I saw this one coming from the Obamma administration. Unfortunately the Democrats have always had strong links to the music / movie / TV industries, so any Democrat White House is gonna be their man on the hot seat. Any assumption otherwise would be like expecting a Republican White House not to appeal to their conservative Evangelical voter base, it's just not gonna happen. Bush made the Republicans unellectable for now, and being a two party state the Democrats were the default choice. Both parties are bought and paid for by corporate America too, which means the music / movie / TV industry have at least four years of fucking their customers even more than they could before.
I think Obamma can be good for the US in general, good for it's relations with other countries where Bush previously fucked them over but was never gonna be good in the whole RIAA / MPAA / DRM issue. At least you still have the courts and lawyers fighting the good fight, even if the asshats have a friend in the top seat. It's not like the President can send someone down to the court to deliver the verdict and bypass the judge.
"Now, Microsoft wants to help secure third-party applications that run on top of Windows."
Microsoft can't even secure their OWN stuff, what makes them think anyone can take them seriously when they try to secure third party stuff? Who knows, maybe it will make third party stuff more secure, which puts the blame back onto Microsoft for every exploit. It will just enhance the fact that the best way to make Windows secure is to use as little Microsoft software as you can on it. It may also backfire on them if people start wondering why they don't use their little tool to make Microsoft software more secure too. If they do, will the difference be noticeable? Will people get noticeably fewer malware infections per week?
Re:All censorship is about control of information
on
The Coming Censorship Wars
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· Score: 2, Insightful
I had a few more thoughts while making coffee and since/. won't allow editing of your own posts I'm forced to reply to mine, sorry.....it would have been in the post above if I chose not to publish before making coffee.
When people can set up as bloggers and gain credibility as a reliable source of information based on what they say, this has to be seen as dangerous to the mainstream. It can cut though a lot of money slushing around to get a controlled message out, only to find the controlled version is being dissected by someone with real credibility. When sites and forums offer an uncensored channel of feedback and reviews on something that the manufacturer won't (Apple I'm looking at you here) it can have a hefty impact countering the millions of dollars spent on polishing the message. Microsoft also fell foul of this with Vista being shown as the POS it is despite Microsoft trying to silence the dissenters and bribe the mainstream media. In Microsoft's case it meant that they shipped a dead product that nobody wanted. They had no choice after a while to advance Windows 7.
More and more people are starting to figure out that the last place you want to go for REAL information on a product is the manufacturers sites, as all you'll get there is a sales pitch designed to hype up the positives and not mention the negatives. Corporations know their messages are seen increasingly as sales pitches and are desperate to get the message out but from a source the consumer won't filter out. This is where the role of "independents" come in.
Before the internet these so called "independents" were still being controlled by advertising money etc. If Microsoft advertised in every PC magazine on the shelves, are any of them likely to expose one of Microsoft's crimes if they got a scoop on it? Now with the internet independents can establish themselves by their actions, and are not reliant on advertising by corporations who would rather shut their message down. This means there are REAL alternative voices drawing people away from their carefully controlled messages. Without the internet, if you got all your PC knowledge from magazines you'd be under the impression that Windows and PC's were the same thing, and that it was impossible to separate them.
The ban on online gambling in the US was never about protecting American citizens from harm, it was about protecting the Las Vegas profit streams as more and more American gamblers stayed at home and gambled online instead of visiting their establishments.
Before the internet the only way you could have a voice that told a story to a large amount of people was to publish it, which cost a LOT of money and had a gatekeeper (editor) to decide if it was suitable. If your story was exposing corruption within a corporation and that corporation sponsored that publishing house, you have zero chance of it getting published. Publishing is not just the cost of printing, but the distribution network to get it to a large number of widely spread out locations. You could print the story yourself which would cost a small fortune, then drive around delivering it yourself which would cost another small fortune in fuel bills. Then your next problem is how to recoup your money. That's just the print industry. TV and radio are even tighter controlled and much more expensive to break into.
The point is that before the internet the elite had control over the gatekeepers; the gatekeepers can now be bypassed by anyone with access to the internet.
Even when PC's were still very expensive and programs were still complicated, knowledge like how to put up a website was seen as having skills beyond the normal user, internet censorship wasn't really an issue. From there grew some things that weren't illegal at the time but gradually became illegal like publishing child porn. The only reason these types of things weren't illegal in the first place is that when the laws were written they didn't foresee this "internet thingy" and had to be amended to take it into account.
As PC's get cheaper and easier to use, as services pop up that make it easier and easier, not to mention cheaper or even free for average non-technical users to set up some web presence. Throw a stick and you find plenty of examples from MySpace, Facebook, WordPress etc. This means that all those voices who had knowledge of some wrongdoing now have a voice and are increasingly willing to use it. It means that everyone willing to try and scam someone from a safe distance now has a way to do it. It means that everyone with an agenda (good, bad or just sad) now has a way to organize and recruit.
As people spend more and more time with online services which they are interacting WITH other people instead of being a target being sprayed with adverts from corporations in the hopes of leeching some cash for shit they didn't really need. Not only does that take their time and loyalty away from the traditional media companies, it also exposes them to different stories than they see in the mainstream, or different versions of the same stories. That's not to say everything they see / hear / read online is true, but then again that is also true of the mainstream media corporations who they previously DID believe to be true......before the internet made them skeptical.
Without this free access to publishing online, sites like wikileaks would never have gotten than knowledge to the masses. By "the masses" we're not just talking one country, we're talking "the whole planet". Well the whole planet who have not censored them. Without the internet that knowledge would never come out, and the corporations involved would continue to get away with murder because they control the gatekeepers of the knowledge. Any who step out of line have work addresses which can be visited by some "re-educators" with baseball bats. The internet has changed all of that, it's no surprise that the elite are scrambling around trying to silence stuff, they have a LOT of skeletons in their closets which would seriously damage their liberty, money or their reputation which they've carefully managed over the years by controlling the gatekeepers. In short, they have lost control, internet censorship is the only response they have to regaining that control.
"Then is it just me that noticed a 90% tax rate bill actually get passed just a while ago; 90%, specifically to tax these bonuses. It looks like their anger is changing quite a bit."
