These bids aren't serving anyone's interest except a select few. (Despite claiming to be for "shareholder interest")... Why is there so much money to be made by destroying companies, jobs, and livelihood? Why is it legal?
These bids are absolutely in the shareholder interest, that's who is making the money here (at least in the short term). Nearly all companies exist for the purpose of the people who own them (shareholders), not the people who work there. If you want a company that runs for the benefits of its workers, you're looking for a co-op (where the members are also the owners), but they are relatively few in number and aren't suited to exist in certain industries where you need funding from outside sources to start or build your business.
As to why it's legal... why not? Let's say you run a diner and someone offers you $100K for it and says they will buy it and keep it running. I offer you $150K for the diner but say I'm going to close it down and convert into a bar, firing all the current employees in the process. Why should it be illegal for you to take my higher bid? You might not take my bid because you find it morally distasteful. But it certainly shouldn't be illegal for me to offer that or for you to accept it.
You are fooling yourself. That minimum wage employee you had be your credit card to is not heavily invested financially.
You are correct. But their employer, who is financially liable for their actions on the job, certainly is. If a 7-11 clerk steals my credit card and goes on a shopping spree, the clerk might go to jail but it's 7-11 and its licensed franchisee that my bank (or me if it comes down to it) will be pursuing legal remedies with.
imagine if mobile data service was non-proprietary: your phone simply negotiated a 5 minute service contract with the set of carriers it could detect at the moment, wherever you happen to be. (voice and text would simply layer over data, of course.) yes, that sort of thing is obvious to any techie as The Right Way
Not necessarily a great example, for two reasons. First, it isn't necessarily the Right Way to build mobile phones that can just pick up any network. In the US, do I really want my phone to have the extra cost and size associated with GSM/HSPA/LTE radios plus CDMA and WiMax radios with antennas for 950/1800 MHz plus T-Mobile's AWS and ClearWire's 2.4 GHz bands? Small radio devices like cellphones where power, space and cost are constrained often benefit by being designed only for their service(s) of choice.
Secondly, what you're describing above DOES actually work with most mobile devices - it's called GSM roaming. Go off your main carrier's network domestically or internationally and your phone will find a compatible carrier in less than a minute. One reason (among many) though it doesn't work that way for all connections is simply billing - when I roam, the charges are passed from the local carrier back to my home carrier who will charge me for the service (probably at exorbitant rates). If I could just pick any carrier around at a moment's notice, am I going to get a bill each month from Verizon for when I was on their network, another one from Sprint, AT&T etc.? Do these carriers charge at different rates for different services, and do I need to know that in advance to decide which one to use? What if one carrier certified my phone with its particular firmware/OS version to be compatible with their network but another one didn't, does the phone need to validate that before it comes on the network? Whose customer care department do I call, and do I need to remember five different numbers? These are all little details, but they are part of the reason the GSM architecture was designed the way it was, with a "home" carrier and not just random carrier attachment. Also, if you want things to work the way you described above, you can do it... just carry around prepaid SIM cards for each of the carriers you might want to use and swap them in our out depending on where you think you get the best coverage.
why the fuck are two guys from Google getting more done than our State department
Because the State Department's negotiations with North Korea are focused on trivial things like providing food and humanitarian aid in exchange for NK shutting down its nuclear weapons program. How foolish of them not to focus on cellphone Internet access for tourists.
Having a college degree - in most cases - also tells you that someone has the ability to show up, do work as requested, demonstrate some degree of ability to learn, and keep themselves at least marginally functional enough to complete a multi-year endeavor. These are all qualities that are seen as desirable in most jobs. Your mileage may vary.
That's really the wrong picture of the 1%. Basically you have to think insane, regardless of the consequence they will continue to lie, cheat and steal right to the bitter end... just like Gaddafi... the 1% are always at each other's throat, as soon as weakness is detected the other's will attack. They continue their insanity until they are actively eliminated.
I hate to defend these people but honestly stuff like you're writing makes it necessary. The "1 percent" is *three million people* in America. They range from Steve Ballmer/Sergey Brin zillionaires to relatively upper middle class types in New York City and its suburbs, and that covers a lot of socioeconomic ground - Democrats and Republicans, philanthropists and libertarians, etc. To talk about them as a whole presumes a lot about a very wide group.
Do you, personally, know many of those three million people and that is your learned opinion from observing them in action? Or are you just repeating what other people have told you about them?
GPS. Application of mapping software to cell tower location detection tools.
