Besides that I think 7" is a bit smallish (I have the EEE 701, the screen size is my main issue), there is one thing that I'd like to add:
I can run my business with such a laptop. Really.
OOo for invoices/keeping track of orders (a spreadsheet),
Skype/chat/e-mail to keep in touch,
GnuCash for the bookkeeping,
Some image viewer/editor (simple edits: remove a license plate number or so, resizing to e-mailable size, that kind of stuff),
Web browser.
The only issue is my e-banking which requires Windows (FF works but demands Windows for some underlying script) - on my main computer I now run XP within VirtualBox just for e-banking...
I'm a small business, communication is what it's about, and such a light computer makes me do everything that I need and more. Really. And honestly I bet 99% of the people in my business feel the same. And large parts of the rest of the small business world as well - that is those being practical in their computing needs and not looking for a status symbol or so.
For a start, the import of CDs and DVDs into China is forbidden, the reason I've been told is censorship mainly.
Secondly the Chinese government, particularly the higher-up parts, DO crack down on copyright infringement, believe it or not. It's just the corruption further down that prevents them to be efficient. However cargo at the borders is inspected so it's costly to import CDs and DVDs.
Finally there is a need to be cheap and quick to the market, and shipping all the way from Russia makes it cost more and take longer.
It is all in all not my experience with the China market that they import this kind of disks from Russia. It is more like Chinese counterfeit disks are exported to other countries, including most of Asia and even the US and Europe. Export of CDs and DVDs is also illegal by the way - because the Chinese government is very aware that most locally produced disks are infringing on copyrights.
In this case it appears to be not just the support, but also the sales of new licenses, which is also being stopped. Though if MS would be forced to sell new licenses still, then the seven-year support period would never start. Oh well they could print the licenses in 2005 and sell them as "old stock" maybe.
That would still leave 10% of the company available for new features. That is still a lot of people.
Now compare MS to Apple. How many people are working in each OS's divisions? I have no numbers but I am willing to bet on Microsoft winning this hands down.
Now compare the number of OS releases over the last say five years, and the number of really new features added over those releases. Oh and maybe you may want to look at overall performance of the product. This one I'd say is a clear win for Apple.
And then I'm not even talking about competitor #3: Linux. That's a bit less clear because of the community, can't say how many people working on what and so and many not working on it full time... but still the innovation I have experienced here over the last five years is enormous.
So long story short: there is no reason why it is impossible for MS to keep supporting WinXP and in the meantime come up with new OS products that are full of innovation and give great performance. Considering the number of people working in that company, and knowing that they have the money to attract and retain the best of the best, the only reason why this is not happening is management failure, plain and simple. You may think of Steve Jobs and his obsessive micro-management style what you want, but the fact is that he is doing a great job at the helm of Apple and has helped the company grow and continue to grow. And Linux with all it's distributions is doing fantastic things without any central management at all. Microsoft on the other hand doesn't know anymore what to do obviously... the failure of Vista, the flop of the Zune, the meagre success of MSN (except maybe the chat service) and the Xbox consoles, the lack of real innovation in their Office suit beyond adding more and more obscure functions... I won't buy their stock anytime soon.
The big difference with land is that we live on a planet with a limited size. Most land has an owner by now - there is not much no-mans-land left in the world. That means to get the land you have to actually figure out who owns it and get the transfer done.
Domain names can be created from scratch - there is a virtually unlimited number available, limited only by the allowed characters (26 letters plus some other characters), and total length (no idea how many characters are allowed but I am not aware of a limit). With 20 characters one would already have something like 10E45 names possible. That is big enough to call unlimited for practical use.
So while I do understand the legitimate business of registering domains and hoping to sell them for a profit, to follow your land-investment analogy these businesses should limit themselves to existing domains, buying disused but already registered domains, and refrain from registering new domains.
The latter, cybersquatting or domaining or whatever you call it does not add anything to the overall system. It is just a nuisance. There is no advantage whatsoever to the user of a domain, and it will definitely never be a market place like a stock exchange or commodities market where buyers and sellers gather and brokers facilitate deals.
The ultimate, nerdy, but very very useful boy-toy.
