Which would you rather own, 5% of Hyundai Motors, or 50% of Rolls Royce. I've confronted this model in software startups too. Early stage, people love to do "4 legged sales for six figures". I think maybe it's easier to sell to VCs. I've never been with a company that had a good plan to move downscale and increase volume, where MOST OF THE MONEY IS.
The smarter money is on Aptera. It's got roughly a $30,000 price tag. That's still a bit more than a low-end economy car; but the Apteras are sleek and different looking. At least a few people will want to have their "space ship" looking car in the driveway, and when the neighbors find out it gets 150mpg, the looks won't matter. Of course, a lot of this depends on how gas prices move. I hate to say this, but if we have just one year of sub $2 gas, people will forget about mileage until the next crisis.
I was tempted to put down my $500 and reserve an Aptera; but given the track record of these companies I decided not to do that.
OK, I've been fairly quiet about the sig. In the event that I ever decide to change it, and because Slashdot dynamicly generates the sig in archives (bad Slashdot, bad, bad!) Here is the sig we're discussing: For all intensive purposes, "whom" is no longer a word. That begs the question, "who cares?"
The sig is, as many have surmised, deliberate "grammar nazi" troll bait. A less inflamatory term for these people is "prescriptive linguists". These are people who are in the camp that says "language has rules, and they should always be followed". They're countered by those in the camp that says "language is what it is, let's just study it, it evolves, etc.". I have to admit I fall somewhere in between. For example, stuff like "help u sell" used to bother me a lot. OTOH, I've always liked "ain't".
At any rate, because of the Slashdot archiving problem, I almost feel trapped at this point. Too many posts that discuss the sig would make absolutely no sense if I changed it. There's probably some interesting potential for tomfoolery for those who want to use an inflamatory sig, and then change it later to make people look wierd in the archives.
Oh, and don't feel too bad; but you, like many gra...urr.. prescriptive linguists, missed my abuse of "begs the question"
...to abolish "civil forfeiture". It's bad enough when it happens to someone falsely accused in a drug case, or even acquitted. Expansion of CF? Absolute oppression. No other way to put it. I understand that you probably need to have *some* civil law apart from criminal law; but I think that if the founders knew that impoverishment was being used as "the next best thing" to imprisonment, they'd be turning in their graves.
At a time when the decline of property values has caused so much trouble; expansion of CF makes no sense at all. I know that as I've considered investing in property, the possibility of CF has given me serious pause. I don't do drugs; but what if my tenant does? And then they come along and, without the stricter standards of a criminal case, they deprive me of the property. Now I have to worry if the tenant is a warez guy? Maybe there's a way to insure against CF, but then that's just one more thing that cuts into the bottom line for an investor.
OK. I had a brain fart. No need to get snippy about it. However, the brain fart I had was ignoring your suggestion of bookmarking. It's really the same thing I suggested originally, if you think about it. The big quibble everybody seems to have with me here is that a spoofed DNS can break the bookmark. They seem to think that the httpS and a bookmark, and no warnings about the cert means everything is hunky-dory. I maintain that it isn't. It seems like once the DNS is spoofed, it wouldn't be hard to fake httpS and the lock icon, in any number of imaginative ways. I'll leave that as an excersise to the reader.
Note, I'm referring to the ISP's DNS being broken into, not your workstation. Obviously you aren't suggesting that DNS servers should be left wide-open and un-patched. That's what I'm referring to--the recent vulns in DNS.
Now, if httpS implies cacheing of IPs (thus bypassing DNS once you've had one successful exchange) that's ignorance on my part; but I don't feel like I should have been castigated quite the way I've been here. Sure I'm ignorant, but to paraphrase Churchill, "tomorrow I'll be educated, and you'll still be an asshole".
Oh come now. Who is going to check a cert every time they hit their bank's web site. Look me straight in the eye and tell me you have all that info jotted down, from the first time you interacted with the bank.