GPS has nothing to do with cell towers, it runs off satellites and a receiver that computes its location in two dimensions (or three, depending on how many GPS satellites you are receiving a signal from). I would strongly argue that a truly global capability to find one's location to within a meter using a handheld device is a fundamental innovation, even though terrestrial location systems like LORAN were around for a while before that.
What you're referring to BTW is generally called cellular LBS (Location-Based Services) using CELL-ID technology. It evolved well post-GPS, which was originally developed by the US Military for its own use. The funny thing about GPS and CELL-ID in cell phones is that it wasn't originally built in because mobile phone makers thought it would enable amazing new services... it was done (at least in the US) to comply with regulations about 911 services so that the carrier would know where you are so that if you dial 911, it is routed to your local 911 center which was traditionally mapped to land lines in the appropriate region.
No, the union should have seen to it that their pensions were protected. I mean, if they won't do something that basic, what's the point of having a union? Why was the retirement plan in the hands of management ever?
This is what most people don't fully get - it's just not that simple.
Say for example that I have just hired you at age 25 into a new job with a pension that says you have a pension benefit meaning that you will receive 50% of your retirement-age salary (at 65) for the rest of your life. So I now have 40 years to save up to pay you back after retirement, by taking money away from excess profits, or other programs, or even cutting expenses/jobs to fund my pension obligation. The question is, how much do I need to save to pay you?
Since I pay you $50/hour now and post-65 life expectancy for your demographic is 22 years, is 22 years x $25/hour what I need to save? Or do I need to assume that your life expectancy will increase? By how much? Or do I need to assume that you will have been promoted to a higher salary 40 years from now? Or that inflation will have forced me to adjust my percentages?
Most importantly, companies that pay pensions don't just put money under their corporate mattresses for 40 years - they invest it. And if all my investments make 7% per year and I am on track to fulfill my pension obligations - but suddenly the market crashes and my investments are making 3% - then I am now in default. I could have invested more in pensions... say assuming that only a 1% return would keep me whole on pensions... but that would take money away from the shareholders - and potentially keep me from hiring new employees as well because that money is now committed to funding the pension plan.
TL;DR - saving for pensions is not like your personal savings account. It's more like managing the 401(k) for hundreds of thousands of people, and it's easy for things to screw up with no malice aforethought (and overcompensating to make sure pensions are funded tomorrow has negative impacts today, too).
Why would they? USA needs to remove "land of the free" from their national anthem as they are plunging down the international listings of freedom.
100% agree - our essential freedoms have been practically eliminated and we are no longer "free" in any meaningful sense. I mean, think about it - how can I possibly be called "free" in a nation where I have "freedom" of religion, speech, assembly etc. but I have to wait until I'm out of a cellular contract before I can call the carrier and unlock my phone? We might as well be North Korea at this point. Thank God Slashdot is here to provide a rational view of these things and demonstrate a keen grasp of priorities when it comes to human freedoms.
The whole thing is just a scare story anyway, only a few retailers are ever likely to exercise this ability anyway (just like few gas stations charge different prices anymore for cash vs. credit, not even Arco). From NBC news:
The big question is: Will any stores do this? Should you worry about paying a credit card surcharge?
"We have discussed the settlement with many, many merchants, and not a single merchant we have spoken to plans to surcharge," Craig Sherman, spokesman for the National Retail Federation (NRF), said in a statement. The NRF was not involved in the class action lawsuit.
NBC News contacted some of the country's largest retailers. Wal-Mart, Target, Sears and Home Depot said they have no plans to add a credit card surcharge.
CEOs should care about details that are important to customers and the company's long-term success. There are lots and lots of details a CEO should NOT care about.
For example, I have worked at smaller companies where the CEO wanted to review each travel request to see if they could find a lower airfare - and the usual result was that by the time they checked it, the airfare cost had gone up. So if your CEO asks you "what is the customer experience for this product, end to end, and are we delivering on everything we are promising?" then you have a good detail-oriented CEO. If your CEO wants to reorganize your company's office parking spaces with the highest titles closest to the front door, you have a bad detail-oriented CEO.
From what I understand, Steve Jobs was both - but he was lauded because his accomplishments as the former outweighed his annoying tendencies as the latter.
The world has moved on to BYOD, why would I want someone else to be able to control what programs I can run on my personal device?
I'm guessing you work at a company or office dominated by "white collar" workers. In the larger business world, the preponderance of headcount is of "blue collar" and "grey collar" workers, and companies are giving those workers smart devices in rapidly proliferating numbers. Whether it's because they want their workers to be able to respond to e-mail, run Point of Sale apps on their devices, run job clock in/clock out & GPS tracker apps, dispatch and routing apps... in many cases your local garbage truck driver is now carrying a company-provided smartphone (or may soon).
