Apple: Rip-off Hardly. Xerox was ripped of by both MS and Apple (and others)
Not exactly. Once you say "no, we don't like it, we're not going to use it" it's not really "ripping off" a company to then market your idea somewhere else.
IBM: OS/2 It was a joined effort. MS has worked on OS/2 as well. No-one talks about the fact that IBM used MS' work when selling OS/2
Erm... IBM and MS had a contract to produce OS/2. That contract included clauses about joint marketing, and I think even non-competition agreements. While OS/2 was under development, MS was also developing Windows NT. Not only that, but they were approaching applications developers, telling them that OS/2 was going to bomb, and if they really wanted to get the jump on things, they should be developing for Win NT. Of course, since MS was involved in both projects, the other developers had every reason to believe them. Then OS/2 failed in large part because there was no software for it, and there was for NT.
That's the usuall/. mantra around here. But to a lot of people it only applies if the IP belongs to a big company like IBM or MS. If it's a small company against a big company then IP has to be protected.
Seems the point is that all IP should have the same protection. Our current laws give huge advantages to big companies with lots of lawyers. If we want to change *all* the laws, fine... until then, the big companies should be held to the same standards that they hold others to.
Besides, MS didn't steal Sendo's IP in order to make it publicly available. They stole it in order to keep it and make money off of it themselves. Not exactly an action that bears any relationship to free software concepts.
MS must have made it clear to Sendo in their deal that they were going to develop a generic cellphone OS that other companies can just bundle in with their telephones.
I'm sure that was the case. However, as I read the story, Sendo had first-to-market rights. The only way that they would lose those rights is if they couldn't put a product out and/or went bankrupt. That is what happened, because MS did not give them the OS in a timely fashion or usable form.
So now stealing "customers and prospective customers" is a crime for a competitor to commit?
Not usually... but it's often breach of contract. At a company I worked for, a group of folks decided to take off and create their own competing company. Now, (1) most of the employees who left had a specific NCA clause in their contracts; (2) they actively recruited current accounts and employees of the original company; (3) they stole equipment and supplies from the original company to get started. In that case, yeah, what they did was definitely suitworthy.
Haven't seen the Sendo contract, so I don't know if they had the sense to put that clause in there. Hopefully...
... but I'm too sleepy to read the entire thread right now.
YES, kids should probably not usually have access to violent video games.
YES, parents need to have access to information about the games their kids want to play.
NO, it's not the government's job to deny access to the kids. It's up to the parents to look into a game and decide if it's right for their kids. Same as movies, books, television shows, and everything else in this world.
But parents are throwing up their hands. We've got a Fundamentalist Christian ethic taking over that's letting people get stuck with kids, and we've got people putting off becoming parents until they're older than 40, and we end up with a whole lot of kids whose parents have no clue how to raise them. Then we reinforce that with more and more regulation of schools and children's entertainment, letting parents know "It's ok, you don't have to worry about it, we'll control what your children get."
But it's not about absolute denial or permission. It's about putting art and entertainment in context. It's about explaining the difference between realistic violence and fantasy violence. It's about letting kids talk about how a movie or game or whatever makes them feel.
Heck, if we don't allow children any fantasy outlet for violence, we'll cause just as much as if we treat violence as normal recreation. That's why we have these images in popular media, for crying out loud. When we get angry, we can't go out and shoot a whole McDonald's full of people... but we can watch Arnie do it for us.
Put simply, if the government perceives a labor shortage and imports workers from countries that have a surplus in that area, then the government should be the one importing and placing them in jobs. An H1-B visa should be for a specific term, with possible renewal, with no possibility of deportation during that term (unless the visa holder violates US laws).
Furthermore, the government should be telling the companies how much that job pays (the "prevailing wage" that we hear so much about) for that location... basically setting the price. If the company doesn't want to pay it, they're welcome to try to find US workers more cheaply. If it happens to be lower than they've been paying, well, more power to them.
If H1-B is intended to fill a gap, then let's take out the advantages for employers in hiring guest workers. If anything, let's make it a disadvantage; if their visa expires and the DoL doesn't feel it should be renewed, boom, they're gone. They may not speak English as a native language, they may not have the same educational background. Right now, these are small prices to pay for having workers that you have a great deal of leverage with. Just take away that leverage, and this will all solve itself, I bet.
