This is one of the problems with the patent system (yes, I know, everybody likes to say that). They are patenting the idea, not a process or design. For once Apple came up with a legitimately good idea, and they are almost certainly going to abuse it. If they want to patent the process or design, which was the intent of the patent system, it wouldn't be a problem....other companies would certainly develop the same concept with their own handsets (which wouldn't match the iphone design for a number of obvious reasons).
With so many companies backing down on certain patents in the name of not being purely despicable (ie. IBM), Apple should announce this one is a patent they will only hold in name only and demand no licensing.
If they insist on the licensing, I would love to see the hacker communities (xda & android probably the most capable) take a step to duplicate the functions. Even if Apple decides to do the wrong thing, there's no reason to allow them to hold an exclusive.
...Microsoft announces an app store built on.Net applications and plan on making it as Mono friendly as possible. (pretend they didn't already announce this for windows mobile)
One year from now...
- Sun announces closure of app store. Notable achievement: 6 popular apps
- Microsoft announces wildfire success.
Note: They also announce the rollout of their 3rd DRM scheme in hopes of ending the massive piracy rates on apps coming from the store.
There's at least one other reason that the botnet holder may have opted to kill it....If he downloaded something that gave him a reason to freak out. Imagine a scenario where you're looking through some stolen data and realize you just picked up information about a government run weapons facility or assassination plans. The dumbest thing you could do is leave tracks, but since that's already been done, you might as well try to destroy your tracks and hope nobody notices.
On a side node, between the semi-bogus slashdot headline and the wildly sensationalized article, which is also misleading on at least a couple of points, there's surprisingly little news here. If more accurate information was in that article, it might be different.
I suppose I was too specific...yes, I agree, I certainly don't bother using different passwords for each and every site, especially the ones I need to sign up to and intend to use just once (commenting on something so stupid I needed to say something, or downloading a single file). For many of those, I don't even use an email address that ever gets checked, like a free yahoo address.
Bank/Credit Card/etc, these get something unique and don't even share a password between each other. Hey, what can I say, I still don't trust Paypal...
You must have missed the last 800 times this has happened to companies. They steal the email/name/username and the password, then try them on other sites with something more valuable to them (read: paypal, banks, online stores that also keep credit card info).
BTW, in case it's not obvious from what I just wrote. Make sure you use a different password on every website. Even if it's only a small variation on a simple password, it might not stop a friend from guessing it, but it will stop a hacker with a database of 2 million name/password pairs from bothering to try changing 'password001' to 'password002'
Just to add to this, there's a couple of apps for windows mobile that repeatedly make alerts for unread text messages. This nearly duplicates the functionality of a pager (for all intents and purposes).
Since Apple moved their OS to be based on BSD (as of OS X), there has been no truly technical reason that it can't be run on a PC. Common sense enforces the logic that Apple had to put some effort into preventing their OS from running on most PC hardware.
Obviously this shouldn't surprise anybody given that Apple's entire history is littered with examples of them actively preventing inter operation with Windows and *nix (up until OS X). They are even getting hammered in parts of Europe for iTunes being unnecessarily exclusive (ok, this is the one spot I take Apple's side, I say let them restrict iTunes to iPods...I DON'T ever want iTunes on my computer). Apple has spent time considering the benefits and clearly seen that locking people into their platform earns them more gains than playing nicely with the rest of the computing world. Sometimes they fail at this (look at the AppleTalk networking protocol), and sometimes they succeed (iTunes).
Let's be logical about this, people's needs (or wants in this case) haven't changed in the last year. It's reasonable to assume that roughly the same percentage of legal and illegal torrents are making their way around.
The rise in encryption is more likely due to around 75% or more of the major torrent clients have adopted encryption as a default setting (low increase in processor usage and no increase to data transmission, but with a likely increase in bandwidth...should sound good to everybody).
The end result is that legal and illegal transmission both increased. Probability has it that illegal went up slightly more than legal, just due to the imaginary incentive.
Crazy question...since nobody else has bothered to ask it...is it possible that the average company feels they will appear more "privacy responsible" by claiming to spend a huge portion on security?