For these types of workers - who are generally paid hourly wages and not salaries - keeping devices managed with work apps only and not Angry Birds, random web access, etc. is a big deal. And that's where Mobile Device Management tools like BES (or Good, MobileIron, whatever) are a HUGE deal.
Stupid is as stupid does... and I would counterargue that launching a war on false premises that cost tens of thousands of lives and hundreds of billions of dollars - with no real plan to "win the peace" - does not put you in Brainiac territory. Throw on top of that a well-intentioned but badly misguided "ownership society" set of policies that fueled the housing and accompanying banking meltdowns, and and you are left with a less than intellectually stellar legacy. Also, in my mind, getting accepted and graduating from Ivy League schools tends to mean far more when you are not the scion of a wealthy and politically connected alumnus.
I will certainly agree with you that GW Bush was smarter than a lot of people want to believe - his enemies portrayed him as a softheaded rube controlled by Dick Cheney, which he wasn't. But I really don't believe that you can make a case that Bush was even of adequate intelligence when it came to exercising intellect when being "the decider" on most of the big issues in his presidency.
an unlikely incubator for startups and tech entrepreneurs
Why is Kansas City an "unlikely incubator?" Because it's fucking Kansas City (no offense intended). Putting Google Fiber there will not change that. Look, I have been to KC, and enjoyed the hip downtown district thoroughly, etc. - but putting Google Fiber in any given town is not going to make it a good place to put technology businesses! Or has everyone magically forgotten Missouri's attitude towards teaching evolution in schools just because Google bought some fiber there?
There are lots and lots of other places that have fast, cheap fiber. Slashdotters love to talk about how they have 50 Gbps Internet for $5/month in Sweden or free cloud-based dick-sucking anime robots in Korea or whatever. Yeah, we all get how much broadband access in the US sucks.
And yet... none of these magical places have somehow displaced the US and its terrible, awful, no-good Internet as the center of the tech world. Silicon Valley is still what it is due to the physical proximity of employers and investors. I love what Google Fiber is doing, but it isn't going to make anywhere else the new Silicon Valley, any more than all the other places in the world with cheaper Internet displaced that region before... which is to say "none."
Google FIber is not going to magically make anywhere a Mecca for technology. What really makes a place a tech center is a.) the tech companies that are already there are form an ecosystem; b.) the universities or other talent pools to draw from; c.) the local state or country's tax policies for residents/companies + immigration/visa policies for new entrants; and d.) the quality of the cultural, educational and political environment to attract new employees and their families to the area. Sadly, Kansas City does not excel on all four, whether cheap fiber is there or not. And if Google Fiber comes to your hometown of East Dead Cow Skull Texas, it doesn't mean that you will be able to attract tech companies either - sorry but it's the truth.
Everyone on Slashdot seems hung up on this idea that because it's not a physical good, redistribution means nothing. That's just not true.
Let me try a different analogy...let's say my job is doing really awesome SAT (or whatever) training courses. I have spent a long time developing the course so I can deliver you a two-hour course that will help you ace your upcoming exam, and as a benefit I record it so that you can watch it again after I leave. You think it's a great course. You turn around and, because you think other people will want it, you send the video I gave you to all your friends in high school.
Did I lose any physical goods as a result of your "sharing?" Nope. Can I still give my course? Yep. Were some of your friends never going to sign up for my course? Absolutely! But were there some of your friends who might have taken my course if you told them it was great, but didn't send it to them for free? Yeah, probably. And that's where "sharing" becomes "theft" - if I wanted my training to be free, I would have made it free. It's my training and I should be able to say what it costs, whether it's a physical good or not.
If they can't handle delivering that bandwidth then they are oversubscribed
People on Slashdot seem to see oversubscription as some kind of evil - it's really not. It keeps your costs down in the name of accommodating real-world demands rather than peak demands.
Every single Internet Service Provider on the Earth is oversubscribed. To buy enough bandwidth and Internet transit to accommodate every Internet user at peak usage would likely double or triple your monthly cost. The POTS telephone network is oversubscribed - in most US areas, no more than 10% of users can make a phone call at any given time, and for the same reason. The airlines are oversubscribed - many flights are overbooked because to keep enough flights running to accommodate peak demand would mean lots of expensive empty flights that would drive up the cost of all tickets. All these things are built on the idea of adjusting capacity costs to usage costs.