Yep, populist damage control politics written on the back of a ciggy packet to appease the masses. Personally I'd like to have promised every fat cat with a huge failure bonus a full-lifetime tax inspection for their whole family and everyone associated with them.....with them paying the inspectors wages regardless of the outcome. Let's see if they have receipts for EVERYTHING they've ever done in their lives. Any attempt to transfer assets outside will trigger a tax evasion charge, if the party it's transfered to knows about it and don't report it, they are charged with assisting tax evasion, if they do know they are accessories which then triggers a full-lifetime tax inspection on them too. Any assets held in tax havens will be seen as tax evasion and presumed guilty until they open up the accounts fully to the IRS. Make sure it's a mandatory jail sentence for tax evasion. The only plea bargain the state would consider is transferring all their assets to the state to offset the tax burden for ordinary citizens who have been fucked over by them.
There are always ways to deal with scumbags, unfortunately, corporate scumbags are well connected with political scumbags so anything like this wouldn't even be considered. Yep, gotta love that "government of the people for the people" line.....boy did folks fall for that one.
There is the solution.....make a new format and make people re-buy all their old stuff in the new format. Make sure to release another "best of" with a couple of bonus tracks which are really just slightly different remixes thought to have been scrapped because they were shit. CD's are so yesterday.
I stand corrected, thanks for pointing that out. As a Linux user / second class citizen to Google I never had a virus compatible OS to test Chrome out on, so I never paid much attention to it. The link you gave was for Chromium which I'll give a try when it gets more mature now there are addon plans for it. I did notice that it was a proposal with bullet points which may or may not go anywhere but you have to give them a chance, and it's still early in the development. I was pleased with a couple of the points though; that it can run without Google services and that it mentions stuff like AdBlock and NoScript and privacy protection. Assuming they don't get derailed it's going to be worth checking back in on at a later date.
It does piss me off that Google's entire front facing business is hosted on Linux, yet Linux users are almost always overlooked when Google do new apps.....well, native apps anyway. Not that I'd use any official Google apps personally, it's just a bit rich not to simultaneously release cross platform for those who do want to use them.
You'd think that counting "one vote for party A" as "one vote for party A" without losing any would be a basic feature of a voting machine, regardless of the quality specified in advance. Maybe Diebold don't inhabit the same universe as the rest of us, maybe they live in "politico-world" along with the rest of the crooks we vote for. I didn't know they did ATMs until I read this article, now I'm wary of my own ATM.
Ain't an ATM well named for recycling money? Ass To Mouth also describes that same process.
Google must be split on the idea of addons for Chrome. Without addons Firefox users wouldn't be blocking Google adverts, blocking Google's Analaytics etc at every turn. I don't doubt that this was a major factor in deciding to build their own browser, which won't allow Google's data mining / advertising machine to be blocked. Unfortunately for them, the cat is out of the bag for a lot of users who now know it's possible, and insist that the browser they use be able to do it. Firefox can with addons, Opera can by editing a text file but Google really must be in a quandry over letting Chrome users do it. If they don't adapt to the addon system they will only ever be a minority to Firefox and Opera, if they do then AdBlock and NoScript will appear very quickly. If they then try the Apple approach and ban anything which competes with (or in this case, blocks) their own stuff, they will not only get bad PR which affects the "do no evil" image they've carefully promoted but will push people who converted early to Chrome under the assumption that addons will appear sometime down the line and that these features will appear when they're ready. How many of those will then switch back to their previous browser of choice if they know advert and script blocking ain't gonna be allowed.
Yep, you can't love without all the Google data mining tools tracking everything your browser does.....well, some can't. Personally it's the main reason I won't be touching the official Google Chrome on ANY platform. At least an Open Source port can be built without all that shit in it.
Oh yeah, I echo the calls for an AdBlock and NoScript type functionality in Chrome.
That's another part of the scare stories to try and convince the customer to buy an extended warranty. A repair costing £70 for a simple fault, where the 3 year warranty is £49.99. What is not said is that £50 of that £70 is the standard call out fee, the other £20 is a part costing about £3 in a DIY store and £17 for the 5 minutes the engineer took to fix it, something which would be simple if you took the panel off and had a look.
Sales / marketing is all about deception. Tell the customer anything to sell the illusion that they're getting a great deal, as long as you don't lie (in a form that can be proven) it's fine. If they are mislead that's all fine.....not unlike Bush & Blair over Iraq.
When you think about it it's odd. You spend 10 minutes talking to a customer about say a TV, telling them it's great quality, will last longer and therefor worth the price (you're trying to upsell them to a more pricey branded TV) and when you have them hooked......then comes the "well, it may break down, so would you like to pay more for a warranty?". I've had a few customers spot that and call me on it, which does leave you having to dance on the head of a pin to explain it away....usually by waffling....they listen for a while and think you actually answered them when you really didn't.
Extended warranties are great IF you need to use it, otherwise it's a waste of money. Like anything else, it's a gamble you take. Statistically the companies know that most people will never claim on them. It also comes down to what the item is, what price it is and what price the warranty is. I remember having to try and sell a £200 warranty on a £200 TV because the manager, assistant manager and senior sales assistant were all standing within earshot watching golf on the satellite TV display at the time. That was not a typo, the warranty is the same price as this TV (the cheapest 22" at the time). I'd have been reprimanded for not trying even though I knew it was a lost cause before I even opened my mouth.
We also had to try and convince the customer that company policy out ranked the law too. When the law states that the customer is entitled to a replacement, we had to tell them it was company policy to get it repaired. The reason was that if it was replaced, the item would be repaired as stock and returned to the store, who would then have to sell it as a "managers special" at a reduced price. Anything in boxes can be easily stacked and sold as new, anything in bubble wrap (sometimes with missing instructions etc) can't.
For those who don't know, EVERYTHING in the "managers special" section (or whatever that store calls it) HAS been repaired at least once. By law they are duty bound to list on the ticket that it has been repaired, what the fault was etc but that box wasn't allowed to be ticked at our company, you'd have to tick random other ones like "display model" or "old model".....never "refurbished" or "repaired". Since working there and having to deal with the engineers (I use the term loosely because "chimps with screwdrivers" is closer the mark) I would NEVER buy a "managers special" from any store, regardless of the discount, which is usually a pitiful 10% or 15%. You can guarantee it WILL break down inside the 1st year, and you will be back at the store to be told it will need to be sent away for a few weeks to get repaired (again). In all likelyhood it will continue to break after the original warranty has expired too.