Me, I have a friend who got married a couple years ago. He was engaged, but they hadn't planned to get married so soon... then he found out he was getting laid off, so it was get married or get deported. Why does anyone think it's a good idea to create these situations?
Well, the presidential candidate who picked him as a running mate did publicly mention that atheists make him uncomfortable because they think they're intellectually superior. Or some such nonsense.
Liebermann said that quote only once (during a campaign visit at a church), but he frequently called for more open discussion of religion. You know, in schools and other places we don't have a choice of being. He thought it was just terrible that people have to "hide" their religion just because they're in a public office where they are required to represent diverse populations, or they are asked to impartially judge crime and law, or whatever their duty. He was appalled that people think that just because not *everyone* is religious, that religion should be a personal matter... especially for public officials.
The same guy, who ostentatiously kept the Sabbath and went to synagogue every Saturday and made much of these things in his campaign, was first asked nicely by the same synagogue to quit flouting his religion for political gain. Then, when he didn't, they kicked him out.
Re:Building on the existing infrastructure
on
DSL Rising
·
· Score: 2
My mistake. Seems that DSL even moreso doesn't require new infrastructure.
It does still require some updates; loading coils and other archaic setups can totally fubar the system. But that's not nearly so much as having to rewire the whole infrastructure.
I remember reading some where, I wish I could remember, that the FAA was supposed to contact the military when any flight deviates from its course without notification. If that was done, there would have been jets around the planes well before they could have crashed into the buildings. Sometimes executed response plans are enough to help ensure safety.
Whether or not the FAA contacted the military, there would have been no jets around those planes. Until 9/11, we thought that the worst that would happen with a hijacked plane was that it would be crashed and all the people in it (including the hijackers) would die. We also thought that that was the *last* thing the hijackers wanted.
The reason the fourth plane never hit a target was because someone on their cell phone found out about the first three, and realized they were all going to die no matter what they did... and the least they could do was make sure no one on the ground died too. Until that bit of info filtered in, it was "common knowledge" that hijackers are only deadly if you don't cooperate. i.e. they won't kill anyone so long as you don't send military jets up to escort them.
Just after 9 a.m. EDT on 9/11/2001, planes were reclassified as weapons of mass destruction. But no one imagined they would be used that way until then, and no one thought to treat them that way either.
You want the government to "become connected" to server your needs but you don't want them to "become connected" to for use in criminal investigations.
Actually, I want them to have access to the latest technology to use in criminal investigations. I want them to use DNA matching, computer simulation and analysis, the whole nine yards.
Until there's a crime, though, the investigation doesn't have a purpose. It's a fishing expedition. Theoretically, they could use this database to match reported crimes to likely patterns... but they've as much as said that's NOT the intention. It's the other way around; to examine behavior to determine (in their opinion) if someone is likely to commit a crime. Maybe sometimes they'd get the right people, at first; but imagine if the FBI decided that Open Source software was subversive. What if they started scanning for keywords in/. posts looking for potential cyberterrorists. Say they came up with a profile on people most likely to hack government computers based on this information. Now, imagine it's you getting arrested on the strength of this information.
However, even if they manage to indict that ham sandwich, it's a matter of public record. The ham sandwich knows it's been indicted.
Even if the courts are a rubber stamp, they're still part of keeping the process open. If the FBI, CIA, or whoever can just keep picking up info on you without any public record of it for years, you have very little recourse for proving your innocence on down the road. It's all ancient history; your witnesses are gone, your documentation has hit the shredder, and so on. And you had no way of knowing because that "rubber stamp" wasn't required.
Don't confuse thugs with guns with responsible people with guns. Thugs are just plain dangerous, whether they have guns, knives, chains, or just their fists. Responsible people don't engage in gunfights...
Trouble with that is, I can't tell if the guy holding the gun is a responsible person or a thug until he starts shooting at me. If a responsible person is one who does not do a thing, you can never prove that anyone is a responsible person, because you can't prove a negative. You can prove that someone is a thug, by your definition, but not until they've already shot at someone.
A guy in my neighborhood has a bumper sticker that says "Only tyrants and criminals fear honest armed citizens." I'd love to ask that guy if he thinks honest citizens should fear armed tyrants and criminals. If so, how do you tell "honest armed citizens" from "tyrants and criminals"?
