Thanks for the explanation of how the advertising industry works. I really do think that commoditizing things that should really never be commoditized (i.e., home loans, ad placements, etc) creates a perverse incentive to such razor thin margins that cheating or lying becomes the only way to stay profitable.
In a larger sense, commoditization prevents competition on value. Everything competes on price, and quality isn't quantifiable as easily as price, and so there's a race to the bottom. Even if you build up a good name, a bigger player can undercut you on both price and quality for a while, drive you out of business and then completely drop the ball on quality and still rake in the profits (send a few $$ to reviewers or quality inspectors and buy a higher rating than you deserve).
What's sane about allowing large-scale copyright infringement?
The sanity of large-scale copyright infringement is based in large part on the insanity of essentially perpetual copyright (life + 70 years is pretty damn long).
Race to the bottom? They're already there. They arrived with the debut of the iPad. That's a great irony of the situation that many people don't fully grasp. Apple created a new market by being the cheap option.
You're just making the mistake of assuming that fruity logo actually means something. Except for the novelty form factors, Apple is a PC maker just like anyone else. The same random collection of spare parts that's in a Mac are also in Dell and any other brand.
I'm surprised you think an iPad is a race to the bottom. It's not even a general purpose PC (wake me when I can code and compile iOS app on an iOS device without jailbreaking). An iPad is likely in the top-tier of most expensive tablets - you can get a Kindle Fire for about $150 these days - about 2-3x cheaper than the basic iPad.
Sure you could keep confusing the tablet market with the PC market, why not throw the smartphone market in there as well? That's just about as valid.
I will ding Apple for seemingly starting the widescreen fad.
You'd be wrong then. Mac laptops are some of the few remaining that even support 16:10 while most PC laptops are 16:9. I mean, yeah, I prefer 4:3 but it's actually a huge difference to lose the last 10% of vertical space as you go to 16:9.
I wonder how much of this move is designed to position Google more firmly in your house. Maybe they saw that Amazon Echo was getting traction and is moving to compete in this space as well?
While OnHub doesn't track the websites you visit, your DNS provider can associate your web traffic with your public IP address. OnHub sets your default DNS provider to Google Public DNS. (This can be changed in the Advanced Networking settings of the Google On app.)
What could possibly go wrong?
Compare contrast with Comcast's DNS - Comcast owns NBC now so they have a vested interest in hunting down sharing of pirated content. I'd bet every single/.er is a legitimate target for them.
So do you trust Google or Comcast more here? Unless we're all running OpenDNS, and even then are you sure they're not selling your info too?
They do very unpredictable driving school-level things like slow/stop where deep shadows fall on the road. Like very suddenly. And then they stay there for a few seconds.
I'm not surprised there's finally a rear-ending. I'm actually surprised it took so long.
Apart from SCO, RightsCorp, Righthaven, Lodsys, and other organizations that have built up "troll" reputations in certain circles, I can think of One Rich American Called Larry Ellison.
And that's just in computing. If you want to go up a league in EVIL, take a look at Cargill, Monsanto or any major oil company. Their list of sins are large and not debatable. If you go even further, take a look at international financial institutions like UBS or HSBC. And that's before we get into politicians, dictatorships, and the good ol' CIA (who was Oracle's #1 customer, now that I think of it).
Yeah, If Google's on the list of EVIL they've either got a long way to go, or have been completely stealth in comparison.
It is much better to have a company which promises not to pull the trigger take possession of it, rather than leave it unattended for some sue-happy patent troll to get their hands on it.
Are those promises legally binding? If Google sold the patents, would new patent holders be legally bound to uphold those promises? I'm guessing the answers to both are no. I'm not so sure that tomorrow's Google will have the same intentions as today's Google. All it takes is a bit of revenue pressure, or hell, just a small change in management.
Apple's 30% cut(apps that can only be signed up for online are OK; but such apps are forbidden to link to the signup page in-app; either no sign-up information, or Apple-provided payment mechanism only); which more or less assures that they'll be able to undercut their competitors on iOS, unless some miracle has made the labels 30% or more more generous in their dealings with that competitor.
