Magic Statistics

Federal Industry Minister Maxime Bernier grew impatient with the CRTC's glacial pace of telephone deregulation and decided unilaterally to open local telephone markets to unrestricted competition.

"The federal government has now substituted its wisdom for the wisdom of the CRTC," says industry analyst Ian Angus of Angus Telemanagement. "This is an ideological difference about the whole concept of competition."

The federal government's concept — which now prevails — means that telecom companies will be freed from the current requirement that they prove they've lost 25 per cent of their customer base to competition in a specified area before they are exempt from regulation, That threshold will be replaced by a new test that requires only that there are at least three other non-affiliated competitors in a given market.

Basically, urban telephone markets in Canada are now wide open.  This is clearly a big win for Canadian consumers and the large telecommunications companies that have been pushing for faster deregulation.  The big loser is the CRTC, and not for the first time in recent days.

It is the second time in rapid succession that the Industry minister has overruled the federal regulator: in mid-November, he asserted himself on the issue of Voice-over-Internet Protocol.

This time out, Mr. Bernier's strike doesn't just hobble the CRTC's power, it cuts the regulator out of the loop altogether. With de facto deregulation of the local telephone market in place, the CRTC is superceded by the federal Competition Bureau, which just last week was given the power to fine telecoms that act in an uncompetitive manner.

The award of that power to the Competition Bureau is also perceived as a direct slight to the CRTC, because it had asked for that authority in the past and been denied.

Maybe the CRTC is finally on its way out.

h/t: Bourque

Gazi University in Ankara has suspended Professor Atilla Yayla for criticising modern Turkey’s founder and first president, Mustafa Kemal Ataturk.

News reports said the professor was suspended after he referred to the late soldier-statesman as "that man," criticized the statues and pictures of Ataturk that adorn government offices and schools, and said an era of one-party rule under Ataturk had led to "regression rather than progress."

Prof Yayla says the subject of his speech was what makes a nation civilized.  He argued that, during the Ataturk era, Turkey did not fulfill all the criteria he listed.

I said that despite widespread official propaganda, the single-party era between 1925-1945, led mainly by Mustafa Kemal Ataturk, was not as progressive as it is claimed and was, in some respects, backward.
. . .
Gazi University, instead of defending academic freedom, suspended me for my statements - and for leaving the city limits of the university without official permission. An investigation is sure also to uncover evidence of failing "to educate Turkish students in accordance with Ataturk's principles and revolutions," the legal basis of education here.

One of his criteria was freedom of expression.  Thus, by suspending him, the university has arguably called into question Turkey’s claim to be a civilized country, and potentially compounded the difficulties the country faces being accepted into the European Union.

Yayla has been accused in the popular press of treason and violating laws against “insulting Ataturk’s memory”, belittling the Turkish government, and denigrating “Turkishness”.

Previous related post: Turkey adamant: Armenian genocide shall not be discussed

Jim Allchin, Windows development chief, said in a January 2004 e-mail to Microsoft  co-founder Bill Gates and CEO Steve Ballmer, “I would buy a Mac today if I was not working at Microsoft”.  He also said that the company had “lost sight” of customer needs.

"In my view, we lost our way," Allchin, the co-president of Microsoft's platform and services division, wrote in an e-mail dated Jan. 7, 2004. The e-mail was presented as evidence late last week in the Iowa antitrust trial, Comes v. Microsoft Corp.

"I think our teams lost sight of what bug-free means, what resilience means, what full scenarios mean, what security means, what performance means, how important current applications are, and really understanding what the most important problems our customers face are. I see lots of random features and some great vision, but that does not translate into great products."

Since the e-mail was posted at Groklaw last weekend, Mr Allchin has responded with the claim that he was being “dramatic” to make the point that the company needed to change.

Mr Allchin plans to retire at the end of this month, shortly before Windows Vista is released.  Maybe he’ll buy his Mac then.

h/t: Macworld UK

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Demographics expert Nicholas Eberstadt has warned that the practices of prenatal sex selection and sex-selection abortions are spreading around the globe, resulting in growing birth imbalances.  Far more boys than girls are being born.

Refuting the assumptions that preference for baby boys is a localized cultural phenomenon or due solely to coercive population programs, Eberstadt’s research reveals that imbalance is due to several factors: an existing preference for sons, a decrease in overall fertility, and the exponential increase in the use of technology which facilitates sex selection in the prenatal stages. He also emphasized that a rise in education levels does not slow the problem and in some cases is associated with increases in aborting baby girls.

According to Eberstadt, natural birth rates are about 105 males for every 100 females born. Some regions of the world are experiencing upwards of 115 boys born for every 100 girls, some are as high at 150 boys born for every 100 girls.  He warned delegates that this could just be the beginning and that the world is “moving to the realm of science fiction” as the ratio of baby boys to baby girls was already at levels “beyond nature.”  Citing a recent study, Eberstadt said that even now there are 20 million “missing” baby girls in Asia alone, that sex-selected abortions have permanently skewed the demographic balance of China and are in the process of skewing the demographic balance of India. He also showed the way that the trend has crept into Eastern Europe and Latin America, and that almost every African state is showing signs of vulnerability to the phenomenon.

Other researchers suggest that demographic imbalance causing a surplus of men who are unable to marry could foster growth of terrorism and organised crime.  Another foreseeable result is increased abduction and trafficking of women.

Prohibiting sex-selection abortions will probably not solve the problem.  When South Korea tried that, incidence of intentional abortion of girls jumped.  Eberstadt believes that the most likely solution is restricting all abortions.

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• Repeat abortions trivialise pregnancy
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