Please, if you can answer this question, I'd really appreciate it. As it now stands, if I see someone holding a gun, I have no way to know whether they're going to shoot me or not. I'd really like to know when it's ok to call 911 without infringing on the second amendment.
John Poindexter has broken laws that we're currently subjecting people to military tribunals for breaking.
And the database doesn't track criminals, it tracks everyone, on the premise that any of them *might* become criminals. You, me, anyone.
Of course, the next logical step is if you know that you want to lock someone up, you study their record, and find a law you can use against them. If one doesn't exist, you make one. It's very convenient.
Re:Building on the existing infrastructure
on
DSL Rising
·
· Score: 2
I may be totally wrong about this, but can't cable modems use existing cable lines, where DSL needs either fiber or at least better than two-wire phone line?
Real cable broadband requires a full-duplex connection, while most cable infrastructure is/was one-way. Some companies have worked around by doing cable downlink with a 56k uplink, others have made the investment and replaced the existing cable with full-duplex connections (in hopes that other applications such as on-demand movies and such will also justify the expense).
DSL does require at least a 4-wire phone line, but it became standard practice to install these in new buildings I think at least 20 years ago (sorry, tried to find a link, couldn't dig one up). ISDN also requires four-wire, and it's been around much longer. So while the requirement is there, it's been met in many places well before DSL ever arrived on the scene.
Cable modems require no new infrastructure. They just require people who already have cables coming into their house to get another wire run inside. DSL requires the phone company to update its stuff and put up new equipment.
Actually...
Both require new infrastructure. However, while telephone companies started updating their infrastructure to four-wire in houses and digital backbones 20-30 years ago, it's only been within the last decade that cable has realized they need full-duplex connections. In some places where you can get "cable broadband," you actually only get a broadband downlink and are still uploading through a 56k connection.
DSL on the other hand has been quicker to implement since the new equipment needed is fairly centralized. They need to install the stuff at the CO, but not to rewire your house (usually). If they do need to rewire your house, you'll probably get better phone service afterward too.
My theory on why cable is more popular than DSL here? Service. Customer service, that is. Cable companies seem to have a better attitude towards customer service than phone companies. It's simply *harder* to get DSL, and more of a pain. The distance limitations add to the problem. (Actually, you can get DSL at more than 12,000 feet from the CO, they just can't guarantee the same speeds. Most phone companies don't want to go there, but you can often contract with third-party companies that will still hook you up. Friend of mine has DSL even though he's more like 17,000 feet away.)
I just put in a support ticket with my hosting company, after checking the version of MySQL they're running (3.23.53a). It's virtual hosting with many people all on the same server, and most users have MySQL database access.
So if you are running your own server and have the option of closing it off, yeah, this doesn't matter... but that's not the whole world.
There's nothing incorrect about what you've said, but it makes a faulty assumption: that the Internet *can* be secured.
The point most people are making here is that what they're trying to do is impossible, and if they start with WiFi, there's no telling where it will end. As it is now, you can check into a hotel room under an assumed name and pay cash, use their dial-up connection and a laptop to wreak whatever havoc you wish, and be gone before anyone knows. You can get internet access from tons of places where you can't be traced except by your face (if anyone actually looked at you; I've seen internet terminals where you can deposit cash without interacting with a human being).
Crimes occuring over the Internet are already difficult to trace... *almost* as difficult as crimes occuring in the real world. That's right; the guy who broke into your neighbor's house last week didn't need a MAC address to do it, so he's less traceable than an Internet crook.
If they talked about educating people about securing their networks, or funding development of better security methods, that would be one thing... but they're saying "We're going to make you responsible for an impossible task, and *when* you fail, we're going to clamp down and cripple this medium into oblivion."
Having recently read large chunks of The Logic of Collective Action for an econ paper, I find the idea of an automated interest-sharing system fascinating. My ears pricked up at the use of the term "cooperate" in the article. See, one of the biggest problems we face in society (particularly market-driven society) is that, since we can't count on anyone else to act in our interests, we are constantly compelled to act in our own interests with the assumption that others will act against them. This leads us to situations where people who could collectively get much more satisfactory results end up working separately and getting sub-optimal results.
A system where you could express your interests to the network and search for others who share them would have the potential to reduce or eliminate this problem. Say, for example, you're in a crowded parking lot, trying to leave after a show. You try to get through as best you can, not sure if you should let that other guy in or if it's just going to start a flood that's going to hang you up for days. Tempers get short, people jockey for position, and it all becomes a tangled mess.
