For some reason this brings to mind shades of the Windows/Internet Explorer bundling situation that the courts found problematic. It certainly wasn't the case that people who used Windows couldn't use other web browsers, but the thing was that the bundling made it much easier for people to use IE, and that lead to somewhat stifled competition. I suppose the main problem was that was that Windows was a perceived monopoly and that the judges felt that since one had to buy Windows, one had to be shoveled IE..so I guess this wouldn't be a real problem unless AOL became the sole manufacturer of keyboards.
My big question is: are they targeting people who already use AOL (e.g., selling them through ads on the AOL service), or are they trying to pack these in with PCs, or sell them in stores? The latter would certainly be much scarier.
"We are not about taking legal action (or) resisting the open-source community," Fareed said.
Fareed said the company is looking at ways to work with the engineers and programmers who have been tinkering with the innards of the device.
Netpliance didn't appear to be too worried about the hacks, either. Instead, they're thinking about tapping into the kind of engineering expertise that's hard to hire at start-up companies.
Well, either the Netpliance spokesman (Fareed) wasn't at all speaking for the company when he said these things, or there's been a rapid turnaround of their "strategy." I know it's cynical, but this may have been a way to try to calm the demand for the machines (..."If we lull them into thinking that we're not pulling the plug, some of them might wait..") while they were working on their "fixes." Then again, it may have been a way to calm investors (who were already getting plenty nervous) into thinking it wasn't a horrible situation for the company.
It's unusual for a publicly traded company to get away with rapid reversals of policy such as this one--it's generally discouraged, it gets investors nervous. After all, who wants to sink money into a company that's not being honest with the public. Oh well, seeing as their stock went up 14% today, I guess people are either less concerned with customer perception than they once were, or the investors don't see the company's actions as any way detrimental to how customers will see the company. It still is 6 points shy of where it was on the 17th, when it started a fall to its low.
Direct statements from the company state that the actual units cost upwards of $200 to make, and that they were planning on making all the money on the subscription. This was even before the whole hack incident.
It looks like the main server, however, is still down. While it would still be possible to configure this for local nets, widespread Napster-esque usage wouldn't be possible until the main server is back up.
Frankly I'm surprised that this is still in development. I guess we'll find out just how tight a hold AOL has on them.. More interesting will be what exactly AOL will do if they don't cooperate.
Wow, good thing you didn't tell everyone about that until the game went gold! Oh wait.. that game's still in beta..meaning even if you weren't full of b.s., they could take your "cheats" out, couldn't they? Okay, so even if you really were a Blizzard programmer and got fired for adding cheats, I'd tend to think you deserved it just for being stupid: if you really wanted them to get into the final product, you'd have kept quiet about it.
"go get the code and do it yourself" is actually the strongest damn argument in the world. From the Smith's Invisible Hand to Galbraith's Countervailing Power to Stallman's "you can hire whomever you want to support it", competition among suppliers is the single best thing for customers.
First of all, I don't know what version of Smith's book you read, but all that the "invisible hand" states is that a command market is not needed for all of peoples' needs and wants to be met, but rather that a free market can do all of this without any command. Despite all of your name-dropping, you still haven't shown me why it's useless for me to criticize something just because I have the perceived ability to make a competitor with all of my desires incorporated into it. For one, I don't have the time, nor the money (read: the money to quit my job so I can invenst enough time into doing it right), nor, quite frankly, the technical know-how to make my own slashdot. If this was a case of my not liking a part of an open-source program, it would be quite easy for me to modify it so that I could use the features I want. But even if I set up my own slashdot-esque site, what use do I have for it if I don't have the time to keep it up to date, to make it profitable, or to get people to read/contribute?
Simply put, the opportunity cost needed for everyone involved to just make slashdot better opposed to my (or someone else) making a whole new slashdot is just not even comparable. There's a good thing going here--what's wrong with making it better? Every time you want to make a piece of software better, do you have to completely abandon the old version and build from the ground up? That's what I'd be doing if I tried to make my own slashdot--not from the aspect of the actual server code, I know, but from every other aspect.
BTW, it's ironic to see you whine about other people's constructive (literally!) criticism of your contributions to Slashdot.
