What do chinese knockoff shops have to do with anything? Mainstream electronics companies are perfectly capable of dealing with this. And they have every incentive to manufacture in mass quantities. This kind of business doesn't make money selling in small quantities at high prices. This is Henry Ford economics.
"Supply and demand" is a principle; it's not a law of nature. Yes, supply and demand are two important factors in setting prices, but they're not the only factors. The cost of manufacturing something is a factor too.
Please. Do you consider DVDs to be a monopoly? How about CDs? A standard format is not a "monopoly", not unless the format is proprietary.
Here's what's going on: both Blu Ray and HD-DVD players were being sold at a minimal profit — a loss, even — because both sides were trying to grab market share. End of format war, end of need to grab market share.
The problem has been that everybody with any brains has been waiting for the format war to end before plunking down their hard-earned cash. When consumers don't buy, sales are low, and when sales are low, there are no economies of scale. No economies of scale means high manufacturing costs, and thus high retail costs — unless the product is being sold at a loss.
So of course prices go up. But that's a short term thing. Right now, every consumer electronics company on the planet is gearing up to manufacture Blu Ray players by the million. When you manufacture something on that scale (especially electronics, where the fundamental technology is subject to Moore's Law) prices crash.
In a year or two, Blu Ray players will be as cheap as DVD players are now.
Yes, it's hypocritical of Spitzer to enforce prostitution laws he was himself violating. The secretary thing is a whole different matter.
I don't know what the story was there (can't seem to find this detail online) but I very much doubt that Grasso was prosecuted for "sleeping with his own secretary." Having sex isn't illegal in itself (at least not in New York!). Having sex with one of your own employees might open you up to sexual harassment or discrimination charges, but not without the question of the sexual partner. Was Grasso perhaps using his position to get his lover a better salary or perqs? That's a corrupt practice, and certainly deserves prosecution.
Spitzer wasn't just interested in prosecuting corrupt businesses for fraud. He was interested in crushing those businessmen and women in every way possible. Show me a case where Spitzer went after someone for trivial or imaginary offenses and I'll agree with you. But going after a subject with every violation you can document is not vindictive — it's standard prosecutorial practice. No sane lawyer goes into court without every legal weapon he can dig up.
Finding fault with Spitzer as a person (even if it headn't made it horribly easy!) doesn't change the fact that he was trying to right some really bad wrongs. We've had 8 years of big business basically getting away with almost anything, at least until their crimes are so blatant they can't be ignored. It's time for that to stop.
Spitzer may have been an opportunist, but in a democracy, opportunism is what gets the job done.
You think there's no connection between moralistic politicians and moralistic laws?
Then again, Spitzer's crusades, however self-serving or hypocritical, were aimed at corrupt businesses that were ripping off their investors and customers. That's not moralism, that's just expecting people to play by the rules. That stuff still needs doing, even if one of its leaders turns out to have Clinton Pants Disorder.
Bah. Do you do everything for your cats that you do for your children? Would you go deep into debt to keep one alive? Maybe you'd risk your life to save theirs, but would you expect somebody else to do so?
When you say, "they're family members, not inanimate objects", you're making a false dichotomy. There are many gradations of being between rocks and humans. It's wrong to hurt any living being unnecessarily, but no matter how kind you are to them, they're not people.
Gah. Garfield is beneath the notice of serious cat lovers. I actually liked the strip when it was actually about an obnoxious cat who did feline things. But after a while they ran out of material, so they did a Snoopy, making him walk on his hind legs and develop a taste for lasagna. Lame.
And beating up the neighborhood dogs is just gravy - keeps them from pooping in your yard, or barking at night, that sort of thing.
Keep the dogs from barking? Hah! Nothing like an overbold-cat to get dogs excited.
Once I was out walking with the Big Orange Beast at my heels, and we both saw a woman out walking her dog. The cat immediate ran behind a rock, waited until they came by, then jumped out and bashed the poor dog on the nose. I should have apologized, but I couldn't help laughing. I'm sure the lady thought we were both evil beings.
Which reminds us that the ICanHasCheezburger feed provides many of the same benefits as actually owning a cat!
