The Yahoo article has more information and reasoning. I link to it, quote it and give an alternate explanation here. Basically, Paypal is losing customers of all browsers but least of all from IE7 users. I think this is because IE7 users are sheep not people sharp enough to have noticed a new tool.
IE over Safari? Really? I can understand wanting a good free browser like Firefox on OSX but IE? Do they even have IE 7 for OSX yet? The article Ars points to says that this is driven by IE7 users not quiting PayPal. The fishing stuff is pure speculation and not even Microsoft thinks IE7 fishing protection is effective:
Last year, researchers at Microsoft and Stanford University published a study showing that, without training, people were unlikely to notice the green address-bar notification provided by EV certificates.
Barrett says data compiled on PayPal's Web site show that the EV certificates are having an effect. He says IE 7 users are more likely to sign on to PayPal's Web site than users who don't have EV certificate technology, presumably because they're confident that they're visiting a legitimate site.
Over the past few months, IE 7 users have been less likely to drop out and abandon the process of signing on to PayPal, he said. "It's a several percentage-point drop in abandonment rates," he said. "That number is... measurably lower for IE 7 users."
Rather than percieved security, I think the reason they see more IE7 users still logging in is because IE7 users are the kind of sheep that move along when prodded. They are using Windows, right? Like sheep to the slaughter, every day.
I've got a paypal account. I don't use it much because I don't use Ebay much. I would never use an emailed link to visit the site because it's just as easy to find the right page through Paypal itself. If they make it hard, they don't deserve my business.
should public money be used for this? Can't it go to feed the homeless instead?
No! Public libraries can and must continue their roll as repositories of verifiable information. Copyright law in it's current form makes this impossible and must be changed. It is not good enough for us to trust primary historical documents such as newspapers to their original publisher. We must allow libraries verbatim copy, and distribution. If we don't, what we will have is an Orwellian memory hole instead of a library. The same kinds of things can be said about all periodicals, journals and even books. We as a whole must never allow private interests to control information. Information must remain free and it will have to be truly liberated if it's going to be that way. DRM and dissapearning media have no place in free societies. Don't worry, if publishers don't want to play ball authors will. Universities are full of people working on "labor of love" textbooks and other material they expect no financial return on. B and N can keep their paper and coffee shop megaplexes, the rest of us want knowledge. Free societies require it.
The good news is that libraries of the future will be cheaper than those of the present. When you liberate yourself from paper you eliminate most of the costs of libraries - shelving, circulation and all that. The difference will be put to good use and free economies tend to minimize financial ruin.
The US has a legal and philosophical framework that expressly forbids censorship but has ignored it in crucial ways. Broadcast monopolies have been a universal dissaster for free press and democracy but were technically required until about twenty years ago. The unanimous clamoring for "traffic shaping" by ISPs and telcos, if granted will propagate broadcast monopolies onto the internet. It's hard to tell if that or a government panel would be worse but both are unacceptable. Our high minded constitution also forbids phone taps, email reading and web snooping without a warrent. It's debasement is a travesty.
See US Liable Laws for a good, civil way to take care of malicious harm. Barriers are high to prevent abuse, it's done after the fact and has nothing to do with the government except for the government providing a neutral judge and documentation of the case. Free speech is so important that prior restraint is reserved only for extreme danger like nuclear weapon design and even then it's debatable. Other restraints like the DMCA are laughable and will be struck down sooner than later.
Setting up a powerful board with a vague mandate is a very different kettle of fish. Analogies to broadcast don't hold internet water. The public interest in pull media demands freedom and neutrality where the public interest in once scarce spectrum demanded accountability. We have all seen how abused that power over broadcast was... because we now have free internet news for fact checking. That free media has proved more consistent, informative and reliable than broadcast ever was. "Regulation" of the internet will make it look more like broadcast than reliable or truthful. Without care, it will be pure censorship and can also be used to smear and cause harm without redress.
It is hard to believe that this basic issue has escaped the attention of those planning "accountability".