To use a car analogy FTW:
Nearly all highways in metro areas are oversubscribed. That's why there are traffic jams. You'd need to build 15-lane highways instead of 4-lane highways to ensure there would never be traffic jams... which would entail several times the maintenance cost for a road that would be empty except for during rush hour. Instead, most regions encourage off-hours commuting or carpooling... or they charge tolls so drivers who use the roads more pay more. Which is not all that different than what ISPs do with data caps if you think about it.
Can I place copyright infringements with Verizon to get people blocked?
Sure. 10 seconds of Googling found this link. BTW if you want to report someone for child pornography, go here.
Anyone can report anyone else, that's how it works... so if you have actual evidence that "we all know that the MPAA and RIAA use their internet connections for infringement" then you can report it and give them a taste of their own medicine and we all win. Looking forward to it!
I have Verizon DSL with and open AP at my coffee shop for customers. What then?
If you have an open WiFi access point, it is not for customers. It is just an open access point. Just curious - if it really is for customers, why not at least have a password that people get when they buy a cup of coffee? That doesn't stop people from buying one cup then camping forever, but it's better than a purely open AP- for you and your paying customers, too...
Also - I'm assuming (maybe wrongly) that the rules will be very different for business accounts, knowing they shouldn't be liable for the acts of their users. I'm interested, did they send you anything about this for your business account saying what their policy will be?
Perhaps if they WERE more like Andy Griffith their job would be less dangerous.
Not so much. I don't recall there being movie theater shooters, drug runners, insane crackheads or a local MS-13 chapter in Mayberry. (Maybe there were gangs and I just didn't notice; on a black and white TV, you couldn't tell if Opie was wearing crip or blood colors.)
Their job is dangerous because... people don't support jack booted thugs.
Citizens like you or me who are unhappy about our infringed civil liberties are not the dangers to the cops, the abovementioned groups are. Are you suggesting that they're only dangerous and violent towards the police because they are righteously indignant?
This whole question is based on a false premise that personal and corporate smartphones can't be managed. The answer is very simple:
Are these work-mandated/provided smartphones that have access to the company e-mail/intranet system? If so, then the company needs to invest in Mobile Device Management (MDM) software like Good, MobileIron or even a BlackBerry BES and lock down which apps end users can install, what can be downloaded or forwarded, etc.
Are these personal smartphones? Don't provide any access to the company e-mail/intranet or any other system on non-company devices so whatever malware you decided to install has no impact on the company.
Whether personal smartphones are allowed in a business should not even be a question unless you work in an environment where employees taking pictures of documents, people or facilities is a security risk (the government has a lot of these environments), and generally in those cases you are not allowed electronic devices in those restricted facilities, period - work or personal.
BTW the linked Washington Times article (quality news source, there) describes a proof of concept app but does not describe the platform(s), attack/delivery vectors or anything else about how you would actually hijack a phone in this way. I'm pretty sure it wouldn't get approved in Google Play, the iOS App Store, or any other reputable app source. So if your employers are afraid of that, then they need to up their med dosages.
Most companies should make money from products, not the ads.
So do you think Google should start charging for searches, Gmail, YouTube or Maps first? Which Internet news aggregator site would you prefer to pay for your news? How much per month do you think most people want to pay for Facebook?
Advertisers pay for the stuff you nominally get for free on radio, OTA television or the Internet. There is nothing wrong with this model, if people are willing to accept the bargain that "I don't pay for this but they want to show me ads." If you don't want to be party to that ad-driven model, that's fine but just be prepared to pay directly for what would otherwise be free.
Even if thieves were blind, and stealing randomly, they'd steal more iDevices than all the other brands added together.
Precisely. BTW I'm pretty accustomed to Slashdot's ever-declining state of "quality" over the last several years, but this story takes the cake - it's 1/2 article and 1/2 ludicrous Fandroid rant that somehow the real cause of the problem of increased theft of small, highly valuable electronic devices in NYC is that Apple charges too much for the 64 GB iPhone and that somehow Google's pricing for the 8 GB Nexus 4 is the solution? Are you shitting me? Can you possibly be serious?
Slashdot, who do do you have at the wheel these days approving stories? Is it someone that actually cares, or are they just looking for the biggest flamebait submissions they can find? Through all the ups and downs, Slashdot have been my homepage for more than a decade. Please don't make this latest acquisition the one that drives me away for good.
Slashdot Mirror
These bids aren't serving anyone's interest except a select few. (Despite claiming to be for "shareholder interest") ... Why is there so much money to be made by destroying companies, jobs, and livelihood? Why is it legal?