I never said there was anything with arguing against someone. I was disagreeing with the content of his post, not the post itself. Those are two different things. I felt the content wasn't constructive because it didn't offer any real, viable solutions. I would hope that you would think I have the right to post a disagreement to something I don't agree with. I don't think anyone else doesn't have that right--I was just questioning the usefulness of such a dead-end solution that was proposed within the post.
And finally, if Slashdot's editorial policy bothers you so much, there's a place you can go that may help.
Why is it that every time someone criticizes slashdot, the only response that anyone gives is that the person doing the criticizing should take the code and start their own threaded discussion stie? I'm not claiming for a second that I could build, from the ground up, a site of the quality of slashdot. What I am suggesting, however, is that there are improvements that could be made to an already great resource. It seems like the knee-jerk reaction is just "go get the code and do it yourself," but if you stop and think about it, that's a pretty weak argument. If you disagree with my contentions, argue agains the contentions themselves. Constructive criticism has never hurt anyone. Just because I think there's something wrong with the current system doesn't mean I want to scrap it all, nor does it mean that I think that the problems are irreperable.
I'm a little sick of the editorializing thats going on on the level of the actual story presentations here at/. I understand that the whole point of the site is to let any and all opinions be heard--that's fine, as long as the opinions are coming from the posts themselves. I see little to no value of there being opinions in the stories themselves--let the readers read the stories and make up their own minds. If a particular reader--or even the vast majority of readers--believes that MS (wow--can you believe it, I'm not writing it as "M$"--that must be a/. first!) is evil, that's great.. let him/her have her opinion heard in the replies. But don't bias the reporting of the stories.
Also, I think a little less bias in the selection of the stories themselves could be useful. Who on earth made the decision that the release of FreeBSD 4.0 wasn't even worthy of a mention as a "quickie," yet the book review on assosciate programs was worthy of a whole article? God forbid a VA Linux subsidiary would have any mention of a non-Linux based OS in a somewhat positive light! Okay, openness lovers, why not open up your story selection process a little bit?
First, I can see how you'd see some hypocrisy and how you'd be somewhat angered by this since you work for Napster, Inc. But I think that Gnutella has much more of a claim for legitimate usage than does Napster. Since Gnutella can be used to create smaller groups, etc., it could be used between businesses or educational enterprises. Also, since it can be used for so many different types of files, e.g., HTML, text, Word, spreadsheets, graphics, its possibilities for legitimate use is much greater.
This has some really interesting ramifications over the lawsuit against Napster, no?
Gnullsoft->Nullsoft->AOL->Time-Warner->Music Co.
What you're overlooking here is that Napster is not produced by Nullsoft... Gnullsoft/Gnutella is a completely separate entity from Napster, Inc. Therefore, suing Napster is not at all contradictory because it isn't connected to Time-Warner in any way.. Time-Warner suing Gnullsoft, on the other hand, might be--and likely wouldn't happen. Instead they'd just likely kill the project or take tighter control of the company itself.
Just because Enron owns 'alot of power plants' and has a large market cap doesn't make it any less of a start-up. Especially when compared to the industry giants that have been in place for decades. They only recently began providing energy to consumers and businesses directly, and their entrance into the power market in general is very recent when compared to the former de jure monopolists. While there still may be plenty of de facto monopolists, that's because of a number of reasons, not the least of which is the relativly recent opening up of the markets to competition.
This may have been due to some lobbying from a start-up energy company called Enron. They provide electric, etc. in some of the markets just opened up for competition. I've been seeing their advertisments pushing the idea of a "bandwidth market--just like the market for porkbellies" for a month or so now. An interesting idea, but obviously it could make bandwidth very expensive at some times.
but are the votes of those people that are not prepared to make any effort worth counting?
Well, in some countries everyone is forced to vote. I'm not saying that this is how it should be here in the United States, but, if you're truly committed to democracy, I don't see how you could want anything but as many people voting as possible--even if those people are "lazy" and would not put in the effort to drive to a polling station. There could be many reasons why someone would not vote using the normal method which would in no way make them any less qualified to actually cast a ballot. And since when is our motto "peace and justice for all--except for 'lazy' people"?