You have to be sleeping to have missed free software's 2007 surge and proof of concept. Dell, IBM and Asus all did well with it on "consumer" desktops. If the Asus EEE PC meets sales goals, there will be more EEEs out there than Macs. So far, the EEE has exceeded sales goals handily. You only need a few home runs like that to have GNU/Linux break into double didgit market share, which would also eclipse Vista. Microsoft has launched this firesale to prevent that but it's too little too late. Every vendor is going to pile on to the new, profitable model and Microsoft will never recover. They lost their "cool" factor and will soon lose their perception of practicality. Non free software can't compete with free, even when you give it away.
But they cost 10x as much and, despite Sony marketing assurances, alligator skin is not what people want a laptop to do. EEE delivers almost everything people care about in a laptop for an order of magnitude less than the competition. The reason it's selling for twice as much as expected is because it's a runaway hit and considered a good deal at $400. Used computers of the same weight sell for twice the price but offer only better screen size and keyboard. If they come with Windows, a used laptop does not offer much performance gain, and some significant performance losses, as well as a the usual Windows migration and software install pains. Good for Asus, EEE sells out as soon as they hit the shelves because people who don't care about GNU/Linux want it.
Funny you say that in a thread about an Intel powered laptop.
Yes, it would be nice if Asus had chosen a chipset that gave 5 to 10 hours of battery life instead of 1 to 3. The problem of non free hardware remains if you want Flash and other non free software. The custom version of Xandros used does not give Asus or customers the complete freedom but it's a step in the right direction.
The fat to be cut is the OS. Sorry Microsoft, your days have been numbered a long time.
Next thing you know, there will be competition in the "permium" chipset market too. That's another free software strength. Sorry Intel, you will have to make chipsets that deliver more than Winblows and heat.
There's enough flame left from OS/2, BeOS, BBCPC, ARM, Alpha and others to consume the entire Wintel world. Good riddance to 35% profit margins and performance that sucks. Hello to better computing for everyone.
What you say would make sense if closed source software was honest but honest people don't keep secrets. The author correctly notes that this can't happen in the free software world. It's too bad he goes on to write a sniveling apology for noticing and Slashdot's so called missunderstanding. Here's the low down, Vlad, FREE SOFTWARE ONLY HAS PERFORMANCE ISSUES BECAUSE GRAPHICS VENDORS USED TO KEEP SECRETS WITH APPLE AND MICROSHIT. This is a completely intentional crippling of all competitors, free and non free. This is not competition based on merit, it's subjugation that leaves you at the mercy of those who know but won't ever really tell you how your hardware works.
Even the smaller point does not hold water. A good example of non free API abuse was the nasty stuff that Microsoft sold Lotus developers. It was horrible and Microsoft employees hated it and liked the older set better. With full knowledge of this, they sold the new set to their competitors at Lotus and then bragged about how much harm this did.
Trend Micro works but Novell does not. Let that be a lesson to those who would cooperate with Microsoft, it never lasts. They may reward you today but they will punish you tomorrow.
AV vendors have been claiming antitrust for eight months. SP1 causes great inconvenience to their customers, what a suspicious coincidence. If the vendors were really cooperating SP1 would have contained their improvements, not a little note or a lock out.
Vista was in development for five years or so and it's still broken a year later. No one can be faulted for a month or two in that time frame. The problem was more in the process itself and all sorts of other executive characters have left the Soft over it. Non free software development, especially Microsoft style development, is broken.
all open source projects are by definition successful. Failure would be if they used closed source, and if they used microsoft it would be a disaster.
Sure, why not? If the free software was not a success it would quickly be replaced by your other options who's costs are known. Most of these companies have been there and done that.
You are witnessing the rise of free software. It has already taken over embedded systems, HPC and other "server" applications. The whole point was to provide a community sharing building blocks that would benefit everyone. User generated software serves users. The other stuff serves it's owners. The trend really is irreversible.
That is what I imagined but it's worse than that. It won't just happen once, it will happen again and again. The first few times, most moms will give up and go home. After a while, they will either give up the store or stay there despite the baby crying. Eventually the mom will quit going. If she ever hears about these devices.... Kaboom! Real anger. Most will never go to the guilty store again and many will give a lot of innocent clerks a piece of their mind. Anything that looks like these devices, including fire alarms is going to be vandalized by people no one would suspect of such behavior.
