And as much as we wish to make anything we find uncomfortable illigal, that is not the purpose of the government, or laws in general. I this case, unlike the post-9/11 laws that made the US look like another reactionary dictatorhship, the congress tried to define acceptable marketing using measurable enforcable terms.
The biggest problem with spam is the deception and confusion. This is also the biggest problem in all advertising, and something the US government tries hard to minimize. This bill speaks specifically two three issues on this. It requires that addresses be gathered overtly, and not harvested or guessed. It requires that the headers be true. It requires the content conform to current laws, and in particular requires adult content to be marked. This is similiar to existing laws. Such laws have been used to by the AG to punish direct mail and telemarketing firms.
It is unrealistic to assume that the Congress will ban commercial email. We would like something like confirmed opt-in and the like, but that may come later. Look at it this way. The drive to make telemarketers behave themselves has been going on for a very long time. As it has become clear that they do not and will not respect the wishes of the public, more aggresive laws have been passed to make them behave, until the most recent laws threaten to destroy the industry. This was the right and proper sequence of events. I think we can realiable expect the spammers to show the same disrespect and greed, and therefore can expect increasingly strict laws.
As far as the non-US mailer problems, that will can not really be solved by the congress.
What Sun is targeting is the home market. Some home machines are game machines. Some home machines are SOHO machines. Some home machines are typewriters, personal communication, and reference machines. Some home machines are door stops. Most any modern computer can satisfy the last two requirements, and the only issue is cost.
So, what is needed is a cheap machine that is MS office compatibility, a web browser that can handle the broken web pages produced by Frontpage and other MS developments apps, and email. What I really need in a home machine is stability. For instance, not having to spend a couple hours every couple weeks maintain it and downloading patches.
And really the compatibility is the problem. If it doesn't run like a windows machine, then most people can't make the cognitive generalization to use it. Most people cannot generalize the basic use of a word processor into a skill where they can get basic functionality out of any word processor. Sometime it comes down to a font name. They want a specific font that they have a the office, and they don't want a machine that does not have that font.
Star Office is wonderful. Mozilla and Opera are wonderful. But the minute something goes wrong, they will blame the fact that they bought something not made by MS, they will forget that MS product has at least as many problems, and they will never buy anything other than MS again.
Perhaps someone could explain if this laser is dangerous. A laser's powerfulness comes from the fact that a lot of energy is packed into a tight space. The normal laser spot is around 1mm. This laser spot, which they claim is the size of basketball hoop, would be around 46 cm, or about 450 times that size.
Also, if they are claiming a continuous power of at most 200 W ( 4.5 W/cm^2), and maybe as low at 50 W, that is about equivalent to at most 500mW, and maybe a 100mW laser, which is powerful enough to damage an eye, even in reflection, but a far cry from the 10 W lasers that can mark a surface, or the 100+W lasers that can do some damage.
Programming is a very creative process. One has to create structure and meaning and processes on a blank page that contains non of these. One takes ideas and creates useful products. Not only that, but one needs to know what is possible with current technology and resources. Making in all happen is an art.
However, most coders do not do this. Most modern coders do not analyze the problem, create the best possible solution, and then figure out how to make it happen. Most modern coders do not even have to think about constraints like memory and performance. Most modern coders just need to put some widgets on the screen and then type in a few lines of patching code. And they don't even think about what the code does. From what I have seen, if they need to do the same thing 10 times, they will cut and paste the same 10 lines of code in the properties box for the widgets. Not that such things did not happen before, but we also had crappy programmers before. At least they were generally creative.
So what we have now are a precious few creative types, that still have not been driven out of the industry, who can come with the ideas. Then we have the majority of drones to cobble together some widgets and code. of course, from the look of some of the web pages and applications I have seen, I think we have gotten rid of the creative types altogether.
This is just scare tactics. The other day I heard an ad for a jewelry shop and one of the main benefits cited for shopping at this shop was that you would be less likely to get mugged. I find decisions based on fear are unreliable.
Proponents have long argued that because biometrics cannot be forgotten, like a password, or lost or stolen, like a key or an identity card, they are an ideal way to control access
From what I have read and understood about security, it is inherently insecure to rely on a single form of validation. In general a secure system, like an ATM, one should require a token and a secret, or perhaps, two tokens. So on tv you see the secret agents required to swipe a card, and speak a code word. This uses biometrics as the second token. The advantage to biometric, therefore, is that one could go to an ATM and use a fingerprint and card to access the account, thus saving the PIN.