When I setup my Amazon/Audible account, I did it on a web page (even if it was on iOS), and in fact, that's where I continue to make my purchases (the webpage simply directs back to the app once I've bought a book). It's fairly easy. With Spotify, it's even less of an issue - the user only has to do this transaction once. Arguably, Spotify should simply force users to do what Amazon/Audible do - transact outside of the App for purchases.
Why should Apple be forced to help Spotify make their App simpler piggybacking on the simplicity of iOS without renumeration? Allowing purchases within an iOS app is not some sovereign right of an app creator. It's Apple's rules, and is not dissimilar from Google's rules (even the % is the same - 30%).
Finally, Spotify is owned (20% from last accounting) [1] by the music industry - it's their (very successful) stalking horse into streaming music, which is partly why they've been so successful - Spotify got deals/labels that other apps (Pandora, LastFM) simply could not. It's quite ironic that Spotify is complaining that they can't compete -they've been the ones benefiting from an unlevel playing field for years.
I mean 300 billion $ (build up over the course of decades) Vs 3.5 trillion $ (in a month)...
The thing about Greece is that if #grexit happens, Spain, Italy and other weak economies with large debt/GDP ratios will be "emboldened" to also exit the Euro.
While greeks are suffering crippling unemployment under the austerity measures approved by their former leadership, the rest of Europe is scared shitless of letting them "off the hook".
As you said, for $300B. The ECB and politicians are essentially incompetent, but are dealing with a very poor situation, the real fix should have been that the investors involved in the Greece debt take some pain, but they were made whole and the EU countries are now on the hook for Greece's debt.
Same ol' recipe for crony capitalism: privatize the gains, socialize the losses. And you wonder why banksters are held in such contempt...
The restriction to look at now is whether the marital status of each spouse in the marriage at hand is single. Today it has to be. But there's not a good reason for it. (As already mentioned, administrative convenience is not a good reason). So why can't Alice, who is married to Bob, now also marry Carol? Bob isn't marrying Carol; the A-C marriage would be between two people only. You're treating Alice differently merely because she is already married.
So what happens to Alice's stuff when she dies? How are property rights naturally divided? I can tell you there would be different interpretations of what happens and that's a problem. You need new law or legal precedent to establish how that works.
Sure, it's not intractable, it's also not even something I'd be against. Equal protection, however, is based on "protected classes" and the state of "being married" is not one of those. Why should it be? Someone who is married is denied the joys of... being married? That doesn't compute.
Sprint is really in no position anyway to be dictating any terms to its customers. Of the top 4, it has the worst native network.
Which is really telling - even t-Mobile has stepped up their game - when I get service (major cities and outside of large warehouse-like buildings), it's phenomenal and much better than my coworkers' VZ and ATT networks. With wifi-calling and HD Voice, I get better calls than I ever did on AT&T or VZ.
I liked Sprint when I had it 20 years ago. But data is the game and all advances in mobile are driven by data. Sprint has got to improve their network.
These researchers had physical control of the hardware in question and were able to extract unencrypted data? That must have been difficult.
You can't do that with an iPhone. Hardware access that's in a locked mode shouldn't necessarily give you access to encrypted data. Oh, in one case at least it simply wasn't encrypted. Health data. Nice.
The Huffington Post was live updating the proceedings, and said this:
USA Freedom Act advances 77-17
In a stunning reversal from last week’s drama, the USA Freedom Act was passed by a vote of 77-17. The bill, which passed the House overwhelmingly several weeks ago will now move forward and is likely to receive a final vote on Tuesday.
The bill fell three votes short of the needed supermajority to advance last week but with the clock ticking on controversial provisions of the Patriot Act, supporters of NSA surveillance thought that the proposed reforms were better than letting the program expire entirely.
Rand Paul stated that the Freedom Act will likely get passed on Tuesday.
Wait... did we win or not? Isn't this just a 2-day repreive?
