I agree. Have you seen the trash graduating with a marketing/advertising degree?
So make a commercial that's funny, witty, beautiful.
More boobs, less FCC?
I bet there are a thousand independent filmmakers out there who could come up with 30 second clips that fit this bill on half the budget they usually spend.
I agree. If Coke had a "Make us a free ad and we'll pay to run the top 10" you'd have 5000 filmmakers dying for the publicity.
That is the problem. You have 864 ads per channel-day. You have no idea what channels a viewer actually watch. There's no way to reduce dupes.
Here's a thought: Use Tivo. Run commercials, offer a prize to the first 100 people who click Thumbs Up when a red dot appears for 5 frames. Who knows which commercial per show gets the dot? You'll increase the number of commercial-viewers during the broadcast, maybe overcoming the loss to Tivo?
Those familiar with my anti-copyright ideas know that I've promoted product placement as a partial solution to PVR commercial skipping.
The advertising community is, yet again, far behind. Tivo is so 2001. BitTorrent and the newer anonymous P2P apps take the problem a step farther.
With vidgeeks easily editing out commercials for P2P redistribution (this can be time consuming to be frame perfect), it is only a matter of time before they digitally smear out product placement. A little bit of work and you can nuke logos without the MTV blur.
What will advertisers do next?
My thought is that we'll see video and audio starting and stopping at different offsets. Imagine -- a scene ends with the audio ending but the video continuing. A character can walk off screen for entire seconds after they're finished talking. If Cisco paid to have the audio portion of the ad start before the video is over. P2P editors could nuke this audio.
The video could end before the audio, maybe bringing a logo in before a narration is finished. Still, the video portion could be edited to black.
Pop-up video advertising could be placed like A&E and Bravo do with TB show mentions. In fact, I believe we see more of these mentions to prep us for 3rd party pop-overs. Yet a vidgeek could humorously edit the pop-over to advertise their l33t skills.
The Department of Commerce does not have a very good track record of forecasting market trends. I think this report is especially callous as investors might heed this "warning" and invest in IPv6 companies prematurely.
_No one_ knows IPv6's cost. The market will see a few early adopters, then a steadily growing medium-sized business buy-in, followed by a boom of users or a bust due to newer technologies.
For a government agency to print these assumptions makes me think they either needed some media spotlight or the researchers wanted their stocks to go up.
This is important insight. I wrote about a recent article from the UPI regarding studying children who haven't been vaccinated and how they didn't find one case of autism.
We're needing more studies by independent researchers into childhood diseases and problems. I personally don't trust the AMA, but I also don't trust anecdotal evidence. I have a friend who believes that AIDS occurs from a mutation, not blood/fluid exchange. He's a tinfoil investor, but there is research out there by the medical community that just doesn't seem all that trustworthy.
The biggest concern of mine is how much money is wasted when someone says "it is for the children!!!" I care about the welfare of the people, but not at the expense of everyone else.
I definitely agree there is a balance between security and ease-of-use. I personally keep all my confidential data on a portable hard drive, and it is fairly insecure. Nothing I have is really all that important to me.
For people who have unique security needs, though, I am surprised that they'd need to have SMS messages deleted. If someone sends you proprietary information through SMS, how hard is it to just delete it yourself? Why is 40 seconds picked over 30 seconds or 80 seconds? The idea that a company is spending R&D on this is bizarre to me. Why not just make a new SMS standard option called "Delete in X seconds" instead of making one preset timing?
I guess I shouldn't be surprised at the ineptitude of general humanity. What is the point of having any passwords if people don't keep them at least minimally protected? Sheesh!
The only thing I use SMS for is contacting my employees that overslept, communicating with friends, using Google for SMS and looking up prices (froogle etc). Sending proprietary information using a text messaging service is crazy.
For me, the first thing that comes to mind from "self destructing SMS" is the advertising potential. Combined with a locator, you could now receive "Eat at Wendy's!" messages that expire so you don't have to delete them.
I don't really see it happening, but advertising in the old markets (TV, radio, newsprint) is not returning as big of a response as it used to. They'll always try to find more direct ways to advertise, and I wouldn't be surprised if this move is a predecessor to more direct advertising schemes.
Hopefully I'll be able to opt-in rather than opt-out of any such programs.
FWIW, I just can't imagine that people are SMS'ing proprietary information. If its private and confidential, keep it on paper (preferably typed with a typewriter). Digital information will always be too insecure.
If you are really interested there is plenty of informational economic theory out there.
I'm not. I've been in business for 18 years: retail, communications, IT, ISP, writing/publishing and public speaking.
There are two laws for businesses to follow to succeed in the long run: 1. provide what the customer wants at a reasonable price, in a reasonable time frame and with reasonable service, and 2. watch you cash flow so you can outlive anyone offering only "best price" with "best product" and "best service."