Items are different, as are brands. Cars do cost a lot more to repair. Technically there is not that much difference between cars 10 years apart in terms of features, there is no public shaming if you don't have the latest car, which is very different in the gadgets market; Apple play this one to the Nth degree, where Apple people look down on other Apple people if they have last years iPod. Cell phones and games consoles are also prone to this. Anything where you're encouraged to drop something which is perfectly functional just because there is a new updated one on the market will NEVER be a candidate to even consider an extended warranty on. Cars are also your transport so losing it has knock on effects for your work / college / family. If you have an unexpected expensive repair to make and have no money it can be a nightmare. It's also the thing in which you trust the lives of yourself and your family / friends, which means it needs to get a higher priority than a gadget. If your DVD player is away for a couple of weeks (or you have to save for a new one) it's not the end of the world even though you may be used to watching a movie each night.
The other angle here is that the high profile gadgets like the iPod attract people who would steal them from you and some warranties cover accidental damage and theft. Personally I see people with white earplugs in the street and know they have an iPod. To me as a Linux / FOSS user that'd be a mark of shame as well as an invitation to get mugged and robbed.
Two other things I thought were dishonest is the numbering. We used to sell 3 & 5 year extended warranties. That's INCLUDING the 1st year from the manufacturers, so it's really 2 & 4 +1. Some stuff had 2 years from the manufacturers like Sony TV's (I think they're down to 1 now), so there would be cheaper warranties reflecting the 1 & 3 ye
This type of behavior is all to do with the profit margins. They have to cut their profit margins wafer thin on the products themselves due to competition, but extended warranties are mostly pure profit. Most people who buy an extended warranty on any product (not just PCs) won't need to claim against it within the time covered, and even if they do, no doubt the small print will have something which exempts that particular issue so they'll never have to actually pay out on it. The small minority who do have to claim and have the warranty pay out often find that one claim pays for the warranty.
The thing that many people don't take into account at the time of purchase, is that if the unit breaks in 4 years, do you want the same thing repaired, or do you want newer technology? If you bought an XBOX which needed repairing 3 years later, wouldn't you rather use that same warranty cash (in part) for an XBOX 360?
I used to work for an electrical retailer in the UK, and the pressure on sales staff to get a certain percentage of their sales figures in extended warranties and instore credit cards (where the compound interest rates were horrendous) was immense. They'd rather you had a little sale with a large percentage of the total price being a warranty, than a large value sale which was all product. They even tried to bully us into visiting the area manager to explain our lack of target achievement.....needless to say, I'm not there anymore. As a customer, it is handy to be able to cut the sales staff off with "I used to sell these things, I know the deal, forget it" when the "would you be interested in....." line comes up.
We got told we could offer discounts ONLY if an extended warranty was being bought at the same time, or they were opening an instore credit card. We were encouraged to just tick the "payment protection" box because it saves time explaining what it is, and it's more profit. I insisted in explaining to the customer as I felt like I was cheating them if I decided for them.
This type of behavior does go further than my ex-employers would go (at the time I worked there at least). It's gonna be interesting how many complaints / lawsuits they get from disgruntled customers who never realized something was fishy at the time but suddenly the penny drops that it happened to them. If this does get through courtrooms / inquiry where the allegations are proven true and they are punished for it, it'll be a hellava hit on their reputation for a while to come. Right now no companies can afford to lose customers.
Of course marketing departments around the world are disconnected from reality, their job is to convince themselves that the product they've just been told to sell is the best thing since the previous best thing they just finished selling. They have to avoid any connection with reality to do this. They have no connection to the product or it's customers, only the remit to make money. The only way they know how to do this is to put the product through market research data filters and increase the demographics that research says it will appeal to.
In this case they saw women as an untapped market who will be easily fooled by a name and logo change, while the downside is a petition from previous fans that will be treated like any other petition.....ignored. Will people suddenly stop watching because of a name and logo change? I'd side with the marketing people here in saying "no". People will decide for themselves whether to keep watching / paying on the content they show; if the schedules change too much then they will lose some and potentially gain others.
Like any other corporation who have to compete for customers, the only thing that will influence their decisions is the bottom line.....money. If they have a flood of cancellation all with the "reason for cancellation" as the same thing, only a boardroom full of imbeciles would ignore it and carry on regardless, in which case the shareholders would have something to say about it. They could bank on future subscriptions to make up the loss but that's a hard sell in the current climate.
And people wonder why I avoid everything Google like the plague when I possibly can. Sometimes I do need to use parts of their services, but I do everything possible to thwart their data mining. Use a Firefox addon called CustomizeGoogle, with settings to anonymize data, not send tracking data back to Google, block tracking on a service by service basis etc, as well as remember your search preferences. I also use AdBlock & NoScripts in addition to CSSLite for easy control over cookie prefs, which are set to be blocked by default and only allowed an exception when a site I need ot use demands them; in which case they get changed to temporary, then deleted afterwards.
I also use the term "ask" instead of Google when I tell people to search for stuff online, it has a privacy option as well as getting results from multiple search engines including Google. While Google is used as a word for "online searching" they will continue to do as they please, regardless of the users concerns. They have no real competition. How far do they need to go before people start to wake up and start avoiding them.
I also block their other service scripts from running, like AdSense, DoubleClick etc on every page I visit. I refuse to use them on sites I build. I will never install (or leave installed if an app has a deal with Google to install it by default) the Google Toolbar which admittedly has a few nice features.
How long will it be before an anti-malware company labels Google as a spyware provider? Will any dare, regardless of Google's policies? No doubt the first to do so will have their Google page rank mysteriously disappear.....completely coincidently of course. A bit like Microsoft lobbyists having a private meeting with a group of politicians who were going open source, only to go Microsoft after the meeting.....merely a coincidence.
Writing software to force people to buy new PC's has been an integral part of Microsoft's strategy for years, it's only recently begun to bite them on the ass with Vista and the credit crunch happening at the same time. People keep forgetting that around 80% of Windows sales come from new PCs pre-installed with the current version of Windows that Microsoft are giving customers the choice of.
Actually malware compatibility helps Microsoft sales. Around 80% of Windows sales are new PC's with Windows pre-installed. If Windows was properly secure and stable it wouldn't get hosed within 6 months and need wiping / reinstalling. Many people don't know how to do this so they either pay to get their Windows fixed, or assume they need a new PC.
On the "use another OS" point, I already do.....and I feel left out that I won't be able to experience this latest suspicious.exe. Sometimes I miss that fun.