Worse yet, nevermind technical users. Non-technical users will never check this stuff. And frankly, I don't want to check it either. A simple rule like, "don't click links in e-mails" is far easier to follow. Even then, it's been hard enough to stop people from doing that.
Oh, and I suppose I should have linked the google search for "fake ssl" which is where I got that stuff. I'm sure there are better links. Bottom line? I don't put a lot of stock in the lock icon, and I'm not paranoid enough to go through cert checks every time. The people who provide DNS should just fix their stuff. It's their job.
The Constitution and the Bill of Rights have at least two clauses that are in the form of "$purpose therefore $power".
The other famous case of this involves a well regulated militia. IANAConstitutional scholar, but it seems that it isn't necessary for $purpose to be served in order for $power to be upheld as Constitutional. This cuts both ways, you see. If we accept that $purpose must be served, then you must interpret the 2nd ammendment as providing no right to bear arms except in support of a well regulated militia. In exchange for that, you get to eliminate copyrights and patents that can't be proven to have incentivized the creator.
Note, I'm not advocating that SCOTUS should be so rigid in its thinking. I'd like our judges to actually use judgement. If they don't use judgement, they're just referees not judges.
This doesn't work so well when the "nearest branch" is in New York, and you are in California. Why have such an arrangement? Because they offer the best rates (or at least they did in the past--with such crappy rates and so much risk, chasing bank rates has become way too important; but I digress). In fact though, for that particular account, there has never been an unsolicited e-mail. If there was, I'd be inclined to wait several days anyway. I've never had a bank e-mail that classified itself as "urgent", and if I did, then indeed I'd be inclined to pick up the phone and make a call.
What scares me is that while this guards against the garden variety phishing attack, it can't protect me from an ISP DNS compromise. Running *NIX on your home PC or using a Mac can't protect you from that either, so don't get smug. It's a good idea to find an "obscure" yet stable feature on your bank's site. Phishing sites may not take the time to duplicate it. If you know the bank is based in New York, and you traceroute it to Bulgaria, that's a bad sign too. I have to admit I'm not that paranoid though.
At the very least, 1 and 2 should be SOP for everybody. Financial institutions shouldn't put any kind of hypertext in a mail, and really ought not to even be using HTML mail which was evil right from its inception. I can dream, can't I?
And yes, I know it's a common expression for quackery, which the wiki article mentions; but the legit history of snake oil is interesting, and worth reading if you're not aware of it.
Yep. Totally. Even before they called it "could computing", and people were talking about network applications I always used to come back with "I can't use my word processor, the network is down". If such a statement doesn't sound silly to you, you've misunderstood what's needed to do word processing. Networks are great for getting information. You could say that they're a good way to provide patches too; but if there was no network accesss there'd be no need for network security patches! Heck, if all I had to do was create PDFs and play solitary games; I'd be inclined not to put the computer on the network at all. My Commodore 64 was never networked, and it was a blast. To be sure, there was the threat of floppy viruses; but even the damage these can do is limited when your whole system is in ROM. If anything, a good number of the systems out there should be taken off the network, or air-gapped from the Internet. That's right. When you think security, instead of moving further out into the network, move further away from it. Go one step further, and move away from sneakernet too. Put the system files in ROM and the attacker can't modify your system files. It would solve a lot of problems if it was done right. Obviously, I'm not advocating that all the machines be taken off the network, but... another example. A friend of mine is a lawyer, and for a good number of years he used DOS, WordPerfect, and a laser printer to create documents. No network. Worked great. Absolutely no reason to do anything to that system until the hardware broke. Putting it on the network? Total foolishness.
Umm... unless the end result is for the helium to fuse. Doesn't it fuse into carbon in stars? How energetic would that reaction be, with that much helium. If it doesn't fuse and/or no other types of matter-energy conversion are involved, then nevermind.