5 out of 7 of my businesses succeeded because I followed these rules. 2 of 7 failed because I broke these rules. I've interviewed hundreds of businessowners who succeeded and failed and they all fit within these rules.
Megacorps differ slightly as they have the laws on their sides. For every 1 law you think you can use in your favor, they have 100 laws to protect them. Going to court is not going to fix the situation (it will make lawyers wealthy though!). The only thing that fixes the situation is to let people know you are unhappy -- even if it is just 10 or 20 people close to you. No company that screws the little man stays in business long, unless they are propped up with government funding or are able to be a monopoly due to licensing or restrictive entry to business through excessive government bureaucracy.
Wal*Mart could not decide to just raise prices one day, or sell boxes of loose parts, or perform any true negative business practices. If they did, they'd go the way of Zayre, Venture, Silo, the old K-Mart, or any of the thousands of medium sized businesses that go under once they start screwing their customers.
And soon, there will be 50 competing services of that kind, half of which receive kickbacks from the companies they rate well. How do you choose which service to trust? Maybe a meta-service that rates the info-services? Soon, there will be 50 competing meta-services...
I think that is a ridiculous argument. Does eBay receive kickbacks from their top sellers? Recently a huge paintball discounter on eBay (with 10,000+ positive feedback) went out of business because they started to scam their customers. I believe from the first set of bad feedback to their bankruptcy, it was about 2 weeks. If a moderation system starts to get manipulated feedback, you'll know as it will start showing a bad company in a positive light, where other feedback providers don't. No megacorp can manipulate every review site, and you WILL see other websites providing an average review of a company. Information can be manipulated in short hops, but the overall picture is too big for any one company or cartel to shake down.
However when I travel on the train and I'm not afraid of robbers, then to be quite honest it's not because I think any of my fellow travellers would stand up and stop them - it's because government has been successful in keeping crime rates at such a level that being robbed is an unlikely event.
Really? John Lott has written two books on the subject of government protection of the people, and he found that more people are mugged and raped in areas where the police protection was high but personal protection was illegal (no gun permits). I feel safe in public because of the piece I conceal, and I have shown it twice to fend off attacks. Do I want the Wild West mentality? No, but I know I feel safer in Vegas and Texas than I do in Illinois or New York. I know someone near me is carrying and the burglars know the same thing.
Government creates laws that criminals will break. The laws, in the long run, don't work as crime continues unabated, in my opinion. When it comes to criminal transactions, it is more and more likely that we'll be able to moderate criminals out of existance, rather than try to catch them in the act and put them in jail.
But how many of those "thousands" of people actually bother to complain about their experiences to the relevant authorities?
You're right, it isn't easy. For most bad experiences it may not be fraudulent or a scam -- maybe the customer paid too much, or the retailer doesn't offer warranty service on the product, or the customer ended up breaking the item and didn't want to admit it. I'm a retailer, and about 50% of our customer complaints that we fix aren't our fault.
As it gets easier to rate a transaction (for both parties), people will start doing it. On eBay, they practically beg you to leave feedback, and I bet 90%+ of transaction always get feedback. As information is more readily available everywhere, you'll have more ways to moderate a transaction. This is good for both the buyer and the seller.
I'd like to pay less for my fuel, for example, and I'm by no means alone. A few years ago there were protests about the price of petrol - depots being picketted, motorways blockaded. The result? Nothing, but a lot of hot air in Parliament and in the press. Prices are even higher now.
Fuel prices are a collusion of the State and the fuel providers. In America, we have hundreds of different boutique blends of gasoline that are mandated by state and local legislatures. These custom blends are, of course, only provided by licensed gas blenders, and new licenses aren't available to provide added competition. Gas prices are high directly because of State intervention, not because gas stations are looking to gouge consumers. This is an issue to be debated in another forum, though.
Sure, if an isolated shop or part of a small chain starts ripping people off, people can drive it out of business by stopping going. If a multinational does it, tough.
That isn't true. In the U.S., Silo Electronics was forced out of business for selling too cheap and not backing up their products. For a few years, they were #1 in the electronics business. Before that, we saw other megaretailers go under because of bad service, bad selection and high prices. The reason Wal*Mart stays on top is because the consumers, as a whole, like what they get. The same is true for any megacorp.
Do the megacorps use government's force against competitors? Absolutely. But this is legal force that is accepted by the voting public. If people have a problem with oil prices or Wal*Mart tactics, they should blame their elected officials, not the corporation taking advantage of laws that are in place because the public never said no, in fact, they continue to say yes.
One of the assumptions is that all participants have complete, truthful information. Obviously, that would be the end of any and all scammers.