The disadvantage i have read the most is that once you lose control of the biometric, say your voice, or fingerprint, or whatever, security is forever compromised. You can't call you bank and ask for a new fingerprint.
3. Constitution and Marriage"If Darl McBride was in charge, he'd probably make marriage unconstitutional too, since clearly it de-emphasizes the commercial nature of normal human interaction, and probably is a major impediment to the commercial growth of prostitution"
I hate to say it, but perhaps the opposite is true. A reasonable single person in the western world has any number of opportunities to couple, as long as the the person is not too picky, and is in fact in interested in regular coupling. As long as everything is kept safe and no one is a maniac, which are big ifs, such coupling often does not have long term implications.
OTOH, a married person who wants to stay married does not have such freedoms. If that person wants to couple outside of the marriage, they cannot just chat up someone at the grocery. It is in fact much safer to hire a professional.
which are later added to false cards and used to empty bank... The 'ATM gang' profiled managed to purchase and setup 50+ machines and steal over $4 million from over 21,000 customers.
Are we getting poor or what? This means that the average bank customer has under $200 dollars in their bank account. I rather think the it is more likely that each card was used once to get the max allowed money, which in often on the order of a couple hundred dollars.
On a more serious note, this is a security problem that has been talked about quite a bit in the papers, and the conclusion seems to be that the banking and ATM industry brought upon itself. They set up ATMs in non-bank, non-secure, standalone locations and expect the customer to just trust that these are real ATMs. Of course ATM suppliers are more than happy to sell them to anyone who will fork over the cash. To make matters worse, the banks have been training customers to fall for this scam. The motivation is, of course, greed. The banks get $2-$5 of pretty much pure profit for each transaction. Much of the risk for these standalone machines are assumed by the owners of the machines and the account holder.
The banks should just refund money to anyone defrauded by such a scam. Ideally, the people who sold the ATMs should be held responsible for damaging the nations financial network.
On a less serious note, I really think it is funny that they way the picture is labeled in the article it appears that the suspect is in fact part of the Secret Service.
Where is the first real portable with a LCD? It was the portability but the first clone. But this shouldn't have been so high, if there was Apple, then IBM, there wouldn't be anything to clone. Copycats shouldn't rate so high.
An LCD screen is not in itself what makes the portable computer great. It, like a number of other factors, makes the transportable portable, but much of the practice in fitting large number of components into a small space had been done by the time the LCD came around.
As as Compaq being a copycat, it would be more accurately described as The Copycat. Everything that has happened with Intel machines is due to Compaq. If you enjoy your sub $1000 Intel Machine, you can thank Compaq. Compaq reversed engineered the original IBM PC. Compaq fought IBM tooth and nail, and amazingly, won. Where would Linux be without the cheap platform. What would the price of Apples be they did not have to compete against cheap PC. Compaq indirectly created the environment in which the current standardization and resulting commodity parts can profitable exists.
There were many computers that made the home computer possible. But in terms what made the home computer that the majority of people use. possible, it was the Compaq.
As far as the other comments, RTFA. The authors details his rational, and makes quite a bit of sense. It sucks that the Newton is no on the list, but, as it says, the list is what computers allowed the current home computer to exist. I would prefer to have Apple in the #1 position, but that is a small quibble.
The markets are meant for people to invest their money in businesses they feel will make a decent return for them. Investment risk consists of inherent risk of the industry, currency risk, political risk, etc. Nowhere in that equation is there EVER risk of a glitch in the computing system factored in.
The investor chooses the risk and the reaction to short term changes. The low risk, long term investor would not likely be affected by this mistake. Such investors seldom keep track of minute to minute prices. Such an investor might notice something funny happened the previous day, and check on the details, but when nothing was found go on with life.
It the high risk trader that is going to be burned by this scenario. This trader has chosen the high risk levels, and should know the consequences. And, your fantasy world notwithstanding, information is sometimes wrong. (In fact this case is not about computers but information dispersal) Sometimes you lose money. Sometimes you can sue for damages. But these traders are big boys and girl. The smart ones double check information if it seems out of the ordinary (and wrong quotes come by more than you might believe, often direcly from the exchange). They do not run home to mommy and daddy complaining that a 5th grader sold his pubes for $10, and you now want your money back.
Re:$299 is financed at 21.7% APR
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It is even worse than that. In order to cancel you have to call to return the PC and call to cancel the AOL account. If you cancel the AOL account without returning the PC, you get charged like $325 dollars plus taxes plus all other fees all at once, which one can imagine could be close to $400. If you return the computer and don't cancel the AOL account within the promotional period, it seems that you still might be liable for the year.