Of course, cats have their downside. I once had this huge 20-pound orange beast who destroyed my stereo with piss, routinely bullied all the neighborhood dogs, almost gave me phlebitis by sleeping on my legs at night, and would bite if I tried to stand up before he was done with this lap nap.
IANAL. I'm not even sure it's illegal to be a peeping tom any more. But if somebody were to climb up a ladder to peer though that space in your window, would you, or would you not consider your privacy violated? I think most people would.
You're something like the 5th person to make pretty much the same argument in response to my post. The logic seems to go, "if it's not properly protected, it's fair game". That's not the way ethics or the law works. These assume you have a right to privacy, and to be secure in your possessions and person. These rights don't magically disappear because you're sloppy in securing them.
Dude, people have gone to jail for using accounts with no password.
The owner of the URL obviously considers it a secret. You're claiming that because it's a URL they can't. I'd check with a lawyer before trying that in the real world.
Apparently you know more law than the lawyers involved in this. And also the various prosecutors who have put people in jail for logging into unprotected accounts. Where did you get your degree?
I don't know the whole story, but it isn't as weird as it sounds. The Soviet government shut down because it had no cash. Even in 1988, they were in financial straits. Selling off weapons meant for an atomic war that never happened seems an obvious way to raise cash.
As for the Reagan/Bush purchase, they didn't do it to save money. They did it to keep all that poorly-guarded bomb material out of the black market.
Sorry, no. The planet is named after the god, the element is named after the planet. You might have noticed that uranium and neptunium are also named after planets.
Of course you shouldn't be surprised if a poorly-secured item is stolen. That doesn't change the fact that theft is illegal. The fact that the stolen item was easy to steal is not a mitigating factor.
In brief, security through obscurity is very bad security, but it's still security, and breaking somebody's security is illegal.
My first thought about the C&D letter is that it's stupidly counterproductive, because even if the recipient complies, the publicity will actually make more people aware of the URL than would otherwise. But then I realized that if management didn't send out the C&D letter, they'd catch grief from their stakeholders for "lack of fiduciary responsibility" or whatever. They could even get sued themselves. C&D letters are just one of those legal rituals big companies have to do, no matter how silly the context. Remember the New Zork Times?
What is stupid is thinking that nobody would find out about this URL.
I never heard that, but it does make sense. It kind of parallels the role Lindbergh later played in federal approval of the DC-3. The design eliminated one of the standard three engines in order to reduce vibration in the fuselage. Many experts considered this unsafe. Lindbergh's idea: see if the plane could safely fly across the continental divide on only one engine. It could, and that resolved the issue.
The card maker wants to be Windows only so don't buy it. Sooner or later hardware vendors will have to come around. My experience asking people about this for nearly two years tells me 100% that you are wrong. I didn't write that. In fact, I agree with you on this point.
Scams always have an element of social engineering. And they succeed far more when users are left ignorant and unable to make the right choice. By all means, inform the user. I submit that current technology does a lousy job of informing the user.
You forget that, and all your fancy technology just gives you a false sense of security. Oh, so we are railing against "fancy technology" on Slashdot, are we? Well, you are using a computer and a web browser to say that, buster, so you sound like a hypocrite. I'm not railing against technology, I'm railing against the false sense of security technology can bring. To quote Bruce Schneier, security is a process, not a product.
As long as we getting personal: you sound like a jerk.
What I want is a certificate scheme that verifies not just that you're access a certified site, but automatically displays who the certificate was issued to. That feature would not only help prevent phishing, it would provide a mechanism for identifying email users. The address + lock doesn't just show that you are accessing "a certified site", it shows that the actual address being displayed is itself cryptographically signed and has connected you to the actual physical server(s) the registrant intended. i.e. the address itself is a keyed identity that is proof against tampering. So what? It doesn't bleeping do the job. That's not my opinion, that's consensus of every serious security expert.
Here's the procedure the user is supposed to follow:
Verify the presence of the lock icon.
Look at the url, and parse out the part the identifies the domain name of the site.
Match the domain name against the domain name that you found out somehow is the official one for the owner of the site.
Even if people could remember to do all this, it assumes too much technical skill. This is a classical case of a techie designing a procedure for use by non-techie, and and totally failing. You or I call figure out what all that crap in the address bar means at a glance. Most people cannot. The whole protocol needs to be redesigned to communicate in a simpler, clearer manner, and that's actually happening.