Somehow I'm picturing companies answering surveys with 20%, stock investors are probably hearing 2%-5%, and the people who actually make decisions are really putting in about 7%-12%.
I admit, I haven't got the time to read the legal writing, but in the summary it says:
...if Apple can determine that the modification or enhancement is responsible [for] damaging the product in question... It seems to me, after reading this, that if the unlocking method does NOT damage the iPhone, and the upcoming patch DOES brick it...then that means Apple's own patch constitutes an 'enhancement' that will void the warranty, because their own patch damages the product.
If this ever reaches class action status (the only way apple will ever pay out on this issue), and if this particular law manages to be invoked, I expect that one of the primary platforms for the suit will be that Apple's release of the patch intentionally voids the warranty on any phone that previously had a valid warranty despite having been legally, legitimately, and safely unlocked.
Why on earth do you want those to be the criterion for TSA to drop the issue. This is the first time I've heard of TSA doing something right.
First off, let me just say that I spent a good deal of time working on electronics in college, and even I would at least be concerned about somebody wearing a breadboard. Even though you don't see explosive (noting of course the dumb broad carried putty in her hand), doesn't mean that it's not somewhere...btw, maybe she has no boobs and they ARE made of explosive;)
Further, just because a terrorist doesn't hop onto a plane, doesn't mean they couldn't kill thousands just by walking up to the check-in line at an airport. In fact, they would kill more that way (if body count was their goal)
Finally, disregard the police/TSA for a minute (even if they were trained properly, though we know better), the fact is that average people aren't going to recognize a breadboard and the fact it's not connected to explosive. That alone makes this a close equivalent to yelling 'FIRE!!!!' in a crowded movie theater.
Just because the girl wasn't an immediate danger, she could have a) caused a stampede, and b) distracted security from a legitimate threat. Any intelligent person knows that if you spread resources thin enough, they cease to be useful...and that's made even more serious when the resources are already nearly useless like TSA
My problem is worse than that. My private cell phone is registered on the list and I still get frequent calls, mostly from fly-by-night groups offering small business loans or from office supply companies. At first I asked to be removed, but when call volume reached 4-5 a day, I started insisting on asking how they got the number. Most would hang up on me the instant they realized I wasn't worth a sale, some would at least admit they didn't know. The only excuse that has been given is that my number was sold to them as a business and therefore they don't have to subscribe to the registry to filter out numbers (yes, I know that's misinformation/lying, but they usually hang up before I can get in another word)
I have moved to asking to speak to managers and telling them to give me information, but they often ignore me outright. I've collected as many numbers and names as I can, but many of the calls have their caller id info blocked (something I think phone companies should prevent businesses from doing legally). So far I'm not any closer to finding the company that sold my number, but I am eager to get that information, which will quickly lead to a call to a lawyer and a few internet postings (especially to slashdot so that others can join in attacking companies that disregard the law and lead to harassment of people.
Google has claimed many times, and I think they have demonstrated this with their success, that their business does it's best when it operates as platform independent. In this instance, that means building a phone that will work with every provider of a particular technology, be it 3G, EDGE, or whatever...
It doesn't seem unlikely that they would eventually build phones for each of the major options so that a "GPhone" could be connected to Sprint, AT&T, T-Mobile, and every other service you care to name. (note: the following speculation is based on virtually zero knowledge of the possibility, only the assumption of possibility) Begs a bigger question, could they possibly build a phone with interchangeable chips that would make it possible to spend $15 to change the phone from one option to another. This would result in making a semi-future-proofed phone possible, which would build a huge secondary market...something that only re-doubles google's business model; where they believe that as long as they are the ones providing the data, they are coming out ahead.
