For me, an Iphone is useless because AT&T has very poor coverage in this end of San Jose. So poor that I can't get a usable signal at my home, at the local mall, etc.
I don't much care for Verizon as a company - and don't get me started on how they cripple their phones. But they do have the undeniable advantage of a good strong signal in all the places where I need it. So I'm a Verizon customer (for now).
If Apple made a CDMA Iphone - and Verizon could resist their need to disable apps and hardware features to protect their "buy it now" revenue stream - then I'd be carrying an Iphone right now. It's not perfect, but it's leaps and bounds beyond the other cell phones in its class.
Or AT&T could get busy and plant some cell towers around here so that their service would be usable. As bad as AT&T is as a company, they're nowhere near as greedy and abusive as Verizon. If there was signal, I'd switch to AT&T and get an Iphone.
But neither of these things is likely to happen at any time in the foreseeable future. Verizon isn't likely to stop crippling the phones they sell and AT&T isn't likely to expand their signal coverage into this part of town. So I'll keep carrying this crippled piece of stuff cell phone and hope for a better day.
Stores don't check receipts at the doors to catch shoplifters. Think about it - how many shoplifters carry a store bag into the store and put their purloined items into the bag and try to walk it past the receipt checkers?
That's not the way shoplifters work - it's in their pockets, down their pants, etc. And the guys checking receipts at the door aren't looking in those places, just in the bag.
The REAL reason for that guy at the door who looks in your bag and checks your receipt is to monitor the performance of the people running the cash registers. This allows them to catch mistakes and put a stop to that old "ring up every other item for your friends" scam.
If any shoplifters are caught it's incidental - they're not looking for shoplifters because they're looking IN THE WRONG PLACE. The "door nazis" are working for the loss control department but they're trying to cut down on losses to internal problems.
Think about it for a few minutes and you'll realize that this is the truth.
Now, just exactly what right do you suppose they have to force you to help them prevent their employees from stealing? What right do they have to detain and / or search you? The store personnel have no police powers and they're subject to the same laws as everyone else. Except for one limited circumstance they can not detain you in any way, and they can not search you - any attempt to do so is a crime. That limited exception is when they see you shoplift an item and continuously observe you carry it out of the store without paying. In that situation they can detain you until the police arrive. They have to call the police immediately and can not interrogate or search you.
Each time I see this topic replied to with "just show them the receipt, what do you have to hide?" comments it points out a real problem in our society. Why should you blindly obey and comply with a request to perform an illegal search of your person / possessions by an employee at some retail store?
Suppose someone set up a checking station on a busy sidewalk and asked to search the purse of every passing female. That's not right, is it? But what they're doing at the store is no different.
So if you feel OK with helping the store management monitor their employees and don't mind the offense against your basic constitutional rights - go ahead and let them look in your bag and check your receipt. But if you don't feel that this is the proper course of action then feel free to say "No, thanks" and walk right by. If a store employee makes an attempt to stop you and touches you in the attempt, go right ahead and sue them. Call it assault, or unlawful detainer and make them pay. If they call the police - be nice to the officer, he's just doing his job. Keep in mind that he's not there because you were leaving the store, the person in the store that called him said you were shoplifting. Once he's seen that you're not stealing anything he'll tell them to let you go. Don't make the officer's job harder; just remember to add "false criminal report" to the store's list of offenses and make them pay even more.
Remember, the descent into fascism is paved with passive agreement to corporate control over our lives. You might not be able to stop it, but we can slow it down a little by not giving in to these attempts by retail stores to seize police powers.
What were these clowns thinking? Let's open up a music download site and exclude the vast majority of potential customers because they chose an Apple product.
They must be getting desperate - they've escalated their war to where they're now attacking not only their customers but Apple too. These media corporate suits are used to getting their own way but this time they're way over their heads.
It's becoming clear (to me at least) that the media middlemen are intent on destroying themselves in a spectacular fashion. The only thing that's unclear at this point is how many bad decisions they'll make before their corporate offices are replaced by smoking craters...
I don't think it's news to anyone here that users are the greatest threat to a corporate network. Even the classifications they use are useless; think about the times a virus has attacked your network and I'll bet it was a user doing something that was prohibited by company policy that set the virus loose.
So let's look at the possible solutions. We've got "lock everything down" in the lead - that's fine in its way but causes worker dissatisfaction because they can't use the creative solutions they've developed, can't use the tools they're used to in the way they're used to, etc. Ultimately, if you get things limited to the point that all possibility of damage is prevented you've also created a situation where productivity is severely limited or prevented. And it's just a matter of time before it's pointed out to you that you weren't as secure as you thought you were.
Then there's the "monitor and log everything" plan - give the users a quick class in acceptable use of IT assets then "correct" anyone who violates the rules. This overlooks the very real truth that most of the harm caused by users is not intentional; it's almost always an unexpected result from a silly mistake. The result of this plan is to create an environment of fear where everyone is careful to follow the rules exactly, won't do anything that's "not my job" and if something goes wrong nobody saw anything. Ultimately you end up with all the problems you had before but with no useful information on how it happened / how to prevent it from happening again - and low productivity due to the workers being unwilling to do any more than necessary.
The real answer is that You can't solve personnel problems with technological solutions. Forget what they taught you in your MBA program and what the security software vendors told you, treat the workers like human beings and help them to understand what can go wrong and how to avoid it. Remember that IT's mission is to support the workers. Offer classes on information security, available to all, and on paid time so they'll have the chance and ability to take part. IT works much, much better when the rest of the corporate staff are partners, not antagonists.
There's a couple of things that this stealth update has pointed out that do indeed have some serious implications.
For example, there's a service running on virtually all home PCs that can be instructed to download and install an executable by a remote site and give no indication that this has happened. It seems to me that the only reason this hasn't been exploited yet (if it hasn't) is because it wasn't a published interface. Now that the existence of this vulnerability has been sprayed across all the tech sites it's just a matter of time before it becomes a BIG problem.
And let's not overlook the little detail of how you can configure the automatic updates client to notify only, or download and notify and Microsoft overrides your explicit configuration and causes it to download and install software without notifying you. That story about needing to update the update client so you could receive notifications is a load of bull and just further illustrates the utter lack of respect for their customers that has become the calling card of Microsoft.