Given the way Norton are running around trying to silence the reports I'd guess it is something they hoped they could slip in and nobody would notice, which in itself is a dodgy position for a company who's entire business is based on "trust us to protect your interests from dodgy.exe files". As a company who rely on the internet for customers (no internet? vastly reduced flow of malware) they really should know better than to assume they can silence a story like this by putting lots of staff on "deleting forum posts and replies" duty. Bloggers and sites like this one will be all over it, and like anything else, trying to cover it up will make you guilty to many observers who don't read the details or updates to the story.
Perhaps Norton have fallen for their own ego and have started to make assumptions on what they can get away with. How many people install Norton by choice? I'd bet most of their customers are new PC owners with shareware Norton which tells them after a while to "pay up or remove", and they don't know there are alternatives, let alone better and cheaper / free alternatives. Like AOL they'll have a high customer turnover as people gradually realize how bad their product is, and find (or be recommended) an alternative one. As long as there are plenty new chumps who are new to computers they will have new revenue to replace the disillusioned. When that starts to dry up, Norton are gonna be fucked, not unlike AOL.
The more complex the app, the more time and money it takes to bring it to market; which means the more money you need to make to break even, let alone start to make a profit. This is always going to tempt you to overvalue your app and turn potential buyers away because it's too expensive; which in turn adds to your woes. By comparison a simple, novel app which is quick to develop can turn a profit much quicker, at a cheaper price tag, which may bring in additional casual buyers.
All creative people have the problem of being too close to the subject to see it the way others do. If you've had the idea for something, spend weeks mulling over the details, working out how to bring it to life, then months of hard work actually turning it into something you have an emotional attachment to it. People who come across the final product don't have that attachment; all they have is another product on a shelf trying to attract their wallets. What you may see as novel, buyers may see as yet another clone with the twist so subtle that they don't see it, to don't give it a try to get a chance to see it. What you may find fun and addictive may bore people because it lacks something you can't see because you're too attached to it. Others can have a quick game of something and dismiss it as "meh", while you spent months of work on it. This is something all creative people have to accept as just part of the job. One man's trash is another man's treasure. You have to hook people REALLY fast to get them to stay with your product long enough to even start to appreciate it. If the screenshots look like a clone of an old idea with the twist not explained in a way that grabs them it'll often be skipped over.....specially if you charge too much for it.
I wonder how many developers only plan on making one game and sticking their entire career on it. The music and movie industry seem hell bent on legalizing that model with extensions to copyright laws. I'd imagine that most developers would release a game, then start working on another; unless their creativity does not match their coding abilities and they only have one good idea in them and have just released it....and wondering why the masses ain't bringing down the App Store servers with sales requests. I'd imagine (like any other creative career) that it's a cumulative sales of many titles which makes their living. Games you made 3 years ago may still sell a few copies a month in addition to the 3 or 4 others released since. Does an author stop getting paid royalties on a book after they release a new book? Of course not, it may not be a best seller but they still get paid for each sale.
Often people expect to get simple little puzzle games as part of their phone OS, not having to pay for it. Plenty of people will play them occasionally to pass the time if they're already on the phone but won't pay for it if it's not. Some will pay but the value will be limited; $5 does seem rather optimistic for this type of title.
If that basic thought process ain't enough to dry your market river to a trickle, we're going through a fuckin' recession right now, people ain't throwing money around on little things like this as they maybe would have a few years ago, they have all sorts of demands on their income, with everything rising in price and their jobs potentially on the line. People are holding onto their cash, holding on for bargains and sales to make planned purchases of essential goods, not buying stuff on a whim that they may only play from time to time; or even forget they even have installed.
Are these games DRM'd? With it being Apple I'd suspect the answer would be yes. If so, can the game be transferred to a new phone if they replace it, or are people expected to buy the game again at that point?
This always reminds me of some factual kids show I saw when I was young, where they explained that water is not actually wet; it's the effect it gives when it touches something that's wet.
I do agree though, DRM is totally pointless; it's only going to piss off the people who are actually buying your stuff, and force more of them to get illegal copies of stuff they bought so they can use it the way they want. After a while they may end up deciding not to reward companies who insist on using DRM infested shit.
The paid channels that have adverts; those adverts pay part of the cost, with you paying the rest in subscription fees. A subscription based channel with no adverts would cost a lot more, which in turn would reduce the numbers of people who still see it as value for money, which reduces the subscription numbers, which in turn means the same load is being covered by less people, which result in an even higher subscription fee.....and the cycle starts again. Many would love an advert free TV, but don't want to pay the extra premium prices for it.
DVR with ad skipping gives people the best of both worlds but for how long? If this becomes so widespread as to become the norm, why would companies pay big money to show adverts in popular programs if most people are blocking or skipping them? When they pull out, where does that revenue come from? They can either cut back on costs like new TV shows, or increase the subscription fees; which would be more popular with the viewers? Subscribers (not counting the BBC) can cancel (contract terms permitting) if they don't like what they're getting for the money they're paying.
It can indeed run in the users home directory, but it can't affect system wide settings. The worst it can do is destroy a users data. Malware is not written to damage only a users data, it wants access to the whole system, which means outside as well as inside the users home directory.
The reason most Windows users run as Administrator is that it's set up like that by OEMs. Windows has always edged on the "easy to use" side, which could be done in 2 ways:
1 - Educate users on the choices 2 - Make the users decisions for them in the background and don't ask them.
Microsoft have never entertained the option of educating their users, specially when there's money in repairing boxes hosed with malware....again. When they have expensive certifications to sell people the last thing they want is average users getting knowledgeable; it dries up other revenue streams. Microsoft have long relied on people just buying new PC's with fresh Windows licenses when their old PC is so clogged with malware. Teach the people to avoid infestations and their PC's last longer which means less sales. Around 80% of Windows sales come from new PC's with Windows pre-installed.
"User privilege separation is almost completely irrelevant to malware. A piece of malware can do basically anything it needs to from a regular user account."
Linux boxes can't install or uninstall anything as a regular user, they need root priv's to do that. Whether that's a su into a separate root account, or a sudo to elevate those commands to root, they still need to be root. Doing anything to the root file system, program binaries, system wide settings etc can only be done with root privs too. This is a huge defense mechanism that Windows does not have, it is very much central in protecting the system from malware.
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Let me get back to you when my sides stop hurting from laughing.