That is NEVER an assumption -- in fact I believe the counter-fact to be true. In a free market, every transaction is based on the assumption that both parties feel they are profiting from the transaction. This case is based on the risk versus reward idea. The bigger the reward is, the bigger one assumes the risk is. If Camera W123 sells locally for $499, at Amazon for $449, and John's Photo Shop sells it for $379, you're gaining a huge reward. If you jump on that price, you're accepting a risk. It is personal greed that leads people to buy from deep discounters, and they have to acknowledge that there is always a risk in making a purchase. The reason many people buy locally for more money is to lower their risk.
The problem is, of course, that our governments, pretty much no matter which one you choose, are not exactly breeding pools or good examples of honesty and integrity
This is true -- government tends to be run by scammers and shysters, in my experience.
What you're advocating is putting government in charge of markets -- the same government that is never transparent, hides information "legally" and has zero oversight except for a vote once every 4 years or so. I advocate dumping the government provisions and letting the new Internet information sharing structure take over. Now, we have instant voting based on consumer demand. If a lot of consumers get duped by a company, we'll soon have the ability to broadcast that information over many different sources.
I'd like to see an SMS server where you can message a number "JohnPhotoShop.com" and have it return "50 positives, 300 negatives, 15 neutrals" I believe this will happen, very soon, as Google and many other companies are trying to gain brand share by providing free SMS services. I use FBOWEB.COM to track all my flights and used the free PDA version of the site for a few months. Now I purchased a subscription as the site is really worth the information I've received -- and it is always more accurate than what the airlines provide.
I don't think government has protected us from scammers, ever. If anything, the platforms made by government are only used by scammers to find new loopholes (as is seen in the New York Photo scam that has been going on for 20 years). Now that information is available to EVERYONE, there is no excuse to getting scammed. Even some posts on slashdot today show that people didn't research the too-good-to-be-true pricing, and got scammed. Greed: you get what you deserve.
Being pro-market, I see the scammers as the worst aspect of any market. In the past, it can be argued that regulations and restrictions through government was needed -- scammers were able to swindle thousands to millions of dollars before people were able to get the word out and warn each other.
As the percentage of technically-savvy individuals grows, information about a dealer or retailer can be distributed in seconds. Thousands of individuals can moderate (or rate) a seller, and sellers can moderate (or rate) buyers instantly. eBay handles these transactions with very little government involvement or force.
Scammers (such as the photo retailers) have been suckering people for DECADES. This is WITH government "protection" that many citizens believe they can rely on, yet we still see thousands of people getting swindled.
As the old generation moves out of the buying phase and the new generation becomes the big power in buying, we will see less swindling and scamming. It is already very hard to scam someone in my age range (low 30s) as most of us check online before buying a large item. Google is adapting much of their search ability to cellphones (WAP, SMS and other means). I already check items out through my wireless PDA phone when I am on the go. I've saved myself a few hundred dollars by not purchasing items with bad reviews. I found these reviews through my phone in mere moments.
The old ways of the retail industry are dying. As a retailer myself (who lost one of our stores because of a scamming employee and manager base), I know that the customer has more power than I do. When all you had was a local shop to buy from, you weren't able to negotiate for better quality, service or pricing. With next day service from thousands of online shops, the retailers are put on notice that they better offer more than just a product, or they'll go out of business.
These photo scams will end without much government involvement. If they broke a contract or agreement, I can understand calling a lawyer. Hopefully in the short run enough people will comment about their bad experiences that the companies will be punished before more people are scammed -- and I see the strength of scammers quickly weakening as information is globally available, instantly.
I'm against both sides of the debate. There is no reason for the state to force any standards. If the customers of the state (the governed) request two formats (en masse), the state should oblige them. Why should the state say "This is how it will be" if the governed is saying "We want PDF, we want Word, we want ODF."
Microsoft is nuts to not support ODF, but I understand their reasoning. They don't support any creative commons licenses in their product. I think they're back about a decade in this thinking, but it is their right to do so.
In the end, the consumers are the governed and they will need to be appeased. How many users currently run ODF-compatible software? How many businesses? My customers are fearful that this mandate "for the state only" will cost them hundreds per desktop (in labor, software and future licenses) so they can be compatible with state demands.
Every customer of mine in Massachusetts is scared crapless than they'll have to invest in new software in order to assimilate state documents into their software systems. This is way more political than just setting an inside-the-house standard. I'm against both Microsoft and Massachusetts on this one. Every document I receive from my State (Illinois) is subpar to what I get from private companies. I can't imagine the cost to try to make every department follow a standard that isn't supported by 90% of my customers.
So you're both basically saying that documents made by the government should be readable by the people? In Massachussetts, what percentage of the people are using Microsoft Word or Adobe PDF, and what percentage of them are using software that support ODF?
20/20's John Stossel discovered that privatized water and electricity is safer, cheaper and more abundant.
If MS sold strictly direct-to-consumers, I'd be concerned. They don't. 12,000 retail companies are not forced to sell Windows/Office. They're asked to by their customers.