I've yet to understand all of the people who claim that google would make a mistake by playing in the hardware market...It seems those people don't understand that google's business model isn't at all related to that of the carriers or other handset producers. Google will focus on making money from services and content delivery (ie. Advertising), not from constantly selling new handsets each year and pushing customers to make regular upgrades. Google has the money to fund a venture like this, and they are counter-culture to the approach that the existing carriers and handset makers have used so far, which *COULD* ensure them solid footing in this market if they play it right. As a side note, I feel that "playing it right" will also mean playing friendly with carriers at first and NOT including VoIP at first (since it will not be welcomed to the market by carriers)
Minor correction, the example you give of a burglar dropping his wallet is an example of accidentally leaving the object in somebody's care. In this instance, the police knowingly and willingly put the devices into his possession. And you're right, unless he willingly accepts the devices, then the rightful owner doesn't change...EXCEPT, when he found the devices, he clearly opted to take ownership, and proceeded to attempt a sale. Unless some law prohibits ownership of these devices, then he has every right to do with them as he chooses (as long as it remains within the confines of the law;). The really interesting part is, if there is a law prohibiting ownership of these devices, it means the police department is an accessory to the crime, in addition to any other crime they committed in placing those nifty little toys in the first place.
Of course, now this guy has just pissed on the police...even if he weasels out of whatever he's guilty of, they will bust this guy's balls for years to come.
Maybe I'm oversimplifying this, but in a day when I expect to do firmware/bios updates on my motherboard, raid controller, routers (and there's even alternate firmware options like OpenWRT), and possibly even a video card. Guess what, even your monitors and TVs can have firmware updates now! What's the big deal about getting a firmware update on a hard drive?
It seems to me that the only reason people make a big deal out of this is that historically nobody is used to updating their hard drives.
Oops, I started responding and forgot to emphasize a main point, that unlike cell phone carriers, people have the choice to leave the cable companies behind. No real alternative exists to the cell carriers since WiFi-based phones aren't realistic in a huge percentage of the country yet, and any form of satellite phone is still largely hopeless.
As for Cable Providers, so goes the rule of competition...if people can find it cheaper, better, and more reliably; they will eventually buy elsewhere
While I'm certain that this won't lead to the death of the cable company, it will almost certainly ensure that a lot of people will begin going online to get some/more/all of their video needs. In many cases, and increasingly more, the content of each network is making it to the internet in legal channels...and that's disregarding the illegal methods which happen to serve up greater quality.
Compare the ease of ANY method where the user goes online to get a video to the complications that are coming along with any of the new "standards" or hardware that are involved in HD. One week your expensive HD TiVo works, the next week it's dead. This of course comes after spending hours with CableCards which didn't work without being replaced a few times, or even having a failed activation. While confused or uneducated users won't rush to the internet, as long as these problems continue, especially if they are preventing people from watching the TV they want to see, it'll eventually end with many of them seeking a new solution...especially when the cost is also increasing so much with the cable providers while online video options are only likely to get cheaper.
The Sys Admin is NOT a "Work Unit" type of job. Let me explain...Most jobs in the US are either Production or Service industry, in either case, you can clearly measure how many widgets are assembled, how many burgers are cooked, how many drinks are mixed, or how many feet of ditch were dug.
Many posters have pointed this out, but none of them suggested what type of job a Sys Admin really is. The same type of question has been asked for years regarding programmers, as people quickly realized that programmers couldn't just be measured on lines of code (which is basically similar to how most posters have suggested solving this so far). The reality is that Sys Admins are much more similar to executives in that there is no legitimate way to measure their production. Any quantifiable number (Uptime, tickets resolved or remaining, response time, etc.) can be easily explained by a counter example showing that those numbers can be fake, or even represent the opposite of the desired target.
So, here's an answer...a performance review by peers. Yeah, I know they are annoying and certainly imperfect, but it certainly provides the most measurable outcome, based entirely on what REAL people are seeing with the system. What will happen is that one admin or a team that are getting the job done and are successful will have little or no complaints and get very high scores. Even if there are several technical issues that arise (which happens even with a great team of highly knowledgeable people that don't make mistakes), the users and other admins will recognize that it's outside of control, and still give good responses. If people (including other admins) recognize that one or many admins are slacking, that too will become obvious.
It's always worked for Microsoft [insert uproarious laughter here]
Seriously though, this isn't TOO dissimilar from what happened several years ago when ISP's started blocking their subscribers from running their own base protocol servers. Most block ftp servers, some block web servers, and I've yet to sign up an ISP that doesn't get hinky with running a mail server. In point of fact, I'm signed up to Cox cable right now, and I am constantly working around the ftp server limitation. Nobody could call fraud, because nobody asked the questions about what features where disabled...