I saw this one coming from the Obamma administration. Unfortunately the Democrats have always had strong links to the music / movie / TV industries, so any Democrat White House is gonna be their man on the hot seat. Any assumption otherwise would be like expecting a Republican White House not to appeal to their conservative Evangelical voter base, it's just not gonna happen. Bush made the Republicans unellectable for now, and being a two party state the Democrats were the default choice. Both parties are bought and paid for by corporate America too, which means the music / movie / TV industry have at least four years of fucking their customers even more than they could before.
I think Obamma can be good for the US in general, good for it's relations with other countries where Bush previously fucked them over but was never gonna be good in the whole RIAA / MPAA / DRM issue. At least you still have the courts and lawyers fighting the good fight, even if the asshats have a friend in the top seat. It's not like the President can send someone down to the court to deliver the verdict and bypass the judge.
...only see Windows.
"Now, Microsoft wants to help secure third-party applications that run on top of Windows."
Microsoft can't even secure their OWN stuff, what makes them think anyone can take them seriously when they try to secure third party stuff? Who knows, maybe it will make third party stuff more secure, which puts the blame back onto Microsoft for every exploit. It will just enhance the fact that the best way to make Windows secure is to use as little Microsoft software as you can on it. It may also backfire on them if people start wondering why they don't use their little tool to make Microsoft software more secure too. If they do, will the difference be noticeable? Will people get noticeably fewer malware infections per week?
I had a few more thoughts while making coffee and since /. won't allow editing of your own posts I'm forced to reply to mine, sorry.....it would have been in the post above if I chose not to publish before making coffee.
When people can set up as bloggers and gain credibility as a reliable source of information based on what they say, this has to be seen as dangerous to the mainstream. It can cut though a lot of money slushing around to get a controlled message out, only to find the controlled version is being dissected by someone with real credibility. When sites and forums offer an uncensored channel of feedback and reviews on something that the manufacturer won't (Apple I'm looking at you here) it can have a hefty impact countering the millions of dollars spent on polishing the message. Microsoft also fell foul of this with Vista being shown as the POS it is despite Microsoft trying to silence the dissenters and bribe the mainstream media. In Microsoft's case it meant that they shipped a dead product that nobody wanted. They had no choice after a while to advance Windows 7.
More and more people are starting to figure out that the last place you want to go for REAL information on a product is the manufacturers sites, as all you'll get there is a sales pitch designed to hype up the positives and not mention the negatives. Corporations know their messages are seen increasingly as sales pitches and are desperate to get the message out but from a source the consumer won't filter out. This is where the role of "independents" come in.
Before the internet these so called "independents" were still being controlled by advertising money etc. If Microsoft advertised in every PC magazine on the shelves, are any of them likely to expose one of Microsoft's crimes if they got a scoop on it? Now with the internet independents can establish themselves by their actions, and are not reliant on advertising by corporations who would rather shut their message down. This means there are REAL alternative voices drawing people away from their carefully controlled messages. Without the internet, if you got all your PC knowledge from magazines you'd be under the impression that Windows and PC's were the same thing, and that it was impossible to separate them.
The ban on online gambling in the US was never about protecting American citizens from harm, it was about protecting the Las Vegas profit streams as more and more American gamblers stayed at home and gambled online instead of visiting their establishments.
Before the internet the only way you could have a voice that told a story to a large amount of people was to publish it, which cost a LOT of money and had a gatekeeper (editor) to decide if it was suitable. If your story was exposing corruption within a corporation and that corporation sponsored that publishing house, you have zero chance of it getting published. Publishing is not just the cost of printing, but the distribution network to get it to a large number of widely spread out locations. You could print the story yourself which would cost a small fortune, then drive around delivering it yourself which would cost another small fortune in fuel bills. Then your next problem is how to recoup your money. That's just the print industry. TV and radio are even tighter controlled and much more expensive to break into.
The point is that before the internet the elite had control over the gatekeepers; the gatekeepers can now be bypassed by anyone with access to the internet.
Even when PC's were still very expensive and programs were still complicated, knowledge like how to put up a website was seen as having skills beyond the normal user, internet censorship wasn't really an issue. From there grew some things that weren't illegal at the time but gradually became illegal like publishing child porn. The only reason these types of things weren't illegal in the first place is that when the laws were written they didn't foresee this "internet thingy" and had to be amended to take it into account.
As PC's get cheaper and easier to use, as services pop up that make it easier and easier, not to mention cheaper or even free for average non-technical users to set up some web presence. Throw a stick and you find plenty of examples from MySpace, Facebook, WordPress etc. This means that all those voices who had knowledge of some wrongdoing now have a voice and are increasingly willing to use it. It means that everyone willing to try and scam someone from a safe distance now has a way to do it. It means that everyone with an agenda (good, bad or just sad) now has a way to organize and recruit.
As people spend more and more time with online services which they are interacting WITH other people instead of being a target being sprayed with adverts from corporations in the hopes of leeching some cash for shit they didn't really need. Not only does that take their time and loyalty away from the traditional media companies, it also exposes them to different stories than they see in the mainstream, or different versions of the same stories. That's not to say everything they see / hear / read online is true, but then again that is also true of the mainstream media corporations who they previously DID believe to be true......before the internet made them skeptical.
Without this free access to publishing online, sites like wikileaks would never have gotten than knowledge to the masses. By "the masses" we're not just talking one country, we're talking "the whole planet". Well the whole planet who have not censored them. Without the internet that knowledge would never come out, and the corporations involved would continue to get away with murder because they control the gatekeepers of the knowledge. Any who step out of line have work addresses which can be visited by some "re-educators" with baseball bats. The internet has changed all of that, it's no surprise that the elite are scrambling around trying to silence stuff, they have a LOT of skeletons in their closets which would seriously damage their liberty, money or their reputation which they've carefully managed over the years by controlling the gatekeepers. In short, they have lost control, internet censorship is the only response they have to regaining that control.
"Then is it just me that noticed a 90% tax rate bill actually get passed just a while ago; 90%, specifically to tax these bonuses. It looks like their anger is changing quite a bit."