I laughed at your response. I usually get attacked when I denounce copyright as I believe data can't be protected in any way once released to the public. Your reply sets software as physical property.
Let me paraphrase reply:
Who locks vendors into their software?
I can lock employees and vendors to my business with a non-compete agreement.
Who tried to block other media players on their OS?
If software is property, I can restrict who uses my land.
Who committed numerous acts of perjury at their antitrust trial?
I believe the fifth amendment protects all speech from perjury crimes.
I fully support ODF as long as the licensing allows incorporation into closed source software.
I believe Microsoft is attempting to control the situation using legal mechanisms that are standard when dealing with government.
I think ODF would save me dozens of hours a year in State document filing.
But I don't think the problem is with MS. They're using loopholes set by the State and taking advantage of the power conferred to the politicians. Government has too much power, and this power is being legally manipulated.
EVERY SINGLE COMMENT 'dada21' makes appears to be anarcho-capitalist in some way, for good, for bad.
As long as it is on-topic, it is acceptable. I get moderated up and down based on content.
The 'free market' --in this case, everyone stuck on Microsoft proprietary formats--IS NOT FREE IN ANY WAY.
I agree 100%. Microsoft is "Evil" as they use government power to exercise extra rights. I'm anti-corporations and anti-mercantilism. I'm not pro-business, I'm pro-personal responsibility.
If it was up to dada21 the USA would abandon all of its social programs.
Yes! And leave them to the States and preferably the People, per the 9th and 10th Amendments.
Does he understand that this is not the state governments telling companies what to do, it is their own damn internal policy?
Yet government is looking to use a power not applicable to you or I - standards through force. My business can standardize on Lotus 1.0 DOS, I'd lose customers. The State's choice has huge economic repercussions, hence the money/bribes being thrown around.
Alabama (failing schools, shitty roads, ridiculous poverty) is not the centre of the universe.
Thank God it isn't. Alabama is covered in "government save us" mentality, and decades of that attitude leaves behind citizens that can't earn for themselves.
I'm against Microsoft trying to set a standard, but they can because the citizens want Massachusetts run that way. They've given the politicians sole discretion in almost every decision.
Microsoft is not a monopoly. Only force can create a monopoly -- and only government can legally use force.
If you set your Constitution to give unlimited power to your politician, don't be surprised if that power is bought. Want to end megacorp control? Scale back government's unlimited power.
This is a case of a monopoly trying to close off competition to a competitor who does it free of charge. THAT is what the case comes down to.
That is what our federal government is. Drug companies support the FDA for quasimonopoly power. Radio conglomerates support the FCC. Teacher's unions support th DOEd.
It is funny how anti-government geeks can be when it matters to them and how anti-freedom they can be when it is about controlling others. In "Taxachusetts" regulations are especially violent professional opinion and private rights.
I recommend dismantling the FDA and letting professionals do their jobs -- the doctors and researchers.
I recommend dismantling the SEC and letting professionals do their jobs -- the brokers and economists.
I recommend dismantling the DOEd and letting professionals do their jobs -- the teachers and testers.
I recommend dismantling FEMA and letting professionals do their jobs -- the insurers and engineers.
Now, when someone recommends that bureaucrats set IT standards, it's tyranny!
Look at what you're wanting: free market decisions created competitively by experts. Look at what you'll get from your previous voting records: bureaucrats with the power to set legal monopolies.
Interesting article but it didn't answer something I've been pondering for a few months: the chance of Wikiregulations or censorship.
History tends to be written by the winners or at least the survivors. We've seen great measures taken to control speech, especially political speech. Wiki changes that. I've seen articles with definite left-bias, similar to what I'd expect from any geek forum.
With Wikis gaining ground (google searches seem attracted to them), will there be a push to put pressure on the wiki maintainers? Corporate and hegemony controlled major media don't seem different from one another. Wiki isn't a news source, but many articles could be taken as political speech, falling under who-knows-what regulations.
Wouldn't it be better to calculate which portal is the top portal based on the actual number of users that click a portal link?
I have customers who leave yahoo.com as their home page but always click a bookmark or head to another search engine to actually start browsing. I have no idea why people don't change the home page, but even some of my family works this way. Every time they open their web browser, yahoo pops up, and then they head off in a different direction.
With the various search toolbars, will the portal be as important as it was over the past decade? My homepage is blank -- especially on my primary browser, my PDA. Even with a fast connection I don't like the delay in popping up a start page.
I go look at yahoo about once every few months and just can't handle the site. Too much text, way too many colors, and it doesn't respond very quickly on some of my older (IE-based) PCs. I guess the average person doesn't have very much knowledge of proper use of color, text and overall layout. Yahoo reminds me of the beach blanket bingo madness from the 60s.
Slashdot Mirror
make advertisements worth watching.
/advertising degree?
I agree. Have you seen the trash graduating with a marketing
So make a commercial that's funny, witty, beautiful.