Of course if you wait the 45 days, and isn't it interesting that is 45 and not 30 or 60, you have one month interest for $6, and probably double that buy the time they get it processed. No much, but it wil add up for AOL. Of course you can and ask for a one time credit, but, as we talked about earlier, how many people are going to do that for $10.
Not to mention that nowhere does it say what shipping and handling is, which isn't refunded. Can anyone say that the consmer ends up paying $100 no matter what?
Re:If this shipped with Lindows instead...
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They wouldn't even have to ship it with Lindows. An xBox can be had for $150, and the machine that AOL is giving out is not more sophisticated. Also take into consideration that the Montor and Printer probably does not affect the cost that much.
I think they selling this at a competitvie price so that people who might be concerned at the complexity of getting online will be confortable buying the system. The configuration is as it is so that no one will be concerned about the purchase. It is vanilla system that is ok but no great. I don't think they are selling it at a loss, and unless the sales are really bad, I doubt the are interested in moving below this price point.
I would think that spammers would use 100% non-ms solutions. After all they know exactly what kind of security risks MS software presents. And one would assume that they would to protect themselves against thier own and competitors spam.
Perhaps the spam industry is run by the PHB as well, and the demand for 100% MS, no matter what, is just a prevalent.
Re:You don't need a conspiracy theory
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I tend to agree with you that mistakes are made, and have attributed most of difficulties I have with companies to honest mistakes.
The problem I have is the lack of effective problem solving processes, that, as you case suggests, appear to be geared to encouraging the customer to accept the overcharge rather than actually fixing the problem. I have one case where the bank fraudulently debited by account. It was clear that it was their fault, but they refused to anything until i came to the bank to complain in person. They would not take faxes of the documents.
And the list goes on. I have had cellular companies mess up registering me for special offers and overcharge me every month. They told me if I called every month they could correct the problem, but there was no way to note the account to have it done automatically. I have been told more times that I can remember that things can't be done, that I must talk to someone else, and to call back when I receive the next bill to see if is fixed.
It seems arguable that they are creating a situation in which these mistakes become profit centers. And if that is true, then even if they are not purposefully creating the "mistakes", they have little incentive to minimize them.
What we learn from this book is that is very profitable to sell a product that then creates a demand for other products. While such a business model is not always unethical, it only succeeds as long consumers are willing to buy the products. Unfortunately consumers, especially US consumers, have been whipped up into such a state of fear and desperation, they are willing to buy almost anything that given them the tiniest sliver of hope, even though the purchase of such products often just digs the hole deeper.
The problem with DRM is that it is break once run anywhere. Palladium like any other hardware enforcement system is breakable, the catch is that you have to break a system that is trusted by the sender of the data.
For control of sensitive company documents the issue is very different. I can configure my systems so that they only deliver sensitive data to specific palladium pcs that I have designated as trusted and to obtain my documents you have to break those specific machines.
Really, the internal problem is not much different from the external problem. While it is true that more control exists for internal networks, it again takes a single malicious agent to break the system. Therefore, for things such as securing memos that are sent to 1000 employees, it would still be difficult to find the one that caused the breech.
For more serious security, we already have protocols that seem to work, but might benefit from the type of system that MS is talking about. The benefit, however, is not against malicious attacks, which tend to be covered by existing protocols, but against accidental breeches. For instance, if the system is set up so only secure local computers can be hooked up to critical parts of the network, then it would not be possible for someone to accidently hook up their home computer the office network. It might still fail against a purposeful attack, but the benefit still exists.
It is possible that the assumption that making email cost money, say comparable to the postage of physical mail, in an effort to make spam go away is naive.
The reality is that all the costs involved with physical mail merely force advertisers to acquire targeted mail lists. Since each piece of mail costs them money, in addition to the development cost of the campaign, they want to make sure each piece has a good possibility of generating a sale. Of course, since they have to have enough sales to cover the campaign, they send tend to accept returns of less that 1 in 100.
Taxing email will not directly address the slight bigger issue of deceptive or inappropriate advertising. With physical bulk mail someone, somewhere, is accountable for the contents. People are still free to send out whatever they wish, but they risk prosecution if the contents are illegal. This is why firm like Publisher's Clearinghouse, which is probably responsible for more trash than the City of New York, is allowed to exists. They walk the a fine line in order to generate sales, and occasionally crosses over to illegal content. When they do, they settle and business goes on.