Looks like it's a good thing that I don't have a cell phone
Um.. is it just me, or is this extremely short-sighted reasoning? While this article might mean that it's a good thing that you don't have a Spring PCS phone that you use to access web pages, I don't see how this remotely changes the usefulness of cell phones in general, and even of non-Sprint PCS phones and/or of Sprint PCS phones that aren't used to access the web. Nothing I've read about this so far in any way makes me any less glad that I own a PCS phone that's capable of receiving email, SMS and pages.
I am not a "member" of the ACLU, nor do I agree with all of their stances on all issues. I just suggested the above as a means of acting on this particular issue. I do not see using their web site as a way to contact representatives/senators about this specific issue as either an explicit or implicit sponsorship of the values which the organization as a whole extolls. Additionally, (re: my second post) how can it hurt to read what the organization has to say about the issue? If you don't agree with specific points they raise, then that is entirely up to you. Again, by referencing their outline of opinions on one particular issue in no way is an obligation to be bound by their other principles--nor all of the principles contained within their take on this issue. It is my opinion that there is no such thing as too much information--especially when one is trying to educate one's self about specific issues of importance.
If you read the guide, and decide that there are things you disagree with, then you have in no way been harmed by reading it, and may have even been helped (sometimes reading opinions differing from your own can help you strengthen your own beliefs). If you read the guide and come away thinking differently, then that too is good.
Just because the two links above are from one particular organization that you may not agree with on all issues is no reason to discount their value to the community at large or to the debate on the issue at hand.
The problem is that there currently aren't any perfect filtering programs available. By implementing these, you are resigning yourself to blocking legitimate material as well. Something that more personal ways of keeping "bad" things from minors (e.g., parental / librarian supervision) doesn't entail. The implementation of an imperfect solution--especially in this case--is worse than the original problem.
Also, for a rough and ready guide to the reasons why people are against filtering in general, take a look at http://www.aclu.org/issues/cyber/box.html, also from the ACLU's site. It contains some interesting things I haven't seen mentioned here before.
I realize that this may be a bit late for the Utah case itself, but there is still much that can be done for this issue in general, and other civil liberties issues.
A page that I've found useful in the past is the ACLU's "Act Now!" section of their site. It contains updated information about various issues, as well as a free and easy way to fax, email and mail letters to your representative on certain issues--all by just filling in a zip code and some information. Currently there is a page dedicated to information about bills dealing with mandating filtering in libraries. There is the usual way to contact representatives included as well. Take a look.
I'm at a small liberal arts college in Western Mass. Recently, the OIT banned the use of Napster. Their reasoning behind it was that it was sucking up way too much bandwidth. According to their statistics, Napster was using 70% of our available bandwidth. I must say I have noticed a very big difference in speed since the ban was put into effect. Now those of us that know how to get MP3s through sources other than Napster are much better off.;)
In an article in our campus newspaper, the head of the OIT stated that the reason was purely bandwidth-related. While I'm sure that this did have a large impact on the decision, it made me a little suspicious to see that the bulk of the article was talking about why mp3s are illegal, and how our college had received "friendly" letters from the RIAA asking us to stop certain students from running MP3 servers. I would be surprised if this didn't factor into the decision as well.
I think this is a good thing, believe it or not. To not have any taxes on internet-sold goods is somewhat problematic in a few ways. First, it's blatantly unfair to those who dont' have access to technology--in a sense it makes lower class people who can't get on the web pay an extra tax compared to those of us who do have web access. In addition, not taxing internet sales in a way distorts consumers' priorities: consumers respond to incentives, and a tax-free way of buying something certainly is an incentive. The distortion of preferences is more dangerous in the long run. When people make their decision to buy solely upon whether or not they will pay a tax, other things fall by the wayside. I realize that it is up to the consumer what particular aspects of a purchase (s)he views as most important--and therefore choosing solely upon there not being a tax is his/her prerogative--but gov't sponsored (and by not taxing, they are in effect sponsoring) changes in peoples' preferences in the long run can be a bad thing.
I think it it you who doesn't understand the issue. Exactly what principle are you appealing to to prove that gravity is a 'law' which will always be upheld? Do you believe it just because it makes sense? Or because it has held true for 'years'? Of course there is a difference between physics and advertising. You didn't think I meant there wasn't one. Please tell me exactly what it is that makes you believe that gravity is a 'law' and not just an event that seems to hold true? All you possibly can appeal to is years and years of amassed evidence.
