If their positions weren't protected by the FCC, they would be worried about competition. If they were worried about competition, they would be doing everything in their power to differentiate their service from any potential competitors by using their economies of scale to provide the fastest, cheapest service available. Competition inherently lowers the percentage of profits to very low levels. We can look to the first world countries that we used to be able to count ourselves amon and see the levels of service and pricing that would develop in a competitive market.

I can't believe the hubris of claiming this is a market driven policy. AT&T is bascially saying, "Capitalism, Capitalism, Capitalism . . . unless I lose my monopoly, in which case, Central planning, Central Planning, CENTRAL PLANNING!"

AT&T and Comcast are doing everything the can to prevent market pricing, and claiming that there's a market-based reason for it.

Most companies keep their pirates in the finance department.

I'm suddenly remembering that it's been a while since I saw "Month Python's TheMeaning of Life".

The HP12C was still being recommended in 2008 to MBA students. I've got a "Platinum Edition" from earller this century. So, if they are defunct, it hasn't been long.

Develop an eidetic memory.

Dip pens or fountain?
    I won't even discuss the expressionless abominations that are ball-point and roller-ball.

I remember getting pages of largely unformatted text as letters when I was in college because my father used vi as his word processor of choice and then just piped the output to a dot matrix printer. He used vi for correspondence for the rest of his life into the current century. He was a Unix/Xenix guy from the word go, and thought C was for people who were too lazy to organize their thoughts well enough to code in Fortran and Cobol.

I miss him. He was a great guy.

Who cares? The people paying for the retraining, not only directly, but also indirectly through lost productivity. The people who's business is slowed because it takes longer to fix issues while the IT staff is getting up to speed on the new system.

If the new system won't be so much more efficient that it more than makes up for all of those lost hours of productivity, then the switch doesn't make sense. Lots of people outside of IT are affected by changes to systems like this. All of those wasted cycles represent workers not able to use their computers to get the work of the firm done. How much does it cost a company if a system change like this mean that the Pittsburgh, Atlanta, and Mobile offices are down for a couple of hours because IT has never experienced a problem like this before and is having to fly by the seat of their pants to come up with a solution?

People who rely on their computer systems and need them to be up and running as much of every day as is possible. That's who cares if IT is learning a new system "on the job."

I did. And let me tell you, putting your faith in a Master Control Program is a very, very bad idea.

I had to read that sentence twice in the article. I think what he meant was that a fundamental change that's met with such controversy shouldn't be implemented, not that the controversy shouldn't exist. If you can't get buy-in, you shouldn't be mucking up the works by invalidating people's knowledge of how the system operates.

Unfortunately, as my former boss used to say, "Some people are never going to like the taste of the soup until they get a chance to p*ss in it."

That being said, please, if you insist on undoing millions of hours of system training for workers around the globe, go work at Microsoft. It's their business model (see: ribbon interface, Start button, loss of Start button, Bob, etc., ad nauseum.)

Just because I know I won't get what I want, doesn't mean I can't vote to make my life less miserable. I hope one day to vote for what I think is right. I've so far only been able to be a thorn in the side of the greater of two evils.

I suspect that he's referring to the idea that a lot of people can't shake that stockhoder voting correlates to the voting booth. In fact, corporations tend to be structured so that one person, or a few "like-minded" people maintain sufficient power that no number of new voters will change the direction of the company, since no newly issued stock goes out without existing shareholders having the ability to buy sufficient shares to maintain their majority status. Companies only change when there are tender offers and the majority shares change hand, being purchased by a new, small cadre of like-minded people. Not because a lot of small shareholders ban together to vote a different way. Individual votes are less meaningful than in a general election.

But . . . witih a government run utility, the "shareholders" (i.e. - voters) have interests that generally align with my own (quality of service, cost of service, etc.) because they benefit from the same outcome as I do (better, cheaper service.) With a corporation, shareholders are interested in maximizing the amount of money they take from me, while minimizing the amount of money they spend to provide service.

I'm not saying that government officials and special interests can't get in the way of optimal service, but at least my interests are not in direct opposition to the people who ultimately get to decide what is done.