The ROI is 0%, just like the ROI of digging an underground bunker, and putting all the servers and business facilities underground inside a faraday cage, in order to protect against thermonuclear war.
That's funny: even Microsoft does not recommend utilizing Internet Explorer Version 6.
In fact: the update from IE6 to IE8 is distributed as a critical security update.
To be using it at this point with known compromise of Google using the vulnerability, and massive numbers of exploits in the wild, isn't just insecurity, it's insanity, and vying for the computer equivalent of a darwin award...
I've noted.. posters on slashdot really love to use the word false dichotomy in totally bogus contexts like this...
basically: It's a straw man argument to declare the GP's argument a false dichotomy, even if it really is a dichotomy (which it does not appear to be), because the argument doesn't hinge on a dichotomy existing or not.
The poster is quite right, in that if your company allows custom solutions, there will be many people wanting their own custom solution.
It would be unlikely for IT choices made at a fixed point in time to be perfect for the business forever -- software gets outdated, people write new software: sometimes newer or different software products are more efficient, convenient, more comfortable, or more fun to use. May result in higher productivity
So it is extremely likely that everyone or nearly everyone will eventually want some change or deviation from a standard image IT has laid out in advance.
Which belies GP's point.
And this may be inconvenient for IT.
Given that IT likes to apply a standard image to all PCs, to make their job easier.
In addition, it's true that there are people who will do foolish things, such as break their computers, and risk security of the network, if they are allowed to choose custom solutions at will.
However, I don't agree with the poster in this regard.
I say: If it's inconvenient for IT, that's IT's problem. IT's job is to provide the technology and support for technology needed by the business, not to try to dictate terms that are convenient for IT.
If a user breaks the configuration of their computer, IT's job is to help them fix it.
Not cripple them a-priori so they cannot break it in the first place.
That would be like chaining your (able-bodied) kids in a wheelchair, keeping them locked up in it, to ensure they can't accidentally trip and hurt themselves.
I.E. It would be ridiculous.
Pragmatically, there is a point to security.
And I see good reasons to lock down users who repeatedly break their machines,
or counsel them to seek advise before installing software.
If a simple rogue software program allowed to successfully run is capable of compromising security, beyond the permissions of that workstation's user, then IT is grossly incompetent.
Punishing employees seen playing a game, who are neglecting their duties (giving them a stripped down, locked down workstation, is a punishment, yes).
But forcing employees to use pre-defined products, when better free, widely-used tools are available....
that totally warps and twists part of the promise of computing, part of the benefit and opportunity it offers for business improvement.
It's like artificially treating free stuff as expensive stuff.
This is just some software engineer's rebellion against a professor that made him use a pure functional language in early childhood, without allowing access to intoxicating side-effects.
In Exchange, he decided to release a major software program with nothing but GOTO statements and JMPs to call executables, no functions at all.
The device alone is not useful as a toy, or able to be made useful as a toy, without incurring much larger expenses.
Without owning something like the 'wii' platform
and undertaking a major software development effort, there's no way to make a force board that's both a medical device and a toy.
Of course it's conceivable that Nintendo could make a medical device now.
They were fortunate to have already done all the research and development work to market a gaming console widely enough to use the BB with.
If 85 bucks is break-even, then they'll have a 100% profit margin selling at twice that, or 170 bucks.
In the example above, 85 bucks is only break-even if they make a certain sales number.
It's a completely unwarranted assumption to suppose you can simply change the price, and have the number of sales stay the same. In fact, when you double the price, the number of sales may go down by 20x or more: it is the job of market research people to make the proper analysis there.
They have to sell 1 million units for 85 bucks to be break-even.
We're assuming the original research and development is a fixed cost that doesn't depend on the number of units (for the sake of simplicity).
If they sell only 200,000 units, the break-even price is much higher, which is the whole point of the post, and you seemed to have missed.
200,000 is 1/5 of 1 million. So following your line of thought, the actual price would be 5 times 170, or 850 bucks.
No, because in the model I was giving, support costs are 4x as much.