Please note this [1] is one of the bills being proposed (by the sitting Senate Intelligence Chair, no less):
The bill Senate Intelligence Chair Richard Burr released last Friday is bad enough for the way it expanded the existing illegal dragnet. I argued here Burr’s bill would give the Intelligence Community everything they lost in 2009 and 2011. [...]
So think about it - is this just a 2 day reprieve or 2 days so they can rollback more restrictions and make things worse than they are now?
There is no right to make a profit. http protocol is displayed by a backend interpretation. I can do what I want with the data I fetch.
In addition I want the concept of ad revenue generated content to die.
Well then you better be concerned because according to TFA, they're going after ad networks but not ads within social networks. How logical is that? All this means is that Google's monopoly will be diverted to Facebook, and the same shit continues, except Zuck gets all the $$.
The War on (some non-patentable, not pushed by Big Pharma) Drugs is a failure.
Ah, but I disagree. Its purpose is manifold, but the two biggies are the erosion of the constitution to keep the prison/security state growing and fed, and the profits of Big Pharma.
This sad state of affairs has been slowly engineered over decades by some very wealthy and influential people as a goal to increase their power and wealth.
It's not a failure - it's a wild success. Sucks that you and I aren't on that list of winners though.
Possibly - but then the best way is just to let any password open the vault.
This is highly undesirable. Even knowing which services I find worthy enough to include in my vault is important. If the attacker knows my gmail, linkedin, or more niche account username, and doesn't see it in the vault, then they will get suspicious.
But seriously between this, and the moves that the FCC will actually implement Title 2 protections to uphold Net Neutrality, my hopes for humanity (and the US Govt in general) have gone up a bit.
That's no justification for the employer's action. If your employee doesn't behave properly, you talk with them, maybe put them on performance plan, or maybe terminate their employment.
To talk with another employer to get her fired there is pretty unethical and evidence of douchebaggery.
Actually small planes aren't that bad- you can get 20-25 mpg at a ground equivalent of 100 mph. Figure that you are going on a straight path and the economics look pretty good.
So you're only traveling between airports? What about commuting to/from the airport?
To be fair, this pretty much describes 95% of the elected critters on Capitol Hill. By using the title "Senator" the rest of your statement was pretty much redundant.
For the tiny percent of people who have tattoos that cover all the way down, why would they waste money or resources trying to figure out that last barely 1 percent or less? That makes no sense from a business stand point, on the other hand I totally agree with you on they should have a warning for those people with tattoo. For most, there is still time to return the watch, stop being major cry babies, thats how you let companies know there product has problems, RETURN IT.
So, GM shouldn't have fixed the ignition key problem because it affects even less than your "barely 1%"? And if a laptop design has barely 1% of cpus fail out of the box, that's okay? Or drugs or contaminated food shouldn't be recalled because it only affects barely 1%? Can you change your name from Anonymous Coward to Corporate Shill?
So is the Apple Watch not working with wrist tattoos equivalent to a malfunctioning car, failing laptop, or or contaminated drugs/food? You call the GP commenter a shill. You sounds silly and shrill.
If you have wrist tattoos (my guess is you don't) and the watch doesn't work for you return it. Get some perspective, and buy a Google Wear instead.
So I've read that what's happening is the proverbial "straw that broke the camel's back". Meaning all this activity only hastened the inevitable; an earthquake. Some geologists have stated that in hindsight, this may actually be a good thing in that it releases stress that would otherwise buildup and cause an even bigger quake at a much later date. Much MUCH later I would think. So I dunno, if a mag 7 goes off, could you really prove who or what caused it though??
Do you have a cite for this? I haven't heard anything like that.
I hate that we have to legislate instead of educate people about vaccinations.
I hate that legislation is allowed to force people into something the state mandates.
There's no mandate. Just a removal of bullshit exceptions to an rule preventing unvaccinated children from attending schools. Kind of like anti-dumping laws - you don't get to drain your sewer into the streets, just because you don't believe in "government mandated" plumbing.
Slashdot Mirror
Thanks for the explanation of how the advertising industry works. I really do think that commoditizing things that should really never be commoditized (i.e., home loans, ad placements, etc) creates a perverse incentive to such razor thin margins that cheating or lying becomes the only way to stay profitable.