Those who run Linux may take some satisfaction in knowing that the creators of their OS cares about what the users want. But they can't ignore the MS beast; when the day comes that umpteen million XP installations silently download and install BOTNET.EXE and the net is saturated with the traffic from all these zombies the Linux users will suffer too.
Thanks once again to the "smart" people at Microsoft. They've introduced many, many systems to allow remote sites to execute code on client computers. Unfortunately, they're not wise people at Microsoft and they've baked all these vulnerabilities into their products.
It's been a feast for the spyware, virus and botnet creators - people think that these people are brilliant (but misguided) computer geniuses that have gone over to the dark side. That's really not the case - these blights upon the network are created by common criminals. Microsoft has made it easy for even them to take over systems running Microsoft software.
This situation presents a case study: will American courts protect the public interest, or will they sell us out to corporate interests again?
If any of you ever felt like you might want to write some letters or make some phone calls, this would be a good time. Keep in mind that Verizon won't be hurt in any way if they don't get this frequency band. It's you and I that'll get hurt if they do...
The members of the RIAA have been enriching themselves as (essentially) statutory middlemen. For decades, any music you listened to came to you through their distribution system; there was no other option.
This internet thing blows their monopoly apart - there's a new method of distribution that's cheaper, faster, and out of the control of the music companies. This presents a problem to them: their "money for nothing" gravy train is threatened. It's no surprise that they're using every tool they can to stop reality from sending them to the realm of the irrelevant.
But since they haven't worked for their money for years, when it comes to taking legal action they don't seem to be willing to put forth an effort there either. This latest decision is an interesting one; significant enough by itself, but it'll cause some big changes for a lot of people...
Maybe after all the IT layoffs the remaining staff is busy trying to keep the current systems running - and just doesn't have the man hours available to implement some new Web 2.0 stuff much less support it.
Hey, corporate suit - remember when you were rolling out metrics so you could determine which IT staff you'd keep and which you'd fire (for questionable reasons - no layoffs, don't want to pay unemployment). Now you think you need to make some significant changes - but the remaining IT staff is already overworked doing their jobs, plus the jobs of all the people you got rid of (and got a nice bonus for reducing IT payroll).
The chickens have come home to roost - time to pay the piper...
They're going to rethink the penalties based on how much of the finished product infringes?
How about rethinking what's patentable instead? The number of patent infringement cases would plummet if the junk patents were thrown out - and no new junk patents were granted.
Their "solution" is ridiculous; altering the penalty for violating the "one click" patent isn't what's needed. What's really needed is to reform the patent system so that things like that "one click" patent could never occur.
The "web 2.0" plan is to let the people each contribute a small amount - so that everyone can take advantage of the contributions of many. This works well - many examples exist today.
Then some corporate drones looked at what was happening and though "how can we take advantage?" So they got the "each contribute a small amount" part but overlooked the "everyone takes advantage" part. The corporate version is more like "everyone contributes a small amount and the corporation takes advantage". Many corporations have tried this plan and they've been left wondering "what went wrong?"
So here comes Intel - they're asking the people to contribute ideas and then they'll take advantage of them. We've seen this play out before and the result is always the same. Hey, Intel - if you really want people to do your work for you, you need to include some way to compensate them in your plan. You didn't really expect them to do this for you for free, did you?
I suspect they did - and when this plan fails miserably they'll pick some unfortunate person in their corporation to take the blame for the failure. They'll never for a moment think that their plan was flawed and doomed to failure from the start...
Comcast (and the other large ISP firms) evade responsibility for the traffic they carry by being "common carriers". The law recognizes that if they just move bits then they're not responsible for - or even aware of the content being transferred.
But throttling or cancelling transfers based upon the content being carried means that they are exercising editorial control over the traffic they carry. This puts them under a different set of rules; if they block or cripple transfers of content types that they prohibit, then they are demonstrating that they are capable of monitoring the content of the transmissions and exerting control over what content is carried. This makes them liable for any illegal / actionable transfers - they were watching the transfers, they knew the laws - so if something "wrong" slips through it's because of negligence or a willful omission on the ISP's part.
Of course, these corporate ISPs like having it both ways; all the benefits of common carrier status, but not having to carry all the bits they promised to carry in their customer contracts.
I see several in this thread claiming that it's unreasonable to expect Comcast to supply the unlimited access they sold. Some state that overselling their capacity is a normal practice. I call BS here: they willingly contracted with their customers to provide unlimited internet access. Intentionally providing less than the contracted bandwidth / access is fraud. The claims that they don't have enough bandwidth available to support the demand (while true) isn't an excuse - it's further proof that they intended to defraud their customers. They knew they didn't have the necessary resources but continued to sign up customers - knowing full well that these customers would not receive what they paid for.
The problem isn't that people are using more bandwidth than they "should". The problem is that Comcast / Others sold internet access when they didn't have sufficient resources to support that access. If they are forced to upgrade their systems, buy more bandwidth, or upgrade data centers - it's their problem, not ours. They wouldn't need to make those expenditures if they hadn't sold more than they had available to sell in the first place.
They'll cripple and monetize internet access to the extent that we'll allow. If filtering Bit Torrent works out OK for them, then they'll move on to other bandwidth-heavy transfers. What happens now will determine what happens to YouTube in a few months...
One of the GNU / Linux weak points is the wide variety of user interface implementations. Simple and common functions should be accessed in the same way in every application. Look how many different keystroke combinations / menu selections are used to exit a program - sure, us nerds can keep them all straight without any trouble but what about the unwashed masses?
Why is it that all the developers seem to be able to code to a standard API - but they can't even come close to agreement on the way a program is operated? Maybe it's time to create a UI standard for Linux apps?
This would go a long way towards making Linux the favored choice for desktop machines. Ease of use is a great way to unseat the dominant OS; it's not exactly easy to use and it's very possible to beat them at this game.
For those of us who haven't been to business school - one of the currently popular "tools" for increasing profitability is to measure the performance of the individual employees, identify the "weakest links" and get rid of them. In this way the reduction of payroll expense is obtained with a minimum loss of productivity.