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What do chinese knockoff shops have to do with anything? Mainstream electronics companies are perfectly capable of dealing with this. And they have every incentive to manufacture in mass quantities. This kind of business doesn't make money selling in small quantities at high prices. This is Henry Ford economics.
"Supply and demand" is a principle; it's not a law of nature. Yes, supply and demand are two important factors in setting prices, but they're not the only factors. The cost of manufacturing something is a factor too.
Please. Do you consider DVDs to be a monopoly? How about CDs? A standard format is not a "monopoly", not unless the format is proprietary.
Here's what's going on: both Blu Ray and HD-DVD players were being sold at a minimal profit — a loss, even — because both sides were trying to grab market share. End of format war, end of need to grab market share.
The problem has been that everybody with any brains has been waiting for the format war to end before plunking down their hard-earned cash. When consumers don't buy, sales are low, and when sales are low, there are no economies of scale. No economies of scale means high manufacturing costs, and thus high retail costs — unless the product is being sold at a loss.
So of course prices go up. But that's a short term thing. Right now, every consumer electronics company on the planet is gearing up to manufacture Blu Ray players by the million. When you manufacture something on that scale (especially electronics, where the fundamental technology is subject to Moore's Law) prices crash.
In a year or two, Blu Ray players will be as cheap as DVD players are now.
I don't know what the story was there (can't seem to find this detail online) but I very much doubt that Grasso was prosecuted for "sleeping with his own secretary." Having sex isn't illegal in itself (at least not in New York!). Having sex with one of your own employees might open you up to sexual harassment or discrimination charges, but not without the question of the sexual partner. Was Grasso perhaps using his position to get his lover a better salary or perqs? That's a corrupt practice, and certainly deserves prosecution. Spitzer wasn't just interested in prosecuting corrupt businesses for fraud. He was interested in crushing those businessmen and women in every way possible. Show me a case where Spitzer went after someone for trivial or imaginary offenses and I'll agree with you. But going after a subject with every violation you can document is not vindictive — it's standard prosecutorial practice. No sane lawyer goes into court without every legal weapon he can dig up.
Finding fault with Spitzer as a person (even if it headn't made it horribly easy!) doesn't change the fact that he was trying to right some really bad wrongs. We've had 8 years of big business basically getting away with almost anything, at least until their crimes are so blatant they can't be ignored. It's time for that to stop.
Spitzer may have been an opportunist, but in a democracy, opportunism is what gets the job done.
You think there's no connection between moralistic politicians and moralistic laws?
Then again, Spitzer's crusades, however self-serving or hypocritical, were aimed at corrupt businesses that were ripping off their investors and customers. That's not moralism, that's just expecting people to play by the rules. That stuff still needs doing, even if one of its leaders turns out to have Clinton Pants Disorder.
Bah. Do you do everything for your cats that you do for your children? Would you go deep into debt to keep one alive? Maybe you'd risk your life to save theirs, but would you expect somebody else to do so?
When you say, "they're family members, not inanimate objects", you're making a false dichotomy. There are many gradations of being between rocks and humans. It's wrong to hurt any living being unnecessarily, but no matter how kind you are to them, they're not people.
Gah. Garfield is beneath the notice of serious cat lovers. I actually liked the strip when it was actually about an obnoxious cat who did feline things. But after a while they ran out of material, so they did a Snoopy, making him walk on his hind legs and develop a taste for lasagna. Lame.
Once I was out walking with the Big Orange Beast at my heels, and we both saw a woman out walking her dog. The cat immediate ran behind a rock, waited until they came by, then jumped out and bashed the poor dog on the nose. I should have apologized, but I couldn't help laughing. I'm sure the lady thought we were both evil beings.
Which reminds us that the ICanHasCheezburger feed provides many of the same benefits as actually owning a cat!
Of course, cats have their downside. I once had this huge 20-pound orange beast who destroyed my stereo with piss, routinely bullied all the neighborhood dogs, almost gave me phlebitis by sleeping on my legs at night, and would bite if I tried to stand up before he was done with this lap nap.
Damn, I miss him.