In a larger sense, commoditization prevents competition on value. Everything competes on price, and quality isn't quantifiable as easily as price, and so there's a race to the bottom. Even if you build up a good name, a bigger player can undercut you on both price and quality for a while, drive you out of business and then completely drop the ball on quality and still rake in the profits (send a few $$ to reviewers or quality inspectors and buy a higher rating than you deserve).
What's sane about allowing large-scale copyright infringement?
The sanity of large-scale copyright infringement is based in large part on the insanity of essentially perpetual copyright (life + 70 years is pretty damn long).
Race to the bottom? They're already there. They arrived with the debut of the iPad. That's a great irony of the situation that many people don't fully grasp. Apple created a new market by being the cheap option.
You're just making the mistake of assuming that fruity logo actually means something. Except for the novelty form factors, Apple is a PC maker just like anyone else. The same random collection of spare parts that's in a Mac are also in Dell and any other brand.
I'm surprised you think an iPad is a race to the bottom. It's not even a general purpose PC (wake me when I can code and compile iOS app on an iOS device without jailbreaking). An iPad is likely in the top-tier of most expensive tablets - you can get a Kindle Fire for about $150 these days - about 2-3x cheaper than the basic iPad.
Sure you could keep confusing the tablet market with the PC market, why not throw the smartphone market in there as well? That's just about as valid.
I will ding Apple for seemingly starting the widescreen fad.
You'd be wrong then. Mac laptops are some of the few remaining that even support 16:10 while most PC laptops are 16:9. I mean, yeah, I prefer 4:3 but it's actually a huge difference to lose the last 10% of vertical space as you go to 16:9.
I wonder how much of this move is designed to position Google more firmly in your house. Maybe they saw that Amazon Echo was getting traction and is moving to compete in this space as well?
Does it have a microphone...?
Towards the bottom of the link you shared:
While OnHub doesn't track the websites you visit, your DNS provider can associate your web traffic with your public IP address. OnHub sets your default DNS provider to Google Public DNS. (This can be changed in the Advanced Networking settings of the Google On app.)
What could possibly go wrong?
Compare contrast with Comcast's DNS - Comcast owns NBC now so they have a vested interest in hunting down sharing of pirated content. I'd bet every single /.er is a legitimate target for them.
So do you trust Google or Comcast more here? Unless we're all running OpenDNS, and even then are you sure they're not selling your info too?
They do very unpredictable driving school-level things like slow/stop where deep shadows fall on the road. Like very suddenly. And then they stay there for a few seconds.
I'm not surprised there's finally a rear-ending. I'm actually surprised it took so long.
Apart from SCO, RightsCorp, Righthaven, Lodsys, and other organizations that have built up "troll" reputations in certain circles, I can think of One Rich American Called Larry Ellison.
And that's just in computing. If you want to go up a league in EVIL, take a look at Cargill, Monsanto or any major oil company. Their list of sins are large and not debatable. If you go even further, take a look at international financial institutions like UBS or HSBC. And that's before we get into politicians, dictatorships, and the good ol' CIA (who was Oracle's #1 customer, now that I think of it).
Yeah, If Google's on the list of EVIL they've either got a long way to go, or have been completely stealth in comparison.
It is much better to have a company which promises not to pull the trigger take possession of it, rather than leave it unattended for some sue-happy patent troll to get their hands on it.
Are those promises legally binding? If Google sold the patents, would new patent holders be legally bound to uphold those promises? I'm guessing the answers to both are no. I'm not so sure that tomorrow's Google will have the same intentions as today's Google. All it takes is a bit of revenue pressure, or hell, just a small change in management.
Apple's 30% cut(apps that can only be signed up for online are OK; but such apps are forbidden to link to the signup page in-app; either no sign-up information, or Apple-provided payment mechanism only); which more or less assures that they'll be able to undercut their competitors on iOS, unless some miracle has made the labels 30% or more more generous in their dealings with that competitor.