What if you could somehow communicate with all of those people and decide you were going to go about things in an orderly fashion? Then have the computers instruct you on what to do to follow the "plan." Everyone gets out of the parking lot faster and goes on their way.
That's a pretty hokey example, but it does kind of work. These kinds of situations come up all the time, usually on a more permanent scale (the public goods problem). But it has potential to revolutionize the way we collaborate. Yeah, it will take 50-100 years to get that far, I'm sure, but I plan to still be around!
First, the NSA didn't like fiber-optic lines because they had too much trouble listening in on them. Now OHS wants to crack down on Wi-Fi because it's too easy to get into. It sort of looks like the government wants our networks to be transparent to them, and no one else.
And, here's what I really don't get:
"We know that (an attack) could bring down the network of this country very quickly. Once you're on the network, it doesn't matter where you got in."
Does that guy honestly believe that getting into one Wi-Fi network can allow someone to bring down the entire Internet? And if he does, hm, maybe he should look at the original ARPA spec, compare it to the current topography of the 'net, and break up a few megacorps, hm?
Let's not forget that the people making these boneheaded pronouncements are rich white men who remember when color TV came out and they got one for their kids. The internet is a really scary unknown thing. They know it's incredibly powerful... and not much else.
But if they do manage to ban AOL from sending out those disks, I'm going to have to buy them a cookie.
Yeah, I know what you mean... my husband just doesn't like it when I go out and spend money on hardware. "You've got a perfectly good GeForce 3 and it's barely a year old! Why the heck do you need a GF4?"
Just do what he did... find a girl who likes computers.;-) (Too late for you, but for those playing along at home...)
Unless anyone gave away information that was confidential to the company and that could affect their stock prices or proprietary designs i don't see why they could be sued for speaking freely on the net.
Because the First Amendment has seven exceptions, and libel/slander is one of them. Just as you can't invoke free speech to urge someone to a criminal act (the Rosenberg exception) or to cause a panic (fire in a crowded theatre), you can't invoke the first amendment to distribute unfounded and damaging information about a person or another entity.
Slashdot Mirror
Not exactly. Once you say "no, we don't like it, we're not going to use it" it's not really "ripping off" a company to then market your idea somewhere else.
Erm... IBM and MS had a contract to produce OS/2. That contract included clauses about joint marketing, and I think even non-competition agreements. While OS/2 was under development, MS was also developing Windows NT. Not only that, but they were approaching applications developers, telling them that OS/2 was going to bomb, and if they really wanted to get the jump on things, they should be developing for Win NT. Of course, since MS was involved in both projects, the other developers had every reason to believe them. Then OS/2 failed in large part because there was no software for it, and there was for NT.
That's the usuall /. mantra around here. But to a lot of people it only applies if the IP belongs to a big company like IBM or MS. If it's a small company against a big company then IP has to be protected.
Seems the point is that all IP should have the same protection. Our current laws give huge advantages to big companies with lots of lawyers. If we want to change *all* the laws, fine... until then, the big companies should be held to the same standards that they hold others to.
Besides, MS didn't steal Sendo's IP in order to make it publicly available. They stole it in order to keep it and make money off of it themselves. Not exactly an action that bears any relationship to free software concepts.
MS must have made it clear to Sendo in their deal that they were going to develop a generic cellphone OS that other companies can just bundle in with their telephones.
I'm sure that was the case. However, as I read the story, Sendo had first-to-market rights. The only way that they would lose those rights is if they couldn't put a product out and/or went bankrupt. That is what happened, because MS did not give them the OS in a timely fashion or usable form.
So now stealing "customers and prospective customers" is a crime for a competitor to commit?
Not usually... but it's often breach of contract. At a company I worked for, a group of folks decided to take off and create their own competing company. Now, (1) most of the employees who left had a specific NCA clause in their contracts; (2) they actively recruited current accounts and employees of the original company; (3) they stole equipment and supplies from the original company to get started. In that case, yeah, what they did was definitely suitworthy.
Haven't seen the Sendo contract, so I don't know if they had the sense to put that clause in there. Hopefully...
... but I'm too sleepy to read the entire thread right now.
YES, kids should probably not usually have access to violent video games.
YES, parents need to have access to information about the games their kids want to play.
