Re: Using local MTA re: tlug: Naive VM question

["Stephen J. Turnbull" <turnbull@example.com>]

[Aside to Kei:] See?  Our opinions are actually generally quite close!

>>>>> "Kei" == Kei Furuuchi <kfur@example.com> writes:

    Kei> What I like to say is that Linux gives the potential no mater
    Kei> who you are.

Exactly.

[BTW: I think we should all be paying a little more attention to what
people _want_ to say rather than what they _did_ say.  This is the
main complaint about computers, after all: that they don't listen to
the user's BS and then Do The Right Thing.  We humans should be able
to do that a little bit better ;-)]

    Kei> What I think is that schools only need to show students
    Kei> solutions. If they want to do net-surfing, they can do it as
    Kei> off-school activity where school are relieved from
    Kei> responsibility how the net-surfing is conducted rather than
    Kei> rating every webs in the internet.

Yeah, what he said ;-)  I disagree only a little; I think that what
school librarians should be doing is choosing a few places to browse
that are very high content, rather than trying to rate every site.
Note that with Web technology what the Tsukuba University of Library
and Information Science interns are putting together is available to
the librarians/kids at Hiroshima-shiritsu Higashi-Shogakko, so this is
a doable project.

In fact, you could make a game of it.  On Monday, Taro-kun gets a
research project.  He submits a request to the library, where on
Tuesday the ed-student intern gets sat in front of a browser.  The
intern starts at Yahoo Japan or Goo or somewhere, and starts picking
and banning pages.  Then on Wednesday, the kid gets to use the
browser, and he gets to keep using the browser until he hits a banned
page.

This would take a lot of effort to get going, but once it got started
it wouldn't be hard to maintain an EdWeb network with appropriate
ratings, even classification by research topic.

    Kei> Also I am wondering why the telephone companies in US even
    Kei> after the break-up have monopolizing power and can still

Because until wireless technology came along it was too expensive to
duplicate local networks; the local networks had to be monopolies.
The new companies coming in face real problems with management and
brand image, but progress is being made.  The monopolies are starting
to come apart.  Of course, the old monopolies are merging with each
other to return to national coverage, but they're also starting to
compete in each other's home markets.  Takes time.

The Internet is putting extreme cost pressure on local companies to
get rid of the free local call.  Internet users are putting an unfair
burden on non-users (who still make up 60% of the population even in
the US) to share the costs.  It is now much cheaper for the
non-internet user to have message rate service, where you are billed a
small flat fee and then per minute; of course, in the U.S. local calls
are billed at about a penny per 90 seconds in most areas.  Where
flat-rate service is available, it is now generally experience-rated:
you pay a flat rate corresponding to the avarage time you spent in the
last 6 months.

This is making Internet users very unhappy.  Tough.  "There ain't no
such thing as a free lunch"---unless someone else pays for it.  I
don't see why anybody should be taxed so I can watch MPEGs of "idols".

    Kei> offer people local calls free while in Japan, NTT used to be
    Kei> government-own company and can't even offer people local call
    Kei> free.

It's not clear that local calls should be free at any time of the day,
and definitely not during business hours (so-called "peak load
pricing").  So Japan is actually ahead of the curve here.

Of course, the absurdly high rates are due to the fact that large
enterprises in Japan are part of the social employment policy and come 
under extreme pressure to hire more people in good times and never
fire anybody ever.  And large Japanese companies tend to hemorrhage
"political expenses" and "fringe benefits" of various kinds, which the 
poiticians and executives find very convenient because they don't get
accounted as "profit."  So Japanese consumers get whacked in return
for a very nice life-style for the elite, and good job security for
the top 33% of employees.

    Kei> What is the difference between public and private enterprises
    Kei> in Japan?

Amakudari with high ability run the private companies; amakudari with
low ability or low ambition (except for getting money without much
effort) run the public ones.  Half a joke, but unfortunately partly
true, I'm afraid.

Steve