When I setup my Amazon/Audible account, I did it on a web page (even if it was on iOS), and in fact, that's where I continue to make my purchases (the webpage simply directs back to the app once I've bought a book). It's fairly easy. With Spotify, it's even less of an issue - the user only has to do this transaction once. Arguably, Spotify should simply force users to do what Amazon/Audible do - transact outside of the App for purchases.
Why should Apple be forced to help Spotify make their App simpler piggybacking on the simplicity of iOS without renumeration? Allowing purchases within an iOS app is not some sovereign right of an app creator. It's Apple's rules, and is not dissimilar from Google's rules (even the % is the same - 30%).
Finally, Spotify is owned (20% from last accounting) [1] by the music industry - it's their (very successful) stalking horse into streaming music, which is partly why they've been so successful - Spotify got deals/labels that other apps (Pandora, LastFM) simply could not. It's quite ironic that Spotify is complaining that they can't compete -they've been the ones benefiting from an unlevel playing field for years.
[1] http://www.swedishwire.com/job...
I mean 300 billion $ (build up over the course of decades) Vs 3.5 trillion $ (in a month) ...
The thing about Greece is that if #grexit happens, Spain, Italy and other weak economies with large debt/GDP ratios will be "emboldened" to also exit the Euro.
While greeks are suffering crippling unemployment under the austerity measures approved by their former leadership, the rest of Europe is scared shitless of letting them "off the hook".
As you said, for $300B. The ECB and politicians are essentially incompetent, but are dealing with a very poor situation, the real fix should have been that the investors involved in the Greece debt take some pain, but they were made whole and the EU countries are now on the hook for Greece's debt.
Same ol' recipe for crony capitalism: privatize the gains, socialize the losses. And you wonder why banksters are held in such contempt...
The restriction to look at now is whether the marital status of each spouse in the marriage at hand is single. Today it has to be. But there's not a good reason for it. (As already mentioned, administrative convenience is not a good reason). So why can't Alice, who is married to Bob, now also marry Carol? Bob isn't marrying Carol; the A-C marriage would be between two people only. You're treating Alice differently merely because she is already married.
So what happens to Alice's stuff when she dies? How are property rights naturally divided? I can tell you there would be different interpretations of what happens and that's a problem. You need new law or legal precedent to establish how that works.
Sure, it's not intractable, it's also not even something I'd be against. Equal protection, however, is based on "protected classes" and the state of "being married" is not one of those. Why should it be? Someone who is married is denied the joys of ... being married? That doesn't compute.
Sprint is really in no position anyway to be dictating any terms to its customers. Of the top 4, it has the worst native network.
Which is really telling - even t-Mobile has stepped up their game - when I get service (major cities and outside of large warehouse-like buildings), it's phenomenal and much better than my coworkers' VZ and ATT networks. With wifi-calling and HD Voice, I get better calls than I ever did on AT&T or VZ.
I liked Sprint when I had it 20 years ago. But data is the game and all advances in mobile are driven by data. Sprint has got to improve their network.
These researchers had physical control of the hardware in question and were able to extract unencrypted data? That must have been difficult.
You can't do that with an iPhone. Hardware access that's in a locked mode shouldn't necessarily give you access to encrypted data. Oh, in one case at least it simply wasn't encrypted. Health data. Nice.
The Huffington Post was live updating the proceedings, and said this:
USA Freedom Act advances 77-17
In a stunning reversal from last week’s drama, the USA Freedom Act was passed by a vote of 77-17. The bill, which passed the House overwhelmingly several weeks ago will now move forward and is likely to receive a final vote on Tuesday.
The bill fell three votes short of the needed supermajority to advance last week but with the clock ticking on controversial provisions of the Patriot Act, supporters of NSA surveillance thought that the proposed reforms were better than letting the program expire entirely.
Rand Paul stated that the Freedom Act will likely get passed on Tuesday.
Wait... did we win or not? Isn't this just a 2-day repreive?