Have you heard about this Krehley? Well, they're using it over in Britain. Apparently these teenagers over there got nothing to do, and they loiter. They hang around wearing these stupid long shorts, the tattoos everywhere, these 16-year-olds trying to grow goatees and stuff, looking grotesque, and they're loitering in these places of business and causing big problems. People don't want to go there. It's sort of like my famous commentary on ban the ugly from the streets in daytime if you want to promote economic recovery. These people are loitering around, so they've invented this device that emits an irritating sound, irritating frequency noise that only young ears can hear. Once you get past your teenaged years and into your adult years apparently you lose sensitivity to this. It's called a Mosquito. You lose sensitivity to this frequency. So only kids can hear it, and it's working. The shop owners have these things and they're turning them on, and kids don't know where it's coming from. They just scatter. The first thing that I thought when I saw that was, "Where do I get one?"
Statements like this are going to make moms even angrier. It is all very sad and stupid.
No one is going to call for a ban on speakers but it's easy to outlaw a particular use that causes real physical harm to people. It hurts the ears of anyone with ears good enough to hear the sound. You can think of it as a booby trap and those are repulsive no matter how they are made. It also teaches troubled youth that force is the way to solve problems.
There's not even a good business case for this. Besides hoodlums, the device will drive off mothers with babies who are your best customers. When they find out about these devices those moms are going to be very angry. Stores dumb enough to have bought these things would do well to discretely dismantle them and apologize profusely to anyone who asks about them.
The only thing shameful is wishing others harm. That's why you are not supposed to like the victims of this box - they supposedly hurt people and make life unpleasant. It would be better to have reasonable policing to discourage actual crime.
A reasonable society will quickly outlaw or set energy limits for these nasty devices and they may already be illegal. It's already against the law to make yourself a nuisance with noise or to burst someone's ear drums by other means.
This is not capitalism at work, it's predatory behavior and something anti-trust lawyers should sink their teeth into. There is no reasonable expectation of return on SCO's "business" because SCO is full of shit and every decision has been against them. This is just another $100 million that M$ does not mind pissing away. The "investment" harms the reputation of all involved.
Sure, a lot of people go into debt for an education but it's a well managed debt like a mortgage. They still have to pay bills. They also have a cash cushion that comes from jobs, family and the loan itself. In every case I've read about, the RIAA asks for all of the cash the victim has. When the victim is a student, it is very hard for them to keep going to school without help from family.
A whole other can of worms is opened when the load is federally backed, like most are. It is obviously unethical for the RIAA to demand federal money that was intended for education. I hope that it's also against the law for them to collect it. Society wants people to be educated and spends a lot of money making it happen.
OK, I suppose their marketing people know what they are doing. At least they still have a trackpoint. If the trackpad does multitouch, it will be worth having too. One thing that stands out is the Windows keys cluttering up the bottom key row. I don't care how many people want it, on a subnotebook no one will be able to hit it when all of the keys are crammed up like that. That's a real screw up they have been making for two or three years now.
If the DVD is removable, and everything really is, then it's not a big deal and these laptops will be nice additions to the IBM certified used site in a couple of years.
What I'm curious about, is how does an RIAA lawsuit affect a student's ability to pursue their education ? Is the cartel destroying someone's future career over a few hundred overplayed pop songs ? What does that say about the future of the nation ? We all agree that piracy is a crime, but does the punishment fit ?
The least inconvenience is give up your life savings. That leaves students with two bad options, go into debt or quit school. Students who fight risk losses that would sap anyone's desire to work. Unless the university or some other party comes to your legal defense, the lawsuit is going to cost more than you have and suck all of your time. Then you might just lose. In other casts they didn't prove more than the victim "made available" some songs, and their evidence for that was as flimsy at best. What would you do if you were hung with $250,000 of debt to be taken from every pay check?
No punishment should be forthcoming. Sharing is not a crime. Everything that can be coppied without cost should be. Companies that can't make it in a world like that need to go away. These 11 students are not black market hucksters or "pirates", they are music's biggest fans and they wanted to share a few songs and hear music that does not get to them by radio. If the RIAA can't convert that desire into money, they don't deserve to exist.
These lawsuits are self defeating. By now everyone knows how rotten the big lables are. The decline in sales is not wholly due to on line music trading. A lot of it is due to people not wanting to give their money to people who are screwing artists, fans and all but a select few in between. The boycot is large and growing.
and they are violating multiple laws. We shall see how this comes out for the 11 students, and society will make even better laws to stop this kind of harassment. The recording industry is simply wrong and people know it.