In particular: support costs include the
additional average expenses required to obtain each sale.
Medical devices of this nature are not mass-market products, there is no benefit of a separate retailer. The manufacturer typically has to find a vendor to solicit leads and sell the product; salesmen take expensive commissions, and there are other expenses such as travel.
Nintendo doesn't have any need to send salesmen to take every Joe sixpack out to lunch and discuss the merits of their balance board product.
The sales are easier to get, fewer sales staff are needed. Pre-sales support is non-existent.
Yes.. most free software licenses are subject to copyright, some of them have been specifically released into the public domain
In the case of the BSD license, the copyright statement always appeared prior to the license in the software Berkeley applied it to.
The copyright statement applied not just to the software but also to the license itself.
The 'advertising clause' was removed with Berkeley's permission.
It's not entirely clear whether it's an issue or not that other people have widely taken the license to use with their own software, and removed UC Berkeley's copyright statement in doing so.
It's probable that Berkeley has invited this.
But if you are selling software.
Maybe they even released it public domain at some point (but I didn't get the emo).
It's probably best not to take any chances with your software though...
Getting your lawyer to put down your own legalese (if you don't want certain restrictions) can't be that hard.
Let's just say for the sake of argument the Wii balance board, and the medical device both cost $10 million to research and design.
Ignoring the additional compliance, insurance, and qualification a medical device VS a toy has to go through to be produced.
Let's just say nintendo or their insurer was really concerned about safety, and perfect operation of the debe no complaints.
Further, let's say once all the preliminary work was done, the Wii board cost $75 per unit in materials and labor to manufacturer, and the medical force board cost exactly the same $75.
If Nintendo sells 5 million BBs to retailers at the price of $85 per unit, their net revnue is: ($85 - $75) * 5E6 - $10 mil = $40 million dollars revenue from the sale of BBs,
The sales proceeds were: $425 million dollars.
Their cost of sales were: $75 * 5E6 + $10 million = $385 million dollars.
$425 - $375 = $40 million
A very slim profit margin of 10%, but still not bad. Usually game consoles / accessories are sold at a loss anyways, the money is in the software, which can be updated at much lower cost.
Now... as for the medical device... we know there won't be demand for $5 million.
Let's be conservative, and say the medical device manufacturer's market research tells them they can expect to sell 1,000,000 units, it is an innovative device at all, and there are thousands of hospitals all over the country..
What should the price be?
If they make it $85 bucks, even... their revenue will be:
($85 - $75) * 1million - $10 mil = $0
What? They spent $10 million to develop this, they sold 1 million units, and no revenue to show for it? Just taxable business operations?
(By the time other costs are considered, this is actually a net loss of money)
Here's why:
Sales proceeds: $85 * 1 million = $85 million in sales
Cost of sales: ( $75 * 1 million + 10 million = $85 million )
$85 - $75 = $0
So they have two options... go after a larger market that will buy more units, or raise the price.
Their product is only of interest to hospitals really, so the only option is to raise the price.
How much does the price need to be for there to be a 10% profit?
Sales proceeds need to be: $93.5 million.
That means, the price for each unit needs to be: $93.50 per unit.
What if they want a healthier profit margin?
Their sole purpose in life is to manufacture medical devices, they don't sell software -- they need a good profit margin from selling their product.
A fair profit margin is 100% or more.
To achieve that, the minimum price is $930.50 per unit.
At a higher price, two things will happen (1) they will sell fewer units, and
(2) their support costs per unit will be higher -- better warranty and service will be expected.
Also, 1 million sales is unrealistic for a niche product, it will probably be more like 200,000 sales.
To maintain a healthy product with 1/20 of 1 million, the actual price needed will be 20x that, or
$18,610.00
Holy smokes.. that's awfully close to the '$18,000 medical device' price.
I wasn't planning on that, it was really a coincidence, honest..
I'm sure insurance is a consideration, but I think it pales into comparison to the small sales volume,
and the high initial costs to design and manufacture any electronics good.