Please note this [1] is one of the bills being proposed (by the sitting Senate Intelligence Chair, no less):
The bill Senate Intelligence Chair Richard Burr released last Friday is bad enough for the way it expanded the existing illegal dragnet. I argued here Burr’s bill would give the Intelligence Community everything they lost in 2009 and 2011. [...]
So think about it - is this just a 2 day reprieve or 2 days so they can rollback more restrictions and make things worse than they are now?
[1] https://www.emptywheel.net/201...
There is no right to make a profit. http protocol is displayed by a backend interpretation. I can do what I want with the data I fetch.
In addition I want the concept of ad revenue generated content to die.
Well then you better be concerned because according to TFA, they're going after ad networks but not ads within social networks. How logical is that? All this means is that Google's monopoly will be diverted to Facebook, and the same shit continues, except Zuck gets all the $$.
The War on (some non-patentable, not pushed by Big Pharma) Drugs is a failure.
Ah, but I disagree. Its purpose is manifold, but the two biggies are the erosion of the constitution to keep the prison/security state growing and fed, and the profits of Big Pharma.
This sad state of affairs has been slowly engineered over decades by some very wealthy and influential people as a goal to increase their power and wealth.
It's not a failure - it's a wild success. Sucks that you and I aren't on that list of winners though.
Possibly - but then the best way is just to let any password open the vault.
This is highly undesirable. Even knowing which services I find worthy enough to include in my vault is important. If the attacker knows my gmail, linkedin, or more niche account username, and doesn't see it in the vault, then they will get suspicious.
I'm more amazed that Ed signed up.
But seriously between this, and the moves that the FCC will actually implement Title 2 protections to uphold Net Neutrality, my hopes for humanity (and the US Govt in general) have gone up a bit.
Fingers crossed...
She probably lied about it.
That's no justification for the employer's action. If your employee doesn't behave properly, you talk with them, maybe put them on performance plan, or maybe terminate their employment.
To talk with another employer to get her fired there is pretty unethical and evidence of douchebaggery.
Actually small planes aren't that bad- you can get 20-25 mpg at a ground equivalent of 100 mph. Figure that you are going on a straight path and the economics look pretty good.
So you're only traveling between airports? What about commuting to/from the airport?
And Sen. Reid is a known opportunist liar.
To be fair, this pretty much describes 95% of the elected critters on Capitol Hill. By using the title "Senator" the rest of your statement was pretty much redundant.
For the tiny percent of people who have tattoos that cover all the way down, why would they waste money or resources trying to figure out that last barely 1 percent or less? That makes no sense from a business stand point, on the other hand I totally agree with you on they should have a warning for those people with tattoo. For most, there is still time to return the watch, stop being major cry babies, thats how you let companies know there product has problems, RETURN IT.
So, GM shouldn't have fixed the ignition key problem because it affects even less than your "barely 1%"? And if a laptop design has barely 1% of cpus fail out of the box, that's okay? Or drugs or contaminated food shouldn't be recalled because it only affects barely 1%? Can you change your name from Anonymous Coward to Corporate Shill?
So is the Apple Watch not working with wrist tattoos equivalent to a malfunctioning car, failing laptop, or or contaminated drugs/food? You call the GP commenter a shill. You sounds silly and shrill.
If you have wrist tattoos (my guess is you don't) and the watch doesn't work for you return it. Get some perspective, and buy a Google Wear instead.
So I've read that what's happening is the proverbial "straw that broke the camel's back". Meaning all this activity only hastened the inevitable; an earthquake. Some geologists have stated that in hindsight, this may actually be a good thing in that it releases stress that would otherwise buildup and cause an even bigger quake at a much later date. Much MUCH later I would think. So I dunno, if a mag 7 goes off, could you really prove who or what caused it though??
Do you have a cite for this? I haven't heard anything like that.
I hate that we have to legislate instead of educate people about vaccinations.
I hate that legislation is allowed to force people into something the state mandates.
There's no mandate. Just a removal of bullshit exceptions to an rule preventing unvaccinated children from attending schools.
Kind of like anti-dumping laws - you don't get to drain your sewer into the streets, just because you don't believe in "government mandated" plumbing.