So what is needed is accountability. All Spam tries to avoid accountability, either through forged headers, shill companies, or offshore operations. The accountability issue is the weakness of most current laws. If you can find the source, you can sue them, but there are few tools to find the source. One possibility to punish ISPs that exhibit a pattern of catering firms that break existing laws, or do not enforce their EULA, or whatever, but most current laws give blanket amnesty to the ISP.
One has to assume that firms other than the spammers are making money. There must a fair number of otherwise legitimate companies that are reaping tons of profit from this for the laws to be so weak.
First, I can understand why Dell would not endorse the use of spyware removal programs. The removal of spyware can mess up a machine, and if the tech recommended the procedure, then Dell, in theory, has to fix it. Likewise, using spyware-removal willy nilly is a security risk itself. No one knows if the code is really spyware, and people get so afraid the word 'spyware' that they may not take the time to look. Such programs could become prime vectors for trojans.
Anyway, it is really no more the responsibility of Dell to remove spyware from a computer than it is their responsibility to remove IE. Both are security issues. Both have costs and benefits. But the playing field has been set.
using the web to find native translators instead of using over priced local ones
Where have we heard that before. Are we now advocating shipping jobs offshore as long as it saves a lot of money and does not affect quality? Or is it that these jobs were not IT positions, so no one cares.
Anyway, the whole post sounds like an advertisement. Hope/. got comensated.
Just a quick note. The debate as to whether the sun or earth was the center of the universe has been going on for way more than 2000 years. The general Greek teaching was that the earth was the center, but even then there were indications that they thought this assumption might be wrong. In about the 15th century, the western world finally starting thinking for itself and make a careful study of the Greek texts. Such studies led Copernicus, whom the system was named, to state the Sun was the center. At this time most people thought he was crazy, which was reasonable as there was no evidence or need for the change. It is interesting to note, however, that navigational table began to appear that assumed the sun was the center of all. The accuracy of these tables made them very popular.
Later Tycho Brahe, Galileo and Johannes Kepler did the footwork that was needed to fix the problems of the Copernican system. In particular Galileo gathered data was really necessitated the sun centered theory, which got him into trouble with the church. The church then proceeded to waste vast amounts of resource prosecuting him, money that would better have been spent helping plague stickmen victims. All in all, by this time there was 150 years of evidence supporting the sun centered philosophy, and pretty much anyone who mattered accepted it as reality.
In science, unfortunately, sometimes you have to judge the person. The reason is that science is supposed to flow from observation to honest repeatable demonstrations to conclusions that fairly incorporate what was learned from the demonstrations.
Most scientist will assume the ideal situation and assume that colleagues are playing fairly. Therefore, the system is fairly easy to game, for at least a little while. All it takes is a small group of 'scientist' with an agenda. This usually involves some idea that they really want to be 'true'. These characters only need to selectively choose demonstrations and filter data in such a way that their 'truth' is shown to result from the data. Of course real science has great difficulty defending against such attacks because, as in all things, playing by the rules to discover truth is vastly more difficult than just asserting something is true and then picking the few examples that support the position. Even when no malice is involved, such fictions have taken years to disprove.
In the case of softer sciences, or even the harder sciences where duplicating of demonstrations are really difficult, the credibility of the person is critical. The ease by which such sciences are gamed is the reason why we have so much confusion over a variety of social issues, even though the basic consensus is amazingly clear. OTOH, consensus can be wrong, which is why science uses resources to look at all sides of the issue
As an aside, the physicists, and really scientists in general, I know are extremely open minded. They just get jaded after a while due to the number of malcontents that abuse science to promote personal doctrine. To a trained and logical mind, the rhetoric some of these idiots spout is really equivalent to just throwing throwing feces everywhere.
Though simplistic, the example indicates the necessity of OSS. Choice and vibrant competition is the sign of a healthy market. If all we had was IE and Safari, Media Player and Quicktime, MS Office, we would fall into the same trap that has haunted so many socialist and communist economies. An immediate and incredible efficiency in production, but a total inability to meet future needs.
Another factor is that traditionally such innovation is often not funded directly by a single firm. Often governments and private donations help the process of developing new products. This has always been the case, although usually large firms have enough control to insure that they own the end products. That is the difference now. Large companies are either not directly involved with the development, or do not find the product valuable enough to keep. Large firms patent what they can, and compete against the rest. Combine this with a low barrier to entry for the development and distribution of software, and one arrives at the capitalistic free for all that currently characterizes the IT industry.