As some may remember, the prime reason given by many o' ISP was that they didn't want people running public sites that would swallow up all of their bandwidth. To me, this feels like the same argument all over again, but with two significant differences: The scale is dramatically increased (more bandwidth to go around, but way more content), and this time the users aren't tech-savvy and relatively educated computer users, instead they are average people with only enough knowledge to be angry that they can't use bittorrent to get the new Daughtry album.
Unfortunately, this could be more than an issue of bandwidth concern, as many ISPs are still getting constant batteries of requests for customer information and no doubt they are looking for a way to remove that hassles.
The author has disregarded the admission by MySQL that they've willingly handicapped the software.
With RHEL it was an issue of fulling giving up a portion of the software to the OSS world and then including their own proprietary developments in the paid version (along with the benefit of every enhancement having been well tested in Fedora first).
MySQL has knowingly weakened the codebase.
Urlocker says that MySQL "wants to make sure the Community version is rock solid," but admitted that the company has introduced features into the Community edition of the software that "[weren't] as robust as we thought, and created some instabilities."
Red Hat was attacked unfairly for their actions (at least that's how it can be seen today...when it happened, the situation looked different), MySQL can be very justly untrusted as they are rigging the situation and putting the free users at a disadvantage beyond just the lack of business class management tools. If the MySQL team was simply turning the paid for product into an extension of the free product, nobody would need to doubt their actions.
So what he's saying is that Linux excels at being good software, while Microsoft only excel at marketing practices? Sounds like a double-edged compliment to Microsoft to me! You know, that's not really a double-edged compliment at all if you look at this from a broader view. Microsoft is the reason that almost every home and business has a computer today.
Let's be honest, at least until recently, most people in the country couldn't even approach Linux without an in-home guru to tell them how it works. Windows has been largely user friendly throughout the last decade (at least once post-install driver issues are resolved), something that Linux hasn't been able to claim. Without MS Windows, many computer-challenged sods would be too afraid to buy a computer or do anything with it if they did buy it. Microsoft may have some pretty bad things going for/against it, but they do deserve credit, both marketing and development, for bringing most people into the computer world.
Of course, it's also time that people get ready to lose the training wheels and move onto better things.
With all due respect to Apple for the few things they can lay legitimate claim to for innovation, they are largely just a copycat company as well. Perhaps copycat isn't the right way to put it, they are simply too quick to brag about some new product being an innovation when it's really just an obvious combination of existing pieces. For example:
I'll give a shred of credit for the iPod simply because they were the first to get it to market, despite the rather obvious detail that it wouldn't be long before somebody else did it anyway (Creative being the likely choice). After all, it's just an MP3 player (which already existed in heavy numbers) remixed with a hard drive.
Apple lays claims to being the first to put together numerous graphical elements and tools in their OS. Unfortunately for them, there's not a single one of them I've seen or heard of that can't be traced to existing first in the Linux camp, or even a few from MS. Just like the Mouse, Apple is taking credit for other people's innovations.
As for the iPhone, Apple simply copied the multi-touch display that was already being made a topic of much discussion for several years prior, combined it with the (external) look & feel plus the memory elements of the ipod (along with far too many of it's major flaws), and mashed all of that up with a GUI that looks and feels strangely similar to the MS Windows Media Center garbage (or at least any common place photo editing app with slide shows).
I'll give credit to Apple for the work they put into the iPhone in terms of man hours, design expenses and the marketing research, but let's not confuse that with innovation. Cloners don't owe Apple anything on that front, and frankly, they don't appear to be cloning much more than surface design elements and fairly marginal elements of the internals and the base feature set (all things that many companies frequently copy "legally" all the time). Even before the iPhone was visible in any way publicly (including the patent applications), not a single feature of the iPhone didn't already exist in other phones on the market. Apple just spent the money tying it all together and decided to declare themselves brilliant for doing so...sound like the Segway, err "IT" to anybody else?