Yep, populist damage control politics written on the back of a ciggy packet to appease the masses. Personally I'd like to have promised every fat cat with a huge failure bonus a full-lifetime tax inspection for their whole family and everyone associated with them.....with them paying the inspectors wages regardless of the outcome. Let's see if they have receipts for EVERYTHING they've ever done in their lives. Any attempt to transfer assets outside will trigger a tax evasion charge, if the party it's transfered to knows about it and don't report it, they are charged with assisting tax evasion, if they do know they are accessories which then triggers a full-lifetime tax inspection on them too. Any assets held in tax havens will be seen as tax evasion and presumed guilty until they open up the accounts fully to the IRS. Make sure it's a mandatory jail sentence for tax evasion. The only plea bargain the state would consider is transferring all their assets to the state to offset the tax burden for ordinary citizens who have been fucked over by them.
There are always ways to deal with scumbags, unfortunately, corporate scumbags are well connected with political scumbags so anything like this wouldn't even be considered. Yep, gotta love that "government of the people for the people" line.....boy did folks fall for that one.
I knew I shoulda put the sarcasm tags into my comment......ah well, you live; you learn......well, you live at any rate.
There is the solution.....make a new format and make people re-buy all their old stuff in the new format. Make sure to release another "best of" with a couple of bonus tracks which are really just slightly different remixes thought to have been scrapped because they were shit. CD's are so yesterday.
I stand corrected, thanks for pointing that out. As a Linux user / second class citizen to Google I never had a virus compatible OS to test Chrome out on, so I never paid much attention to it. The link you gave was for Chromium which I'll give a try when it gets more mature now there are addon plans for it. I did notice that it was a proposal with bullet points which may or may not go anywhere but you have to give them a chance, and it's still early in the development. I was pleased with a couple of the points though; that it can run without Google services and that it mentions stuff like AdBlock and NoScript and privacy protection. Assuming they don't get derailed it's going to be worth checking back in on at a later date.
It does piss me off that Google's entire front facing business is hosted on Linux, yet Linux users are almost always overlooked when Google do new apps.....well, native apps anyway. Not that I'd use any official Google apps personally, it's just a bit rich not to simultaneously release cross platform for those who do want to use them.
You'd think that counting "one vote for party A" as "one vote for party A" without losing any would be a basic feature of a voting machine, regardless of the quality specified in advance. Maybe Diebold don't inhabit the same universe as the rest of us, maybe they live in "politico-world" along with the rest of the crooks we vote for. I didn't know they did ATMs until I read this article, now I'm wary of my own ATM.
Ain't an ATM well named for recycling money? Ass To Mouth also describes that same process.
Google must be split on the idea of addons for Chrome. Without addons Firefox users wouldn't be blocking Google adverts, blocking Google's Analaytics etc at every turn. I don't doubt that this was a major factor in deciding to build their own browser, which won't allow Google's data mining / advertising machine to be blocked. Unfortunately for them, the cat is out of the bag for a lot of users who now know it's possible, and insist that the browser they use be able to do it. Firefox can with addons, Opera can by editing a text file but Google really must be in a quandry over letting Chrome users do it. If they don't adapt to the addon system they will only ever be a minority to Firefox and Opera, if they do then AdBlock and NoScript will appear very quickly. If they then try the Apple approach and ban anything which competes with (or in this case, blocks) their own stuff, they will not only get bad PR which affects the "do no evil" image they've carefully promoted but will push people who converted early to Chrome under the assumption that addons will appear sometime down the line and that these features will appear when they're ready. How many of those will then switch back to their previous browser of choice if they know advert and script blocking ain't gonna be allowed.
Yep, you can't love without all the Google data mining tools tracking everything your browser does.....well, some can't. Personally it's the main reason I won't be touching the official Google Chrome on ANY platform. At least an Open Source port can be built without all that shit in it.
Oh yeah, I echo the calls for an AdBlock and NoScript type functionality in Chrome.
That's another part of the scare stories to try and convince the customer to buy an extended warranty. A repair costing £70 for a simple fault, where the 3 year warranty is £49.99. What is not said is that £50 of that £70 is the standard call out fee, the other £20 is a part costing about £3 in a DIY store and £17 for the 5 minutes the engineer took to fix it, something which would be simple if you took the panel off and had a look.
Sales / marketing is all about deception. Tell the customer anything to sell the illusion that they're getting a great deal, as long as you don't lie (in a form that can be proven) it's fine. If they are mislead that's all fine.....not unlike Bush & Blair over Iraq.
When you think about it it's odd. You spend 10 minutes talking to a customer about say a TV, telling them it's great quality, will last longer and therefor worth the price (you're trying to upsell them to a more pricey branded TV) and when you have them hooked......then comes the "well, it may break down, so would you like to pay more for a warranty?". I've had a few customers spot that and call me on it, which does leave you having to dance on the head of a pin to explain it away....usually by waffling....they listen for a while and think you actually answered them when you really didn't.
Extended warranties are great IF you need to use it, otherwise it's a waste of money. Like anything else, it's a gamble you take. Statistically the companies know that most people will never claim on them. It also comes down to what the item is, what price it is and what price the warranty is. I remember having to try and sell a £200 warranty on a £200 TV because the manager, assistant manager and senior sales assistant were all standing within earshot watching golf on the satellite TV display at the time. That was not a typo, the warranty is the same price as this TV (the cheapest 22" at the time). I'd have been reprimanded for not trying even though I knew it was a lost cause before I even opened my mouth.
We also had to try and convince the customer that company policy out ranked the law too. When the law states that the customer is entitled to a replacement, we had to tell them it was company policy to get it repaired. The reason was that if it was replaced, the item would be repaired as stock and returned to the store, who would then have to sell it as a "managers special" at a reduced price. Anything in boxes can be easily stacked and sold as new, anything in bubble wrap (sometimes with missing instructions etc) can't.
For those who don't know, EVERYTHING in the "managers special" section (or whatever that store calls it) HAS been repaired at least once. By law they are duty bound to list on the ticket that it has been repaired, what the fault was etc but that box wasn't allowed to be ticked at our company, you'd have to tick random other ones like "display model" or "old model".....never "refurbished" or "repaired". Since working there and having to deal with the engineers (I use the term loosely because "chimps with screwdrivers" is closer the mark) I would NEVER buy a "managers special" from any store, regardless of the discount, which is usually a pitiful 10% or 15%. You can guarantee it WILL break down inside the 1st year, and you will be back at the store to be told it will need to be sent away for a few weeks to get repaired (again). In all likelyhood it will continue to break after the original warranty has expired too.