You can identify companies that are being managed along these lines by their sudden interest in generating metrics. In production line situations where units of productivity are obvious and easily measured this approach has some validity. But trying to apply these theories to jobs where what we do is reactive - there's no valid way to do it - and no valid reason other than to sort out who's going to get canned. By reactive, I mean that the workload is determined by outside events; you don't know what you'll be doing or how long it'll take until something breaks and you've fixed it.
Here's a whack with the cluestick for you: if you think that the fact that you (and your team) keep the systems running smoothly means you're doing great - that's not what management is thinking. They're looking at the labor cost and what they get for their dollar. If nothing breaks then they don't need to keep you on the payroll. And they'll probably get a bonus for reducing expenses after letting a few of you non-productive people go.
If they're measuring performance by the number of tickets you handle - get your resume in order now. When a virus comes along and disrupts operations you'll be buried under a huge number of tickets; you'll take care of business and get things back in order - and the management will look at how you've handled 500 tickets in a month and consider that a good benchmark. A few months later when things are a bit boring - they'll look at the metrics again and see that you've only handled 50 tickets in a month. Good luck trying to explain how your productivity dropped 90% and it's really OK. If you convince them that you couldn't do more because there wasn't that much to do then you're arguing for a headcount reduction. If you can't convince them, then you're a slacker. Either way, somebody's likely to lose their job.
Or if they're measuring performance by the time it takes you to resolve problems - get your resume in order now. If your resolution was to reset a hung server then you got done very quickly and you're a hero. But if Exchange burped and ate its database, the hours you spend reloading the database from backup and getting the mail back online will count heavily against you.
Really, it doesn't matter what set of metrics they choose - since our work doesn't come in equal sized packets and it doesn't come at regular intervals, any production measurement is essentially a random number. But it doesn't matter to management; they've been tasked with cutting payroll expense by 10% and they'll use these "metrics" to determine who goes and who stays. Implementation of performance metrics in an IT department is ALWAYS followed by cuts in staffing.
Who will it be? They're figuring it out using the metrics they've collected - regardless of the validity of the data. What this means is that it's just as likely to be you as anyone else. And even if you're "lucky" and don't lose your job - you'll still get stuck doing not just your work but also the work of the people who were let go. It's a real lose/lose situation.
Did I mention that you need to get your resume in order?
While the original article does say that the TALON database will be shut down - and acknowledges that there's uncorrected errors in the data - there's some things that aren't made clear.
For example, the database isn't going to be deleted - it's just getting moved to a different agency. They'll give it a different name, but that database will live on. And those errors in the data? Nobody said anything about correcting them.
So it's really a "Tom shuts it down then gives it to Bob who turns it right back on" kind of deal. Politics as usual...
IT assets cost real money. If a company purchases large amounts of "CPU cycles" it requires a large expenditure. How that translates to a faster growing business is unclear. Maybe if we rephrase the source article a bit it'll make more sense?
Let's try: "Company X says that buying lots of company X products will cause your business to grow at an exponential rate".
Aha! Now I see - it's just more marketing doublespeak. I wonder if you could get Sun to put these claims in writing?
Microsoft has made incredible sums of money from their monopoly control of desktop operating systems. Linux represents the greatest threat to their monopoly that's ever come about. Their continued domination (and pocket stuffing) depends upon Linux (or any other competitor) being destroyed or sidelined.
Microsoft has a long history of anti-competitive behavior - look at how they've dealt with Stacker, Lotus, Netscape, DR-DOS - the list goes on and on. This is their history, and provides a good indication of their future behavior.
Now they're trying to make nice, put on the "open source" show and offer to interoperate with Linux? They're going to lay down their knives and cuddle up to the biggest threat to their continued domination?
Anyone that believes that Microsoft is sincere in their offer to open source their code - or work along with Linux - is (pardon me for being so blunt, but) a deluded fool. They'll prevaricate and make false offers as they try to find a chink in the armor - then they'll move in for the kill. Remember, they offered deals to Stack, Netscape, etc, etc. and every time it ended up badly for their "partners". Why believe that this time will be different? They're just trying to use the OSI rules against open source - will stupidity allow the MS camel to insert its nose into the open source tent?
I can't believe that HP would do such a stupid thing to start with. Out of all the people you could mess with in this life, pissing off a reporter has to be one of the dumbest moves you could make. Breaking the law while you're doing it doesn't make things any better at all. Multiply that by the number of reporters they messed with and it's a real problem.
So up to this point - charges were filed against HP by the government. Those charges were dropped - all HP had to do was admit wrongdoing, pay a 15 million dollar fine to the state, and agree to make some changes in the way they handle investigations. $15M sounds like a lot, but to a corporation like HP it's not such a big penalty.
The people involved were also charged - and the charges were dropped in all cases except one of the underlings at the private investigation agency - he had to do some community service. The worst actor of the lot - Patty Dunn - walked away scot free.
But what about those reporters? Beside the trauma of finding that their private records had been rummaged through secretly, they've suffered some real damage to their careers. None of them can ethically report on HP any more - and what good is a technology reporter that can't report on HP?
Not to mention the chilling effect HP's actions had on news reporters in general. Hard to get those hot tips when the people passing the information along quit doing so; if someone's tapping the reporter's phone, they'd be targeted. No thanks.
HP tried to settle with the reporters. We don't know what kind of settlement offer was made but it clearly wasn't enough to satisfy the reporters. So the reporters sue, and HP announces that they'll defend vigorously. What kind of defense can they offer, considering they admitted guilt in the state case? Another bad move by the folks at HP - now they're going to end up paying more (probably much, much more) and enjoy more negative publicity that gets generated as the cases wind their way through the legal system.
HP needs to make those reporters whole. Since HP through its illegal actions damaged their careers, they should pay the reporters at least the difference between what they would have earned and what they can earn now. That's only fair. But there's another angle to consider - punitive damages. Big punitive damages, the kind that would cause HP some financial pain and send a message to others - it's not even worth considering illegally manipulating the press. Lots of people in the news business feel this way, not just the plaintiffs in this action. And while these plaintiffs can't report on HP, There's an awful lot of reporters who saw what happened, feel that their profession has been done a great wrong, and aren't prohibited from writing about HP.
So here they go - HP gets to defend itself in multiple lawsuits and has to go in with the fact that they've already admitted guilt, preventing them from arguing much of anything other than how much they should have to pay. And while this is going on, the media will be reporting on it - the same media that HP went out of their way to alienate. The same media that HP depends on to print its press releases.