Slashdot Mirror
This is one of the problems with the patent system (yes, I know, everybody likes to say that). They are patenting the idea, not a process or design. For once Apple came up with a legitimately good idea, and they are almost certainly going to abuse it. If they want to patent the process or design, which was the intent of the patent system, it wouldn't be a problem....other companies would certainly develop the same concept with their own handsets (which wouldn't match the iphone design for a number of obvious reasons).
With so many companies backing down on certain patents in the name of not being purely despicable (ie. IBM), Apple should announce this one is a patent they will only hold in name only and demand no licensing.
If they insist on the licensing, I would love to see the hacker communities (xda & android probably the most capable) take a step to duplicate the functions. Even if Apple decides to do the wrong thing, there's no reason to allow them to hold an exclusive.
...Microsoft announces an app store built on .Net applications and plan on making it as Mono friendly as possible. (pretend they didn't already announce this for windows mobile)
One year from now...
- Sun announces closure of app store. Notable achievement: 6 popular apps
- Microsoft announces wildfire success.
Note: They also announce the rollout of their 3rd DRM scheme in hopes of ending the massive piracy rates on apps coming from the store.
There's at least one other reason that the botnet holder may have opted to kill it....If he downloaded something that gave him a reason to freak out. Imagine a scenario where you're looking through some stolen data and realize you just picked up information about a government run weapons facility or assassination plans. The dumbest thing you could do is leave tracks, but since that's already been done, you might as well try to destroy your tracks and hope nobody notices.
On a side node, between the semi-bogus slashdot headline and the wildly sensationalized article, which is also misleading on at least a couple of points, there's surprisingly little news here. If more accurate information was in that article, it might be different.
I suppose I was too specific...yes, I agree, I certainly don't bother using different passwords for each and every site, especially the ones I need to sign up to and intend to use just once (commenting on something so stupid I needed to say something, or downloading a single file). For many of those, I don't even use an email address that ever gets checked, like a free yahoo address.
Bank/Credit Card/etc, these get something unique and don't even share a password between each other. Hey, what can I say, I still don't trust Paypal...
Yeah, cause they want the resumes
You must have missed the last 800 times this has happened to companies. They steal the email/name/username and the password, then try them on other sites with something more valuable to them (read: paypal, banks, online stores that also keep credit card info).
BTW, in case it's not obvious from what I just wrote. Make sure you use a different password on every website. Even if it's only a small variation on a simple password, it might not stop a friend from guessing it, but it will stop a hacker with a database of 2 million name/password pairs from bothering to try changing 'password001' to 'password002'
Just to add to this, there's a couple of apps for windows mobile that repeatedly make alerts for unread text messages. This nearly duplicates the functionality of a pager (for all intents and purposes).
Since Apple moved their OS to be based on BSD (as of OS X), there has been no truly technical reason that it can't be run on a PC. Common sense enforces the logic that Apple had to put some effort into preventing their OS from running on most PC hardware.
Take a look at:
http://osx86.thefreesuite.com/
http://uneasysilence.com/os-x-proven-hacked-and-running-on-an-ordinary-pc/
Obviously this shouldn't surprise anybody given that Apple's entire history is littered with examples of them actively preventing inter operation with Windows and *nix (up until OS X). They are even getting hammered in parts of Europe for iTunes being unnecessarily exclusive (ok, this is the one spot I take Apple's side, I say let them restrict iTunes to iPods...I DON'T ever want iTunes on my computer). Apple has spent time considering the benefits and clearly seen that locking people into their platform earns them more gains than playing nicely with the rest of the computing world. Sometimes they fail at this (look at the AppleTalk networking protocol), and sometimes they succeed (iTunes).
Let's be logical about this, people's needs (or wants in this case) haven't changed in the last year. It's reasonable to assume that roughly the same percentage of legal and illegal torrents are making their way around.
The rise in encryption is more likely due to around 75% or more of the major torrent clients have adopted encryption as a default setting (low increase in processor usage and no increase to data transmission, but with a likely increase in bandwidth...should sound good to everybody).
The end result is that legal and illegal transmission both increased. Probability has it that illegal went up slightly more than legal, just due to the imaginary incentive.