More boobs, less FCC?
I bet there are a thousand independent filmmakers out there who could come up with 30 second clips that fit this bill on half the budget they usually spend.
I agree. If Coke had a "Make us a free ad and we'll pay to run the top 10" you'd have 5000 filmmakers dying for the publicity.
That is the problem. You have 864 ads per channel-day. You have no idea what channels a viewer actually watch. There's no way to reduce dupes.
Here's a thought: Use Tivo. Run commercials, offer a prize to the first 100 people who click Thumbs Up when a red dot appears for 5 frames. Who knows which commercial per show gets the dot? You'll increase the number of commercial-viewers during the broadcast, maybe overcoming the loss to Tivo?
Those familiar with my anti-copyright ideas know that I've promoted product placement as a partial solution to PVR commercial skipping.
The advertising community is, yet again, far behind. Tivo is so 2001. BitTorrent and the newer anonymous P2P apps take the problem a step farther.
With vidgeeks easily editing out commercials for P2P redistribution (this can be time consuming to be frame perfect), it is only a matter of time before they digitally smear out product placement. A little bit of work and you can nuke logos without the MTV blur.
What will advertisers do next?
My thought is that we'll see video and audio starting and stopping at different offsets. Imagine -- a scene ends with the audio ending but the video continuing. A character can walk off screen for entire seconds after they're finished talking. If Cisco paid to have the audio portion of the ad start before the video is over. P2P editors could nuke this audio.
The video could end before the audio, maybe bringing a logo in before a narration is finished. Still, the video portion could be edited to black.
Pop-up video advertising could be placed like A&E and Bravo do with TB show mentions. In fact, I believe we see more of these mentions to prep us for 3rd party pop-overs. Yet a vidgeek could humorously edit the pop-over to advertise their l33t skills.
So what is the answer?
DRM.
The Department of Commerce does not have a very good track record of forecasting market trends. I think this report is especially callous as investors might heed this "warning" and invest in IPv6 companies prematurely.
_No one_ knows IPv6's cost. The market will see a few early adopters, then a steadily growing medium-sized business buy-in, followed by a boom of users or a bust due to newer technologies.
For a government agency to print these assumptions makes me think they either needed some media spotlight or the researchers wanted their stocks to go up.
This is important insight. I wrote about a recent article from the UPI regarding studying children who haven't been vaccinated and how they didn't find one case of autism.
We're needing more studies by independent researchers into childhood diseases and problems. I personally don't trust the AMA, but I also don't trust anecdotal evidence. I have a friend who believes that AIDS occurs from a mutation, not blood/fluid exchange. He's a tinfoil investor, but there is research out there by the medical community that just doesn't seem all that trustworthy.
The biggest concern of mine is how much money is wasted when someone says "it is for the children!!!" I care about the welfare of the people, but not at the expense of everyone else.
I definitely agree there is a balance between security and ease-of-use. I personally keep all my confidential data on a portable hard drive, and it is fairly insecure. Nothing I have is really all that important to me.
For people who have unique security needs, though, I am surprised that they'd need to have SMS messages deleted. If someone sends you proprietary information through SMS, how hard is it to just delete it yourself? Why is 40 seconds picked over 30 seconds or 80 seconds? The idea that a company is spending R&D on this is bizarre to me. Why not just make a new SMS standard option called "Delete in X seconds" instead of making one preset timing?
I guess I shouldn't be surprised at the ineptitude of general humanity. What is the point of having any passwords if people don't keep them at least minimally protected? Sheesh!
The only thing I use SMS for is contacting my employees that overslept, communicating with friends, using Google for SMS and looking up prices (froogle etc). Sending proprietary information using a text messaging service is crazy.
For me, the first thing that comes to mind from "self destructing SMS" is the advertising potential. Combined with a locator, you could now receive "Eat at Wendy's!" messages that expire so you don't have to delete them.
I don't really see it happening, but advertising in the old markets (TV, radio, newsprint) is not returning as big of a response as it used to. They'll always try to find more direct ways to advertise, and I wouldn't be surprised if this move is a predecessor to more direct advertising schemes.
Hopefully I'll be able to opt-in rather than opt-out of any such programs.
FWIW, I just can't imagine that people are SMS'ing proprietary information. If its private and confidential, keep it on paper (preferably typed with a typewriter). Digital information will always be too insecure.
If you are really interested there is plenty of informational economic theory out there.
I'm not. I've been in business for 18 years: retail, communications, IT, ISP, writing/publishing and public speaking.
There are two laws for businesses to follow to succeed in the long run: 1. provide what the customer wants at a reasonable price, in a reasonable time frame and with reasonable service, and 2. watch you cash flow so you can outlive anyone offering only "best price" with "best product" and "best service."