I think it is bigger than this. I think it is about google having a fairly open system in which advertisers have relatively equal access to consumers. As google says, you can't buy the top ranked spot. Because it is open, they have to be careful about the kind of business they attract. If they get too many shady companies their credibility as trusted source of advertisements will suffer. Such advertisements, in which the advertiser may not have the product at all, clutters up the advertising space and may annoy the legitimate advertisers, with whom the long term relationship will be of more value to google than short term income generated by the not-so-legitimate companies.
Look at it this way. We have unlicensed music on the net. You can download music without paying a licensing fee in the same way we used to copy music without paying licensing fees. OTOH, if some dude stopped you on the street and offered you an unmarked CDR of Missy E for $5, would you buy it. You might, if you got to listen to it, but you are likely to waste your money on an incomplete product. Likewise, would you buy copies of music from some firm that poped up on google? Maybe. You potentially do so on places like half.com. But you may get ripped off.
I think just like most things google, they are trying to keep things as simple as possible so they offer reasonable service as cheaply as possible. Of course there are a lot of people who will try to work the system to cheat people.
One thing I try to communicate to the kids is that anonymity implies a total lack of credibility. I am not commenting on the veracity of your post, just the tendency of kids and many adults to believe whatever they are told.
Communication works when it can be attributed to a known individual or institution. Judgments can then be made by past direct or indirect involvement with those parties. While it certainly true that anonymous communication protects certan parties from certain other parties that wish to stop such information, it also severely degrades the quality of the information, often to the point of worthlessness. At some point, someone has to risk their neck to validate the infomation.
Movies are rated voluntarily. The movie theaters do a pretty good job at keeping kids out of inappropriate movies and the stores do a pretty good job at not selling inappropriate movies to kids based on this voluntary system. It is hard to show that the voluntary measures are not working well enough. For instance, the theaters were carding everyone for "Y tu mama tambien."
My understanding is the rating for video games are only to inform parents and other consumers about the suitability of the games for certain audiences. I do not believe they are specificaly meant to limit sales to certain persons.
OTOH, one can make the argument that an R or unrated movie that is shown next door or sold next to a PG movie provides an opportunity for children to sneak into or shoplift such a movie. Therefore separating video games with mature content would be unfair and might unfairly limit the availability to legitimate consumers.
I do agree with you about the silliness of a parent being more scared of a breast, or even a penis or vagina, than of the graphic depiction of the violent taking of a human life. I think this is one of the points that South Park has been trying to make.
In the past it does seem the guests were at least partially responsible. Of the ten items reference on the page, 4 were due to guest ignoring ride rules, 3 were due to lack of proper security, and three were due to poorly designed or maintained rides.
Recently, it seems, that the park has gotten better at security and designing rides to keep the guests safe, even the stupid ones. OTOH, people are dying because of faulty maintenance.
Slashdot Mirror
The biggest problem with spam is the deception and confusion. This is also the biggest problem in all advertising, and something the US government tries hard to minimize. This bill speaks specifically two three issues on this. It requires that addresses be gathered overtly, and not harvested or guessed. It requires that the headers be true. It requires the content conform to current laws, and in particular requires adult content to be marked. This is similiar to existing laws. Such laws have been used to by the AG to punish direct mail and telemarketing firms.
It is unrealistic to assume that the Congress will ban commercial email. We would like something like confirmed opt-in and the like, but that may come later. Look at it this way. The drive to make telemarketers behave themselves has been going on for a very long time. As it has become clear that they do not and will not respect the wishes of the public, more aggresive laws have been passed to make them behave, until the most recent laws threaten to destroy the industry. This was the right and proper sequence of events. I think we can realiable expect the spammers to show the same disrespect and greed, and therefore can expect increasingly strict laws.
As far as the non-US mailer problems, that will can not really be solved by the congress.
So, what is needed is a cheap machine that is MS office compatibility, a web browser that can handle the broken web pages produced by Frontpage and other MS developments apps, and email. What I really need in a home machine is stability. For instance, not having to spend a couple hours every couple weeks maintain it and downloading patches.
And really the compatibility is the problem. If it doesn't run like a windows machine, then most people can't make the cognitive generalization to use it. Most people cannot generalize the basic use of a word processor into a skill where they can get basic functionality out of any word processor. Sometime it comes down to a font name. They want a specific font that they have a the office, and they don't want a machine that does not have that font.