What will ultimately be the result of these suits? I don't want to guess at this point; corporations seem to be getting away with all kinds of things these days.
And I've got a solution. Each time I see that a page load is stalled waiting for an ad server (or an analytics server), I simply add that server to my AdBlock list. Problem solved.
If you'd read the original article you'd find the title of it to be:
Microsoft questions FCC's 'white spaces' decision
While it's true that other companies are involved in the White Spaces project, only Microsoft is using their public relations machine to try for a "do-over" on their test failure.
More of the typical BS from Microsoft. They submitted a device for testing and it failed, so the testing authority refused to certify it. Nothing special about this.
But then they issue a press release. Somehow it's unfair that their device failed its tests; their device was malfunctioning but if it had been working correctly it would have passed?
It's the same old tune - those mean old government agencies won't dance to Microsoft's tune, so they'll appeal to the court of public opinion. It's worked so well for them in the past, why not give it another go?
When there's a difference of opinion then PR stunts like this have some value. But in situations like this one where a device was being measured against technical standards and failed - that's not negotiable. Trying to use the same old trick here just makes them look foolish - and gives another good look at the man behind the curtain...
Are MP3 files as good as the source material? Not quite; the differences are subtle but audible. Those sonic differences are MINOR in comparison to the other demons that turn sweet music into noisy trash. A badly mastered CD has sound that's far more damaged, cheap headphones and sleazy audio electronics do their part to muddy the tunes.
There are some who are audio purists - but despite their exotic sound systems they're fooling themselves - there is no perfect audio reproduction, there's not even a way to perfectly record it. All real audio systems are made up of compromises; all arguments about audio quality revolve around those compromises.
Me? I use an IPod Nano with a set of Etymotic ER-4P canalphones. Is it perfect? No, but it's amazingly good. Much, much better than you'd expect (yes, those expensive phones are worth every penny). Much better than what the stereo store is selling for five figure prices. Would uncompressed files make it better? Yes - actually, the IPod supports uncompressed music already. But I make the compromise - compress the tunes a little so that I can carry a larger library. It works for me.
The biggest sonic problem I experience? Lousy recordings on record company CDs. Clipping, huge amounts of compression, distortion - how could they release that album in such poor condition? But they do - and wonder why people don't buy so much anymore.
You know how they talk about the dynamic range of CDs being 96db? Pop a current pop release into a system with VU meters and watch the meters as it plays. Those needles will be stuck between -6 and 0 the whole time; 6 whole db of dynamic range. And the people that sell this crap have the nerve to claim that MP3 files don't have all the sonic benefits? Bozos...
A big part of what makes a personal computer so useful and necessary is its general-purpose nature and its "personal" characteristic: it does what you ask it to do.
Microsoft's big mistake here was to modify the relationship between user and computer. In their new design, the computer no longer does solely what you want it to do. Sometimes it does what Microsoft wants it to do, sometimes it does what some un-named third party company wants it to do. And if you ask it to do what you want instead, it will REFUSE TO DO SO.
It's not a "save the children!" situation and it's not a "stop piracy!" situation. It's a situation where your personal computer isn't yours anymore - it belongs to Microsoft and you can only use it for things that they'll allow you to use it for. All it takes for you to give up your control over your PC is to buy and install Vista. Read that EULA carefully - it's all bad news.
Right now it's "only" high quality (whatever that means) audio and video files that can only be played under terms negotiated between Microsoft and some other corporation. You weren't involved in those negotiations - but if your audio and video files come out looking like crap then it's because those corporate folks decided that you shouldn't be allowed to see / hear them in their normal quality. Some people here seem to think that this is an anti-piracy feature - while it could be used in that way it's really a more general purpose system. The media corporations can "push the button" on any file they create for any reason they want; how about a special "plays on your PC" version for a slight additional charge?
Microsoft has installed all the "plumbing" to provide custom designed file access restrictions. Combine that with the media corporations and Microsoft itself being dedicated to making more and more profit every year - abuse of Vista's access controls isn't something that might happen - the only question is when and how badly it'll be abused.
It used to be (maybe still is) that engineering students had to take an ethics course. It was considered very important to consider your design and its interactions with people - could it harm people or property during normal operation - or in case of a malfunction? By carefully considering the worst possible outcomes in advance there wouldn't be any surprises once the design was produced and sold.
Tools are a special case and deserve extra consideration. They can be used in many unpredictable ways so often the way to look at them is with a risk / benefit analysis. What are the best results from the use of the tool, what are the worst results. Does the good outweigh the bad in the use of the tool? If not, it should not be produced.
Data mining is a tool; it can be used in many different ways by different people. Figuring out how to reduce street crime is a good thing - but what else can this tool be used for. What kind of evil can be done?
History offers a clue: the Nazis kept track of their Jewish problem using tabulating machines custom built for them by IBM.
Anyway, what kind of uses for this kind of data mining would some other people find? How about Karl Rove - he'd find it very useful. There's plenty of others who'd be thrilled to put this technology to work in ways that would cause great harm to our society. You know that the current administration has been busy collecting every bit of data they can from any and all sources - TIA is alive and well, its just gone underground. Does the thought of GW sitting down at a terminal to discover who is loyal to him and who is not trouble you? It sure does bother me...
It's not DRM that's on life support, it's Universal (and the rest of the "music industry"). Their sales and profits have been declining for a few years - now they're getting worried. They can see the end of the gravy train staring them in the face and there's no relief in sight.
They're still holding tightly to their fantasy about P2P downloaders costing them millions and billions - but they have noticed that their introduction of DRM technologies has received an almost totally negative response from their former customers. So they'll back off on this a little and "see if the piracy rate goes up". That's not what they'll be looking at at all, that's just some spin for the media. What they're looking for is some kind of upward bump to their profits; when they added DRM their income went down - so let's remove the DRM and see if our income goes back up.
What they still can't see through their pride is that DRM doesn't reduce piracy in any meaningful way; all it does is cause inconvenience to their paying customers. It's driven more than a few customers away; buy one CD that won't play in your player and it's quite natural to avoid any CDs from that company in the future. What they also can't see is that those lost customers won't be coming back just because of some mealy-mouthed PR statement about removing DRM from some music for a short period - they've been fooled once already.