5 out of 7 of my businesses succeeded because I followed these rules. 2 of 7 failed because I broke these rules. I've interviewed hundreds of businessowners who succeeded and failed and they all fit within these rules.
Megacorps differ slightly as they have the laws on their sides. For every 1 law you think you can use in your favor, they have 100 laws to protect them. Going to court is not going to fix the situation (it will make lawyers wealthy though!). The only thing that fixes the situation is to let people know you are unhappy -- even if it is just 10 or 20 people close to you. No company that screws the little man stays in business long, unless they are propped up with government funding or are able to be a monopoly due to licensing or restrictive entry to business through excessive government bureaucracy.
Wal*Mart could not decide to just raise prices one day, or sell boxes of loose parts, or perform any true negative business practices. If they did, they'd go the way of Zayre, Venture, Silo, the old K-Mart, or any of the thousands of medium sized businesses that go under once they start screwing their customers.
And soon, there will be 50 competing services of that kind, half of which receive kickbacks from the companies they rate well. How do you choose which service to trust? Maybe a meta-service that rates the info-services? Soon, there will be 50 competing meta-services...
I think that is a ridiculous argument. Does eBay receive kickbacks from their top sellers? Recently a huge paintball discounter on eBay (with 10,000+ positive feedback) went out of business because they started to scam their customers. I believe from the first set of bad feedback to their bankruptcy, it was about 2 weeks. If a moderation system starts to get manipulated feedback, you'll know as it will start showing a bad company in a positive light, where other feedback providers don't. No megacorp can manipulate every review site, and you WILL see other websites providing an average review of a company. Information can be manipulated in short hops, but the overall picture is too big for any one company or cartel to shake down.
However when I travel on the train and I'm not afraid of robbers, then to be quite honest it's not because I think any of my fellow travellers would stand up and stop them - it's because government has been successful in keeping crime rates at such a level that being robbed is an unlikely event.
Really? John Lott has written two books on the subject of government protection of the people, and he found that more people are mugged and raped in areas where the police protection was high but personal protection was illegal (no gun permits). I feel safe in public because of the piece I conceal, and I have shown it twice to fend off attacks. Do I want the Wild West mentality? No, but I know I feel safer in Vegas and Texas than I do in Illinois or New York. I know someone near me is carrying and the burglars know the same thing.
Government creates laws that criminals will break. The laws, in the long run, don't work as crime continues unabated, in my opinion. When it comes to criminal transactions, it is more and more likely that we'll be able to moderate criminals out of existance, rather than try to catch them in the act and put them in jail.
But how many of those "thousands" of people actually bother to complain about their experiences to the relevant authorities?
You're right, it isn't easy. For most bad experiences it may not be fraudulent or a scam -- maybe the customer paid too much, or the retailer doesn't offer warranty service on the product, or the customer ended up breaking the item and didn't want to admit it. I'm a retailer, and about 50% of our customer complaints that we fix aren't our fault.
As it gets easier to rate a transaction (for both parties), people will start doing it. On eBay, they practically beg you to leave feedback, and I bet 90%+ of transaction always get feedback. As information is more readily available everywhere, you'll have more ways to moderate a transaction. This is good for both the buyer and the seller.
I'd like to pay less for my fuel, for example, and I'm by no means alone. A few years ago there were protests about the price of petrol - depots being picketted, motorways blockaded. The result? Nothing, but a lot of hot air in Parliament and in the press. Prices are even higher now.
Fuel prices are a collusion of the State and the fuel providers. In America, we have hundreds of different boutique blends of gasoline that are mandated by state and local legislatures. These custom blends are, of course, only provided by licensed gas blenders, and new licenses aren't available to provide added competition. Gas prices are high directly because of State intervention, not because gas stations are looking to gouge consumers. This is an issue to be debated in another forum, though.
Sure, if an isolated shop or part of a small chain starts ripping people off, people can drive it out of business by stopping going. If a multinational does it, tough.
That isn't true. In the U.S., Silo Electronics was forced out of business for selling too cheap and not backing up their products. For a few years, they were #1 in the electronics business. Before that, we saw other megaretailers go under because of bad service, bad selection and high prices. The reason Wal*Mart stays on top is because the consumers, as a whole, like what they get. The same is true for any megacorp.
Do the megacorps use government's force against competitors? Absolutely. But this is legal force that is accepted by the voting public. If people have a problem with oil prices or Wal*Mart tactics, they should blame their elected officials, not the corporation taking advantage of laws that are in place because the public never said no, in fact, they continue to say yes.
One of the assumptions is that all participants have complete, truthful information. Obviously, that would be the end of any and all scammers.
That is NEVER an assumption -- in fact I believe the counter-fact to be true. In a free market, every transaction is based on the assumption that both parties feel they are profiting from the transaction. This case is based on the risk versus reward idea. The bigger the reward is, the bigger one assumes the risk is. If Camera W123 sells locally for $499, at Amazon for $449, and John's Photo Shop sells it for $379, you're gaining a huge reward. If you jump on that price, you're accepting a risk. It is personal greed that leads people to buy from deep discounters, and they have to acknowledge that there is always a risk in making a purchase. The reason many people buy locally for more money is to lower their risk.