NO, it's not the government's job to deny access to the kids. It's up to the parents to look into a game and decide if it's right for their kids. Same as movies, books, television shows, and everything else in this world.
But parents are throwing up their hands. We've got a Fundamentalist Christian ethic taking over that's letting people get stuck with kids, and we've got people putting off becoming parents until they're older than 40, and we end up with a whole lot of kids whose parents have no clue how to raise them. Then we reinforce that with more and more regulation of schools and children's entertainment, letting parents know "It's ok, you don't have to worry about it, we'll control what your children get."
But it's not about absolute denial or permission. It's about putting art and entertainment in context. It's about explaining the difference between realistic violence and fantasy violence. It's about letting kids talk about how a movie or game or whatever makes them feel.
Heck, if we don't allow children any fantasy outlet for violence, we'll cause just as much as if we treat violence as normal recreation. That's why we have these images in popular media, for crying out loud. When we get angry, we can't go out and shoot a whole McDonald's full of people... but we can watch Arnie do it for us.
... that it's tied to a specific job.
Put simply, if the government perceives a labor shortage and imports workers from countries that have a surplus in that area, then the government should be the one importing and placing them in jobs. An H1-B visa should be for a specific term, with possible renewal, with no possibility of deportation during that term (unless the visa holder violates US laws).
Furthermore, the government should be telling the companies how much that job pays (the "prevailing wage" that we hear so much about) for that location... basically setting the price. If the company doesn't want to pay it, they're welcome to try to find US workers more cheaply. If it happens to be lower than they've been paying, well, more power to them.
If H1-B is intended to fill a gap, then let's take out the advantages for employers in hiring guest workers. If anything, let's make it a disadvantage; if their visa expires and the DoL doesn't feel it should be renewed, boom, they're gone. They may not speak English as a native language, they may not have the same educational background. Right now, these are small prices to pay for having workers that you have a great deal of leverage with. Just take away that leverage, and this will all solve itself, I bet.
Me, I have a friend who got married a couple years ago. He was engaged, but they hadn't planned to get married so soon... then he found out he was getting laid off, so it was get married or get deported. Why does anyone think it's a good idea to create these situations?
...someone in the government seems to realize that Microsoft can't be trusted ;-)
Well, the presidential candidate who picked him as a running mate did publicly mention that atheists make him uncomfortable because they think they're intellectually superior. Or some such nonsense.
Liebermann said that quote only once (during a campaign visit at a church), but he frequently called for more open discussion of religion. You know, in schools and other places we don't have a choice of being. He thought it was just terrible that people have to "hide" their religion just because they're in a public office where they are required to represent diverse populations, or they are asked to impartially judge crime and law, or whatever their duty. He was appalled that people think that just because not *everyone* is religious, that religion should be a personal matter... especially for public officials.
The same guy, who ostentatiously kept the Sabbath and went to synagogue every Saturday and made much of these things in his campaign, was first asked nicely by the same synagogue to quit flouting his religion for political gain. Then, when he didn't, they kicked him out.
My mistake. Seems that DSL even moreso doesn't require new infrastructure.
It does still require some updates; loading coils and other archaic setups can totally fubar the system. But that's not nearly so much as having to rewire the whole infrastructure.
I remember reading some where, I wish I could remember, that the FAA was supposed to contact the military when any flight deviates from its course without notification. If that was done, there would have been jets around the planes well before they could have crashed into the buildings. Sometimes executed response plans are enough to help ensure safety.
Whether or not the FAA contacted the military, there would have been no jets around those planes. Until 9/11, we thought that the worst that would happen with a hijacked plane was that it would be crashed and all the people in it (including the hijackers) would die. We also thought that that was the *last* thing the hijackers wanted.
The reason the fourth plane never hit a target was because someone on their cell phone found out about the first three, and realized they were all going to die no matter what they did... and the least they could do was make sure no one on the ground died too. Until that bit of info filtered in, it was "common knowledge" that hijackers are only deadly if you don't cooperate. i.e. they won't kill anyone so long as you don't send military jets up to escort them.
Just after 9 a.m. EDT on 9/11/2001, planes were reclassified as weapons of mass destruction. But no one imagined they would be used that way until then, and no one thought to treat them that way either.
You want the government to "become connected" to server your needs but you don't want them to "become connected" to for use in criminal investigations.