"Piracy" (copyright infringement) is an interesting thing - it only happens with items that can be duplicated and sold at a price substantially below the price of the original product. If the record companies sold CDs for 69 cents each then the "pirates" wouldn't bother with music CDs. The record companies would never willingly reveal their cost of production - but you can safely assume that it's much less than a dollar. When they over-price the finished product at 20 dollars they create their own piracy problem.
Will they ever see this simple truth? "Pirates" are a fact of life; eliminate one or a dozen and a hundred more will take their place. As long as there's easy money to be made then people will be lined up to get their share. There is nothing that the music companies, their lobbying lapdogs, the government, the courts, or anyone else can do to prevent it. As long as the product is priced far in excess of its production cost, there's going to be a "piracy" problem.
Even the folks who just "want to get it for free" would become paying customers if the price was RIGHT. But the music industry keeps turning out formula junk with one or two good tunes per CD and then asking 20 bucks for it - and then they wonder why people aren't buying it. This is the root cause of their decline - expecting top dollar for bargain basement material.
But they weren't satisfied with shooting themselves in that foot - they decided to start up their "legal" extortion racket and run people over the coals for thousands of dollars - for downloading a song that has a market value of less than a dollar. They even decided to sue some dead people, children, disabled seniors, etc. just to make sure that they offended everyone. This bone-headed plan is pure public relations poison - but they just can't stop. This turns a bunch more customers into former customers and the sales drop off even faster.
Having shot themselves in both feet, they turned to their kneecaps with DRM and rootkits. While it's tempting, I won't belabor the point about what a bad idea this was. Now they suggest that they'll remove the DRM from a subset of their catalog - provisionally, for a short period of time. It almost sounds as if they believe they're dealing from a position of strength.
What a bunch of closed-minded fools. Their doom is upon them and they act as if they're in control of the situation...
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I don't much care for Verizon as a company - and don't get me started on how they cripple their phones. But they do have the undeniable advantage of a good strong signal in all the places where I need it. So I'm a Verizon customer (for now).
If Apple made a CDMA Iphone - and Verizon could resist their need to disable apps and hardware features to protect their "buy it now" revenue stream - then I'd be carrying an Iphone right now. It's not perfect, but it's leaps and bounds beyond the other cell phones in its class.
Or AT&T could get busy and plant some cell towers around here so that their service would be usable. As bad as AT&T is as a company, they're nowhere near as greedy and abusive as Verizon. If there was signal, I'd switch to AT&T and get an Iphone.
But neither of these things is likely to happen at any time in the foreseeable future. Verizon isn't likely to stop crippling the phones they sell and AT&T isn't likely to expand their signal coverage into this part of town. So I'll keep carrying this crippled piece of stuff cell phone and hope for a better day.
Store charging for downloads of the discussed material? Check.
Prices for downloads higher than the price of the books? Check.
How did this get approved as a FP post? I dunno...
That's not the way shoplifters work - it's in their pockets, down their pants, etc. And the guys checking receipts at the door aren't looking in those places, just in the bag.
The REAL reason for that guy at the door who looks in your bag and checks your receipt is to monitor the performance of the people running the cash registers. This allows them to catch mistakes and put a stop to that old "ring up every other item for your friends" scam.
If any shoplifters are caught it's incidental - they're not looking for shoplifters because they're looking IN THE WRONG PLACE. The "door nazis" are working for the loss control department but they're trying to cut down on losses to internal problems.
Think about it for a few minutes and you'll realize that this is the truth.
Now, just exactly what right do you suppose they have to force you to help them prevent their employees from stealing? What right do they have to detain and / or search you? The store personnel have no police powers and they're subject to the same laws as everyone else. Except for one limited circumstance they can not detain you in any way, and they can not search you - any attempt to do so is a crime. That limited exception is when they see you shoplift an item and continuously observe you carry it out of the store without paying. In that situation they can detain you until the police arrive. They have to call the police immediately and can not interrogate or search you.
Each time I see this topic replied to with "just show them the receipt, what do you have to hide?" comments it points out a real problem in our society. Why should you blindly obey and comply with a request to perform an illegal search of your person / possessions by an employee at some retail store?
Suppose someone set up a checking station on a busy sidewalk and asked to search the purse of every passing female. That's not right, is it? But what they're doing at the store is no different.
So if you feel OK with helping the store management monitor their employees and don't mind the offense against your basic constitutional rights - go ahead and let them look in your bag and check your receipt. But if you don't feel that this is the proper course of action then feel free to say "No, thanks" and walk right by. If a store employee makes an attempt to stop you and touches you in the attempt, go right ahead and sue them. Call it assault, or unlawful detainer and make them pay. If they call the police - be nice to the officer, he's just doing his job. Keep in mind that he's not there because you were leaving the store, the person in the store that called him said you were shoplifting. Once he's seen that you're not stealing anything he'll tell them to let you go. Don't make the officer's job harder; just remember to add "false criminal report" to the store's list of offenses and make them pay even more.
Remember, the descent into fascism is paved with passive agreement to corporate control over our lives. You might not be able to stop it, but we can slow it down a little by not giving in to these attempts by retail stores to seize police powers.
They must be getting desperate - they've escalated their war to where they're now attacking not only their customers but Apple too. These media corporate suits are used to getting their own way but this time they're way over their heads.
It's becoming clear (to me at least) that the media middlemen are intent on destroying themselves in a spectacular fashion. The only thing that's unclear at this point is how many bad decisions they'll make before their corporate offices are replaced by smoking craters...
So let's look at the possible solutions. We've got "lock everything down" in the lead - that's fine in its way but causes worker dissatisfaction because they can't use the creative solutions they've developed, can't use the tools they're used to in the way they're used to, etc. Ultimately, if you get things limited to the point that all possibility of damage is prevented you've also created a situation where productivity is severely limited or prevented. And it's just a matter of time before it's pointed out to you that you weren't as secure as you thought you were.
Then there's the "monitor and log everything" plan - give the users a quick class in acceptable use of IT assets then "correct" anyone who violates the rules. This overlooks the very real truth that most of the harm caused by users is not intentional; it's almost always an unexpected result from a silly mistake. The result of this plan is to create an environment of fear where everyone is careful to follow the rules exactly, won't do anything that's "not my job" and if something goes wrong nobody saw anything. Ultimately you end up with all the problems you had before but with no useful information on how it happened / how to prevent it from happening again - and low productivity due to the workers being unwilling to do any more than necessary.