OK, Aside from RMS and Linus; I think of Carmack also, as well as John Abrash who co-wrote the games with him. From back in the day, anybody remember Bill Budge? EA, back in the day, gave its game developers the same sort of status that record labels gave musicians and his name sticks out in my mind. Of course, there's anybody behind a language as the summary stated: Larry Wall, Guido van Rossum, etc. Then there's Miguel ummm... I forget the last name... Icaza, or something like that, who worked on the Linux desktop.
OK, that's all I can think of off the top of my head, before having breakfast.
...the social contract that says "it's really not nice to do that". Some people use the "would you say you did that if the programmer/artist was in the room with you?" test. This test can fail. It can fail if the programmer/artist isn't really the person taking home the pay. Back in the day, it often was; but now many of them are just employees, so they might not care if you pirated the game and if they got paid barely living wages and worked 70 hour weeks, they might even applaud you. Same deal with music. This will depend somewhat on how the artists feel about their relationship with the recording industry. Any number of one-song phenoms, and even current artists with bad deals won't care, because they don't get the money anyway. Some artists who've already got their mansions won't care, and may even regard giving it away as philanthropy. Others still want their beans and aren't ready to set up "The Foundation", so they'd be pissed off.
Oh, and there is one other effective DRM and sensible, but it's only valid if the product relies on the network. Sell a userid, and prohibit multiple-logons. At that point, your enforcement mechanism is similar to an ISP abuse department. Legitimate buyers will call to find out why the service turned off, and get reminded to keep their password secure. Everybody else will shut up, or they might try but then the operator will say "you're not the registered user, piss off". Too many games are fun without network access for this technique to really impact the market.
I think I'll have to stand corrected on the impact of CAFE. Nevertheless, mileage does have some marketing impact, and if it could be increased 20% with a $100 device, I think they would have done it.
Sorry. This sounds way too much like "the tornado" and various other devices with magnets that you put around the fuel line. This stuff has been around for years, and it's pseudo-science. With pressure to meet CAFE standards, don't you think Detroit would have deployed such tech years ago if it really worked? Cue the Detroit-BigOil-AxisOfEvil conspiracy theorists in 3... 2... 1...
Why this is on Slashdot, why TMTA failed
on
Transmeta Up For Sale
·
· Score: 2, Insightful
It's on Slashdot because Linus worked for them. IMHO, TMTA failed because they didn't make their product accessible to geeks like us. I've never heard Linus say anything about it; but it must have been frustrating to see VIA's mini-ITX boards selling in the $300-$500 range, while in the meantime the only way for the average Joe to access TMTA's chip was by purchasing a $1000+ "development system". Even that came only after a very long time. The management had a disruptive idea, but they kept trying to push it through channels. Big mistake. Disruptive ideas have to be put in the hands of people who want to be disruptive. The typical OEM simply wanted to pick the "I won't get fired..." processor, and TMTA's was not it.
Apple got started in the garage because they could buy processors in onesies and twosies at Fry's. That was never possible with TMTA's chips. So sad. If they had allowed geeks to write their own code-morphing firmware, there's not telling what we might have had.
...is that when a company goes bankrupt, holders of common get squat. Preferably, you learn this before you invest. Even more preferably, you learn not to invest in a company that's going bankrupt (toughest lesson to learn). The 2nd best lesson is learning when to take a loss. I lost $1000 on Worldcom. It was the best $1000 I ever lost, when you consider what would have happened if I had "held on, because I just knoooow it's coming back".
Tech makes up about 40% of the total line of business staff, but the whole LOB is only a tiny percentage of the larger company in the financial industry.
Don't worry. You should be laid off in the next few days when $large_financial_company goes bankrupt. Problem solved, partially. I understand that the homeless guys who use cardboard don't like the ones who use plastic sheeting and sticks.
Slashdot Mirror
Which would you rather own, 5% of Hyundai Motors, or 50% of Rolls Royce. I've confronted this model in software startups too. Early stage, people love to do "4 legged sales for six figures". I think maybe it's easier to sell to VCs. I've never been with a company that had a good plan to move downscale and increase volume, where MOST OF THE MONEY IS.