The same marketing trick that worked 10 years ago may not work today, citing years of evidence means, again, you don't understand the issue...
Again, you are the one who doesn't understand the issue. The argument was, if you'll read back, not about whether a specific marketing 'trick' works, but whether if corporations have any way of knowing if advertising in general works. There is no difference between correlation of man dying after hitting the ground and correlation of sales increasing after advertising. True, gravity has been around much longer and you have a larger body of evidence, but still all you have is the correlation that when someone hits the ground, they die. There is no way to prove a necessary connection. Just as there is no way to prove a necessary connection between advertising and sales. In both cases, however, you would be remiss not to believe that each principle was valid.
If one were to scrutinize everything to the level that you are suggesting one should, very little would get done in this world. You are looking for a level of proof that is, for all intents and purposes, impossible to attain. While Bertrand Russell would surely be very happy with your lack of faith in inductive reasoning, it is nonetheless extremely impractical.
Every man who, in the past 20 years, has jumped off a building of 20 stories or higher and has hit the ground has died. There is no proof of cause that the death was at all related to the impact. There is however, a very strong correlation between jumping off roofs and dying after hitting the ground. Do you believe that it is practical to live your life based upon the principal that jumping off a roof is the cause of death? I would hope so. I would also hope that if you were presented with a large body of data indicating the success of advertisements, you would agree that the rational thing to do would be to advertise.
Slashdot Mirror
My big question is: are they targeting people who already use AOL (e.g., selling them through ads on the AOL service), or are they trying to pack these in with PCs, or sell them in stores? The latter would certainly be much scarier.
"We are not about taking legal action (or) resisting the open-source community," Fareed said.
Fareed said the company is looking at ways to work with the engineers and programmers who have been tinkering with the innards of the device.
Netpliance didn't appear to be too worried about the hacks, either. Instead, they're thinking about tapping into the kind of engineering expertise that's hard to hire at start-up companies.
Well, either the Netpliance spokesman (Fareed) wasn't at all speaking for the company when he said these things, or there's been a rapid turnaround of their "strategy." I know it's cynical, but this may have been a way to try to calm the demand for the machines (..."If we lull them into thinking that we're not pulling the plug, some of them might wait..") while they were working on their "fixes." Then again, it may have been a way to calm investors (who were already getting plenty nervous) into thinking it wasn't a horrible situation for the company.
It's unusual for a publicly traded company to get away with rapid reversals of policy such as this one--it's generally discouraged, it gets investors nervous. After all, who wants to sink money into a company that's not being honest with the public. Oh well, seeing as their stock went up 14% today, I guess people are either less concerned with customer perception than they once were, or the investors don't see the company's actions as any way detrimental to how customers will see the company. It still is 6 points shy of where it was on the 17th, when it started a fall to its low.
Direct statements from the company state that the actual units cost upwards of $200 to make, and that they were planning on making all the money on the subscription. This was even before the whole hack incident.
Nope, it's still there. The link in the story was wrong, it's really http://www.nerd-out.com/a pex/Secret_Menu/secret_menu.html. Try there.
Frankly I'm surprised that this is still in development. I guess we'll find out just how tight a hold AOL has on them.. More interesting will be what exactly AOL will do if they don't cooperate.
Wow, good thing you didn't tell everyone about that until the game went gold! Oh wait.. that game's still in beta..meaning even if you weren't full of b.s., they could take your "cheats" out, couldn't they? Okay, so even if you really were a Blizzard programmer and got fired for adding cheats, I'd tend to think you deserved it just for being stupid: if you really wanted them to get into the final product, you'd have kept quiet about it.
First of all, I don't know what version of Smith's book you read, but all that the "invisible hand" states is that a command market is not needed for all of peoples' needs and wants to be met, but rather that a free market can do all of this without any command. Despite all of your name-dropping, you still haven't shown me why it's useless for me to criticize something just because I have the perceived ability to make a competitor with all of my desires incorporated into it. For one, I don't have the time, nor the money (read: the money to quit my job so I can invenst enough time into doing it right), nor, quite frankly, the technical know-how to make my own slashdot. If this was a case of my not liking a part of an open-source program, it would be quite easy for me to modify it so that I could use the features I want. But even if I set up my own slashdot-esque site, what use do I have for it if I don't have the time to keep it up to date, to make it profitable, or to get people to read/contribute?