I might understand wanting blue ray but DVDs are no longer worth the weight. Software installs are rare and Thinkpads can boot off firewire. If you need to share information with the clueless, carry a GNU/Linux CD so you can use someone else's DVD to copy the information by network. If you really want to watch movies, you have figured out how to put them on more reasonable media already. I've got a much older Thinkpad subnotebook that does not have an optical drive. I've only missed it once or twice over the last three years. The reduction is weight and increase in battery life is something I felt every day.
Slashdot Mirror
The Yahoo article has more information and reasoning. I link to it, quote it and give an alternate explanation here. Basically, Paypal is losing customers of all browsers but least of all from IE7 users. I think this is because IE7 users are sheep not people sharp enough to have noticed a new tool.
IE over Safari? Really? I can understand wanting a good free browser like Firefox on OSX but IE? Do they even have IE 7 for OSX yet? The article Ars points to says that this is driven by IE7 users not quiting PayPal. The fishing stuff is pure speculation and not even Microsoft thinks IE7 fishing protection is effective:
Rather than percieved security, I think the reason they see more IE7 users still logging in is because IE7 users are the kind of sheep that move along when prodded. They are using Windows, right? Like sheep to the slaughter, every day.
I've got a paypal account. I don't use it much because I don't use Ebay much. I would never use an emailed link to visit the site because it's just as easy to find the right page through Paypal itself. If they make it hard, they don't deserve my business.
should public money be used for this? Can't it go to feed the homeless instead?
No! Public libraries can and must continue their roll as repositories of verifiable information. Copyright law in it's current form makes this impossible and must be changed. It is not good enough for us to trust primary historical documents such as newspapers to their original publisher. We must allow libraries verbatim copy, and distribution. If we don't, what we will have is an Orwellian memory hole instead of a library. The same kinds of things can be said about all periodicals, journals and even books. We as a whole must never allow private interests to control information. Information must remain free and it will have to be truly liberated if it's going to be that way. DRM and dissapearning media have no place in free societies. Don't worry, if publishers don't want to play ball authors will. Universities are full of people working on "labor of love" textbooks and other material they expect no financial return on. B and N can keep their paper and coffee shop megaplexes, the rest of us want knowledge. Free societies require it.
The good news is that libraries of the future will be cheaper than those of the present. When you liberate yourself from paper you eliminate most of the costs of libraries - shelving, circulation and all that. The difference will be put to good use and free economies tend to minimize financial ruin.
The US has a legal and philosophical framework that expressly forbids censorship but has ignored it in crucial ways. Broadcast monopolies have been a universal dissaster for free press and democracy but were technically required until about twenty years ago. The unanimous clamoring for "traffic shaping" by ISPs and telcos, if granted will propagate broadcast monopolies onto the internet. It's hard to tell if that or a government panel would be worse but both are unacceptable. Our high minded constitution also forbids phone taps, email reading and web snooping without a warrent. It's debasement is a travesty.
See US Liable Laws for a good, civil way to take care of malicious harm. Barriers are high to prevent abuse, it's done after the fact and has nothing to do with the government except for the government providing a neutral judge and documentation of the case. Free speech is so important that prior restraint is reserved only for extreme danger like nuclear weapon design and even then it's debatable. Other restraints like the DMCA are laughable and will be struck down sooner than later.
Setting up a powerful board with a vague mandate is a very different kettle of fish. Analogies to broadcast don't hold internet water. The public interest in pull media demands freedom and neutrality where the public interest in once scarce spectrum demanded accountability. We have all seen how abused that power over broadcast was ... because we now have free internet news for fact checking. That free media has proved more consistent, informative and reliable than broadcast ever was. "Regulation" of the internet will make it look more like broadcast than reliable or truthful. Without care, it will be pure censorship and can also be used to smear and cause harm without redress.
It is hard to believe that this basic issue has escaped the attention of those planning "accountability".
You have to be sleeping to have missed free software's 2007 surge and proof of concept. Dell, IBM and Asus all did well with it on "consumer" desktops. If the Asus EEE PC meets sales goals, there will be more EEEs out there than Macs. So far, the EEE has exceeded sales goals handily. You only need a few home runs like that to have GNU/Linux break into double didgit market share, which would also eclipse Vista. Microsoft has launched this firesale to prevent that but it's too little too late. Every vendor is going to pile on to the new, profitable model and Microsoft will never recover. They lost their "cool" factor and will soon lose their perception of practicality. Non free software can't compete with free, even when you give it away.