Crazy question...since nobody else has bothered to ask it...is it possible that the average company feels they will appear more "privacy responsible" by claiming to spend a huge portion on security?
Somehow I'm picturing companies answering surveys with 20%, stock investors are probably hearing 2%-5%, and the people who actually make decisions are really putting in about 7%-12%.
Good thing this news is coming out on a site frequented almost exclusively by people that already know better than to call up a repairman.
...if Apple can determine that the modification or enhancement is responsible [for] damaging the product in question... It seems to me, after reading this, that if the unlocking method does NOT damage the iPhone, and the upcoming patch DOES brick it...then that means Apple's own patch constitutes an 'enhancement' that will void the warranty, because their own patch damages the product.If this ever reaches class action status (the only way apple will ever pay out on this issue), and if this particular law manages to be invoked, I expect that one of the primary platforms for the suit will be that Apple's release of the patch intentionally voids the warranty on any phone that previously had a valid warranty despite having been legally, legitimately, and safely unlocked.
Oh my gawd, the scientists just gave another idea to terrorists on how to kill us all!
for the clueless or paranoid out there...yes, this is a joke
Why on earth do you want those to be the criterion for TSA to drop the issue. This is the first time I've heard of TSA doing something right.
;)
First off, let me just say that I spent a good deal of time working on electronics in college, and even I would at least be concerned about somebody wearing a breadboard. Even though you don't see explosive (noting of course the dumb broad carried putty in her hand), doesn't mean that it's not somewhere...btw, maybe she has no boobs and they ARE made of explosive
Further, just because a terrorist doesn't hop onto a plane, doesn't mean they couldn't kill thousands just by walking up to the check-in line at an airport. In fact, they would kill more that way (if body count was their goal)
Finally, disregard the police/TSA for a minute (even if they were trained properly, though we know better), the fact is that average people aren't going to recognize a breadboard and the fact it's not connected to explosive. That alone makes this a close equivalent to yelling 'FIRE!!!!' in a crowded movie theater.
Just because the girl wasn't an immediate danger, she could have a) caused a stampede, and b) distracted security from a legitimate threat. Any intelligent person knows that if you spread resources thin enough, they cease to be useful...and that's made even more serious when the resources are already nearly useless like TSA
My problem is worse than that. My private cell phone is registered on the list and I still get frequent calls, mostly from fly-by-night groups offering small business loans or from office supply companies. At first I asked to be removed, but when call volume reached 4-5 a day, I started insisting on asking how they got the number. Most would hang up on me the instant they realized I wasn't worth a sale, some would at least admit they didn't know. The only excuse that has been given is that my number was sold to them as a business and therefore they don't have to subscribe to the registry to filter out numbers (yes, I know that's misinformation/lying, but they usually hang up before I can get in another word)
I have moved to asking to speak to managers and telling them to give me information, but they often ignore me outright. I've collected as many numbers and names as I can, but many of the calls have their caller id info blocked (something I think phone companies should prevent businesses from doing legally). So far I'm not any closer to finding the company that sold my number, but I am eager to get that information, which will quickly lead to a call to a lawyer and a few internet postings (especially to slashdot so that others can join in attacking companies that disregard the law and lead to harassment of people.
Google has claimed many times, and I think they have demonstrated this with their success, that their business does it's best when it operates as platform independent. In this instance, that means building a phone that will work with every provider of a particular technology, be it 3G, EDGE, or whatever...
It doesn't seem unlikely that they would eventually build phones for each of the major options so that a "GPhone" could be connected to Sprint, AT&T, T-Mobile, and every other service you care to name. (note: the following speculation is based on virtually zero knowledge of the possibility, only the assumption of possibility) Begs a bigger question, could they possibly build a phone with interchangeable chips that would make it possible to spend $15 to change the phone from one option to another. This would result in making a semi-future-proofed phone possible, which would build a huge secondary market...something that only re-doubles google's business model; where they believe that as long as they are the ones providing the data, they are coming out ahead.