Items are different, as are brands. Cars do cost a lot more to repair. Technically there is not that much difference between cars 10 years apart in terms of features, there is no public shaming if you don't have the latest car, which is very different in the gadgets market; Apple play this one to the Nth degree, where Apple people look down on other Apple people if they have last years iPod. Cell phones and games consoles are also prone to this. Anything where you're encouraged to drop something which is perfectly functional just because there is a new updated one on the market will NEVER be a candidate to even consider an extended warranty on. Cars are also your transport so losing it has knock on effects for your work / college / family. If you have an unexpected expensive repair to make and have no money it can be a nightmare. It's also the thing in which you trust the lives of yourself and your family / friends, which means it needs to get a higher priority than a gadget. If your DVD player is away for a couple of weeks (or you have to save for a new one) it's not the end of the world even though you may be used to watching a movie each night.
The other angle here is that the high profile gadgets like the iPod attract people who would steal them from you and some warranties cover accidental damage and theft. Personally I see people with white earplugs in the street and know they have an iPod. To me as a Linux / FOSS user that'd be a mark of shame as well as an invitation to get mugged and robbed.
Two other things I thought were dishonest is the numbering. We used to sell 3 & 5 year extended warranties. That's INCLUDING the 1st year from the manufacturers, so it's really 2 & 4 +1. Some stuff had 2 years from the manufacturers like Sony TV's (I think they're down to 1 now), so there would be cheaper warranties reflecting the 1 & 3 ye
This type of behavior is all to do with the profit margins. They have to cut their profit margins wafer thin on the products themselves due to competition, but extended warranties are mostly pure profit. Most people who buy an extended warranty on any product (not just PCs) won't need to claim against it within the time covered, and even if they do, no doubt the small print will have something which exempts that particular issue so they'll never have to actually pay out on it. The small minority who do have to claim and have the warranty pay out often find that one claim pays for the warranty.
The thing that many people don't take into account at the time of purchase, is that if the unit breaks in 4 years, do you want the same thing repaired, or do you want newer technology? If you bought an XBOX which needed repairing 3 years later, wouldn't you rather use that same warranty cash (in part) for an XBOX 360?
I used to work for an electrical retailer in the UK, and the pressure on sales staff to get a certain percentage of their sales figures in extended warranties and instore credit cards (where the compound interest rates were horrendous) was immense. They'd rather you had a little sale with a large percentage of the total price being a warranty, than a large value sale which was all product. They even tried to bully us into visiting the area manager to explain our lack of target achievement.....needless to say, I'm not there anymore. As a customer, it is handy to be able to cut the sales staff off with "I used to sell these things, I know the deal, forget it" when the "would you be interested in....." line comes up.
We got told we could offer discounts ONLY if an extended warranty was being bought at the same time, or they were opening an instore credit card. We were encouraged to just tick the "payment protection" box because it saves time explaining what it is, and it's more profit. I insisted in explaining to the customer as I felt like I was cheating them if I decided for them.
This type of behavior does go further than my ex-employers would go (at the time I worked there at least). It's gonna be interesting how many complaints / lawsuits they get from disgruntled customers who never realized something was fishy at the time but suddenly the penny drops that it happened to them. If this does get through courtrooms / inquiry where the allegations are proven true and they are punished for it, it'll be a hellava hit on their reputation for a while to come. Right now no companies can afford to lose customers.
Of course marketing departments around the world are disconnected from reality, their job is to convince themselves that the product they've just been told to sell is the best thing since the previous best thing they just finished selling. They have to avoid any connection with reality to do this. They have no connection to the product or it's customers, only the remit to make money. The only way they know how to do this is to put the product through market research data filters and increase the demographics that research says it will appeal to.
In this case they saw women as an untapped market who will be easily fooled by a name and logo change, while the downside is a petition from previous fans that will be treated like any other petition.....ignored. Will people suddenly stop watching because of a name and logo change? I'd side with the marketing people here in saying "no". People will decide for themselves whether to keep watching / paying on the content they show; if the schedules change too much then they will lose some and potentially gain others.
Like any other corporation who have to compete for customers, the only thing that will influence their decisions is the bottom line.....money. If they have a flood of cancellation all with the "reason for cancellation" as the same thing, only a boardroom full of imbeciles would ignore it and carry on regardless, in which case the shareholders would have something to say about it. They could bank on future subscriptions to make up the loss but that's a hard sell in the current climate.
And people wonder why I avoid everything Google like the plague when I possibly can. Sometimes I do need to use parts of their services, but I do everything possible to thwart their data mining. Use a Firefox addon called CustomizeGoogle, with settings to anonymize data, not send tracking data back to Google, block tracking on a service by service basis etc, as well as remember your search preferences. I also use AdBlock & NoScripts in addition to CSSLite for easy control over cookie prefs, which are set to be blocked by default and only allowed an exception when a site I need ot use demands them; in which case they get changed to temporary, then deleted afterwards.
I also use the term "ask" instead of Google when I tell people to search for stuff online, it has a privacy option as well as getting results from multiple search engines including Google. While Google is used as a word for "online searching" they will continue to do as they please, regardless of the users concerns. They have no real competition. How far do they need to go before people start to wake up and start avoiding them.
I also block their other service scripts from running, like AdSense, DoubleClick etc on every page I visit. I refuse to use them on sites I build. I will never install (or leave installed if an app has a deal with Google to install it by default) the Google Toolbar which admittedly has a few nice features.
How long will it be before an anti-malware company labels Google as a spyware provider? Will any dare, regardless of Google's policies? No doubt the first to do so will have their Google page rank mysteriously disappear.....completely coincidently of course. A bit like Microsoft lobbyists having a private meeting with a group of politicians who were going open source, only to go Microsoft after the meeting.....merely a coincidence.
Writing software to force people to buy new PC's has been an integral part of Microsoft's strategy for years, it's only recently begun to bite them on the ass with Vista and the credit crunch happening at the same time. People keep forgetting that around 80% of Windows sales come from new PCs pre-installed with the current version of Windows that Microsoft are giving customers the choice of.
Actually malware compatibility helps Microsoft sales. Around 80% of Windows sales are new PC's with Windows pre-installed. If Windows was properly secure and stable it wouldn't get hosed within 6 months and need wiping / reinstalling. Many people don't know how to do this so they either pay to get their Windows fixed, or assume they need a new PC.