I have the EEE 701 and I love it except for the smallish screen and too short battery life (can squeeze out 3-4 hrs by dimming the screen but that's it). 8-10 hrs sounds quite OK to me, getting usable. And built-in 3G radio: ultimate connectivity.
The logistics part is not even the hard one for micropayments, though the privacy issue is. I can not think of any way using encryption or whatnot to make micropayments work without a central server. Cash (bank notes, coins) works because it's so hard to copy them. However a digital bank note, by nature, can be copied. So it requires a central server that keeps track of all payments, with all privacy issues related to it.
The technical side is also not even that hard, albeit that you will have to install an add-on to your browser to facilitate the transaction communication. Critical mass becomes an issue of course, both on buyer (browser) and seller (website) sides.
Finally it's the consumer that doesn't like to have to decide time and again whether such a micropayment (for a microservice like a single page or to watch some short video) is worth it. That is a really big issue and a showstopper.
That are small payments maybe, not micropayments. The iTunes store charges US$0.99 for most songs, in other words for the price of a few songs you can have lunch as well. That are not micropayments.
Real micropayments are smaller. Cents, or fractions of that. And they have always been a failure, mainly for the inconvenience ("click here to pay $littlebit to see the article/video") and the fact that users don't like to decide time and again whether something is worth paying for. Subscriptions work far better for that.
Like another poster mentioned: most of the EU qualifies.
My residence of Hong Kong also very much qualifies. It has a very relaxed immigration policy, except if you happen to be from China (yes HK is part of China and has most immigration restrictions against mainland Chinese). Unfortunately recently also some Taiwanese were refused entry, it appears arbitrarily and for political reasons. That is very bad.
And for criminals: if they have served their time, and released, they deserve a second chance and should be treated like anyone else in this respect. Criminals (or suspects) on a watch-list will be stopped and arrested at the border (both HK and EU) when they try to enter or leave, and possibly extradited.
No fingerprinting necessary by the way, except that I use my thumb print for automated immigration clearance. Failing the thumb print I can also use the conventional face-to-face-with-an-officer method.
Besides going for software alternatives like Linux, aren't there other vendors reselling MS software with support? The most expensive part in software should be the support after all. The integration of it all into working desktop systems, that do what the users need it to do, and the maintenance of both the software and the hardware. It is not that hardware is immortal. Stuff breaks now and then.
In inviting other vendors (HP, Dell?) to bid for the contract maybe they can get even better integration: use mostly MS software but also some from other vendors to complete the package, have the same supplier take care of the hardware, thus making sure it all works fine with the underlying hardware and knowing who you have to blame if it doesn't.
Or how about Apple? There is afaik still a MS Office version available for OS-X. Actually most commercial software is available for OS-X. It could be a very good alternative for Windows boxes. And I'm sure Apple or a reseller can provide excellent software/hardware integration.
Add to that (for statistics): the user doesn't know the account is under attack or which passwords have been tested already. So even if they change the password to something the attacker has tried already, they are immune until the next change comes when they have a good chance to change to something that was not yet tried.
As many other posters argued already: there should be a rate limit of attempts per 5 minutes, or total number of attempts - set that to say three or five times per five minutes or ten times to block the account and a human that knows the password has plenty of tries available but a brute forcer will be locked out virtually immediately with next-to-zero chance to guess right.
About ten years ago I heard the password scheme of someone who had to change his password on a monthly basis. He used the name of the current month as basis for the password... the current password ('may') would have to be padded or doubled or so probably, but later in the year it went fine: 'september', 'october', 'november'. Need to add numbers? Capitals? 'September09', 'October10'. Yes, monthly password changes are so good for security. At least he didn't need post-it notes as reminder.
This is actually a pretty secure way of doing transactions, far more secure than just a login and password like so many banks use. When I see fishing for online banking credentials it is virtually exclusively targeting US banks. Not European banks.
The idea is quite simple: it is the combination of something you know (un/pw to login), and something you have (the phone). This has always been argued on/. as being a good way to do authentication. It is quite similar to the ATM card: something you know (your PIN code) and something you have (the card). Having one or the other is not enough.