The smarter money is on Aptera. It's got roughly a $30,000 price tag. That's still a bit more than a low-end economy car; but the Apteras are sleek and different looking. At least a few people will want to have their "space ship" looking car in the driveway, and when the neighbors find out it gets 150mpg, the looks won't matter. Of course, a lot of this depends on how gas prices move. I hate to say this, but if we have just one year of sub $2 gas, people will forget about mileage until the next crisis.
I was tempted to put down my $500 and reserve an Aptera; but given the track record of these companies I decided not to do that.
...don't clean house until after November 4. Please.
Jackhammer. Now that's news.
Or how about: "Good thing he doesn't play the tuba".
OK, I've been fairly quiet about the sig. In the event that I ever decide to change it, and because Slashdot dynamicly generates the sig in archives (bad Slashdot, bad, bad!) Here is the sig we're discussing: For all intensive purposes, "whom" is no longer a word. That begs the question, "who cares?"
The sig is, as many have surmised, deliberate "grammar nazi" troll bait. A less inflamatory term for these people is "prescriptive linguists". These are people who are in the camp that says "language has rules, and they should always be followed". They're countered by those in the camp that says "language is what it is, let's just study it, it evolves, etc.". I have to admit I fall somewhere in between. For example, stuff like "help u sell" used to bother me a lot. OTOH, I've always liked "ain't".
At any rate, because of the Slashdot archiving problem, I almost feel trapped at this point. Too many posts that discuss the sig would make absolutely no sense if I changed it. There's probably some interesting potential for tomfoolery for those who want to use an inflamatory sig, and then change it later to make people look wierd in the archives.
Oh, and don't feel too bad; but you, like many gra...urr.. prescriptive linguists, missed my abuse of "begs the question"
...to abolish "civil forfeiture". It's bad enough when it happens to someone falsely accused in a drug case, or even acquitted. Expansion of CF? Absolute oppression. No other way to put it. I understand that you probably need to have *some* civil law apart from criminal law; but I think that if the founders knew that impoverishment was being used as "the next best thing" to imprisonment, they'd be turning in their graves.
At a time when the decline of property values has caused so much trouble; expansion of CF makes no sense at all. I know that as I've considered investing in property, the possibility of CF has given me serious pause. I don't do drugs; but what if my tenant does? And then they come along and, without the stricter standards of a criminal case, they deprive me of the property. Now I have to worry if the tenant is a warez guy? Maybe there's a way to insure against CF, but then that's just one more thing that cuts into the bottom line for an investor.
OK. I had a brain fart. No need to get snippy about it. However, the brain fart I had was ignoring your suggestion of bookmarking. It's really the same thing I suggested originally, if you think about it. The big quibble everybody seems to have with me here is that a spoofed DNS can break the bookmark. They seem to think that the httpS and a bookmark, and no warnings about the cert means everything is hunky-dory. I maintain that it isn't. It seems like once the DNS is spoofed, it wouldn't be hard to fake httpS and the lock icon, in any number of imaginative ways. I'll leave that as an excersise to the reader.
Note, I'm referring to the ISP's DNS being broken into, not your workstation. Obviously you aren't suggesting that DNS servers should be left wide-open and un-patched. That's what I'm referring to--the recent vulns in DNS.
Now, if httpS implies cacheing of IPs (thus bypassing DNS once you've had one successful exchange) that's ignorance on my part; but I don't feel like I should have been castigated quite the way I've been here. Sure I'm ignorant, but to paraphrase Churchill, "tomorrow I'll be educated, and you'll still be an asshole".
Oh come now. Who is going to check a cert every time they hit their bank's web site. Look me straight in the eye and tell me you have all that info jotted down, from the first time you interacted with the bank.
Worse yet, nevermind technical users. Non-technical users will never check this stuff. And frankly, I don't want to check it either. A simple rule like, "don't click links in e-mails" is far easier to follow. Even then, it's been hard enough to stop people from doing that.