The real answer is that You can't solve personnel problems with technological solutions. Forget what they taught you in your MBA program and what the security software vendors told you, treat the workers like human beings and help them to understand what can go wrong and how to avoid it. Remember that IT's mission is to support the workers. Offer classes on information security, available to all, and on paid time so they'll have the chance and ability to take part. IT works much, much better when the rest of the corporate staff are partners, not antagonists.
For example, there's a service running on virtually all home PCs that can be instructed to download and install an executable by a remote site and give no indication that this has happened. It seems to me that the only reason this hasn't been exploited yet (if it hasn't) is because it wasn't a published interface. Now that the existence of this vulnerability has been sprayed across all the tech sites it's just a matter of time before it becomes a BIG problem.
And let's not overlook the little detail of how you can configure the automatic updates client to notify only, or download and notify and Microsoft overrides your explicit configuration and causes it to download and install software without notifying you. That story about needing to update the update client so you could receive notifications is a load of bull and just further illustrates the utter lack of respect for their customers that has become the calling card of Microsoft.
Those who run Linux may take some satisfaction in knowing that the creators of their OS cares about what the users want. But they can't ignore the MS beast; when the day comes that umpteen million XP installations silently download and install BOTNET.EXE and the net is saturated with the traffic from all these zombies the Linux users will suffer too.
Thanks once again to the "smart" people at Microsoft. They've introduced many, many systems to allow remote sites to execute code on client computers. Unfortunately, they're not wise people at Microsoft and they've baked all these vulnerabilities into their products.
It's been a feast for the spyware, virus and botnet creators - people think that these people are brilliant (but misguided) computer geniuses that have gone over to the dark side. That's really not the case - these blights upon the network are created by common criminals. Microsoft has made it easy for even them to take over systems running Microsoft software.
If any of you ever felt like you might want to write some letters or make some phone calls, this would be a good time. Keep in mind that Verizon won't be hurt in any way if they don't get this frequency band. It's you and I that'll get hurt if they do...
This internet thing blows their monopoly apart - there's a new method of distribution that's cheaper, faster, and out of the control of the music companies. This presents a problem to them: their "money for nothing" gravy train is threatened. It's no surprise that they're using every tool they can to stop reality from sending them to the realm of the irrelevant.
But since they haven't worked for their money for years, when it comes to taking legal action they don't seem to be willing to put forth an effort there either. This latest decision is an interesting one; significant enough by itself, but it'll cause some big changes for a lot of people...
Hey, corporate suit - remember when you were rolling out metrics so you could determine which IT staff you'd keep and which you'd fire (for questionable reasons - no layoffs, don't want to pay unemployment). Now you think you need to make some significant changes - but the remaining IT staff is already overworked doing their jobs, plus the jobs of all the people you got rid of (and got a nice bonus for reducing IT payroll).
The chickens have come home to roost - time to pay the piper...
How about rethinking what's patentable instead? The number of patent infringement cases would plummet if the junk patents were thrown out - and no new junk patents were granted.
Their "solution" is ridiculous; altering the penalty for violating the "one click" patent isn't what's needed. What's really needed is to reform the patent system so that things like that "one click" patent could never occur.
Then some corporate drones looked at what was happening and though "how can we take advantage?" So they got the "each contribute a small amount" part but overlooked the "everyone takes advantage" part. The corporate version is more like "everyone contributes a small amount and the corporation takes advantage". Many corporations have tried this plan and they've been left wondering "what went wrong?"
So here comes Intel - they're asking the people to contribute ideas and then they'll take advantage of them. We've seen this play out before and the result is always the same. Hey, Intel - if you really want people to do your work for you, you need to include some way to compensate them in your plan. You didn't really expect them to do this for you for free, did you?
I suspect they did - and when this plan fails miserably they'll pick some unfortunate person in their corporation to take the blame for the failure. They'll never for a moment think that their plan was flawed and doomed to failure from the start...
But throttling or cancelling transfers based upon the content being carried means that they are exercising editorial control over the traffic they carry. This puts them under a different set of rules; if they block or cripple transfers of content types that they prohibit, then they are demonstrating that they are capable of monitoring the content of the transmissions and exerting control over what content is carried. This makes them liable for any illegal / actionable transfers - they were watching the transfers, they knew the laws - so if something "wrong" slips through it's because of negligence or a willful omission on the ISP's part.
Of course, these corporate ISPs like having it both ways; all the benefits of common carrier status, but not having to carry all the bits they promised to carry in their customer contracts.
I see several in this thread claiming that it's unreasonable to expect Comcast to supply the unlimited access they sold. Some state that overselling their capacity is a normal practice. I call BS here: they willingly contracted with their customers to provide unlimited internet access. Intentionally providing less than the contracted bandwidth / access is fraud. The claims that they don't have enough bandwidth available to support the demand (while true) isn't an excuse - it's further proof that they intended to defraud their customers. They knew they didn't have the necessary resources but continued to sign up customers - knowing full well that these customers would not receive what they paid for.
The problem isn't that people are using more bandwidth than they "should". The problem is that Comcast / Others sold internet access when they didn't have sufficient resources to support that access. If they are forced to upgrade their systems, buy more bandwidth, or upgrade data centers - it's their problem, not ours. They wouldn't need to make those expenditures if they hadn't sold more than they had available to sell in the first place.
They'll cripple and monetize internet access to the extent that we'll allow. If filtering Bit Torrent works out OK for them, then they'll move on to other bandwidth-heavy transfers. What happens now will determine what happens to YouTube in a few months...
Why is it that all the developers seem to be able to code to a standard API - but they can't even come close to agreement on the way a program is operated? Maybe it's time to create a UI standard for Linux apps?
This would go a long way towards making Linux the favored choice for desktop machines. Ease of use is a great way to unseat the dominant OS; it's not exactly easy to use and it's very possible to beat them at this game.