That these phones can be hacked to log on to the mobile network using an arbitrary number is where the problem is. That should not be possible in the first place and should be fixed. I think this is pretty much the level of adding a magnetic reader and camera to an ATM to copy victims cards and read their PIN as they enter it. Except that this hack seems to be a degree harder to pull off.
There is probably no 100% safe and secure way of doing banking business, neither online nor offline. There will ALWAYS be ways to hack them. So we have to remain vigilant, and try to detect and stop those hacks immediately.
When doing my bank business offline, all I have to do is fill in a remittance form, sign it, and hand it in to the bank (I can ask someone else to do that for me, no need to go by myself). Signatures can be forged relatively easily with practice - as long as it looks very much like the original the bank staff will accept it.
The main trick has to be to make it so hard that it becomes unprofitable. Or to improve traceability of the cash: follow the stolen money to the criminal, that the risk of getting caught becomes really big.
I know at work, if the network goes down, 90% of work stops. Everything is integrated anyway, so the negatives of a browser-only PC aren't that huge.
Going back to the fat server - thin client (not-so-dumb terminal) I think is quite a good idea for office settings. I can think of quite some advantages:
Easy maintenance of clients for the IT guys.
Very easy application maintenance: all is in one place - on the server - instead of spread out throughout the company.
Easy and reliable data back-up and management. Again all is guaranteed in one place, no risk of workers saving their work on the local hard disk instead of on the network.
Great reliability for the workers (assuming the IT guys keep their network and servers running well), and if a computer breaks down... just get another one, log in, and continue where you were.
Workers can not install their own applications at will (which they may find an inconvenience, but then it's not their own computer in the first place).
This may not work for all workers, I'm sure programmers will demand their own full featured work station to install local software and whatnot, but for 90% of the office workers it's enough to be able to access their applications, whether on the network or locally installed. And for network outages... as you say, then the work will stop anyway in the office. That doesn't change.
And for home PC's: for my grandma it may work (all she wants to do is e-mail to keep in touch with the family), but for me it wouldn't do.
Speaking from experience in Hong Kong (my current home) and The Netherlands (my native country):
Accidental power outages are measured in mere minutes or even seconds per year. In Hong Kong power outages are usually confined to a building (poor maintenance of the building's management, not the power company) and once over the last years I recall a power dip lasting a fraction of a second, which is enough to wreak havoc with lifts, traffic lights and even train services, causing serious chaos. Most years I do not experience power outages, at all - even people living in the more remote rural areas barely if ever have power outages. In my office building there is a few times a year a Sunday without power, and this is announced in advance. Barely anyone has their computer connected to a UPS - I don't even recall seeing any of those on offer in the major computer malls. They are probably for sale but not put prominently on display, indicating really low demand for these devices. This is how reliable the power supply is here.
Internet services are pretty much at the same level. I have outages less than once a year - and most of those are announced and due to maintenance or network upgrades. Not due to natural disasters or poor network set-up. Outages are about as rare as outages of the telephone network, and that is really rare. And if my ADSL would go down, I can always connect over my mobile phone (3G data). Not fast but it still works, and enough for browsing/chatting.
Now I do understand the US is quite behind large parts of the world in this (broadband availability, mobile telephone networks, power reliability), but large parts of the developed world do not have much of an issue with network/power reliability. Of course you are trying to joke (and get modded "insightful" which to me confirms the sad state of affairs in the US), it is really not so much of an issue in large parts of the on-line world.
I would say that the fact that/. renders in a sans-serif font pretty much proves your statement. Because we all know that if anything, the interface of/. is not an example of how it should be done:)
And go bankrupt in the process of doing so? Lawsuits are expensive and most sensible businesses will want to avoid them. Even if they could win. They will only fight if NOT going to court will kill them off in the first place.
I think having to go to the counter every 30 mins gets old quickly for the customer. It is irritating. This way it's great for a normal session (I can imagine very much using such a service when on business trip to read e-mail and reply some urgent matters, 30 mins is usually enough for that - otherwise just get a second ticket to finish your work), but not for WiFi camping in that shop for hours.
This sounds like a creative and smart solution to me. And I am not surprised it works very well.
This may actually be a good solution: they say a WiFi customer keeps a seat occupied for 35 mins while other customers do so only 10 mins. So they have less customers, hence less turnover, per seat.