And there's only 1 company on the planet that builds the wiimote balance board....
The difference is the average gamer doesn't have the budget or the desire to spend $18,000 for a game controller.
It has to be cheap, and there are certain compliance processes they don't need to deal with that a medical manufacturer does.
Moreover, with the high sales volume of a commodity game platform, they will make up Research and development costs easily, even though the price is less, the profit margin can be much greater than with the $18,000 device, which is still very expensive to originally research, design, test, qualify, and ultimately produce and support.
Try the metro areas: Atlanta GA, Washington DC, Chicago IL, Dallas, Houston TX, San Antonio TX, Austin TX, Portland OR, Seattle WA, Salt Lake City UT, Denver CO, New Orleans LA, Tallahassee, Tampa FL, Jacksonville FL, Charlotte SC, Raleigh SC, Baltimore, Philadelphia, New York City, Boston, New Haven CT
I have no doubt there are some gaps/dead areas if you look hard enough, just like there are coverage gaps with Verizon and others.
But within the areas that are officially covered, I think the network accessibility is very similar..
What we really need is a free data roaming service:)
Actually.. I think the best coverage might be WiFi + Skype. Not any cell provider.
The speed is a heck of a lot better, and you are pretty much guaranteed to be able to find WiFi coverage in almost any coffee shop, even in fairly small cities that have very poor or non-existent 3G coverage from major providers.
Also, the price is less.. usually a $3 cup of coffee you would buy anyways, and no per-kilobyte billing -- you may be able to get it less-expensively also. At home, you don't have to pay any monthly fee at all (other than for your internet service and electricity, which you already buy).
When considering the statistics, regarding cell phone providers, the trouble is it's really hard to determine if the reports that provided those statistics were unbiased, or if funding or influence was received from ATT.
In addition, other providers in their war against ATT, very likely have paid shills whose job is to influence public opinion, by creating an impression their network has the best coverage, instead of ATT.
So it's really hard to determine from a conversation like the comments on this slashdot post.. who really is the best anecdotally.
Are posters' anecdote's real?
Which company has the most customers that visit slashdot?
Which company has the most satisfied (or unsatisfied) customers that visit slashdot?
Are the characteristics of slashdot visitors similar to characteristics of the general population?
For example, are Slashdot users likely to notice problems (or features) that the general population doesn't know about, or doesn't prioritize so much?
Which of the cell providers have the most paid shills in this forum?
AT&T has fairly good 3G coverage in all major US cities. And the best performance by far, where you can find coverage.
If you're a traveller who frequents many areas (esp. small towns) or live in one of those small cities with spotty ATT coverage for 3G, then you will probably want Sprint or Verizon.
Although their networks are generally slower, and the experience is generally poorer (on average), they have a lot more area covered.
So again: ATT is clearly the superior choice if you live in a well-covered area and don't go too far from home.
Verizon is a superior choice for most other areas.
For a moderate number of areas, Sprint will give you a better service, and there are a small number of areas where T-Mobile will be the best service.
Now service/coverage might not be the only you are concerned about, you may be interested in price too... you might pick a T-Mobile service based on price, even though it's not the best service for your area.
You might pick ATT, because they don't lock down features on your blackberry or other smartphone like Verizon does.
Then again, you might not want ATT, because of them restricting tethering on certain phones, Verizon may be the best choice there, depending on your needs.
So without knowing, how particular you are about what phone and what features you really need.
It's a toss-up.
However, with ATT and the iPhone it's hard to go wrong (except on price, and except if you frequent relatively unpopulated rural areas...).
Yes... Most of the people with "inside" info are going to be under confidentiality cracks.
What if someone isn't?
What if someone made a mistake, and a person has the goods or has seen or come into detailed info about the goods, who isn't under any contract?
For example, someone with inside info, or a prototype could have already (accidentally) broke their agreement, and inadvertently revealed info to a friend, family member, or other third-party, who has not signed any secrecy agreement.
Or have inadvertently placed the item or the material in a place where someone who didn't sign any contracts could legally get a peek at it.