These bids are absolutely in the shareholder interest, that's who is making the money here (at least in the short term). Nearly all companies exist for the purpose of the people who own them (shareholders), not the people who work there. If you want a company that runs for the benefits of its workers, you're looking for a co-op (where the members are also the owners), but they are relatively few in number and aren't suited to exist in certain industries where you need funding from outside sources to start or build your business.
As to why it's legal... why not? Let's say you run a diner and someone offers you $100K for it and says they will buy it and keep it running. I offer you $150K for the diner but say I'm going to close it down and convert into a bar, firing all the current employees in the process. Why should it be illegal for you to take my higher bid? You might not take my bid because you find it morally distasteful. But it certainly shouldn't be illegal for me to offer that or for you to accept it.
You are fooling yourself. That minimum wage employee you had be your credit card to is not heavily invested financially.
You are correct. But their employer, who is financially liable for their actions on the job, certainly is. If a 7-11 clerk steals my credit card and goes on a shopping spree, the clerk might go to jail but it's 7-11 and its licensed franchisee that my bank (or me if it comes down to it) will be pursuing legal remedies with.
imagine if mobile data service was non-proprietary: your phone simply negotiated a 5 minute service contract with the set of carriers it could detect at the moment, wherever you happen to be. (voice and text would simply layer over data, of course.) yes, that sort of thing is obvious to any techie as The Right Way
Not necessarily a great example, for two reasons. First, it isn't necessarily the Right Way to build mobile phones that can just pick up any network. In the US, do I really want my phone to have the extra cost and size associated with GSM/HSPA/LTE radios plus CDMA and WiMax radios with antennas for 950/1800 MHz plus T-Mobile's AWS and ClearWire's 2.4 GHz bands? Small radio devices like cellphones where power, space and cost are constrained often benefit by being designed only for their service(s) of choice.
Secondly, what you're describing above DOES actually work with most mobile devices - it's called GSM roaming. Go off your main carrier's network domestically or internationally and your phone will find a compatible carrier in less than a minute. One reason (among many) though it doesn't work that way for all connections is simply billing - when I roam, the charges are passed from the local carrier back to my home carrier who will charge me for the service (probably at exorbitant rates). If I could just pick any carrier around at a moment's notice, am I going to get a bill each month from Verizon for when I was on their network, another one from Sprint, AT&T etc.? Do these carriers charge at different rates for different services, and do I need to know that in advance to decide which one to use? What if one carrier certified my phone with its particular firmware/OS version to be compatible with their network but another one didn't, does the phone need to validate that before it comes on the network? Whose customer care department do I call, and do I need to remember five different numbers? These are all little details, but they are part of the reason the GSM architecture was designed the way it was, with a "home" carrier and not just random carrier attachment. Also, if you want things to work the way you described above, you can do it... just carry around prepaid SIM cards for each of the carriers you might want to use and swap them in our out depending on where you think you get the best coverage.
Let me say that again: they've shortened the length of the yellow lights, not for safety, but in spite of safety, so they get to write more tickets.
Citation needed
Not trolling, genuinely curious as to where this was discovered, was someone held responsible and what the public fallout was.
why the fuck are two guys from Google getting more done than our State department
Because the State Department's negotiations with North Korea are focused on trivial things like providing food and humanitarian aid in exchange for NK shutting down its nuclear weapons program. How foolish of them not to focus on cellphone Internet access for tourists.
Having a college degree - in most cases - also tells you that someone has the ability to show up, do work as requested, demonstrate some degree of ability to learn, and keep themselves at least marginally functional enough to complete a multi-year endeavor. These are all qualities that are seen as desirable in most jobs. Your mileage may vary.
That's really the wrong picture of the 1%. Basically you have to think insane, regardless of the consequence they will continue to lie, cheat and steal right to the bitter end ... just like Gaddafi ... the 1% are always at each other's throat, as soon as weakness is detected the other's will attack. They continue their insanity until they are actively eliminated.
I hate to defend these people but honestly stuff like you're writing makes it necessary. The "1 percent" is *three million people* in America. They range from Steve Ballmer/Sergey Brin zillionaires to relatively upper middle class types in New York City and its suburbs, and that covers a lot of socioeconomic ground - Democrats and Republicans, philanthropists and libertarians, etc. To talk about them as a whole presumes a lot about a very wide group.
Do you, personally, know many of those three million people and that is your learned opinion from observing them in action? Or are you just repeating what other people have told you about them?
Handbrake as well would have worked surely?
Only if he was ripping DVDs while he was driving.
GPS. Application of mapping software to cell tower location detection tools.