/. posts looking for potential cyberterrorists. Say they came up with a profile on people most likely to hack government computers based on this information. Now, imagine it's you getting arrested on the strength of this information.
Actually, I want them to have access to the latest technology to use in criminal investigations. I want them to use DNA matching, computer simulation and analysis, the whole nine yards.
Until there's a crime, though, the investigation doesn't have a purpose. It's a fishing expedition. Theoretically, they could use this database to match reported crimes to likely patterns... but they've as much as said that's NOT the intention. It's the other way around; to examine behavior to determine (in their opinion) if someone is likely to commit a crime. Maybe sometimes they'd get the right people, at first; but imagine if the FBI decided that Open Source software was subversive. What if they started scanning for keywords in
Still harmless?
However, even if they manage to indict that ham sandwich, it's a matter of public record. The ham sandwich knows it's been indicted.
Even if the courts are a rubber stamp, they're still part of keeping the process open. If the FBI, CIA, or whoever can just keep picking up info on you without any public record of it for years, you have very little recourse for proving your innocence on down the road. It's all ancient history; your witnesses are gone, your documentation has hit the shredder, and so on. And you had no way of knowing because that "rubber stamp" wasn't required.
Don't confuse thugs with guns with responsible people with guns. Thugs are just plain dangerous, whether they have guns, knives, chains, or just their fists. Responsible people don't engage in gunfights...
Trouble with that is, I can't tell if the guy holding the gun is a responsible person or a thug until he starts shooting at me. If a responsible person is one who does not do a thing, you can never prove that anyone is a responsible person, because you can't prove a negative. You can prove that someone is a thug, by your definition, but not until they've already shot at someone.
A guy in my neighborhood has a bumper sticker that says "Only tyrants and criminals fear honest armed citizens." I'd love to ask that guy if he thinks honest citizens should fear armed tyrants and criminals. If so, how do you tell "honest armed citizens" from "tyrants and criminals"?
Please, if you can answer this question, I'd really appreciate it. As it now stands, if I see someone holding a gun, I have no way to know whether they're going to shoot me or not. I'd really like to know when it's ok to call 911 without infringing on the second amendment.
Democrats are like Republicans, except secular.
You mean like the last Democratic vice-presidential candidate, who said "Freedom *of* religion is not freedom *from* religion"?
John Poindexter has broken laws that we're currently subjecting people to military tribunals for breaking.
And the database doesn't track criminals, it tracks everyone, on the premise that any of them *might* become criminals. You, me, anyone.
Of course, the next logical step is if you know that you want to lock someone up, you study their record, and find a law you can use against them. If one doesn't exist, you make one. It's very convenient.
I may be totally wrong about this, but can't cable modems use existing cable lines, where DSL needs either fiber or at least better than two-wire phone line?
Real cable broadband requires a full-duplex connection, while most cable infrastructure is/was one-way. Some companies have worked around by doing cable downlink with a 56k uplink, others have made the investment and replaced the existing cable with full-duplex connections (in hopes that other applications such as on-demand movies and such will also justify the expense).
DSL does require at least a 4-wire phone line, but it became standard practice to install these in new buildings I think at least 20 years ago (sorry, tried to find a link, couldn't dig one up). ISDN also requires four-wire, and it's been around much longer. So while the requirement is there, it's been met in many places well before DSL ever arrived on the scene.
Cable modems require no new infrastructure. They just require people who already have cables coming into their house to get another wire run inside. DSL requires the phone company to update its stuff and put up new equipment.
Actually...
Both require new infrastructure. However, while telephone companies started updating their infrastructure to four-wire in houses and digital backbones 20-30 years ago, it's only been within the last decade that cable has realized they need full-duplex connections. In some places where you can get "cable broadband," you actually only get a broadband downlink and are still uploading through a 56k connection.
DSL on the other hand has been quicker to implement since the new equipment needed is fairly centralized. They need to install the stuff at the CO, but not to rewire your house (usually). If they do need to rewire your house, you'll probably get better phone service afterward too.
My theory on why cable is more popular than DSL here? Service. Customer service, that is. Cable companies seem to have a better attitude towards customer service than phone companies. It's simply *harder* to get DSL, and more of a pain. The distance limitations add to the problem. (Actually, you can get DSL at more than 12,000 feet from the CO, they just can't guarantee the same speeds. Most phone companies don't want to go there, but you can often contract with third-party companies that will still hook you up. Friend of mine has DSL even though he's more like 17,000 feet away.)