Materials containing sensitive info could have accidentally been thrown away without destruction at some facility, allowing someone to root in the dumpster outside and get legit info...
With the scavenger hunt on, now there is much more incentive for such a person (who isn't under NDA), to spill the beans.
I'm not sure of Apple's security practices, but now, they probably need to be even more careful than ever before to protect the secrecy.
Now there is a real financial incentive for someone having no formal NDA in place, to do the immoral thing.
If you read between the lines, it seems like they encourage doing the opposite of what they advise...
Apple, of course, has plenty of good lawyers like Michael Spillner, so we reiterate our advice "to stay within the bounds of the law." And also: use anonymous email addresses! We can't tell Apple who you are if we don't know who you are.
Slashdot Mirror
On average it won't happen.
The ROI is 0%, just like the ROI of digging an underground bunker, and putting all the servers and business facilities underground inside a faraday cage, in order to protect against thermonuclear war.
That's funny: even Microsoft does not recommend utilizing Internet Explorer Version 6.
In fact: the update from IE6 to IE8 is distributed as a critical security update.
To be using it at this point with known compromise of Google using the vulnerability, and massive numbers of exploits in the wild, isn't just insecurity, it's insanity, and vying for the computer equivalent of a darwin award...
I've noted.. posters on slashdot really love to use the word false dichotomy in totally bogus contexts like this... basically: It's a straw man argument to declare the GP's argument a false dichotomy, even if it really is a dichotomy (which it does not appear to be), because the argument doesn't hinge on a dichotomy existing or not.
The poster is quite right, in that if your company allows custom solutions, there will be many people wanting their own custom solution.
It would be unlikely for IT choices made at a fixed point in time to be perfect for the business forever -- software gets outdated, people write new software: sometimes newer or different software products are more efficient, convenient, more comfortable, or more fun to use. May result in higher productivity
So it is extremely likely that everyone or nearly everyone will eventually want some change or deviation from a standard image IT has laid out in advance. Which belies GP's point.
And this may be inconvenient for IT. Given that IT likes to apply a standard image to all PCs, to make their job easier.
In addition, it's true that there are people who will do foolish things, such as break their computers, and risk security of the network, if they are allowed to choose custom solutions at will.
However, I don't agree with the poster in this regard.
I say: If it's inconvenient for IT, that's IT's problem. IT's job is to provide the technology and support for technology needed by the business, not to try to dictate terms that are convenient for IT.
If a user breaks the configuration of their computer, IT's job is to help them fix it. Not cripple them a-priori so they cannot break it in the first place.
That would be like chaining your (able-bodied) kids in a wheelchair, keeping them locked up in it, to ensure they can't accidentally trip and hurt themselves.
I.E. It would be ridiculous.
Pragmatically, there is a point to security. And I see good reasons to lock down users who repeatedly break their machines, or counsel them to seek advise before installing software.
If a simple rogue software program allowed to successfully run is capable of compromising security, beyond the permissions of that workstation's user, then IT is grossly incompetent.
Punishing employees seen playing a game, who are neglecting their duties (giving them a stripped down, locked down workstation, is a punishment, yes).
But forcing employees to use pre-defined products, when better free, widely-used tools are available.... that totally warps and twists part of the promise of computing, part of the benefit and opportunity it offers for business improvement.
It's like artificially treating free stuff as expensive stuff.
Install Windows updates, latest security patches: Ongoing cost, $1.1million annual: profit, $0. Return on investment: 0%.
Backup the servers with all the business documents, records, and databases: Cost: $5 million annual, profit: $0. ROI: 0%.
Of course there is a risk of an adverse event, such as a security attack, or a hardware failure.
But most likely it will not happen.
How do you quantify projects in terms of "ROI" in scenarios like that?
How can you say there is a ROI involved in being able to recover everything within 5 hours, versus 300 hours, or versus no recovery at all?
What do you mean? Every department is under accounting, in a typical Enterprise, where accounting controls every department's budget.
