How?

If you are talking about wireline broadband, the physical barriers are exactly the same as exists with other utilities: utility poles, underground conduits, and all the rights-of-way necessary to get your wire through.

Sure, theoretically, another electric, gas, water, sewage, or cable company can step in to your town and lay all their own new pipes and wires. But the city is not going to let them clog the streets with all new utility poles or new underground conduits; you gotta use the ones already there. And someone, probably your competition, is already leasing them, or owns them outright.

Unless you're google, or the city itself, that's enough barrier to keep all new competition out.

But perhaps you are considering wireless as being free from physical barriers to competition. Not so. Spectrum is a scarce resource; you have to buy, at auction to the highest bidder, the right to use it, which excludes anyone else from using it. And wireless is no replacement for wireline in performance or reliablility.

So much for robust competition. I say again, competition is for small fry and suckers. Once a company has reached a critical mass (e.g., Comcast-size), it becomes more cost-effective to simply crush competition or buy them out. Why compete, risk revenue on innovation that might fail, when you don't have to?

FUD. Either our government does the managing, or the corporations do. The government, at least, is accountable to the ballot box and the press. Comcast and their ilk are not. And don't say anything about free enterprise and competition. Competition is for small fry and suckers. Once you reach the size of Comcast, it benefits shareholders more to merge and acquire than to compete. Once monopoly status is achieved, hell with consumers and employees alike.

Markets without regulation are like sports without referees... there's nothing to prevent a nice pick-up game from turning into an all-out brawl, because who's to say it wasn't your fault for putting your face in the path of my elbow? Without rules and enforcement, you're a fool if you DON'T cheat like hell, because there's no downside and if you don't the other guy will.

An upper manager at Comcast contacted a lower manager in Public and Press Relations, who promptly ordered an assistant to hastily look through pre-fab corporate apology phrases and hash together an official but very brief written response that 1) acknowledges that mistakes were made without admitting to actual knowledge of who made what mistake, if any, 2) appears to take responsibility for whatever went wrong without actually accepting any responsibility for anything, and 3) indicates that some form of appropriate action will be taken without identifying such action or making any commitment that any such action will take place, now or ever. Upon review by at least one corporate attorney to assure that the response does not obligate the company in any way, express or implied, such that the company is completely free and clear to move on and forget the entire thing, the response was released along with an implied message directed to the press that the matter should now be permitted to die away in favor of something more interesting like Katy Perry's wardrobe malfunction.

There. FTFY.

I would bet that management is 100% engaged in the pending merger with Time Warner... that's the sexy stuff. Day to day management of delivering product or keeping the proles... I mean, customers, satisfied is way down the list of priorities. Too hard to measure, too hard to link to anything that raises stock value. It may be sad, but in big companies making customers happy (particularly customers who are captive to your monopoly status anyway) doesn't get you promoted from your middle-management job like cutting costs does.

I'll wager the under-appreciated grunt employees at the front-lines with the customers are doing this just to test whether any of their merger-mad managers are paying any attention. Since management is only apologizing now after the press and blogosphere have discovered it, the answer was probably no.

I don't want to wait in vain for draft mode,
No, I don't want to wait in vain for draft mode.
I don't wanna I don't wanna I don't wanna I don't wanna I don't wanna wait in vain,
I don't wanna I don't wanna I don't wanna I don't wanna I don't wanna wait in vain.

Still waiting...

Very Much This. It's an interface feature that's not at all new, and easily taken for granted until you come across an app that doesn't have it. Particularly in Draw, the lack of this feature wastes a lot of time.

I am also waiting in vain for Writer to include a "normal" or "draft" view like in Word, making better use of the space on the screen (I don't need to see faux paper stuff all the time) while still retaining margins and showing page breaks unlike the useless (to me) "Web View".

There's bugs registered for these things somewhere, but I can't tell how the developers choose which issues to address and which ones to put off indefinitely.

Why do people always say this? Although both parties receive contributions from whoever wants to contribute, they most definitely don't behave the same. This FCC decision is a prime example: the two Republicans voted lock-step with the cable lobby, but the three Democrats had the balls to stand against it to at least try to drag the United States into the future. So, thank you, Democrats, thank you, particularly for calling out the industry's lobbying bullshit, testifying that 4Mbps down and 1Mbps up is just plenty, while at the same time telling consumers that same speed sucks and that we all should pay premium (not available in all areas) because ’25/25 is best for one to three devices at the same time, great for surfing, e-mail, online shopping and social networking, streaming two HD videos simultaneously. 50/50 is best for three to five devices at the same time, more speed for families or individuals with multiple Internet devices, stream up to five HD videos simultaneously.’