GPS has nothing to do with cell towers, it runs off satellites and a receiver that computes its location in two dimensions (or three, depending on how many GPS satellites you are receiving a signal from). I would strongly argue that a truly global capability to find one's location to within a meter using a handheld device is a fundamental innovation, even though terrestrial location systems like LORAN were around for a while before that.
What you're referring to BTW is generally called cellular LBS (Location-Based Services) using CELL-ID technology. It evolved well post-GPS, which was originally developed by the US Military for its own use. The funny thing about GPS and CELL-ID in cell phones is that it wasn't originally built in because mobile phone makers thought it would enable amazing new services... it was done (at least in the US) to comply with regulations about 911 services so that the carrier would know where you are so that if you dial 911, it is routed to your local 911 center which was traditionally mapped to land lines in the appropriate region.
No, the union should have seen to it that their pensions were protected. I mean, if they won't do something that basic, what's the point of having a union? Why was the retirement plan in the hands of management ever?
This is what most people don't fully get - it's just not that simple.
Say for example that I have just hired you at age 25 into a new job with a pension that says you have a pension benefit meaning that you will receive 50% of your retirement-age salary (at 65) for the rest of your life. So I now have 40 years to save up to pay you back after retirement, by taking money away from excess profits, or other programs, or even cutting expenses/jobs to fund my pension obligation. The question is, how much do I need to save to pay you?
Since I pay you $50/hour now and post-65 life expectancy for your demographic is 22 years, is 22 years x $25/hour what I need to save? Or do I need to assume that your life expectancy will increase? By how much? Or do I need to assume that you will have been promoted to a higher salary 40 years from now? Or that inflation will have forced me to adjust my percentages?
Most importantly, companies that pay pensions don't just put money under their corporate mattresses for 40 years - they invest it. And if all my investments make 7% per year and I am on track to fulfill my pension obligations - but suddenly the market crashes and my investments are making 3% - then I am now in default. I could have invested more in pensions... say assuming that only a 1% return would keep me whole on pensions... but that would take money away from the shareholders - and potentially keep me from hiring new employees as well because that money is now committed to funding the pension plan.
TL;DR - saving for pensions is not like your personal savings account. It's more like managing the 401(k) for hundreds of thousands of people, and it's easy for things to screw up with no malice aforethought (and overcompensating to make sure pensions are funded tomorrow has negative impacts today, too).
Why would they? USA needs to remove "land of the free" from their national anthem as they are plunging down the international listings of freedom.
100% agree - our essential freedoms have been practically eliminated and we are no longer "free" in any meaningful sense. I mean, think about it - how can I possibly be called "free" in a nation where I have "freedom" of religion, speech, assembly etc. but I have to wait until I'm out of a cellular contract before I can call the carrier and unlock my phone? We might as well be North Korea at this point. Thank God Slashdot is here to provide a rational view of these things and demonstrate a keen grasp of priorities when it comes to human freedoms.
The whole thing is just a scare story anyway, only a few retailers are ever likely to exercise this ability anyway (just like few gas stations charge different prices anymore for cash vs. credit, not even Arco). From NBC news:
The big question is: Will any stores do this? Should you worry about paying a credit card surcharge?
"We have discussed the settlement with many, many merchants, and not a single merchant we have spoken to plans to surcharge," Craig Sherman, spokesman for the National Retail Federation (NRF), said in a statement. The NRF was not involved in the class action lawsuit.
NBC News contacted some of the country's largest retailers. Wal-Mart, Target, Sears and Home Depot said they have no plans to add a credit card surcharge.
CEOs should care about details
CEOs should care about details that are important to customers and the company's long-term success. There are lots and lots of details a CEO should NOT care about.
For example, I have worked at smaller companies where the CEO wanted to review each travel request to see if they could find a lower airfare - and the usual result was that by the time they checked it, the airfare cost had gone up. So if your CEO asks you "what is the customer experience for this product, end to end, and are we delivering on everything we are promising?" then you have a good detail-oriented CEO. If your CEO wants to reorganize your company's office parking spaces with the highest titles closest to the front door, you have a bad detail-oriented CEO.
From what I understand, Steve Jobs was both - but he was lauded because his accomplishments as the former outweighed his annoying tendencies as the latter.
The world has moved on to BYOD, why would I want someone else to be able to control what programs I can run on my personal device?
I'm guessing you work at a company or office dominated by "white collar" workers. In the larger business world, the preponderance of headcount is of "blue collar" and "grey collar" workers, and companies are giving those workers smart devices in rapidly proliferating numbers. Whether it's because they want their workers to be able to respond to e-mail, run Point of Sale apps on their devices, run job clock in/clock out & GPS tracker apps, dispatch and routing apps... in many cases your local garbage truck driver is now carrying a company-provided smartphone (or may soon).