If accounting decides to allocate $0 to IT, you get fired, and accounting has the benefit of not having to be the one to give you the bad news...
This is a public forum, and the question was "Does your PC Really Need a SysRq Button" anymore.
And the answer is a firm yes.
There is no reason for you to get ugly and post flamebait like the above.
People will still be using DOC and DOCX, even if Microsoft does drop support for it.
And people will still be using AVI, even though Handbreak has dropped support for it.
Handbreak didn't invent AVI, and it's kind of popular as a container format, and Handbreak has very little to do with its popularity.
Since you're running the builds, you should probably be checking your firewall's connections table via 'show conn' or whatever, to see...
You do have a firewall on your network, don't you?
True to its Linux heritage, you need to manually edit a file to effect a basic settings change :)
I wonder why Google is placing config files in /usr/bin instead of /etc or /opt.
Placing an editable configuration item in /usr/bin is a bit whacky....
Then create your own virtual machine, and boot it into ChromeOS Zero using the binary (instead of the host), you lazy slashdot reader...
Hypothetically... suppose you want a nice job at Google. Does that seem like an unreasonable strategy?
Is it something the OSS community should criticize you for? Why?
This is just some software engineer's rebellion against a professor that made him use a pure functional language in early childhood, without allowing access to intoxicating side-effects.
In Exchange, he decided to release a major software program with nothing but GOTO statements and JMPs to call executables, no functions at all.
Take that, Mr. Scheme!
In the words of the developers, 'AVI is a rough beast. It is obsolete.'"
Yes... Windows and the .DOC and .DOCX file formats are also obsolete and a big mess.
Why are people still using them?
Don't people realize their lives would be so much easier if they switched to Linux, KOffice, and started saving everything as .ODT and .PDF files?
In this case it's a real dichotomy.
The device alone is not useful as a toy, or able to be made useful as a toy, without incurring much larger expenses.
Without owning something like the 'wii' platform and undertaking a major software development effort, there's no way to make a force board that's both a medical device and a toy.
Of course it's conceivable that Nintendo could make a medical device now. They were fortunate to have already done all the research and development work to market a gaming console widely enough to use the BB with.
If 85 bucks is break-even, then they'll have a 100% profit margin selling at twice that, or 170 bucks.
In the example above, 85 bucks is only break-even if they make a certain sales number.
It's a completely unwarranted assumption to suppose you can simply change the price, and have the number of sales stay the same. In fact, when you double the price, the number of sales may go down by 20x or more: it is the job of market research people to make the proper analysis there.
They have to sell 1 million units for 85 bucks to be break-even. We're assuming the original research and development is a fixed cost that doesn't depend on the number of units (for the sake of simplicity).
If they sell only 200,000 units, the break-even price is much higher, which is the whole point of the post, and you seemed to have missed.
200,000 is 1/5 of 1 million. So following your line of thought, the actual price would be 5 times 170, or 850 bucks.
No, because in the model I was giving, support costs are 4x as much.
In particular: support costs include the additional average expenses required to obtain each sale.
Medical devices of this nature are not mass-market products, there is no benefit of a separate retailer. The manufacturer typically has to find a vendor to solicit leads and sell the product; salesmen take expensive commissions, and there are other expenses such as travel.
Nintendo doesn't have any need to send salesmen to take every Joe sixpack out to lunch and discuss the merits of their balance board product. The sales are easier to get, fewer sales staff are needed. Pre-sales support is non-existent.
Yes.. most free software licenses are subject to copyright, some of them have been specifically released into the public domain
In the case of the BSD license, the copyright statement always appeared prior to the license in the software Berkeley applied it to.
The copyright statement applied not just to the software but also to the license itself.
The 'advertising clause' was removed with Berkeley's permission.
It's not entirely clear whether it's an issue or not that other people have widely taken the license to use with their own software, and removed UC Berkeley's copyright statement in doing so.
It's probable that Berkeley has invited this. But if you are selling software. Maybe they even released it public domain at some point (but I didn't get the emo). It's probably best not to take any chances with your software though...