Simply put, the opportunity cost needed for everyone involved to just make slashdot better opposed to my (or someone else) making a whole new slashdot is just not even comparable. There's a good thing going here--what's wrong with making it better? Every time you want to make a piece of software better, do you have to completely abandon the old version and build from the ground up? That's what I'd be doing if I tried to make my own slashdot--not from the aspect of the actual server code, I know, but from every other aspect.
BTW, it's ironic to see you whine about other people's constructive (literally!) criticism of your contributions to Slashdot.
I never said there was anything with arguing against someone. I was disagreeing with the content of his post, not the post itself. Those are two different things. I felt the content wasn't constructive because it didn't offer any real, viable solutions. I would hope that you would think I have the right to post a disagreement to something I don't agree with. I don't think anyone else doesn't have that right--I was just questioning the usefulness of such a dead-end solution that was proposed within the post.
Why is it that every time someone criticizes slashdot, the only response that anyone gives is that the person doing the criticizing should take the code and start their own threaded discussion stie? I'm not claiming for a second that I could build, from the ground up, a site of the quality of slashdot. What I am suggesting, however, is that there are improvements that could be made to an already great resource. It seems like the knee-jerk reaction is just "go get the code and do it yourself," but if you stop and think about it, that's a pretty weak argument. If you disagree with my contentions, argue agains the contentions themselves. Constructive criticism has never hurt anyone. Just because I think there's something wrong with the current system doesn't mean I want to scrap it all, nor does it mean that I think that the problems are irreperable.
Also, I think a little less bias in the selection of the stories themselves could be useful. Who on earth made the decision that the release of FreeBSD 4.0 wasn't even worthy of a mention as a "quickie," yet the book review on assosciate programs was worthy of a whole article? God forbid a VA Linux subsidiary would have any mention of a non-Linux based OS in a somewhat positive light! Okay, openness lovers, why not open up your story selection process a little bit?
First, I can see how you'd see some hypocrisy and how you'd be somewhat angered by this since you work for Napster, Inc. But I think that Gnutella has much more of a claim for legitimate usage than does Napster. Since Gnutella can be used to create smaller groups, etc., it could be used between businesses or educational enterprises. Also, since it can be used for so many different types of files, e.g., HTML, text, Word, spreadsheets, graphics, its possibilities for legitimate use is much greater.
Gnullsoft->Nullsoft->AOL->Time-Warner->Music Co.
What you're overlooking here is that Napster is not produced by Nullsoft... Gnullsoft/Gnutella is a completely separate entity from Napster, Inc. Therefore, suing Napster is not at all contradictory because it isn't connected to Time-Warner in any way.. Time-Warner suing Gnullsoft, on the other hand, might be--and likely wouldn't happen. Instead they'd just likely kill the project or take tighter control of the company itself.
Just because Enron owns 'alot of power plants' and has a large market cap doesn't make it any less of a start-up. Especially when compared to the industry giants that have been in place for decades. They only recently began providing energy to consumers and businesses directly, and their entrance into the power market in general is very recent when compared to the former de jure monopolists. While there still may be plenty of de facto monopolists, that's because of a number of reasons, not the least of which is the relativly recent opening up of the markets to competition.
This may have been due to some lobbying from a start-up energy company called Enron. They provide electric, etc. in some of the markets just opened up for competition. I've been seeing their advertisments pushing the idea of a "bandwidth market--just like the market for porkbellies" for a month or so now. An interesting idea, but obviously it could make bandwidth very expensive at some times.
Well, in some countries everyone is forced to vote. I'm not saying that this is how it should be here in the United States, but, if you're truly committed to democracy, I don't see how you could want anything but as many people voting as possible--even if those people are "lazy" and would not put in the effort to drive to a polling station. There could be many reasons why someone would not vote using the normal method which would in no way make them any less qualified to actually cast a ballot. And since when is our motto "peace and justice for all--except for 'lazy' people"?