For these types of workers - who are generally paid hourly wages and not salaries - keeping devices managed with work apps only and not Angry Birds, random web access, etc. is a big deal. And that's where Mobile Device Management tools like BES (or Good, MobileIron, whatever) are a HUGE deal.
The boy ain't dumb, he was just fake'n.
Stupid is as stupid does... and I would counterargue that launching a war on false premises that cost tens of thousands of lives and hundreds of billions of dollars - with no real plan to "win the peace" - does not put you in Brainiac territory. Throw on top of that a well-intentioned but badly misguided "ownership society" set of policies that fueled the housing and accompanying banking meltdowns, and and you are left with a less than intellectually stellar legacy. Also, in my mind, getting accepted and graduating from Ivy League schools tends to mean far more when you are not the scion of a wealthy and politically connected alumnus.
I will certainly agree with you that GW Bush was smarter than a lot of people want to believe - his enemies portrayed him as a softheaded rube controlled by Dick Cheney, which he wasn't. But I really don't believe that you can make a case that Bush was even of adequate intelligence when it came to exercising intellect when being "the decider" on most of the big issues in his presidency.
By making an example of Kansas City ...
Per story submission...
an unlikely incubator for startups and tech entrepreneurs
Why is Kansas City an "unlikely incubator?" Because it's fucking Kansas City (no offense intended). Putting Google Fiber there will not change that. Look, I have been to KC, and enjoyed the hip downtown district thoroughly, etc. - but putting Google Fiber in any given town is not going to make it a good place to put technology businesses! Or has everyone magically forgotten Missouri's attitude towards teaching evolution in schools just because Google bought some fiber there?
There are lots and lots of other places that have fast, cheap fiber. Slashdotters love to talk about how they have 50 Gbps Internet for $5/month in Sweden or free cloud-based dick-sucking anime robots in Korea or whatever. Yeah, we all get how much broadband access in the US sucks.
And yet... none of these magical places have somehow displaced the US and its terrible, awful, no-good Internet as the center of the tech world. Silicon Valley is still what it is due to the physical proximity of employers and investors. I love what Google Fiber is doing, but it isn't going to make anywhere else the new Silicon Valley, any more than all the other places in the world with cheaper Internet displaced that region before... which is to say "none."
Google FIber is not going to magically make anywhere a Mecca for technology. What really makes a place a tech center is a.) the tech companies that are already there are form an ecosystem; b.) the universities or other talent pools to draw from; c.) the local state or country's tax policies for residents/companies + immigration/visa policies for new entrants; and d.) the quality of the cultural, educational and political environment to attract new employees and their families to the area. Sadly, Kansas City does not excel on all four, whether cheap fiber is there or not. And if Google Fiber comes to your hometown of East Dead Cow Skull Texas, it doesn't mean that you will be able to attract tech companies either - sorry but it's the truth.
Some people will join your course because they saw your video.
Why would they do that? They already saw it.
since when is sharing stealing
Everyone on Slashdot seems hung up on this idea that because it's not a physical good, redistribution means nothing. That's just not true.
Let me try a different analogy...let's say my job is doing really awesome SAT (or whatever) training courses. I have spent a long time developing the course so I can deliver you a two-hour course that will help you ace your upcoming exam, and as a benefit I record it so that you can watch it again after I leave. You think it's a great course. You turn around and, because you think other people will want it, you send the video I gave you to all your friends in high school.
Did I lose any physical goods as a result of your "sharing?" Nope. Can I still give my course? Yep. Were some of your friends never going to sign up for my course? Absolutely! But were there some of your friends who might have taken my course if you told them it was great, but didn't send it to them for free? Yeah, probably. And that's where "sharing" becomes "theft" - if I wanted my training to be free, I would have made it free. It's my training and I should be able to say what it costs, whether it's a physical good or not.
If they can't handle delivering that bandwidth then they are oversubscribed
People on Slashdot seem to see oversubscription as some kind of evil - it's really not. It keeps your costs down in the name of accommodating real-world demands rather than peak demands.
Every single Internet Service Provider on the Earth is oversubscribed. To buy enough bandwidth and Internet transit to accommodate every Internet user at peak usage would likely double or triple your monthly cost. The POTS telephone network is oversubscribed - in most US areas, no more than 10% of users can make a phone call at any given time, and for the same reason. The airlines are oversubscribed - many flights are overbooked because to keep enough flights running to accommodate peak demand would mean lots of expensive empty flights that would drive up the cost of all tickets. All these things are built on the idea of adjusting capacity costs to usage costs.