Getting your lawyer to put down your own legalese (if you don't want certain restrictions) can't be that hard.
Let's just say for the sake of argument the Wii balance board, and the medical device both cost $10 million to research and design.
Ignoring the additional compliance, insurance, and qualification a medical device VS a toy has to go through to be produced.
Let's just say nintendo or their insurer was really concerned about safety, and perfect operation of the debe no complaints.
Further, let's say once all the preliminary work was done, the Wii board cost $75 per unit in materials and labor to manufacturer, and the medical force board cost exactly the same $75.
If Nintendo sells 5 million BBs to retailers at the price of $85 per unit, their net revnue is: ($85 - $75) * 5E6 - $10 mil = $40 million dollars revenue from the sale of BBs,
The sales proceeds were: $425 million dollars.
Their cost of sales were: $75 * 5E6 + $10 million = $385 million dollars.
$425 - $375 = $40 million
A very slim profit margin of 10%, but still not bad. Usually game consoles / accessories are sold at a loss anyways, the money is in the software, which can be updated at much lower cost.
Now... as for the medical device... we know there won't be demand for $5 million. Let's be conservative, and say the medical device manufacturer's market research tells them they can expect to sell 1,000,000 units, it is an innovative device at all, and there are thousands of hospitals all over the country.. What should the price be?
If they make it $85 bucks, even... their revenue will be:
($85 - $75) * 1million - $10 mil = $0
What? They spent $10 million to develop this, they sold 1 million units, and no revenue to show for it? Just taxable business operations? (By the time other costs are considered, this is actually a net loss of money)
Here's why: Sales proceeds: $85 * 1 million = $85 million in sales
Cost of sales: ( $75 * 1 million + 10 million = $85 million )
$85 - $75 = $0
So they have two options... go after a larger market that will buy more units, or raise the price.
Their product is only of interest to hospitals really, so the only option is to raise the price.
How much does the price need to be for there to be a 10% profit?
Sales proceeds need to be: $93.5 million.
That means, the price for each unit needs to be: $93.50 per unit.
What if they want a healthier profit margin? Their sole purpose in life is to manufacture medical devices, they don't sell software -- they need a good profit margin from selling their product.
A fair profit margin is 100% or more.
To achieve that, the minimum price is $930.50 per unit.
At a higher price, two things will happen (1) they will sell fewer units, and (2) their support costs per unit will be higher -- better warranty and service will be expected.
Also, 1 million sales is unrealistic for a niche product, it will probably be more like 200,000 sales.
To maintain a healthy product with 1/20 of 1 million, the actual price needed will be 20x that, or $18,610.00
Holy smokes.. that's awfully close to the '$18,000 medical device' price.
I wasn't planning on that, it was really a coincidence, honest..
I'm sure insurance is a consideration, but I think it pales into comparison to the small sales volume, and the high initial costs to design and manufacture any electronics good.
And there's only 1 company on the planet that builds the wiimote balance board....
The difference is the average gamer doesn't have the budget or the desire to spend $18,000 for a game controller. It has to be cheap, and there are certain compliance processes they don't need to deal with that a medical manufacturer does.
Moreover, with the high sales volume of a commodity game platform, they will make up Research and development costs easily, even though the price is less, the profit margin can be much greater than with the $18,000 device, which is still very expensive to originally research, design, test, qualify, and ultimately produce and support.
I can't speak to the west coast.
Try the metro areas: Atlanta GA, Washington DC, Chicago IL, Dallas, Houston TX, San Antonio TX, Austin TX, Portland OR, Seattle WA, Salt Lake City UT, Denver CO, New Orleans LA, Tallahassee, Tampa FL, Jacksonville FL, Charlotte SC, Raleigh SC, Baltimore, Philadelphia, New York City, Boston, New Haven CT
I have no doubt there are some gaps/dead areas if you look hard enough, just like there are coverage gaps with Verizon and others.
But within the areas that are officially covered, I think the network accessibility is very similar..
