Monday Morning Links

Online textbooks are not a good fiscal choice no matter what. it's cheaper to budget replacement books every 10 years or so. If a course has material that changes faster than that, don't use a textbook. There is plenty of information that can be collected via the Internet or other means for free.

If the commercial publishers won't play nice with the kids then expel them for not fulfilling the contract or at least for being idiots. I bet there are a few authors more than happy to write textbooks for tthe district with anual updates for the exercise problems. I know of a few university and college programs that have gone that way already.

... existing providers often control poles to which competitors need access ...

Does anyone have further information on this? I thought the electric company owned the poles and cable paid a fee to hang their wires. Does cable sign an exclusive agreement with the electric company to prevent others from using them?

Sometimes cities own most of the poles. I have never heard of electric companies granting exclusive access but perhaps cities sometimes do.

The article uses the word "provider" and "competitors" which implies the existing cable provider is preventing competitor access.

Perhaps some cities also provide cable? In that case are they a provider and refuse competition?

Internet TV users favor video services over music... isn't that pretty obvious? It is after all an internet TV.

Right now it does look that way, but it may not be the reason at all.

I think the reason is that we think that incumbents are the ones that will give it to us. And i think that we are looking for an answer from the wrong source.
Speed advancements have not stopped just because they aren't willing to sell it to us. So maybe we're just looking for love in all the wrong places...
I think that what we need to do, is start thinking outside the box. This is simply an engineering challenge. And the tools that could emancipate us from the incumbents are starting to show up.
I have very good reasons to believe that the "WiFi" equivalent for the "last mile" is just around the corner. And when that does happen, internet speeds will advance as fast as Ethernet has since it got started.