You can identify companies that are being managed along these lines by their sudden interest in generating metrics. In production line situations where units of productivity are obvious and easily measured this approach has some validity. But trying to apply these theories to jobs where what we do is reactive - there's no valid way to do it - and no valid reason other than to sort out who's going to get canned. By reactive, I mean that the workload is determined by outside events; you don't know what you'll be doing or how long it'll take until something breaks and you've fixed it.
Here's a whack with the cluestick for you: if you think that the fact that you (and your team) keep the systems running smoothly means you're doing great - that's not what management is thinking. They're looking at the labor cost and what they get for their dollar. If nothing breaks then they don't need to keep you on the payroll. And they'll probably get a bonus for reducing expenses after letting a few of you non-productive people go.
If they're measuring performance by the number of tickets you handle - get your resume in order now. When a virus comes along and disrupts operations you'll be buried under a huge number of tickets; you'll take care of business and get things back in order - and the management will look at how you've handled 500 tickets in a month and consider that a good benchmark. A few months later when things are a bit boring - they'll look at the metrics again and see that you've only handled 50 tickets in a month. Good luck trying to explain how your productivity dropped 90% and it's really OK. If you convince them that you couldn't do more because there wasn't that much to do then you're arguing for a headcount reduction. If you can't convince them, then you're a slacker. Either way, somebody's likely to lose their job.
Or if they're measuring performance by the time it takes you to resolve problems - get your resume in order now. If your resolution was to reset a hung server then you got done very quickly and you're a hero. But if Exchange burped and ate its database, the hours you spend reloading the database from backup and getting the mail back online will count heavily against you.
Really, it doesn't matter what set of metrics they choose - since our work doesn't come in equal sized packets and it doesn't come at regular intervals, any production measurement is essentially a random number. But it doesn't matter to management; they've been tasked with cutting payroll expense by 10% and they'll use these "metrics" to determine who goes and who stays. Implementation of performance metrics in an IT department is ALWAYS followed by cuts in staffing.
Who will it be? They're figuring it out using the metrics they've collected - regardless of the validity of the data. What this means is that it's just as likely to be you as anyone else. And even if you're "lucky" and don't lose your job - you'll still get stuck doing not just your work but also the work of the people who were let go. It's a real lose/lose situation.
Did I mention that you need to get your resume in order?
For example, the database isn't going to be deleted - it's just getting moved to a different agency. They'll give it a different name, but that database will live on. And those errors in the data? Nobody said anything about correcting them.
So it's really a "Tom shuts it down then gives it to Bob who turns it right back on" kind of deal. Politics as usual...
Let's try: "Company X says that buying lots of company X products will cause your business to grow at an exponential rate".
Aha! Now I see - it's just more marketing doublespeak. I wonder if you could get Sun to put these claims in writing?
Microsoft has a long history of anti-competitive behavior - look at how they've dealt with Stacker, Lotus, Netscape, DR-DOS - the list goes on and on. This is their history, and provides a good indication of their future behavior.
Now they're trying to make nice, put on the "open source" show and offer to interoperate with Linux? They're going to lay down their knives and cuddle up to the biggest threat to their continued domination?
Anyone that believes that Microsoft is sincere in their offer to open source their code - or work along with Linux - is (pardon me for being so blunt, but) a deluded fool. They'll prevaricate and make false offers as they try to find a chink in the armor - then they'll move in for the kill. Remember, they offered deals to Stack, Netscape, etc, etc. and every time it ended up badly for their "partners". Why believe that this time will be different? They're just trying to use the OSI rules against open source - will stupidity allow the MS camel to insert its nose into the open source tent?
So up to this point - charges were filed against HP by the government. Those charges were dropped - all HP had to do was admit wrongdoing, pay a 15 million dollar fine to the state, and agree to make some changes in the way they handle investigations. $15M sounds like a lot, but to a corporation like HP it's not such a big penalty.
The people involved were also charged - and the charges were dropped in all cases except one of the underlings at the private investigation agency - he had to do some community service. The worst actor of the lot - Patty Dunn - walked away scot free.
But what about those reporters? Beside the trauma of finding that their private records had been rummaged through secretly, they've suffered some real damage to their careers. None of them can ethically report on HP any more - and what good is a technology reporter that can't report on HP?
Not to mention the chilling effect HP's actions had on news reporters in general. Hard to get those hot tips when the people passing the information along quit doing so; if someone's tapping the reporter's phone, they'd be targeted. No thanks.
HP tried to settle with the reporters. We don't know what kind of settlement offer was made but it clearly wasn't enough to satisfy the reporters. So the reporters sue, and HP announces that they'll defend vigorously. What kind of defense can they offer, considering they admitted guilt in the state case? Another bad move by the folks at HP - now they're going to end up paying more (probably much, much more) and enjoy more negative publicity that gets generated as the cases wind their way through the legal system.
HP needs to make those reporters whole. Since HP through its illegal actions damaged their careers, they should pay the reporters at least the difference between what they would have earned and what they can earn now. That's only fair. But there's another angle to consider - punitive damages. Big punitive damages, the kind that would cause HP some financial pain and send a message to others - it's not even worth considering illegally manipulating the press. Lots of people in the news business feel this way, not just the plaintiffs in this action. And while these plaintiffs can't report on HP, There's an awful lot of reporters who saw what happened, feel that their profession has been done a great wrong, and aren't prohibited from writing about HP.
So here they go - HP gets to defend itself in multiple lawsuits and has to go in with the fact that they've already admitted guilt, preventing them from arguing much of anything other than how much they should have to pay. And while this is going on, the media will be reporting on it - the same media that HP went out of their way to alienate. The same media that HP depends on to print its press releases.
What will ultimately be the result of these suits? I don't want to guess at this point; corporations seem to be getting away with all kinds of things these days.
And I've got a solution. Each time I see that a page load is stalled waiting for an ad server (or an analytics server), I simply add that server to my AdBlock list. Problem solved.
Microsoft questions FCC's 'white spaces' decision
While it's true that other companies are involved in the White Spaces project, only Microsoft is using their public relations machine to try for a "do-over" on their test failure.
Anyway, nice try - but your troll-fu is too weak.
But then they issue a press release. Somehow it's unfair that their device failed its tests; their device was malfunctioning but if it had been working correctly it would have passed?
It's the same old tune - those mean old government agencies won't dance to Microsoft's tune, so they'll appeal to the court of public opinion. It's worked so well for them in the past, why not give it another go?