As long as the seats are not all occupied, the extra WiFi users may add to their business, as they only occupy extra seats. However when all seats are occupied other customers may turn around and go to a competitor instead because they can not find an empty seat, and they are losing business.
More prudent in such a case would be to limit free WiFi either in duration (15 mins per connection/MAC address), or to certain periods of time, say not available from 12 to 2 (lunch time).
But then there are so many laws that it probably takes a lifetime to read through them all, especially if you are in a common law system, where you would have to read all the precedents as well.
That said they could have used a little more common sense.
Being impolite will only make things worse in most cases. Better remain polite OR remain silent. That does not mean that you have to help them of course. That is another matter. Tell them to get lost can be done politely and sternly at the same time. And it will get the message across better than when you start being impolite, the latter given the other party only more reason to grill you.
Trial by jury is, also in the US, typical for serious crimes, such as murder/rape/etc. I hope you don't suggest that copyright infringement should fall in that category.
Not enough people care about it, and it will be a while before ISP's start disconnecting their customers: this will give them a bad name, I doubt it's good for business really, so they will be quite reluctant to do so - especially the first to disconnect customers will get a lot of publicity for sure.
People on the street... not likely, as the problem is that people disconnected "broke the law, and were stealing music/movies". That is the line at least, and because it's said like that it is hard to get large numbers to stand up and protest in support of the disconnected "criminals". Mind you: proof is not needed. Never. When you see written in the newspaper "Mr. X and Mr Y have been convicted of burglary and have been put in jail", do you ever doubt they did it? Of course you don't. It's written there, and higher authorities have found it true. Same will account for these copyright infringement cases. The proof that the person is guilty is simply the message from a higher authority that that person did it. It's all the general public needs.
Only when the perception becomes that copyright infringement is legal (that will be a while) or even should be legal (that also will be a while), or that the above mentioned higher authority can not be trusted anymore (in which case there is a much bigger problem than just some copyright losses), nothing will happen.
The only way a law like this can be overturned is if someone who is disconnected goes to court to have the disconnection overturned, and in the process has the law invalidated for being draconian or unconstitutional or whatever. And that is not easy, and will take many years at best, if anyone cares enough to actually step up, and put some millions on the table to hire the lawyers that can actually manage such a case.
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Besides that I think 7" is a bit smallish (I have the EEE 701, the screen size is my main issue), there is one thing that I'd like to add:
I can run my business with such a laptop. Really.
The only issue is my e-banking which requires Windows (FF works but demands Windows for some underlying script) - on my main computer I now run XP within VirtualBox just for e-banking...
I'm a small business, communication is what it's about, and such a light computer makes me do everything that I need and more. Really. And honestly I bet 99% of the people in my business feel the same. And large parts of the rest of the small business world as well - that is those being practical in their computing needs and not looking for a status symbol or so.
[Quotation needed.]
For a start, the import of CDs and DVDs into China is forbidden, the reason I've been told is censorship mainly.
Secondly the Chinese government, particularly the higher-up parts, DO crack down on copyright infringement, believe it or not. It's just the corruption further down that prevents them to be efficient. However cargo at the borders is inspected so it's costly to import CDs and DVDs.
Finally there is a need to be cheap and quick to the market, and shipping all the way from Russia makes it cost more and take longer.
It is all in all not my experience with the China market that they import this kind of disks from Russia. It is more like Chinese counterfeit disks are exported to other countries, including most of Asia and even the US and Europe. Export of CDs and DVDs is also illegal by the way - because the Chinese government is very aware that most locally produced disks are infringing on copyrights.
In Microsoft vs. Russia... who would be the good guys?
In this case it appears to be not just the support, but also the sales of new licenses, which is also being stopped. Though if MS would be forced to sell new licenses still, then the seven-year support period would never start. Oh well they could print the licenses in 2005 and sell them as "old stock" maybe.
[...] they'd have 90+% of the company on support.
That would still leave 10% of the company available for new features. That is still a lot of people.
Now compare MS to Apple. How many people are working in each OS's divisions? I have no numbers but I am willing to bet on Microsoft winning this hands down.
