that is what everyone around here does, for about the same money, in a city that is much more expensive.

    I don't always love my job either, but long workweeks aren't going to get any sympathy from me. Sounds like good ol' Worldcom just trimmed a little fat.

    It sounds to me as if they're engaged in a bit of classic (and illegal) abuse of exempt employee status. Legally, employees must be paid overtime for work beyond specified limits (generally either 40 hours per week or 8 hours per day) unless they're legally exempt. Exempt status is supposed to be reserved for work that falls into two categories: 1) management and 2) work involving significant creativity and independence. Working in QA does not sound as though it falls into either category.

    Unfortunately, there are lots of businesses out there that are eager to abuse the system. They try to convince people that because they are on a salary, they don't have any right to overtime pay. Legally this is complete bunk; if you don't fit one of the legal categories for exemption, you should get overtime. In practice, though, it's all too effective. Employees think that being on salary means no overtime, so they don't even know to demand it and their employers get away with drastically underpaying them for their work.

  • I guess that three long distance providers for the entire country must be enough to protect everyone against harmful tacticts by the Big Three. Maybe our friends in Washington (D.C. that is) don't care that when one company hikes their rates, the other two follow suite in order to get more money. Of course they put it off into "upgrades" and "maintence" that never seems to come. I can see a few telco routers going down and needing replaced.. of course the wages of employees, power bills, rent, etc.. but who really believes the companies couln't afford to make the upgrades on their own? Even with the above costs, the companies each make billions every year. I am glad the DOJ did something about it. It would be nicer if it turned around and demanded all three (ATT, Sprint, and Worldcom) to be split up into two companies. At least we could get gouged by the nicest of the 6!

    P.S. I shouldn't complain. I get free long distance. Check it out over at http://www.broadpoint.com/ [broadpoint.com]

  • I'm glad this is happening. I reckon that the DOJ and the MMC in the UK should allow a minimum number of major players in any particular market. Say 3 or 4. Stop mergers and acquisitions which would cause this number to be reduced but otherwise keep out of it.

    It would keep em at each others throats, keep the prices down and encourage open standards.

  • I worked for MCI for about ten years and I can tell you Worldcom came in and destroyed the company. They are just selling off part by part, The sprint merger would have been no different.

    Aside from all the regulatory reasons, I;m just glad Wolrdcom lost.

  • Oh, the irony (Score:3)

    by J4 ( 449 ) on Tuesday June 27, 2000 @03:42PM (#972614) Homepage
    Wasn't it Craig McCaw from MCI that instigated the antitrust suit against AT&T back in the day, so that MCI could enter the long distance market?

    Go figure.....

  • Re:55 Hours a week? (Score:3)

    by GossG ( 108241 ) on Tuesday June 27, 2000 @03:52PM (#972615)
    A long time ago, a revolution was fought with bullets and billy-clubs against people fighting for fair work rules.

    One of the results of that was a 44 hour work week, that rapidly became 40 hours blue-collar or 37.5 hours white-collar.

    If you want the money, sure. Work the clock around and fry your brain in the effort. But don't make sweatshops the "standard" work week.

    With twelve years of corporate IT experience, I get less than Cdn $50K. But I work 37.5 hours. Anything over 7.5 hours in a day is overtime. Anything over 11 is double. Anything on the SECOND weekend day is double. A call-in counts as 3 hours. A phone consultation that doesn't need a trip in counts as at least one hour. Coffee and bottled water is free. There's a fairly nice fitness room that I should use more often.

    I feel that my employer respects me, despite the low salary. And I think that these conditions should be considered an obtainable goal for other people who would prefer that their employer respect them.

    At the 5 IT environments I've worked at over the years, I've never worked free overtime. (well, except for the volunteer job...) I'm not sure I would.

    I made the choice to drop consulting in order to get the work rules of a company that treats me fairly.

    (Ho God! After my right-wing youth I've become a union organizer????)