What we really need is a free data roaming service :)
Actually.. I think the best coverage might be WiFi + Skype. Not any cell provider. The speed is a heck of a lot better, and you are pretty much guaranteed to be able to find WiFi coverage in almost any coffee shop, even in fairly small cities that have very poor or non-existent 3G coverage from major providers.
Also, the price is less.. usually a $3 cup of coffee you would buy anyways, and no per-kilobyte billing -- you may be able to get it less-expensively also. At home, you don't have to pay any monthly fee at all (other than for your internet service and electricity, which you already buy).
When considering the statistics, regarding cell phone providers, the trouble is it's really hard to determine if the reports that provided those statistics were unbiased, or if funding or influence was received from ATT.
In addition, other providers in their war against ATT, very likely have paid shills whose job is to influence public opinion, by creating an impression their network has the best coverage, instead of ATT.
So it's really hard to determine from a conversation like the comments on this slashdot post.. who really is the best anecdotally.
Are posters' anecdote's real?
Which company has the most customers that visit slashdot?
Which company has the most satisfied (or unsatisfied) customers that visit slashdot?
Are the characteristics of slashdot visitors similar to characteristics of the general population? For example, are Slashdot users likely to notice problems (or features) that the general population doesn't know about, or doesn't prioritize so much?
Which of the cell providers have the most paid shills in this forum?
[ x ] CowboyNeal's WiFi
(with Skype) ?
The world's fastest 3G network
But see here for some caveats.
AT&T has fairly good 3G coverage in all major US cities. And the best performance by far, where you can find coverage.
If you're a traveller who frequents many areas (esp. small towns) or live in one of those small cities with spotty ATT coverage for 3G, then you will probably want Sprint or Verizon.
Although their networks are generally slower, and the experience is generally poorer (on average), they have a lot more area covered.
So again: ATT is clearly the superior choice if you live in a well-covered area and don't go too far from home.
Verizon is a superior choice for most other areas.
For a moderate number of areas, Sprint will give you a better service, and there are a small number of areas where T-Mobile will be the best service.
Now service/coverage might not be the only you are concerned about, you may be interested in price too... you might pick a T-Mobile service based on price, even though it's not the best service for your area.
You might pick ATT, because they don't lock down features on your blackberry or other smartphone like Verizon does.
Then again, you might not want ATT, because of them restricting tethering on certain phones, Verizon may be the best choice there, depending on your needs.
So without knowing, how particular you are about what phone and what features you really need. It's a toss-up.
However, with ATT and the iPhone it's hard to go wrong (except on price, and except if you frequent relatively unpopulated rural areas...).
Yes... Most of the people with "inside" info are going to be under confidentiality cracks.
What if someone isn't? What if someone made a mistake, and a person has the goods or has seen or come into detailed info about the goods, who isn't under any contract?
For example, someone with inside info, or a prototype could have already (accidentally) broke their agreement, and inadvertently revealed info to a friend, family member, or other third-party, who has not signed any secrecy agreement.
Or have inadvertently placed the item or the material in a place where someone who didn't sign any contracts could legally get a peek at it.
Materials containing sensitive info could have accidentally been thrown away without destruction at some facility, allowing someone to root in the dumpster outside and get legit info...
With the scavenger hunt on, now there is much more incentive for such a person (who isn't under NDA), to spill the beans.
I'm not sure of Apple's security practices, but now, they probably need to be even more careful than ever before to protect the secrecy.
Now there is a real financial incentive for someone having no formal NDA in place, to do the immoral thing.
I think they don't encourage, they advise.
If you read between the lines, it seems like they encourage doing the opposite of what they advise...
They're over IP, but use a proprietary protocol.
You need special software on the PC that is specific to the KVM manufacturer.
And i've tried using the on-screen windows keyboard, when I want to do Control+Alt+SysRQ+b to reboot a locked up Linux box.
It seems, that Windows on-screen keyboard doesn't work, or is unable to simulate keystrokes that the software will pick up.
On OpenSolaris (probably BSD,Linux too), there isn't even an equivalent to the Windows on-screen KB...