Now compare the number of OS releases over the last say five years, and the number of really new features added over those releases. Oh and maybe you may want to look at overall performance of the product. This one I'd say is a clear win for Apple.
And then I'm not even talking about competitor #3: Linux. That's a bit less clear because of the community, can't say how many people working on what and so and many not working on it full time... but still the innovation I have experienced here over the last five years is enormous.
So long story short: there is no reason why it is impossible for MS to keep supporting WinXP and in the meantime come up with new OS products that are full of innovation and give great performance. Considering the number of people working in that company, and knowing that they have the money to attract and retain the best of the best, the only reason why this is not happening is management failure, plain and simple. You may think of Steve Jobs and his obsessive micro-management style what you want, but the fact is that he is doing a great job at the helm of Apple and has helped the company grow and continue to grow. And Linux with all it's distributions is doing fantastic things without any central management at all. Microsoft on the other hand doesn't know anymore what to do obviously... the failure of Vista, the flop of the Zune, the meagre success of MSN (except maybe the chat service) and the Xbox consoles, the lack of real innovation in their Office suit beyond adding more and more obscure functions... I won't buy their stock anytime soon.
The big difference with land is that we live on a planet with a limited size. Most land has an owner by now - there is not much no-mans-land left in the world. That means to get the land you have to actually figure out who owns it and get the transfer done.
Domain names can be created from scratch - there is a virtually unlimited number available, limited only by the allowed characters (26 letters plus some other characters), and total length (no idea how many characters are allowed but I am not aware of a limit). With 20 characters one would already have something like 10E45 names possible. That is big enough to call unlimited for practical use.
So while I do understand the legitimate business of registering domains and hoping to sell them for a profit, to follow your land-investment analogy these businesses should limit themselves to existing domains, buying disused but already registered domains, and refrain from registering new domains.
The latter, cybersquatting or domaining or whatever you call it does not add anything to the overall system. It is just a nuisance. There is no advantage whatsoever to the user of a domain, and it will definitely never be a market place like a stock exchange or commodities market where buyers and sellers gather and brokers facilitate deals.
The ultimate, nerdy, but very very useful boy-toy.
I have the EEE 701 and I love it except for the smallish screen and too short battery life (can squeeze out 3-4 hrs by dimming the screen but that's it). 8-10 hrs sounds quite OK to me, getting usable. And built-in 3G radio: ultimate connectivity.
The logistics part is not even the hard one for micropayments, though the privacy issue is. I can not think of any way using encryption or whatnot to make micropayments work without a central server. Cash (bank notes, coins) works because it's so hard to copy them. However a digital bank note, by nature, can be copied. So it requires a central server that keeps track of all payments, with all privacy issues related to it.
The technical side is also not even that hard, albeit that you will have to install an add-on to your browser to facilitate the transaction communication. Critical mass becomes an issue of course, both on buyer (browser) and seller (website) sides.
Finally it's the consumer that doesn't like to have to decide time and again whether such a micropayment (for a microservice like a single page or to watch some short video) is worth it. That is a really big issue and a showstopper.
That are small payments maybe, not micropayments. The iTunes store charges US$0.99 for most songs, in other words for the price of a few songs you can have lunch as well. That are not micropayments.
Real micropayments are smaller. Cents, or fractions of that. And they have always been a failure, mainly for the inconvenience ("click here to pay $littlebit to see the article/video") and the fact that users don't like to decide time and again whether something is worth paying for. Subscriptions work far better for that.
Like another poster mentioned: most of the EU qualifies.
My residence of Hong Kong also very much qualifies. It has a very relaxed immigration policy, except if you happen to be from China (yes HK is part of China and has most immigration restrictions against mainland Chinese). Unfortunately recently also some Taiwanese were refused entry, it appears arbitrarily and for political reasons. That is very bad.
And for criminals: if they have served their time, and released, they deserve a second chance and should be treated like anyone else in this respect. Criminals (or suspects) on a watch-list will be stopped and arrested at the border (both HK and EU) when they try to enter or leave, and possibly extradited.
No fingerprinting necessary by the way, except that I use my thumb print for automated immigration clearance. Failing the thumb print I can also use the conventional face-to-face-with-an-officer method.