  • Large companies are the new government (Score:3)

    by TheSacrificialFly ( 124096 ) on Tuesday June 27, 2000 @02:58PM (#972616)

    These large companies will in the very near future be as powerful, if not eventually totally replacing, individual governments, because they have one ability governments don't have: the legal right (ie. no war necessary) to expand worldwide.

    This scares me.
    tsf.

  • Too bad... (Score:3)

    by hayz ( 160976 ) on Tuesday June 27, 2000 @03:25PM (#972617)
    I was kind of hoping this merger would go through -- it would have decreased the number of annoying telemarketing calls to my phone by *at least* 50%. This is clearly an instance where the anti-monopoly law fail to serve the public interest. Heh.
  • For instance, they often times have to hire, promote and train often times based upon color or sex rather than skills.

    "Affirmative action" only affects companies who contract with the government, and is hardly universal even then. It's usually been fairly toothless, with a few notable exceptions. You may be referring to antidiscrimination laws that affect almost all companies above a certain size, but these merely prohibit hiring/training/promoting based on specific things other than skills and experience -- a different thing entirely than what you imply.

    They have to pay the lionshare of taxes in the US - [which they pass on to us no doubt]

    Large companies actually pay proportionately less in taxes than small companies and individuals, leading to such absurd situations as one of the largest and most profitable companies in the US, General Electric, paying no income taxes at all.

    They have to comply with often time, arcane rules for ergonomics and safety set for them by a department with nothing better to do. [Nothing funnier than seeing the local Bell rep in a hard hat in our equipment room. Look out for those falling bits!]

    I'd agree with you if service reps only had to work in the semi-office environment of the typical machine room. But data and telephone infrastructure is hardly limited to environments such as yours; they can be every bit as dangerous as construction zones -- and frequently they are construction zones.

    As for the larger issue, until you've worked on a line and seen the sorts of things employers try to get away with in terms of safety and working conditions, you've no ground on which to criticise the bulk of what OSHA does. Visit a data-entry facility if you want to see just why some rules might be required for keyboard workers -- they are veritable sweatshops with computers. It may seem a little silly when they get applied to software developers -- but then again, having known several with work-related repetitive-stress injury, perhaps the rules aren't quite so "arcane" for us either.

    They have to, without question, deal with and support unions.

    You're pretty young, aren't you? Union clout these days is miniscule compared to what it was twenty or thirty years ago, with about a third the members today as then and whole industries de-unionized. Unions currently are weaker in the US than in any other industrialized nation, without doubt.

    It takes an act of Congress, literally, for them to do business outside of our borders.

    There's this thing called the US Constitution that requires Congress to do this. But I've not noticed this little fact putting much of a crimp in the sails of multinational corporations lately, have you?

    In brief, I don't know what broadsheet you copied the above "facts" from, but they show a pretty short-sighted view of the situation. Study the history of US industry from the late 1800's to the start of the depression and you'll see an eerie picture of what happens when corporations increasingly rule the US. Perhaps you'll gain a little appreciation for why the government is involved in the affairs of corporations today.

    -Ed

  • Corporate progress (Score:4)

    by Stiletto ( 12066 ) on Tuesday June 27, 2000 @02:54PM (#972619)

    Corporate progress should not be at the expense of ordinary citizens and/or small business. That's why the government steps in when "shady" stuff starts to happen.

    I don't mind if it's an expensive legal battle, as long as a message is sent to these huge corporations: That they can't grow to the point where they threaten the public good.
  • According to the local media here in Kansas City, the world HQ for Sprint, the merger is off.

    The Kansas City Star is saying that while the executives are all really glum, the employees have been celebrating.

    I don't work for Sprint, but I am glad this is off as well. Even though all through this the executives were saying "We are not moving if we merge," everyone knows otherwise. It happened to Marion Labs, it would have happened to Sprint as well. That would have been a huge hit on the local economy beings that Sprint has 24,000+ employees in this town alone.