I just put in a support ticket with my hosting company, after checking the version of MySQL they're running (3.23.53a). It's virtual hosting with many people all on the same server, and most users have MySQL database access.
So if you are running your own server and have the option of closing it off, yeah, this doesn't matter... but that's not the whole world.
There's nothing incorrect about what you've said, but it makes a faulty assumption: that the Internet *can* be secured.
The point most people are making here is that what they're trying to do is impossible, and if they start with WiFi, there's no telling where it will end. As it is now, you can check into a hotel room under an assumed name and pay cash, use their dial-up connection and a laptop to wreak whatever havoc you wish, and be gone before anyone knows. You can get internet access from tons of places where you can't be traced except by your face (if anyone actually looked at you; I've seen internet terminals where you can deposit cash without interacting with a human being).
Crimes occuring over the Internet are already difficult to trace... *almost* as difficult as crimes occuring in the real world. That's right; the guy who broke into your neighbor's house last week didn't need a MAC address to do it, so he's less traceable than an Internet crook.
If they talked about educating people about securing their networks, or funding development of better security methods, that would be one thing... but they're saying "We're going to make you responsible for an impossible task, and *when* you fail, we're going to clamp down and cripple this medium into oblivion."
Having recently read large chunks of The Logic of Collective Action for an econ paper, I find the idea of an automated interest-sharing system fascinating. My ears pricked up at the use of the term "cooperate" in the article. See, one of the biggest problems we face in society (particularly market-driven society) is that, since we can't count on anyone else to act in our interests, we are constantly compelled to act in our own interests with the assumption that others will act against them. This leads us to situations where people who could collectively get much more satisfactory results end up working separately and getting sub-optimal results.
A system where you could express your interests to the network and search for others who share them would have the potential to reduce or eliminate this problem. Say, for example, you're in a crowded parking lot, trying to leave after a show. You try to get through as best you can, not sure if you should let that other guy in or if it's just going to start a flood that's going to hang you up for days. Tempers get short, people jockey for position, and it all becomes a tangled mess.
What if you could somehow communicate with all of those people and decide you were going to go about things in an orderly fashion? Then have the computers instruct you on what to do to follow the "plan." Everyone gets out of the parking lot faster and goes on their way.
That's a pretty hokey example, but it does kind of work. These kinds of situations come up all the time, usually on a more permanent scale (the public goods problem). But it has potential to revolutionize the way we collaborate. Yeah, it will take 50-100 years to get that far, I'm sure, but I plan to still be around!
Yeah, after all, all those penis enlargement ads do mean I have a small penis.
In fact, it's so small, it's completely inside out... us women call it a "vagina."
Targeted spam hasn't really gotten all that targeted yet, I'm afraid. (I wish it would hurry up!)
Will it we keep up the status quo until a WMD (Weapon of Mass Destruction) is smuggled in and used against us?
Why would anyone have to smuggle in a WMD to use against us? Aren't most of the world's weapons of mass destruction already here?
And, here's what I really don't get:
Does that guy honestly believe that getting into one Wi-Fi network can allow someone to bring down the entire Internet? And if he does, hm, maybe he should look at the original ARPA spec, compare it to the current topography of the 'net, and break up a few megacorps, hm?
Let's not forget that the people making these boneheaded pronouncements are rich white men who remember when color TV came out and they got one for their kids. The internet is a really scary unknown thing. They know it's incredibly powerful... and not much else.
But if they do manage to ban AOL from sending out those disks, I'm going to have to buy them a cookie.
Yeah, I know what you mean... my husband just doesn't like it when I go out and spend money on hardware. "You've got a perfectly good GeForce 3 and it's barely a year old! Why the heck do you need a GF4?"
;-) (Too late for you, but for those playing along at home...)
Just do what he did... find a girl who likes computers.
Unless anyone gave away information that was confidential to the company and that could affect their stock prices or proprietary designs i don't see why they could be sued for speaking freely on the net.
Because the First Amendment has seven exceptions, and libel/slander is one of them. Just as you can't invoke free speech to urge someone to a criminal act (the Rosenberg exception) or to cause a panic (fire in a crowded theatre), you can't invoke the first amendment to distribute unfounded and damaging information about a person or another entity.