Besides going for software alternatives like Linux, aren't there other vendors reselling MS software with support? The most expensive part in software should be the support after all. The integration of it all into working desktop systems, that do what the users need it to do, and the maintenance of both the software and the hardware. It is not that hardware is immortal. Stuff breaks now and then.
In inviting other vendors (HP, Dell?) to bid for the contract maybe they can get even better integration: use mostly MS software but also some from other vendors to complete the package, have the same supplier take care of the hardware, thus making sure it all works fine with the underlying hardware and knowing who you have to blame if it doesn't.
Or how about Apple? There is afaik still a MS Office version available for OS-X. Actually most commercial software is available for OS-X. It could be a very good alternative for Windows boxes. And I'm sure Apple or a reseller can provide excellent software/hardware integration.
Add to that (for statistics): the user doesn't know the account is under attack or which passwords have been tested already. So even if they change the password to something the attacker has tried already, they are immune until the next change comes when they have a good chance to change to something that was not yet tried.
As many other posters argued already: there should be a rate limit of attempts per 5 minutes, or total number of attempts - set that to say three or five times per five minutes or ten times to block the account and a human that knows the password has plenty of tries available but a brute forcer will be locked out virtually immediately with next-to-zero chance to guess right.
About ten years ago I heard the password scheme of someone who had to change his password on a monthly basis. He used the name of the current month as basis for the password... the current password ('may') would have to be padded or doubled or so probably, but later in the year it went fine: 'september', 'october', 'november'. Need to add numbers? Capitals? 'September09', 'October10'. Yes, monthly password changes are so good for security. At least he didn't need post-it notes as reminder.
This is actually a pretty secure way of doing transactions, far more secure than just a login and password like so many banks use. When I see fishing for online banking credentials it is virtually exclusively targeting US banks. Not European banks.
The idea is quite simple: it is the combination of something you know (un/pw to login), and something you have (the phone). This has always been argued on /. as being a good way to do authentication. It is quite similar to the ATM card: something you know (your PIN code) and something you have (the card). Having one or the other is not enough.
That these phones can be hacked to log on to the mobile network using an arbitrary number is where the problem is. That should not be possible in the first place and should be fixed. I think this is pretty much the level of adding a magnetic reader and camera to an ATM to copy victims cards and read their PIN as they enter it. Except that this hack seems to be a degree harder to pull off.
There is probably no 100% safe and secure way of doing banking business, neither online nor offline. There will ALWAYS be ways to hack them. So we have to remain vigilant, and try to detect and stop those hacks immediately.
When doing my bank business offline, all I have to do is fill in a remittance form, sign it, and hand it in to the bank (I can ask someone else to do that for me, no need to go by myself). Signatures can be forged relatively easily with practice - as long as it looks very much like the original the bank staff will accept it.
The main trick has to be to make it so hard that it becomes unprofitable. Or to improve traceability of the cash: follow the stolen money to the criminal, that the risk of getting caught becomes really big.
That's debit, silly.
Not from the victim's point of view...
I know at work, if the network goes down, 90% of work stops. Everything is integrated anyway, so the negatives of a browser-only PC aren't that huge.
Going back to the fat server - thin client (not-so-dumb terminal) I think is quite a good idea for office settings. I can think of quite some advantages:
This may not work for all workers, I'm sure programmers will demand their own full featured work station to install local software and whatnot, but for 90% of the office workers it's enough to be able to access their applications, whether on the network or locally installed. And for network outages... as you say, then the work will stop anyway in the office. That doesn't change.
And for home PC's: for my grandma it may work (all she wants to do is e-mail to keep in touch with the family), but for me it wouldn't do.
Speaking from experience in Hong Kong (my current home) and The Netherlands (my native country):
Accidental power outages are measured in mere minutes or even seconds per year. In Hong Kong power outages are usually confined to a building (poor maintenance of the building's management, not the power company) and once over the last years I recall a power dip lasting a fraction of a second, which is enough to wreak havoc with lifts, traffic lights and even train services, causing serious chaos. Most years I do not experience power outages, at all - even people living in the more remote rural areas barely if ever have power outages. In my office building there is a few times a year a Sunday without power, and this is announced in advance. Barely anyone has their computer connected to a UPS - I don't even recall seeing any of those on offer in the major computer malls. They are probably for sale but not put prominently on display, indicating really low demand for these devices. This is how reliable the power supply is here.