Star Office is wonderful. Mozilla and Opera are wonderful. But the minute something goes wrong, they will blame the fact that they bought something not made by MS, they will forget that MS product has at least as many problems, and they will never buy anything other than MS again.
Also, if they are claiming a continuous power of at most 200 W ( 4.5 W/cm^2), and maybe as low at 50 W, that is about equivalent to at most 500mW, and maybe a 100mW laser, which is powerful enough to damage an eye, even in reflection, but a far cry from the 10 W lasers that can mark a surface, or the 100+W lasers that can do some damage.
However, most coders do not do this. Most modern coders do not analyze the problem, create the best possible solution, and then figure out how to make it happen. Most modern coders do not even have to think about constraints like memory and performance. Most modern coders just need to put some widgets on the screen and then type in a few lines of patching code. And they don't even think about what the code does. From what I have seen, if they need to do the same thing 10 times, they will cut and paste the same 10 lines of code in the properties box for the widgets. Not that such things did not happen before, but we also had crappy programmers before. At least they were generally creative.
So what we have now are a precious few creative types, that still have not been driven out of the industry, who can come with the ideas. Then we have the majority of drones to cobble together some widgets and code. of course, from the look of some of the web pages and applications I have seen, I think we have gotten rid of the creative types altogether.
Proponents have long argued that because biometrics cannot be forgotten, like a password, or lost or stolen, like a key or an identity card, they are an ideal way to control access
From what I have read and understood about security, it is inherently insecure to rely on a single form of validation. In general a secure system, like an ATM, one should require a token and a secret, or perhaps, two tokens. So on tv you see the secret agents required to swipe a card, and speak a code word. This uses biometrics as the second token. The advantage to biometric, therefore, is that one could go to an ATM and use a fingerprint and card to access the account, thus saving the PIN.
The disadvantage i have read the most is that once you lose control of the biometric, say your voice, or fingerprint, or whatever, security is forever compromised. You can't call you bank and ask for a new fingerprint.
I hate to say it, but perhaps the opposite is true. A reasonable single person in the western world has any number of opportunities to couple, as long as the the person is not too picky, and is in fact in interested in regular coupling. As long as everything is kept safe and no one is a maniac, which are big ifs, such coupling often does not have long term implications.
OTOH, a married person who wants to stay married does not have such freedoms. If that person wants to couple outside of the marriage, they cannot just chat up someone at the grocery. It is in fact much safer to hire a professional.
Just hypothetically of course.
Are we getting poor or what? This means that the average bank customer has under $200 dollars in their bank account. I rather think the it is more likely that each card was used once to get the max allowed money, which in often on the order of a couple hundred dollars.
On a more serious note, this is a security problem that has been talked about quite a bit in the papers, and the conclusion seems to be that the banking and ATM industry brought upon itself. They set up ATMs in non-bank, non-secure, standalone locations and expect the customer to just trust that these are real ATMs. Of course ATM suppliers are more than happy to sell them to anyone who will fork over the cash. To make matters worse, the banks have been training customers to fall for this scam. The motivation is, of course, greed. The banks get $2-$5 of pretty much pure profit for each transaction. Much of the risk for these standalone machines are assumed by the owners of the machines and the account holder.
The banks should just refund money to anyone defrauded by such a scam. Ideally, the people who sold the ATMs should be held responsible for damaging the nations financial network.
On a less serious note, I really think it is funny that they way the picture is labeled in the article it appears that the suspect is in fact part of the Secret Service.
An LCD screen is not in itself what makes the portable computer great. It, like a number of other factors, makes the transportable portable, but much of the practice in fitting large number of components into a small space had been done by the time the LCD came around.
As as Compaq being a copycat, it would be more accurately described as The Copycat. Everything that has happened with Intel machines is due to Compaq. If you enjoy your sub $1000 Intel Machine, you can thank Compaq. Compaq reversed engineered the original IBM PC. Compaq fought IBM tooth and nail, and amazingly, won. Where would Linux be without the cheap platform. What would the price of Apples be they did not have to compete against cheap PC. Compaq indirectly created the environment in which the current standardization and resulting commodity parts can profitable exists.
There were many computers that made the home computer possible. But in terms what made the home computer that the majority of people use. possible, it was the Compaq.
As far as the other comments, RTFA. The authors details his rational, and makes quite a bit of sense. It sucks that the Newton is no on the list, but, as it says, the list is what computers allowed the current home computer to exist. I would prefer to have Apple in the #1 position, but that is a small quibble.