The problem is, of course, that our governments, pretty much no matter which one you choose, are not exactly breeding pools or good examples of honesty and integrity
This is true -- government tends to be run by scammers and shysters, in my experience.
What you're advocating is putting government in charge of markets -- the same government that is never transparent, hides information "legally" and has zero oversight except for a vote once every 4 years or so. I advocate dumping the government provisions and letting the new Internet information sharing structure take over. Now, we have instant voting based on consumer demand. If a lot of consumers get duped by a company, we'll soon have the ability to broadcast that information over many different sources.
I'd like to see an SMS server where you can message a number "JohnPhotoShop.com" and have it return "50 positives, 300 negatives, 15 neutrals" I believe this will happen, very soon, as Google and many other companies are trying to gain brand share by providing free SMS services. I use FBOWEB.COM to track all my flights and used the free PDA version of the site for a few months. Now I purchased a subscription as the site is really worth the information I've received -- and it is always more accurate than what the airlines provide.
I don't think government has protected us from scammers, ever. If anything, the platforms made by government are only used by scammers to find new loopholes (as is seen in the New York Photo scam that has been going on for 20 years). Now that information is available to EVERYONE, there is no excuse to getting scammed. Even some posts on slashdot today show that people didn't research the too-good-to-be-true pricing, and got scammed. Greed: you get what you deserve.
Being pro-market, I see the scammers as the worst aspect of any market. In the past, it can be argued that regulations and restrictions through government was needed -- scammers were able to swindle thousands to millions of dollars before people were able to get the word out and warn each other.
As the percentage of technically-savvy individuals grows, information about a dealer or retailer can be distributed in seconds. Thousands of individuals can moderate (or rate) a seller, and sellers can moderate (or rate) buyers instantly. eBay handles these transactions with very little government involvement or force.
Scammers (such as the photo retailers) have been suckering people for DECADES. This is WITH government "protection" that many citizens believe they can rely on, yet we still see thousands of people getting swindled.
As the old generation moves out of the buying phase and the new generation becomes the big power in buying, we will see less swindling and scamming. It is already very hard to scam someone in my age range (low 30s) as most of us check online before buying a large item. Google is adapting much of their search ability to cellphones (WAP, SMS and other means). I already check items out through my wireless PDA phone when I am on the go. I've saved myself a few hundred dollars by not purchasing items with bad reviews. I found these reviews through my phone in mere moments.
The old ways of the retail industry are dying. As a retailer myself (who lost one of our stores because of a scamming employee and manager base), I know that the customer has more power than I do. When all you had was a local shop to buy from, you weren't able to negotiate for better quality, service or pricing. With next day service from thousands of online shops, the retailers are put on notice that they better offer more than just a product, or they'll go out of business.
These photo scams will end without much government involvement. If they broke a contract or agreement, I can understand calling a lawyer. Hopefully in the short run enough people will comment about their bad experiences that the companies will be punished before more people are scammed -- and I see the strength of scammers quickly weakening as information is globally available, instantly.
I'm against both sides of the debate. There is no reason for the state to force any standards. If the customers of the state (the governed) request two formats (en masse), the state should oblige them. Why should the state say "This is how it will be" if the governed is saying "We want PDF, we want Word, we want ODF."
Microsoft is nuts to not support ODF, but I understand their reasoning. They don't support any creative commons licenses in their product. I think they're back about a decade in this thinking, but it is their right to do so.
In the end, the consumers are the governed and they will need to be appeased. How many users currently run ODF-compatible software? How many businesses? My customers are fearful that this mandate "for the state only" will cost them hundreds per desktop (in labor, software and future licenses) so they can be compatible with state demands.
Every customer of mine in Massachusetts is scared crapless than they'll have to invest in new software in order to assimilate state documents into their software systems. This is way more political than just setting an inside-the-house standard. I'm against both Microsoft and Massachusetts on this one. Every document I receive from my State (Illinois) is subpar to what I get from private companies. I can't imagine the cost to try to make every department follow a standard that isn't supported by 90% of my customers.
So you're both basically saying that documents made by the government should be readable by the people? In Massachussetts, what percentage of the people are using Microsoft Word or Adobe PDF, and what percentage of them are using software that support ODF?
Funny, my last name IS Dada. Also, I post under my real name (see my e-mail address?). What's your name? Why are you afraid to show it?
20/20's John Stossel discovered that privatized water and electricity is safer, cheaper and more abundant.
If MS sold strictly direct-to-consumers, I'd be concerned. They don't. 12,000 retail companies are not forced to sell Windows/Office. They're asked to by their customers.