Oh, and I suppose I should have linked the google search for "fake ssl" which is where I got that stuff. I'm sure there are better links. Bottom line? I don't put a lot of stock in the lock icon, and I'm not paranoid enough to go through cert checks every time. The people who provide DNS should just fix their stuff. It's their job.
The Constitution and the Bill of Rights have at least two clauses that are in the form of "$purpose therefore $power".
The other famous case of this involves a well regulated militia. IANAConstitutional scholar, but it seems that it isn't necessary for $purpose to be served in order for $power to be upheld as Constitutional. This cuts both ways, you see. If we accept that $purpose must be served, then you must interpret the 2nd ammendment as providing no right to bear arms except in support of a well regulated militia. In exchange for that, you get to eliminate copyrights and patents that can't be proven to have incentivized the creator.
Note, I'm not advocating that SCOTUS should be so rigid in its thinking. I'd like our judges to actually use judgement. If they don't use judgement, they're just referees not judges.
Oh, you're so right. From now on, I'll just totally go to sleep whenever I see the little lock, and I'll ignore stuff like this or this
This doesn't work so well when the "nearest branch" is in New York, and you are in California. Why have such an arrangement? Because they offer the best rates (or at least they did in the past--with such crappy rates and so much risk, chasing bank rates has become way too important; but I digress). In fact though, for that particular account, there has never been an unsolicited e-mail. If there was, I'd be inclined to wait several days anyway. I've never had a bank e-mail that classified itself as "urgent", and if I did, then indeed I'd be inclined to pick up the phone and make a call.
1. Delete e-mail.
2. Log in to bank via their web site.
What scares me is that while this guards against the garden variety phishing attack, it can't protect me from an ISP DNS compromise. Running *NIX on your home PC or using a Mac can't protect you from that either, so don't get smug. It's a good idea to find an "obscure" yet stable feature on your bank's site. Phishing sites may not take the time to duplicate it. If you know the bank is based in New York, and you traceroute it to Bulgaria, that's a bad sign too. I have to admit I'm not that paranoid though.
At the very least, 1 and 2 should be SOP for everybody. Financial institutions shouldn't put any kind of hypertext in a mail, and really ought not to even be using HTML mail which was evil right from its inception. I can dream, can't I?
...areyoureallysurprised or ...nosurprise or ...shocker (which is often used sarcasticly where I'm from) or something like that.
You're harming the reputation of Real Snake Oil
And yes, I know it's a common expression for quackery, which the wiki article mentions; but the legit history of snake oil is interesting, and worth reading if you're not aware of it.
Problem solved. Sounds almost exactly the same.
Yep. Totally. Even before they called it "could computing", and people were talking about network applications I always used to come back with "I can't use my word processor, the network is down". If such a statement doesn't sound silly to you, you've misunderstood what's needed to do word processing. Networks are great for getting information. You could say that they're a good way to provide patches too; but if there was no network accesss there'd be no need for network security patches! Heck, if all I had to do was create PDFs and play solitary games; I'd be inclined not to put the computer on the network at all. My Commodore 64 was never networked, and it was a blast. To be sure, there was the threat of floppy viruses; but even the damage these can do is limited when your whole system is in ROM. If anything, a good number of the systems out there should be taken off the network, or air-gapped from the Internet. That's right. When you think security, instead of moving further out into the network, move further away from it. Go one step further, and move away from sneakernet too. Put the system files in ROM and the attacker can't modify your system files. It would solve a lot of problems if it was done right. Obviously, I'm not advocating that all the machines be taken off the network, but... another example. A friend of mine is a lawyer, and for a good number of years he used DOS, WordPerfect, and a laser printer to create documents. No network. Worked great. Absolutely no reason to do anything to that system until the hardware broke. Putting it on the network? Total foolishness.