I've yet to understand all of the people who claim that google would make a mistake by playing in the hardware market...It seems those people don't understand that google's business model isn't at all related to that of the carriers or other handset producers. Google will focus on making money from services and content delivery (ie. Advertising), not from constantly selling new handsets each year and pushing customers to make regular upgrades. Google has the money to fund a venture like this, and they are counter-culture to the approach that the existing carriers and handset makers have used so far, which *COULD* ensure them solid footing in this market if they play it right. As a side note, I feel that "playing it right" will also mean playing friendly with carriers at first and NOT including VoIP at first (since it will not be welcomed to the market by carriers)
Minor correction, the example you give of a burglar dropping his wallet is an example of accidentally leaving the object in somebody's care. In this instance, the police knowingly and willingly put the devices into his possession. And you're right, unless he willingly accepts the devices, then the rightful owner doesn't change...EXCEPT, when he found the devices, he clearly opted to take ownership, and proceeded to attempt a sale. Unless some law prohibits ownership of these devices, then he has every right to do with them as he chooses (as long as it remains within the confines of the law ;). The really interesting part is, if there is a law prohibiting ownership of these devices, it means the police department is an accessory to the crime, in addition to any other crime they committed in placing those nifty little toys in the first place.
Of course, now this guy has just pissed on the police...even if he weasels out of whatever he's guilty of, they will bust this guy's balls for years to come.
Maybe I'm oversimplifying this, but in a day when I expect to do firmware/bios updates on my motherboard, raid controller, routers (and there's even alternate firmware options like OpenWRT), and possibly even a video card. Guess what, even your monitors and TVs can have firmware updates now! What's the big deal about getting a firmware update on a hard drive?
It seems to me that the only reason people make a big deal out of this is that historically nobody is used to updating their hard drives.
Oops, I started responding and forgot to emphasize a main point, that unlike cell phone carriers, people have the choice to leave the cable companies behind. No real alternative exists to the cell carriers since WiFi-based phones aren't realistic in a huge percentage of the country yet, and any form of satellite phone is still largely hopeless.
As for Cable Providers, so goes the rule of competition...if people can find it cheaper, better, and more reliably; they will eventually buy elsewhere
While I'm certain that this won't lead to the death of the cable company, it will almost certainly ensure that a lot of people will begin going online to get some/more/all of their video needs. In many cases, and increasingly more, the content of each network is making it to the internet in legal channels...and that's disregarding the illegal methods which happen to serve up greater quality.
Compare the ease of ANY method where the user goes online to get a video to the complications that are coming along with any of the new "standards" or hardware that are involved in HD. One week your expensive HD TiVo works, the next week it's dead. This of course comes after spending hours with CableCards which didn't work without being replaced a few times, or even having a failed activation. While confused or uneducated users won't rush to the internet, as long as these problems continue, especially if they are preventing people from watching the TV they want to see, it'll eventually end with many of them seeking a new solution...especially when the cost is also increasing so much with the cable providers while online video options are only likely to get cheaper.
The Sys Admin is NOT a "Work Unit" type of job. Let me explain...Most jobs in the US are either Production or Service industry, in either case, you can clearly measure how many widgets are assembled, how many burgers are cooked, how many drinks are mixed, or how many feet of ditch were dug.
Many posters have pointed this out, but none of them suggested what type of job a Sys Admin really is. The same type of question has been asked for years regarding programmers, as people quickly realized that programmers couldn't just be measured on lines of code (which is basically similar to how most posters have suggested solving this so far). The reality is that Sys Admins are much more similar to executives in that there is no legitimate way to measure their production. Any quantifiable number (Uptime, tickets resolved or remaining, response time, etc.) can be easily explained by a counter example showing that those numbers can be fake, or even represent the opposite of the desired target.
So, here's an answer...a performance review by peers. Yeah, I know they are annoying and certainly imperfect, but it certainly provides the most measurable outcome, based entirely on what REAL people are seeing with the system. What will happen is that one admin or a team that are getting the job done and are successful will have little or no complaints and get very high scores. Even if there are several technical issues that arise (which happens even with a great team of highly knowledgeable people that don't make mistakes), the users and other admins will recognize that it's outside of control, and still give good responses. If people (including other admins) recognize that one or many admins are slacking, that too will become obvious.