I laughed at your response. I usually get attacked when I denounce copyright as I believe data can't be protected in any way once released to the public. Your reply sets software as physical property.
Let me paraphrase reply:
Who locks vendors into their software?
I can lock employees and vendors to my business with a non-compete agreement.
Who tried to block other media players on their OS?
If software is property, I can restrict who uses my land.
Who committed numerous acts of perjury at their antitrust trial?
I believe the fifth amendment protects all speech from perjury crimes.
This is a political issue at heart.
I fully support ODF as long as the licensing allows incorporation into closed source software.
I believe Microsoft is attempting to control the situation using legal mechanisms that are standard when dealing with government.
I think ODF would save me dozens of hours a year in State document filing.
But I don't think the problem is with MS. They're using loopholes set by the State and taking advantage of the power conferred to the politicians. Government has too much power, and this power is being legally manipulated.
EVERY SINGLE COMMENT 'dada21' makes appears to be anarcho-capitalist in some way, for good, for bad.
As long as it is on-topic, it is acceptable. I get moderated up and down based on content.
The 'free market' --in this case, everyone stuck on Microsoft proprietary formats--IS NOT FREE IN ANY WAY.
I agree 100%. Microsoft is "Evil" as they use government power to exercise extra rights. I'm anti-corporations and anti-mercantilism. I'm not pro-business, I'm pro-personal responsibility.
If it was up to dada21 the USA would abandon all of its social programs.
Yes! And leave them to the States and preferably the People, per the 9th and 10th Amendments.
Does he understand that this is not the state governments telling companies what to do, it is their own damn internal policy?
Yet government is looking to use a power not applicable to you or I - standards through force. My business can standardize on Lotus 1.0 DOS, I'd lose customers. The State's choice has huge economic repercussions, hence the money/bribes being thrown around.
Alabama (failing schools, shitty roads, ridiculous poverty) is not the centre of the universe.
Thank God it isn't. Alabama is covered in "government save us" mentality, and decades of that attitude leaves behind citizens that can't earn for themselves.
I'm against Microsoft trying to set a standard, but they can because the citizens want Massachusetts run that way. They've given the politicians sole discretion in almost every decision.
Microsoft is not a monopoly. Only force can create a monopoly -- and only government can legally use force.
If you set your Constitution to give unlimited power to your politician, don't be surprised if that power is bought. Want to end megacorp control? Scale back government's unlimited power.
This is a case of a monopoly trying to close off competition to a competitor who does it free of charge. THAT is what the case comes down to.
That is what our federal government is. Drug companies support the FDA for quasimonopoly power. Radio conglomerates support the FCC. Teacher's unions support th DOEd.
Where do we differ?
It is funny how anti-government geeks can be when it matters to them and how anti-freedom they can be when it is about controlling others. In "Taxachusetts" regulations are especially violent professional opinion and private rights.
I recommend dismantling the FDA and letting professionals do their jobs -- the doctors and researchers.
I recommend dismantling the SEC and letting professionals do their jobs -- the brokers and economists.
I recommend dismantling the DOEd and letting professionals do their jobs -- the teachers and testers.
I recommend dismantling FEMA and letting professionals do their jobs -- the insurers and engineers.
Now, when someone recommends that bureaucrats set IT standards, it's tyranny!
Look at what you're wanting: free market decisions created competitively by experts. Look at what you'll get from your previous voting records: bureaucrats with the power to set legal monopolies.
Enter room. Make bed. Sleep in it.
Interesting article but it didn't answer something I've been pondering for a few months: the chance of Wikiregulations or censorship.
History tends to be written by the winners or at least the survivors. We've seen great measures taken to control speech, especially political speech. Wiki changes that. I've seen articles with definite left-bias, similar to what I'd expect from any geek forum.
With Wikis gaining ground (google searches seem attracted to them), will there be a push to put pressure on the wiki maintainers? Corporate and hegemony controlled major media don't seem different from one another. Wiki isn't a news source, but many articles could be taken as political speech, falling under who-knows-what regulations.
Wouldn't it be better to calculate which portal is the top portal based on the actual number of users that click a portal link?
I have customers who leave yahoo.com as their home page but always click a bookmark or head to another search engine to actually start browsing. I have no idea why people don't change the home page, but even some of my family works this way. Every time they open their web browser, yahoo pops up, and then they head off in a different direction.
With the various search toolbars, will the portal be as important as it was over the past decade? My homepage is blank -- especially on my primary browser, my PDA. Even with a fast connection I don't like the delay in popping up a start page.
I go look at yahoo about once every few months and just can't handle the site. Too much text, way too many colors, and it doesn't respond very quickly on some of my older (IE-based) PCs. I guess the average person doesn't have very much knowledge of proper use of color, text and overall layout. Yahoo reminds me of the beach blanket bingo madness from the 60s.