But they cost 10x as much and, despite Sony marketing assurances, alligator skin is not what people want a laptop to do. EEE delivers almost everything people care about in a laptop for an order of magnitude less than the competition. The reason it's selling for twice as much as expected is because it's a runaway hit and considered a good deal at $400. Used computers of the same weight sell for twice the price but offer only better screen size and keyboard. If they come with Windows, a used laptop does not offer much performance gain, and some significant performance losses, as well as a the usual Windows migration and software install pains. Good for Asus, EEE sells out as soon as they hit the shelves because people who don't care about GNU/Linux want it.
Yes, it would be nice if Asus had chosen a chipset that gave 5 to 10 hours of battery life instead of 1 to 3. The problem of non free hardware remains if you want Flash and other non free software. The custom version of Xandros used does not give Asus or customers the complete freedom but it's a step in the right direction.
The fat to be cut is the OS. Sorry Microsoft, your days have been numbered a long time.
Next thing you know, there will be competition in the "permium" chipset market too. That's another free software strength. Sorry Intel, you will have to make chipsets that deliver more than Winblows and heat.
There's enough flame left from OS/2, BeOS, BBCPC, ARM, Alpha and others to consume the entire Wintel world. Good riddance to 35% profit margins and performance that sucks. Hello to better computing for everyone.
What you say would make sense if closed source software was honest but honest people don't keep secrets. The author correctly notes that this can't happen in the free software world. It's too bad he goes on to write a sniveling apology for noticing and Slashdot's so called missunderstanding. Here's the low down, Vlad, FREE SOFTWARE ONLY HAS PERFORMANCE ISSUES BECAUSE GRAPHICS VENDORS USED TO KEEP SECRETS WITH APPLE AND MICROSHIT. This is a completely intentional crippling of all competitors, free and non free. This is not competition based on merit, it's subjugation that leaves you at the mercy of those who know but won't ever really tell you how your hardware works.
Even the smaller point does not hold water. A good example of non free API abuse was the nasty stuff that Microsoft sold Lotus developers. It was horrible and Microsoft employees hated it and liked the older set better. With full knowledge of this, they sold the new set to their competitors at Lotus and then bragged about how much harm this did.
Non free software is always like this.
Trend Micro works but Novell does not. Let that be a lesson to those who would cooperate with Microsoft, it never lasts. They may reward you today but they will punish you tomorrow.
AV vendors have been claiming antitrust for eight months. SP1 causes great inconvenience to their customers, what a suspicious coincidence. If the vendors were really cooperating SP1 would have contained their improvements, not a little note or a lock out.
Where have I seen this before? Oh yeah, nice. New OS, same old Microsoft.
Vista was in development for five years or so and it's still broken a year later. No one can be faulted for a month or two in that time frame. The problem was more in the process itself and all sorts of other executive characters have left the Soft over it. Non free software development, especially Microsoft style development, is broken.
all open source projects are by definition successful. Failure would be if they used closed source, and if they used microsoft it would be a disaster.
Sure, why not? If the free software was not a success it would quickly be replaced by your other options who's costs are known. Most of these companies have been there and done that.
You are witnessing the rise of free software. It has already taken over embedded systems, HPC and other "server" applications. The whole point was to provide a community sharing building blocks that would benefit everyone. User generated software serves users. The other stuff serves it's owners. The trend really is irreversible.
That is what I imagined but it's worse than that. It won't just happen once, it will happen again and again. The first few times, most moms will give up and go home. After a while, they will either give up the store or stay there despite the baby crying. Eventually the mom will quit going. If she ever hears about these devices .... Kaboom! Real anger. Most will never go to the guilty store again and many will give a lot of innocent clerks a piece of their mind. Anything that looks like these devices, including fire alarms is going to be vandalized by people no one would suspect of such behavior.
Some people, even hearing impaired people who should know better don't think of this because they are so busy gloating about the pain they can inflict on people they don't like:
Statements like this are going to make moms even angrier. It is all very sad and stupid.