  • WorldCom is poised to become a monopoly (Score:5)

    by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday June 27, 2000 @03:12PM (#972621)
    In 1998, being a hacker fresh out of college with sheepskin in hand, I received a job at MCI. My background was information security; MCI was interested in me for that, but the unofficial corporate policy was that everyone in the UNIX development team (which InfoSec was part of, don't ask me why) had to spend six months in an unrelated IT field.

    It was a reasonably sensible requirement; it ensured that everyone in their InfoSec department had experience with the company's IT infrastructure and it would give the InfoSec group a large skill pool to draw upon. So I took the first job I could get in their IT department, intending on getting a transfer in six months. I wound up as (gasp, horrors) a mainframe QA engineer.

    MCI was finishing up the MCI-WorldCom "merger". Don't let it fool you--it wasn't a merger at all. MCI was bought, lock stock and barrel. Bernie Ebbers (the chief of WorldCom) took control and the bloodletting began. In the space of one afternoon, my department lost about a quarter of its headcount. The guy in the cube next to me received his termination notice via email--at ten o'clock in the morning he was fired, and by one o'clock that afternoon he was gone.

    We survivors were told that there would be no more layoffs for (I forget--several months). Not too much later, a few weeks, I noticed that a lot of our workforce was all leaving the building at the same time, carrying boxes of stuff. Bernie Ebbers kept his promise--there weren't any layoffs that day. It was just that a few dozen contractors were informed that their contracts would not be renewed, even though they were desperately needed for the success of the projects they were working on.

    The corporate culture changed dramatically. The work week was 36 hours when I arrived there; MCI corporate management felt it was important to keep its engineers happy, so they gave us Friday afternoons off. After the WorldCom merger it shot up to 40, then 44 hours; at one point (in mid-1999), my manager told me that the company was expecting 55-hour weeks from me for the next six weeks. Y2K work and all.

    Between the constant threat of layoffs, the punishing working conditions, the lack of respect from management, the uncertainty surrounding WorldCom's intentions for MCI and everything else, I decided to get the hell out of Dodge.

    It just wasn't worth it for $38,760 a year.

    Lesson here: WorldCom is not a friendly business. If this buyout of Sprint is anything like the MCI buyout, Sprint will be decimated in order to make sure it gets in line with WorldCom. This will hurt consumers; it homogenizes the market and stifles the competitive spirit that makes the marketplace go 'round.

    While I was at MCI, we were strongly motivated to get the cool stuff done before Sprint could beat us to the punch. It was one part profit motive (stock options) and two parts ego (we wanted bragging rights). It was an effective way of getting us to work hard, and in the end, the consumer benefited.

    If the DOJ hadn't stepped in, MCI would have become Sprint, and a lot of that fierce competitiveness would have gone away.

    WorldCom is growing far too large, far too quickly. Sometime look at just how many telecommunications companies they've bought out in the last ten years.

    -- I'm posting anonymously not because I'm an AC, but because I don't want to get sued by WorldCom. I don't know if they'd sue or not, but considering how draconian their nondisclosure policy was right after the MCI buyout, I'd rather play it safe rather than sorry.

  • T-1000 (Score:5)

    by Seumas ( 6865 ) on Tuesday June 27, 2000 @02:58PM (#972622)
    All I can think of when it comes to telephone companies is the T-1000 in Terminator2:Judgement Day.

    You keep hacking at it; splicing it; chopping it up; melting it; freezing it; splitting it up. Nothing works. At best, you manage to break it into dozens of small chunks, but before you know it, they've instinctively re-assimilated into the original unstoppable body of the T-1000.

    I'm tired of dealing with phone companies. They're one of the few commercial (non government) entities who really could care less about their customers. They don't even attempt to convey the appearence that they care about you. Just give them your money, shut the fuck up, and they'll get around to establishing your phone service when they are good and ready.
    ---
    seumas.com

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