On the "use another OS" point, I already do.....and I feel left out that I won't be able to experience this latest suspicious .exe. Sometimes I miss that fun.
Given the way Norton are running around trying to silence the reports I'd guess it is something they hoped they could slip in and nobody would notice, which in itself is a dodgy position for a company who's entire business is based on "trust us to protect your interests from dodgy .exe files". As a company who rely on the internet for customers (no internet? vastly reduced flow of malware) they really should know better than to assume they can silence a story like this by putting lots of staff on "deleting forum posts and replies" duty. Bloggers and sites like this one will be all over it, and like anything else, trying to cover it up will make you guilty to many observers who don't read the details or updates to the story.
Perhaps Norton have fallen for their own ego and have started to make assumptions on what they can get away with. How many people install Norton by choice? I'd bet most of their customers are new PC owners with shareware Norton which tells them after a while to "pay up or remove", and they don't know there are alternatives, let alone better and cheaper / free alternatives. Like AOL they'll have a high customer turnover as people gradually realize how bad their product is, and find (or be recommended) an alternative one. As long as there are plenty new chumps who are new to computers they will have new revenue to replace the disillusioned. When that starts to dry up, Norton are gonna be fucked, not unlike AOL.
The more complex the app, the more time and money it takes to bring it to market; which means the more money you need to make to break even, let alone start to make a profit. This is always going to tempt you to overvalue your app and turn potential buyers away because it's too expensive; which in turn adds to your woes. By comparison a simple, novel app which is quick to develop can turn a profit much quicker, at a cheaper price tag, which may bring in additional casual buyers.
All creative people have the problem of being too close to the subject to see it the way others do. If you've had the idea for something, spend weeks mulling over the details, working out how to bring it to life, then months of hard work actually turning it into something you have an emotional attachment to it. People who come across the final product don't have that attachment; all they have is another product on a shelf trying to attract their wallets. What you may see as novel, buyers may see as yet another clone with the twist so subtle that they don't see it, to don't give it a try to get a chance to see it. What you may find fun and addictive may bore people because it lacks something you can't see because you're too attached to it. Others can have a quick game of something and dismiss it as "meh", while you spent months of work on it. This is something all creative people have to accept as just part of the job. One man's trash is another man's treasure. You have to hook people REALLY fast to get them to stay with your product long enough to even start to appreciate it. If the screenshots look like a clone of an old idea with the twist not explained in a way that grabs them it'll often be skipped over.....specially if you charge too much for it.
I wonder how many developers only plan on making one game and sticking their entire career on it. The music and movie industry seem hell bent on legalizing that model with extensions to copyright laws. I'd imagine that most developers would release a game, then start working on another; unless their creativity does not match their coding abilities and they only have one good idea in them and have just released it....and wondering why the masses ain't bringing down the App Store servers with sales requests. I'd imagine (like any other creative career) that it's a cumulative sales of many titles which makes their living. Games you made 3 years ago may still sell a few copies a month in addition to the 3 or 4 others released since. Does an author stop getting paid royalties on a book after they release a new book? Of course not, it may not be a best seller but they still get paid for each sale.
Often people expect to get simple little puzzle games as part of their phone OS, not having to pay for it. Plenty of people will play them occasionally to pass the time if they're already on the phone but won't pay for it if it's not. Some will pay but the value will be limited; $5 does seem rather optimistic for this type of title.
If that basic thought process ain't enough to dry your market river to a trickle, we're going through a fuckin' recession right now, people ain't throwing money around on little things like this as they maybe would have a few years ago, they have all sorts of demands on their income, with everything rising in price and their jobs potentially on the line. People are holding onto their cash, holding on for bargains and sales to make planned purchases of essential goods, not buying stuff on a whim that they may only play from time to time; or even forget they even have installed.
Are these games DRM'd? With it being Apple I'd suspect the answer would be yes. If so, can the game be transferred to a new phone if they replace it, or are people expected to buy the game again at that point?
This always reminds me of some factual kids show I saw when I was young, where they explained that water is not actually wet; it's the effect it gives when it touches something that's wet.
I do agree though, DRM is totally pointless; it's only going to piss off the people who are actually buying your stuff, and force more of them to get illegal copies of stuff they bought so they can use it the way they want. After a while they may end up deciding not to reward companies who insist on using DRM infested shit.
The paid channels that have adverts; those adverts pay part of the cost, with you paying the rest in subscription fees. A subscription based channel with no adverts would cost a lot more, which in turn would reduce the numbers of people who still see it as value for money, which reduces the subscription numbers, which in turn means the same load is being covered by less people, which result in an even higher subscription fee.....and the cycle starts again. Many would love an advert free TV, but don't want to pay the extra premium prices for it.
DVR with ad skipping gives people the best of both worlds but for how long? If this becomes so widespread as to become the norm, why would companies pay big money to show adverts in popular programs if most people are blocking or skipping them? When they pull out, where does that revenue come from? They can either cut back on costs like new TV shows, or increase the subscription fees; which would be more popular with the viewers? Subscribers (not counting the BBC) can cancel (contract terms permitting) if they don't like what they're getting for the money they're paying.
It can indeed run in the users home directory, but it can't affect system wide settings. The worst it can do is destroy a users data. Malware is not written to damage only a users data, it wants access to the whole system, which means outside as well as inside the users home directory.
The reason most Windows users run as Administrator is that it's set up like that by OEMs. Windows has always edged on the "easy to use" side, which could be done in 2 ways:
1 - Educate users on the choices
2 - Make the users decisions for them in the background and don't ask them.
Microsoft have never entertained the option of educating their users, specially when there's money in repairing boxes hosed with malware....again. When they have expensive certifications to sell people the last thing they want is average users getting knowledgeable; it dries up other revenue streams. Microsoft have long relied on people just buying new PC's with fresh Windows licenses when their old PC is so clogged with malware. Teach the people to avoid infestations and their PC's last longer which means less sales. Around 80% of Windows sales come from new PC's with Windows pre-installed.
"User privilege separation is almost completely irrelevant to malware. A piece of malware can do basically anything it needs to from a regular user account."
Linux boxes can't install or uninstall anything as a regular user, they need root priv's to do that. Whether that's a su into a separate root account, or a sudo to elevate those commands to root, they still need to be root. Doing anything to the root file system, program binaries, system wide settings etc can only be done with root privs too. This is a huge defense mechanism that Windows does not have, it is very much central in protecting the system from malware.