Internet services are pretty much at the same level. I have outages less than once a year - and most of those are announced and due to maintenance or network upgrades. Not due to natural disasters or poor network set-up. Outages are about as rare as outages of the telephone network, and that is really rare. And if my ADSL would go down, I can always connect over my mobile phone (3G data). Not fast but it still works, and enough for browsing/chatting.
Now I do understand the US is quite behind large parts of the world in this (broadband availability, mobile telephone networks, power reliability), but large parts of the developed world do not have much of an issue with network/power reliability. Of course you are trying to joke (and get modded "insightful" which to me confirms the sad state of affairs in the US), it is really not so much of an issue in large parts of the on-line world.
I would say that the fact that /. renders in a sans-serif font pretty much proves your statement. Because we all know that if anything, the interface of /. is not an example of how it should be done :)
Damn..I was really hoping they'd fight this one.
And go bankrupt in the process of doing so? Lawsuits are expensive and most sensible businesses will want to avoid them. Even if they could win. They will only fight if NOT going to court will kill them off in the first place.
I think having to go to the counter every 30 mins gets old quickly for the customer. It is irritating. This way it's great for a normal session (I can imagine very much using such a service when on business trip to read e-mail and reply some urgent matters, 30 mins is usually enough for that - otherwise just get a second ticket to finish your work), but not for WiFi camping in that shop for hours.
This sounds like a creative and smart solution to me. And I am not surprised it works very well.
This may actually be a good solution: they say a WiFi customer keeps a seat occupied for 35 mins while other customers do so only 10 mins. So they have less customers, hence less turnover, per seat.
As long as the seats are not all occupied, the extra WiFi users may add to their business, as they only occupy extra seats. However when all seats are occupied other customers may turn around and go to a competitor instead because they can not find an empty seat, and they are losing business.
More prudent in such a case would be to limit free WiFi either in duration (15 mins per connection/MAC address), or to certain periods of time, say not available from 12 to 2 (lunch time).
Ignorance of the law is not a defense.
But then there are so many laws that it probably takes a lifetime to read through them all, especially if you are in a common law system, where you would have to read all the precedents as well.
That said they could have used a little more common sense.
Being impolite will only make things worse in most cases. Better remain polite OR remain silent. That does not mean that you have to help them of course. That is another matter. Tell them to get lost can be done politely and sternly at the same time. And it will get the message across better than when you start being impolite, the latter given the other party only more reason to grill you.
Trial by jury is, also in the US, typical for serious crimes, such as murder/rape/etc. I hope you don't suggest that copyright infringement should fall in that category.
It won't.
Not enough people care about it, and it will be a while before ISP's start disconnecting their customers: this will give them a bad name, I doubt it's good for business really, so they will be quite reluctant to do so - especially the first to disconnect customers will get a lot of publicity for sure.
People on the street... not likely, as the problem is that people disconnected "broke the law, and were stealing music/movies". That is the line at least, and because it's said like that it is hard to get large numbers to stand up and protest in support of the disconnected "criminals". Mind you: proof is not needed. Never. When you see written in the newspaper "Mr. X and Mr Y have been convicted of burglary and have been put in jail", do you ever doubt they did it? Of course you don't. It's written there, and higher authorities have found it true. Same will account for these copyright infringement cases. The proof that the person is guilty is simply the message from a higher authority that that person did it. It's all the general public needs.
Only when the perception becomes that copyright infringement is legal (that will be a while) or even should be legal (that also will be a while), or that the above mentioned higher authority can not be trusted anymore (in which case there is a much bigger problem than just some copyright losses), nothing will happen.
The only way a law like this can be overturned is if someone who is disconnected goes to court to have the disconnection overturned, and in the process has the law invalidated for being draconian or unconstitutional or whatever. And that is not easy, and will take many years at best, if anyone cares enough to actually step up, and put some millions on the table to hire the lawyers that can actually manage such a case.