OK, my legal/moral logic was too simplistic. I don't see how your drapes example relates.
IANAL. I'm not even sure it's illegal to be a peeping tom any more. But if somebody were to climb up a ladder to peer though that space in your window, would you, or would you not consider your privacy violated? I think most people would.
You're something like the 5th person to make pretty much the same argument in response to my post. The logic seems to go, "if it's not properly protected, it's fair game". That's not the way ethics or the law works. These assume you have a right to privacy, and to be secure in your possessions and person. These rights don't magically disappear because you're sloppy in securing them.
Lots of trivial things are secret. My social security number is a secret, and if you tried to steal it, I'd assume you were trying to rip me off.
Stop playing lawyer and just admit that the law doesn't work the way you think it should.
Dude, people have gone to jail for using accounts with no password.
The owner of the URL obviously considers it a secret. You're claiming that because it's a URL they can't. I'd check with a lawyer before trying that in the real world.
Apparently you know more law than the lawyers involved in this. And also the various prosecutors who have put people in jail for logging into unprotected accounts. Where did you get your degree?
What's your point? That the owner of the URL didn't try to protect it? If so, why do they mind so much that people are circulating it?
Or is your point that the content behind the URL is fair game because it was so poorly hidden? I think you'll find that the law disagrees with you.
I don't know the whole story, but it isn't as weird as it sounds. The Soviet government shut down because it had no cash. Even in 1988, they were in financial straits. Selling off weapons meant for an atomic war that never happened seems an obvious way to raise cash.
As for the Reagan/Bush purchase, they didn't do it to save money. They did it to keep all that poorly-guarded bomb material out of the black market.
Sorry, no. The planet is named after the god, the element is named after the planet. You might have noticed that uranium and neptunium are also named after planets.
Yeah, right. Every third episode had something to do with failed dilithium crystals. Clearly, Starfleet Procurement is staffed entirely by tribbles.
Of course you shouldn't be surprised if a poorly-secured item is stolen. That doesn't change the fact that theft is illegal. The fact that the stolen item was easy to steal is not a mitigating factor.
You speak for everybody who uses the phrase? You certainly don't speak for me.
Whatever. It's an attempt to protect something. Circumventing said protection, however feeble, is illegal.
In brief, security through obscurity is very bad security, but it's still security, and breaking somebody's security is illegal.
My first thought about the C&D letter is that it's stupidly counterproductive, because even if the recipient complies, the publicity will actually make more people aware of the URL than would otherwise. But then I realized that if management didn't send out the C&D letter, they'd catch grief from their stakeholders for "lack of fiduciary responsibility" or whatever. They could even get sued themselves. C&D letters are just one of those legal rituals big companies have to do, no matter how silly the context. Remember the New Zork Times?
What is stupid is thinking that nobody would find out about this URL.
I never heard that, but it does make sense. It kind of parallels the role Lindbergh later played in federal approval of the DC-3. The design eliminated one of the standard three engines in order to reduce vibration in the fuselage. Many experts considered this unsafe. Lindbergh's idea: see if the plane could safely fly across the continental divide on only one engine. It could, and that resolved the issue.
As long as we getting personal: you sound like a jerk. What I want is a certificate scheme that verifies not just that you're access a certified site, but automatically displays who the certificate was issued to. That feature would not only help prevent phishing, it would provide a mechanism for identifying email users. The address + lock doesn't just show that you are accessing "a certified site", it shows that the actual address being displayed is itself cryptographically signed and has connected you to the actual physical server(s) the registrant intended. i.e. the address itself is a keyed identity that is proof against tampering. So what? It doesn't bleeping do the job. That's not my opinion, that's consensus of every serious security expert.
Here's the procedure the user is supposed to follow:
- Verify the presence of the lock icon.
- Look at the url, and parse out the part the identifies the domain name of the site.
- Match the domain name against the domain name that you found out somehow is the official one for the owner of the site.
Even if people could remember to do all this, it assumes too much technical skill. This is a classical case of a techie designing a procedure for use by non-techie, and and totally failing. You or I call figure out what all that crap in the address bar means at a glance. Most people cannot. The whole protocol needs to be redesigned to communicate in a simpler, clearer manner, and that's actually happening.