No one is going to call for a ban on speakers but it's easy to outlaw a particular use that causes real physical harm to people. It hurts the ears of anyone with ears good enough to hear the sound. You can think of it as a booby trap and those are repulsive no matter how they are made. It also teaches troubled youth that force is the way to solve problems.
There's not even a good business case for this. Besides hoodlums, the device will drive off mothers with babies who are your best customers. When they find out about these devices those moms are going to be very angry. Stores dumb enough to have bought these things would do well to discretely dismantle them and apologize profusely to anyone who asks about them.
The only thing shameful is wishing others harm. That's why you are not supposed to like the victims of this box - they supposedly hurt people and make life unpleasant. It would be better to have reasonable policing to discourage actual crime.
A reasonable society will quickly outlaw or set energy limits for these nasty devices and they may already be illegal. It's already against the law to make yourself a nuisance with noise or to burst someone's ear drums by other means.
Donate your shirt to charity. Your feelings will go like this:
Living well is good revenge. Being kind can be better. You will never get back the time you wasted but someone can make good use of the results.
This is not capitalism at work, it's predatory behavior and something anti-trust lawyers should sink their teeth into. There is no reasonable expectation of return on SCO's "business" because SCO is full of shit and every decision has been against them. This is just another $100 million that M$ does not mind pissing away. The "investment" harms the reputation of all involved.
Sure, a lot of people go into debt for an education but it's a well managed debt like a mortgage. They still have to pay bills. They also have a cash cushion that comes from jobs, family and the loan itself. In every case I've read about, the RIAA asks for all of the cash the victim has. When the victim is a student, it is very hard for them to keep going to school without help from family.
A whole other can of worms is opened when the load is federally backed, like most are. It is obviously unethical for the RIAA to demand federal money that was intended for education. I hope that it's also against the law for them to collect it. Society wants people to be educated and spends a lot of money making it happen.
OK, I suppose their marketing people know what they are doing. At least they still have a trackpoint. If the trackpad does multitouch, it will be worth having too. One thing that stands out is the Windows keys cluttering up the bottom key row. I don't care how many people want it, on a subnotebook no one will be able to hit it when all of the keys are crammed up like that. That's a real screw up they have been making for two or three years now.
If the DVD is removable, and everything really is, then it's not a big deal and these laptops will be nice additions to the IBM certified used site in a couple of years.
University caves to illegal demands is a better headline.
What I'm curious about, is how does an RIAA lawsuit affect a student's ability to pursue their education ? Is the cartel destroying someone's future career over a few hundred overplayed pop songs ? What does that say about the future of the nation ? We all agree that piracy is a crime, but does the punishment fit ?
The least inconvenience is give up your life savings. That leaves students with two bad options, go into debt or quit school. Students who fight risk losses that would sap anyone's desire to work. Unless the university or some other party comes to your legal defense, the lawsuit is going to cost more than you have and suck all of your time. Then you might just lose. In other casts they didn't prove more than the victim "made available" some songs, and their evidence for that was as flimsy at best. What would you do if you were hung with $250,000 of debt to be taken from every pay check?
No punishment should be forthcoming. Sharing is not a crime. Everything that can be coppied without cost should be. Companies that can't make it in a world like that need to go away. These 11 students are not black market hucksters or "pirates", they are music's biggest fans and they wanted to share a few songs and hear music that does not get to them by radio. If the RIAA can't convert that desire into money, they don't deserve to exist.
These lawsuits are self defeating. By now everyone knows how rotten the big lables are. The decline in sales is not wholly due to on line music trading. A lot of it is due to people not wanting to give their money to people who are screwing artists, fans and all but a select few in between. The boycot is large and growing.
and they are violating multiple laws. We shall see how this comes out for the 11 students, and society will make even better laws to stop this kind of harassment. The recording industry is simply wrong and people know it.
I might understand wanting blue ray but DVDs are no longer worth the weight. Software installs are rare and Thinkpads can boot off firewire. If you need to share information with the clueless, carry a GNU/Linux CD so you can use someone else's DVD to copy the information by network. If you really want to watch movies, you have figured out how to put them on more reasonable media already. I've got a much older Thinkpad subnotebook that does not have an optical drive. I've only missed it once or twice over the last three years. The reduction is weight and increase in battery life is something I felt every day.