It's always worked for Microsoft [insert uproarious laughter here]
Seriously though, this isn't TOO dissimilar from what happened several years ago when ISP's started blocking their subscribers from running their own base protocol servers. Most block ftp servers, some block web servers, and I've yet to sign up an ISP that doesn't get hinky with running a mail server. In point of fact, I'm signed up to Cox cable right now, and I am constantly working around the ftp server limitation. Nobody could call fraud, because nobody asked the questions about what features where disabled...
As some may remember, the prime reason given by many o' ISP was that they didn't want people running public sites that would swallow up all of their bandwidth. To me, this feels like the same argument all over again, but with two significant differences: The scale is dramatically increased (more bandwidth to go around, but way more content), and this time the users aren't tech-savvy and relatively educated computer users, instead they are average people with only enough knowledge to be angry that they can't use bittorrent to get the new Daughtry album.
Unfortunately, this could be more than an issue of bandwidth concern, as many ISPs are still getting constant batteries of requests for customer information and no doubt they are looking for a way to remove that hassles.
just trying to get a piece of tail
Forgive me, the joke is obvious, but it had to be made
With RHEL it was an issue of fulling giving up a portion of the software to the OSS world and then including their own proprietary developments in the paid version (along with the benefit of every enhancement having been well tested in Fedora first).
MySQL has knowingly weakened the codebase. Urlocker says that MySQL "wants to make sure the Community version is rock solid," but admitted that the company has introduced features into the Community edition of the software that "[weren't] as robust as we thought, and created some instabilities."
Red Hat was attacked unfairly for their actions (at least that's how it can be seen today...when it happened, the situation looked different), MySQL can be very justly untrusted as they are rigging the situation and putting the free users at a disadvantage beyond just the lack of business class management tools. If the MySQL team was simply turning the paid for product into an extension of the free product, nobody would need to doubt their actions.
Let's be honest, at least until recently, most people in the country couldn't even approach Linux without an in-home guru to tell them how it works. Windows has been largely user friendly throughout the last decade (at least once post-install driver issues are resolved), something that Linux hasn't been able to claim. Without MS Windows, many computer-challenged sods would be too afraid to buy a computer or do anything with it if they did buy it. Microsoft may have some pretty bad things going for/against it, but they do deserve credit, both marketing and development, for bringing most people into the computer world.
Of course, it's also time that people get ready to lose the training wheels and move onto better things.
With all due respect to Apple for the few things they can lay legitimate claim to for innovation, they are largely just a copycat company as well. Perhaps copycat isn't the right way to put it, they are simply too quick to brag about some new product being an innovation when it's really just an obvious combination of existing pieces. For example:
I'll give a shred of credit for the iPod simply because they were the first to get it to market, despite the rather obvious detail that it wouldn't be long before somebody else did it anyway (Creative being the likely choice). After all, it's just an MP3 player (which already existed in heavy numbers) remixed with a hard drive.
Apple lays claims to being the first to put together numerous graphical elements and tools in their OS. Unfortunately for them, there's not a single one of them I've seen or heard of that can't be traced to existing first in the Linux camp, or even a few from MS. Just like the Mouse, Apple is taking credit for other people's innovations.
As for the iPhone, Apple simply copied the multi-touch display that was already being made a topic of much discussion for several years prior, combined it with the (external) look & feel plus the memory elements of the ipod (along with far too many of it's major flaws), and mashed all of that up with a GUI that looks and feels strangely similar to the MS Windows Media Center garbage (or at least any common place photo editing app with slide shows).
I'll give credit to Apple for the work they put into the iPhone in terms of man hours, design expenses and the marketing research, but let's not confuse that with innovation. Cloners don't owe Apple anything on that front, and frankly, they don't appear to be cloning much more than surface design elements and fairly marginal elements of the internals and the base feature set (all things that many companies frequently copy "legally" all the time). Even before the iPhone was visible in any way publicly (including the patent applications), not a single feature of the iPhone didn't already exist in other phones on the market. Apple just spent the money tying it all together and decided to declare themselves brilliant for doing so...sound like the Segway, err "IT" to anybody else?