Umm... unless the end result is for the helium to fuse. Doesn't it fuse into carbon in stars? How energetic would that reaction be, with that much helium. If it doesn't fuse and/or no other types of matter-energy conversion are involved, then nevermind.
OK, Aside from RMS and Linus; I think of Carmack also, as well as John Abrash who co-wrote the games with him. From back in the day, anybody remember Bill Budge? EA, back in the day, gave its game developers the same sort of status that record labels gave musicians and his name sticks out in my mind. Of course, there's anybody behind a language as the summary stated: Larry Wall, Guido van Rossum, etc. Then there's Miguel ummm... I forget the last name... Icaza, or something like that, who worked on the Linux desktop.
OK, that's all I can think of off the top of my head, before having breakfast.
...the social contract that says "it's really not nice to do that". Some people use the "would you say you did that if the programmer/artist was in the room with you?" test. This test can fail. It can fail if the programmer/artist isn't really the person taking home the pay. Back in the day, it often was; but now many of them are just employees, so they might not care if you pirated the game and if they got paid barely living wages and worked 70 hour weeks, they might even applaud you. Same deal with music. This will depend somewhat on how the artists feel about their relationship with the recording industry. Any number of one-song phenoms, and even current artists with bad deals won't care, because they don't get the money anyway. Some artists who've already got their mansions won't care, and may even regard giving it away as philanthropy. Others still want their beans and aren't ready to set up "The Foundation", so they'd be pissed off.
Oh, and there is one other effective DRM and sensible, but it's only valid if the product relies on the network. Sell a userid, and prohibit multiple-logons. At that point, your enforcement mechanism is similar to an ISP abuse department. Legitimate buyers will call to find out why the service turned off, and get reminded to keep their password secure. Everybody else will shut up, or they might try but then the operator will say "you're not the registered user, piss off". Too many games are fun without network access for this technique to really impact the market.
I think I'll have to stand corrected on the impact of CAFE. Nevertheless, mileage does have some marketing impact, and if it could be increased 20% with a $100 device, I think they would have done it.
Sorry. This sounds way too much like "the tornado" and various other devices with magnets that you put around the fuel line. This stuff has been around for years, and it's pseudo-science. With pressure to meet CAFE standards, don't you think Detroit would have deployed such tech years ago if it really worked? Cue the Detroit-BigOil-AxisOfEvil conspiracy theorists in 3... 2... 1...
It's on Slashdot because Linus worked for them. IMHO, TMTA failed because they didn't make their product accessible to geeks like us. I've never heard Linus say anything about it; but it must have been frustrating to see VIA's mini-ITX boards selling in the $300-$500 range, while in the meantime the only way for the average Joe to access TMTA's chip was by purchasing a $1000+ "development system". Even that came only after a very long time. The management had a disruptive idea, but they kept trying to push it through channels. Big mistake. Disruptive ideas have to be put in the hands of people who want to be disruptive. The typical OEM simply wanted to pick the "I won't get fired..." processor, and TMTA's was not it.
Apple got started in the garage because they could buy processors in onesies and twosies at Fry's. That was never possible with TMTA's chips. So sad. If they had allowed geeks to write their own code-morphing firmware, there's not telling what we might have had.
...is that when a company goes bankrupt, holders of common get squat. Preferably, you learn this before you invest. Even more preferably, you learn not to invest in a company that's going bankrupt (toughest lesson to learn). The 2nd best lesson is learning when to take a loss. I lost $1000 on Worldcom. It was the best $1000 I ever lost, when you consider what would have happened if I had "held on, because I just knoooow it's coming back".
There are a lot of posts on this thread criticising Stanford. This is the first one that makes any sense.
Everybody knows seven ate nine and ten.
Tech makes up about 40% of the total line of business staff, but the whole LOB is only a tiny percentage of the larger company in the financial industry.
Don't worry. You should be laid off in the next few days when $large_financial_company goes bankrupt. Problem solved, partially. I understand that the homeless guys who use cardboard don't like the ones who use plastic sheeting and sticks.