To use a car analogy FTW:
Nearly all highways in metro areas are oversubscribed. That's why there are traffic jams. You'd need to build 15-lane highways instead of 4-lane highways to ensure there would never be traffic jams... which would entail several times the maintenance cost for a road that would be empty except for during rush hour. Instead, most regions encourage off-hours commuting or carpooling... or they charge tolls so drivers who use the roads more pay more. Which is not all that different than what ISPs do with data caps if you think about it.
Can I place copyright infringements with Verizon to get people blocked?
Sure. 10 seconds of Googling found this link. BTW if you want to report someone for child pornography, go here.
Anyone can report anyone else, that's how it works... so if you have actual evidence that "we all know that the MPAA and RIAA use their internet connections for infringement" then you can report it and give them a taste of their own medicine and we all win. Looking forward to it!
I have Verizon DSL with and open AP at my coffee shop for customers. What then?
If you have an open WiFi access point, it is not for customers. It is just an open access point. Just curious - if it really is for customers, why not at least have a password that people get when they buy a cup of coffee? That doesn't stop people from buying one cup then camping forever, but it's better than a purely open AP- for you and your paying customers, too...
Also - I'm assuming (maybe wrongly) that the rules will be very different for business accounts, knowing they shouldn't be liable for the acts of their users. I'm interested, did they send you anything about this for your business account saying what their policy will be?
Perhaps if they WERE more like Andy Griffith their job would be less dangerous.
Not so much. I don't recall there being movie theater shooters, drug runners, insane crackheads or a local MS-13 chapter in Mayberry. (Maybe there were gangs and I just didn't notice; on a black and white TV, you couldn't tell if Opie was wearing crip or blood colors.)
Their job is dangerous because ... people don't support jack booted thugs.
Citizens like you or me who are unhappy about our infringed civil liberties are not the dangers to the cops, the abovementioned groups are. Are you suggesting that they're only dangerous and violent towards the police because they are righteously indignant?
This whole question is based on a false premise that personal and corporate smartphones can't be managed. The answer is very simple:
Are these work-mandated/provided smartphones that have access to the company e-mail/intranet system? If so, then the company needs to invest in Mobile Device Management (MDM) software like Good, MobileIron or even a BlackBerry BES and lock down which apps end users can install, what can be downloaded or forwarded, etc.
Are these personal smartphones? Don't provide any access to the company e-mail/intranet or any other system on non-company devices so whatever malware you decided to install has no impact on the company.
Whether personal smartphones are allowed in a business should not even be a question unless you work in an environment where employees taking pictures of documents, people or facilities is a security risk (the government has a lot of these environments), and generally in those cases you are not allowed electronic devices in those restricted facilities, period - work or personal.
BTW the linked Washington Times article (quality news source, there) describes a proof of concept app but does not describe the platform(s), attack/delivery vectors or anything else about how you would actually hijack a phone in this way. I'm pretty sure it wouldn't get approved in Google Play, the iOS App Store, or any other reputable app source. So if your employers are afraid of that, then they need to up their med dosages.
Most companies should make money from products, not the ads.
So do you think Google should start charging for searches, Gmail, YouTube or Maps first? Which Internet news aggregator site would you prefer to pay for your news? How much per month do you think most people want to pay for Facebook?
Advertisers pay for the stuff you nominally get for free on radio, OTA television or the Internet. There is nothing wrong with this model, if people are willing to accept the bargain that "I don't pay for this but they want to show me ads." If you don't want to be party to that ad-driven model, that's fine but just be prepared to pay directly for what would otherwise be free.
Even if thieves were blind, and stealing randomly, they'd steal more iDevices than all the other brands added together.
Precisely. BTW I'm pretty accustomed to Slashdot's ever-declining state of "quality" over the last several years, but this story takes the cake - it's 1/2 article and 1/2 ludicrous Fandroid rant that somehow the real cause of the problem of increased theft of small, highly valuable electronic devices in NYC is that Apple charges too much for the 64 GB iPhone and that somehow Google's pricing for the 8 GB Nexus 4 is the solution? Are you shitting me? Can you possibly be serious?
Slashdot, who do do you have at the wheel these days approving stories? Is it someone that actually cares, or are they just looking for the biggest flamebait submissions they can find? Through all the ups and downs, Slashdot have been my homepage for more than a decade. Please don't make this latest acquisition the one that drives me away for good.