When there's a difference of opinion then PR stunts like this have some value. But in situations like this one where a device was being measured against technical standards and failed - that's not negotiable. Trying to use the same old trick here just makes them look foolish - and gives another good look at the man behind the curtain...
There are some who are audio purists - but despite their exotic sound systems they're fooling themselves - there is no perfect audio reproduction, there's not even a way to perfectly record it. All real audio systems are made up of compromises; all arguments about audio quality revolve around those compromises.
Me? I use an IPod Nano with a set of Etymotic ER-4P canalphones. Is it perfect? No, but it's amazingly good. Much, much better than you'd expect (yes, those expensive phones are worth every penny). Much better than what the stereo store is selling for five figure prices. Would uncompressed files make it better? Yes - actually, the IPod supports uncompressed music already. But I make the compromise - compress the tunes a little so that I can carry a larger library. It works for me.
The biggest sonic problem I experience? Lousy recordings on record company CDs. Clipping, huge amounts of compression, distortion - how could they release that album in such poor condition? But they do - and wonder why people don't buy so much anymore.
You know how they talk about the dynamic range of CDs being 96db? Pop a current pop release into a system with VU meters and watch the meters as it plays. Those needles will be stuck between -6 and 0 the whole time; 6 whole db of dynamic range. And the people that sell this crap have the nerve to claim that MP3 files don't have all the sonic benefits? Bozos...
Microsoft's big mistake here was to modify the relationship between user and computer. In their new design, the computer no longer does solely what you want it to do. Sometimes it does what Microsoft wants it to do, sometimes it does what some un-named third party company wants it to do. And if you ask it to do what you want instead, it will REFUSE TO DO SO.
It's not a "save the children!" situation and it's not a "stop piracy!" situation. It's a situation where your personal computer isn't yours anymore - it belongs to Microsoft and you can only use it for things that they'll allow you to use it for. All it takes for you to give up your control over your PC is to buy and install Vista. Read that EULA carefully - it's all bad news.
Right now it's "only" high quality (whatever that means) audio and video files that can only be played under terms negotiated between Microsoft and some other corporation. You weren't involved in those negotiations - but if your audio and video files come out looking like crap then it's because those corporate folks decided that you shouldn't be allowed to see / hear them in their normal quality. Some people here seem to think that this is an anti-piracy feature - while it could be used in that way it's really a more general purpose system. The media corporations can "push the button" on any file they create for any reason they want; how about a special "plays on your PC" version for a slight additional charge?
Microsoft has installed all the "plumbing" to provide custom designed file access restrictions. Combine that with the media corporations and Microsoft itself being dedicated to making more and more profit every year - abuse of Vista's access controls isn't something that might happen - the only question is when and how badly it'll be abused.
Tools are a special case and deserve extra consideration. They can be used in many unpredictable ways so often the way to look at them is with a risk / benefit analysis. What are the best results from the use of the tool, what are the worst results. Does the good outweigh the bad in the use of the tool? If not, it should not be produced.
Data mining is a tool; it can be used in many different ways by different people. Figuring out how to reduce street crime is a good thing - but what else can this tool be used for. What kind of evil can be done?
History offers a clue: the Nazis kept track of their Jewish problem using tabulating machines custom built for them by IBM.
Anyway, what kind of uses for this kind of data mining would some other people find? How about Karl Rove - he'd find it very useful. There's plenty of others who'd be thrilled to put this technology to work in ways that would cause great harm to our society. You know that the current administration has been busy collecting every bit of data they can from any and all sources - TIA is alive and well, its just gone underground. Does the thought of GW sitting down at a terminal to discover who is loyal to him and who is not trouble you? It sure does bother me...
They're still holding tightly to their fantasy about P2P downloaders costing them millions and billions - but they have noticed that their introduction of DRM technologies has received an almost totally negative response from their former customers. So they'll back off on this a little and "see if the piracy rate goes up". That's not what they'll be looking at at all, that's just some spin for the media. What they're looking for is some kind of upward bump to their profits; when they added DRM their income went down - so let's remove the DRM and see if our income goes back up.
What they still can't see through their pride is that DRM doesn't reduce piracy in any meaningful way; all it does is cause inconvenience to their paying customers. It's driven more than a few customers away; buy one CD that won't play in your player and it's quite natural to avoid any CDs from that company in the future. What they also can't see is that those lost customers won't be coming back just because of some mealy-mouthed PR statement about removing DRM from some music for a short period - they've been fooled once already.
"Piracy" (copyright infringement) is an interesting thing - it only happens with items that can be duplicated and sold at a price substantially below the price of the original product. If the record companies sold CDs for 69 cents each then the "pirates" wouldn't bother with music CDs. The record companies would never willingly reveal their cost of production - but you can safely assume that it's much less than a dollar. When they over-price the finished product at 20 dollars they create their own piracy problem.
Will they ever see this simple truth? "Pirates" are a fact of life; eliminate one or a dozen and a hundred more will take their place. As long as there's easy money to be made then people will be lined up to get their share. There is nothing that the music companies, their lobbying lapdogs, the government, the courts, or anyone else can do to prevent it. As long as the product is priced far in excess of its production cost, there's going to be a "piracy" problem.
Even the folks who just "want to get it for free" would become paying customers if the price was RIGHT. But the music industry keeps turning out formula junk with one or two good tunes per CD and then asking 20 bucks for it - and then they wonder why people aren't buying it. This is the root cause of their decline - expecting top dollar for bargain basement material.
But they weren't satisfied with shooting themselves in that foot - they decided to start up their "legal" extortion racket and run people over the coals for thousands of dollars - for downloading a song that has a market value of less than a dollar. They even decided to sue some dead people, children, disabled seniors, etc. just to make sure that they offended everyone. This bone-headed plan is pure public relations poison - but they just can't stop. This turns a bunch more customers into former customers and the sales drop off even faster.
Having shot themselves in both feet, they turned to their kneecaps with DRM and rootkits. While it's tempting, I won't belabor the point about what a bad idea this was. Now they suggest that they'll remove the DRM from a subset of their catalog - provisionally, for a short period of time. It almost sounds as if they believe they're dealing from a position of strength.
What a bunch of closed-minded fools. Their doom is upon them and they act as if they're in control of the situation...