The investor chooses the risk and the reaction to short term changes. The low risk, long term investor would not likely be affected by this mistake. Such investors seldom keep track of minute to minute prices. Such an investor might notice something funny happened the previous day, and check on the details, but when nothing was found go on with life.
It the high risk trader that is going to be burned by this scenario. This trader has chosen the high risk levels, and should know the consequences. And, your fantasy world notwithstanding, information is sometimes wrong. (In fact this case is not about computers but information dispersal) Sometimes you lose money. Sometimes you can sue for damages. But these traders are big boys and girl. The smart ones double check information if it seems out of the ordinary (and wrong quotes come by more than you might believe, often direcly from the exchange). They do not run home to mommy and daddy complaining that a 5th grader sold his pubes for $10, and you now want your money back.
Of course if you wait the 45 days, and isn't it interesting that is 45 and not 30 or 60, you have one month interest for $6, and probably double that buy the time they get it processed. No much, but it wil add up for AOL. Of course you can and ask for a one time credit, but, as we talked about earlier, how many people are going to do that for $10.
Not to mention that nowhere does it say what shipping and handling is, which isn't refunded. Can anyone say that the consmer ends up paying $100 no matter what?
I think they selling this at a competitvie price so that people who might be concerned at the complexity of getting online will be confortable buying the system. The configuration is as it is so that no one will be concerned about the purchase. It is vanilla system that is ok but no great. I don't think they are selling it at a loss, and unless the sales are really bad, I doubt the are interested in moving below this price point.
Perhaps the spam industry is run by the PHB as well, and the demand for 100% MS, no matter what, is just a prevalent.
The problem I have is the lack of effective problem solving processes, that, as you case suggests, appear to be geared to encouraging the customer to accept the overcharge rather than actually fixing the problem. I have one case where the bank fraudulently debited by account. It was clear that it was their fault, but they refused to anything until i came to the bank to complain in person. They would not take faxes of the documents.
And the list goes on. I have had cellular companies mess up registering me for special offers and overcharge me every month. They told me if I called every month they could correct the problem, but there was no way to note the account to have it done automatically. I have been told more times that I can remember that things can't be done, that I must talk to someone else, and to call back when I receive the next bill to see if is fixed.
It seems arguable that they are creating a situation in which these mistakes become profit centers. And if that is true, then even if they are not purposefully creating the "mistakes", they have little incentive to minimize them.
What we learn from this book is that is very profitable to sell a product that then creates a demand for other products. While such a business model is not always unethical, it only succeeds as long consumers are willing to buy the products. Unfortunately consumers, especially US consumers, have been whipped up into such a state of fear and desperation, they are willing to buy almost anything that given them the tiniest sliver of hope, even though the purchase of such products often just digs the hole deeper.
For control of sensitive company documents the issue is very different. I can configure my systems so that they only deliver sensitive data to specific palladium pcs that I have designated as trusted and to obtain my documents you have to break those specific machines.
Really, the internal problem is not much different from the external problem. While it is true that more control exists for internal networks, it again takes a single malicious agent to break the system. Therefore, for things such as securing memos that are sent to 1000 employees, it would still be difficult to find the one that caused the breech.
For more serious security, we already have protocols that seem to work, but might benefit from the type of system that MS is talking about. The benefit, however, is not against malicious attacks, which tend to be covered by existing protocols, but against accidental breeches. For instance, if the system is set up so only secure local computers can be hooked up to critical parts of the network, then it would not be possible for someone to accidently hook up their home computer the office network. It might still fail against a purposeful attack, but the benefit still exists.
The reality is that all the costs involved with physical mail merely force advertisers to acquire targeted mail lists. Since each piece of mail costs them money, in addition to the development cost of the campaign, they want to make sure each piece has a good possibility of generating a sale. Of course, since they have to have enough sales to cover the campaign, they send tend to accept returns of less that 1 in 100.
Taxing email will not directly address the slight bigger issue of deceptive or inappropriate advertising. With physical bulk mail someone, somewhere, is accountable for the contents. People are still free to send out whatever they wish, but they risk prosecution if the contents are illegal. This is why firm like Publisher's Clearinghouse, which is probably responsible for more trash than the City of New York, is allowed to exists. They walk the a fine line in order to generate sales, and occasionally crosses over to illegal content. When they do, they settle and business goes on.