Um.. is it just me, or is this extremely short-sighted reasoning? While this article might mean that it's a good thing that you don't have a Spring PCS phone that you use to access web pages, I don't see how this remotely changes the usefulness of cell phones in general, and even of non-Sprint PCS phones and/or of Sprint PCS phones that aren't used to access the web. Nothing I've read about this so far in any way makes me any less glad that I own a PCS phone that's capable of receiving email, SMS and pages.
Ultra 66 How-To
And once you have it installed, and want to patch the kernel so you get true UDMA66 support for your drives, visit http://www.linuxnewbie.or g/nhf/intel/hardware/udma66.html.
Hope this helps.
...and you have the ACLU to thank for that, and no one else!
j/k, of course.
If you read the guide, and decide that there are things you disagree with, then you have in no way been harmed by reading it, and may have even been helped (sometimes reading opinions differing from your own can help you strengthen your own beliefs). If you read the guide and come away thinking differently, then that too is good.
Just because the two links above are from one particular organization that you may not agree with on all issues is no reason to discount their value to the community at large or to the debate on the issue at hand.
The problem is that there currently aren't any perfect filtering programs available. By implementing these, you are resigning yourself to blocking legitimate material as well. Something that more personal ways of keeping "bad" things from minors (e.g., parental / librarian supervision) doesn't entail. The implementation of an imperfect solution--especially in this case--is worse than the original problem.
Also, for a rough and ready guide to the reasons why people are against filtering in general, take a look at http://www.aclu.org/issues/cyber/box.html, also from the ACLU's site. It contains some interesting things I haven't seen mentioned here before.
A page that I've found useful in the past is the ACLU's "Act Now!" section of their site. It contains updated information about various issues, as well as a free and easy way to fax, email and mail letters to your representative on certain issues--all by just filling in a zip code and some information. Currently there is a page dedicated to information about bills dealing with mandating filtering in libraries. There is the usual way to contact representatives included as well. Take a look.
http://www.aclu.org/action/jjfilteri ng106.html
In an article in our campus newspaper, the head of the OIT stated that the reason was purely bandwidth-related. While I'm sure that this did have a large impact on the decision, it made me a little suspicious to see that the bulk of the article was talking about why mp3s are illegal, and how our college had received "friendly" letters from the RIAA asking us to stop certain students from running MP3 servers. I would be surprised if this didn't factor into the decision as well.
I think this is a good thing, believe it or not. To not have any taxes on internet-sold goods is somewhat problematic in a few ways. First, it's blatantly unfair to those who dont' have access to technology--in a sense it makes lower class people who can't get on the web pay an extra tax compared to those of us who do have web access. In addition, not taxing internet sales in a way distorts consumers' priorities: consumers respond to incentives, and a tax-free way of buying something certainly is an incentive. The distortion of preferences is more dangerous in the long run. When people make their decision to buy solely upon whether or not they will pay a tax, other things fall by the wayside. I realize that it is up to the consumer what particular aspects of a purchase (s)he views as most important--and therefore choosing solely upon there not being a tax is his/her prerogative--but gov't sponsored (and by not taxing, they are in effect sponsoring) changes in peoples' preferences in the long run can be a bad thing.
The same marketing trick that worked 10 years ago may not work today, citing years of evidence means, again, you don't understand the issue...
Again, you are the one who doesn't understand the issue. The argument was, if you'll read back, not about whether a specific marketing 'trick' works, but whether if corporations have any way of knowing if advertising in general works. There is no difference between correlation of man dying after hitting the ground and correlation of sales increasing after advertising. True, gravity has been around much longer and you have a larger body of evidence, but still all you have is the correlation that when someone hits the ground, they die. There is no way to prove a necessary connection. Just as there is no way to prove a necessary connection between advertising and sales. In both cases, however, you would be remiss not to believe that each principle was valid.
Every man who, in the past 20 years, has jumped off a building of 20 stories or higher and has hit the ground has died. There is no proof of cause that the death was at all related to the impact. There is however, a very strong correlation between jumping off roofs and dying after hitting the ground. Do you believe that it is practical to live your life based upon the principal that jumping off a roof is the cause of death? I would hope so. I would also hope that if you were presented with a large body of data indicating the success of advertisements, you would agree that the rational thing to do would be to advertise.