So what is needed is accountability. All Spam tries to avoid accountability, either through forged headers, shill companies, or offshore operations. The accountability issue is the weakness of most current laws. If you can find the source, you can sue them, but there are few tools to find the source. One possibility to punish ISPs that exhibit a pattern of catering firms that break existing laws, or do not enforce their EULA, or whatever, but most current laws give blanket amnesty to the ISP.
One has to assume that firms other than the spammers are making money. There must a fair number of otherwise legitimate companies that are reaping tons of profit from this for the laws to be so weak.
Anyway, it is really no more the responsibility of Dell to remove spyware from a computer than it is their responsibility to remove IE. Both are security issues. Both have costs and benefits. But the playing field has been set.
Where have we heard that before. Are we now advocating shipping jobs offshore as long as it saves a lot of money and does not affect quality? Or is it that these jobs were not IT positions, so no one cares.
Anyway, the whole post sounds like an advertisement. Hope /. got comensated.
Later Tycho Brahe, Galileo and Johannes Kepler did the footwork that was needed to fix the problems of the Copernican system. In particular Galileo gathered data was really necessitated the sun centered theory, which got him into trouble with the church. The church then proceeded to waste vast amounts of resource prosecuting him, money that would better have been spent helping plague stickmen victims. All in all, by this time there was 150 years of evidence supporting the sun centered philosophy, and pretty much anyone who mattered accepted it as reality.
Most scientist will assume the ideal situation and assume that colleagues are playing fairly. Therefore, the system is fairly easy to game, for at least a little while. All it takes is a small group of 'scientist' with an agenda. This usually involves some idea that they really want to be 'true'. These characters only need to selectively choose demonstrations and filter data in such a way that their 'truth' is shown to result from the data. Of course real science has great difficulty defending against such attacks because, as in all things, playing by the rules to discover truth is vastly more difficult than just asserting something is true and then picking the few examples that support the position. Even when no malice is involved, such fictions have taken years to disprove.
In the case of softer sciences, or even the harder sciences where duplicating of demonstrations are really difficult, the credibility of the person is critical. The ease by which such sciences are gamed is the reason why we have so much confusion over a variety of social issues, even though the basic consensus is amazingly clear. OTOH, consensus can be wrong, which is why science uses resources to look at all sides of the issue
As an aside, the physicists, and really scientists in general, I know are extremely open minded. They just get jaded after a while due to the number of malcontents that abuse science to promote personal doctrine. To a trained and logical mind, the rhetoric some of these idiots spout is really equivalent to just throwing throwing feces everywhere.
Another factor is that traditionally such innovation is often not funded directly by a single firm. Often governments and private donations help the process of developing new products. This has always been the case, although usually large firms have enough control to insure that they own the end products. That is the difference now. Large companies are either not directly involved with the development, or do not find the product valuable enough to keep. Large firms patent what they can, and compete against the rest. Combine this with a low barrier to entry for the development and distribution of software, and one arrives at the capitalistic free for all that currently characterizes the IT industry.
Look at it this way. We have unlicensed music on the net. You can download music without paying a licensing fee in the same way we used to copy music without paying licensing fees. OTOH, if some dude stopped you on the street and offered you an unmarked CDR of Missy E for $5, would you buy it. You might, if you got to listen to it, but you are likely to waste your money on an incomplete product. Likewise, would you buy copies of music from some firm that poped up on google? Maybe. You potentially do so on places like half.com. But you may get ripped off.
I think just like most things google, they are trying to keep things as simple as possible so they offer reasonable service as cheaply as possible. Of course there are a lot of people who will try to work the system to cheat people.
Communication works when it can be attributed to a known individual or institution. Judgments can then be made by past direct or indirect involvement with those parties. While it certainly true that anonymous communication protects certan parties from certain other parties that wish to stop such information, it also severely degrades the quality of the information, often to the point of worthlessness. At some point, someone has to risk their neck to validate the infomation.
My understanding is the rating for video games are only to inform parents and other consumers about the suitability of the games for certain audiences. I do not believe they are specificaly meant to limit sales to certain persons.
OTOH, one can make the argument that an R or unrated movie that is shown next door or sold next to a PG movie provides an opportunity for children to sneak into or shoplift such a movie. Therefore separating video games with mature content would be unfair and might unfairly limit the availability to legitimate consumers.
I do agree with you about the silliness of a parent being more scared of a breast, or even a penis or vagina, than of the graphic depiction of the violent taking of a human life. I think this is one of the points that South Park has been trying to make.
Recently, it seems, that the park has gotten better at security and designing rides to keep the guests safe, even the stupid ones. OTOH, people are dying because of faulty maintenance.