I especially like how they get to keep your Internet history. Why do you think this is a good idea Cisco?
Your new Cloud Connect contract...When you use the Service, we may keep track of certain information related to your use of the Service, including but not limited to the status and health of your network and networked products; which apps relating to the Service you are using; which features you are using within the Service infrastructure; network traffic (e.g., megabytes per hour); Internet history; how frequently you encounter errors on the Service system and other related information ("Other Information"). We use this Other Information to help us quickly and efficiently respond to inquiries and requests, and to enhance or administer our overall Service for our customers. We may also use this Other Information for traffic analysis (for example, determining when the most customers are using the Service) and to determine which features within the Service are most or least effective or useful to you. In addition, we may periodically transmit system information to our servers in order to optimize your overall experience with the Service. We may share aggregated and anonymous user experience information with service providers, contractors or other third parties to assist us with improving the Service and user experience, but any shared information will be consistent with Cisco's overall Privacy Statement and will not identify you personally in any way....
Unless all employees are in the class and assumed to increase their salaries 10% during the time frame; the resulting lawsuit/settlement has little to no chance of being more expensive then if all the companies had been competing for talent as it will be extremely difficult to prove financial damages. I am very disappointed in the DOJ settling this one with little more then a "don't do it again" as they may have been the only way to stop this cold going forward.
"It's not a "health" choice, it's a lifestyle choice."
Your ignorance is deafening. Sorry, but the pill is not just a "life-style" choice. Please educate yourself.
My wife has poly-cystic ovaries (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polycystic_ovary_syndrome), a pre-cancerous condition. One of the fun things about PCOS is you don't menstruate. So my wife will literally go months without a menstrual cycle but when she does, oh boy. She is constantly cramping, imagine someone grabbing your insides and constantly squeezing. Then when a menstrual cycle starts it does so with even more incredible cramping that she can hardly get out of bed in the morning or even get through the day. Pain meds are the order of the day. Next up comes an extremely heavy and clotty flow that will continue for about 4 weeks that makes her tired and light headed most of the day. If she isn't on birth control she gets to look forward to that 2-3 times a year for a month at a time. In our lives there is no such thing as "lifestyle" choice just pain or no pain.
For those who were in mixed Apple / PC environments at the time (I was working on a college campus); the fact that you could still get Office was a major reason that folks got to keep their Macs and would start trading up to the their iMacs and G3 towers in the next two years. While Jobs gets all the credit for bringing the company back from the brink (and rightfully so) you have to remember where his reputation was at the time, ie weird dude that got kicked out earlier. For better or worse, MS blessing upon Apple made it ok to actually purchase Macs because their would always be a copy of Office to be had from Microsoft.
All the articles coming out about start-ups, being your own boss, writing your own iOS app and making money....sure smells like 1999 - 2000 to this Slashdot old-timer.
I was sophomore in college when I found Slashdot, it was 1998. I had P2-266 with 128MB of RAM and 8GB hard drive and a dorm room T-1 connection that I saturated nightly because nobody had a computer hooked up to the Internet yet. I don't even remember how I got to Slashdot, but I know that it has been with me ever since. I don't comment as frequently as I once did, but I do come to the site everyday. In essence, Slashdot and the posting I have done here over the past 12 years is a record of how I have grown and changed as person. From starting out as MIS major (don't snicker Comp Sci guy - I can still run rings around your SQL code), to my first job at Enron, to going back to grad school to get my MBA (yea, a geek in suit's clothing) and finally to my current position - Slashdot has been there. Rob, thank you for what you have done, you gave us all a voice.
Fast question: Its 1993, would you rather have US Dollars or Chinese Yuan for the next 20 years? If you said Yuan, then you owe me money. In October 2003, the Chinese devalued their currency by 50% versus the USD. http://www.oanda.com/currency/historical-rates/ Currency Cross is USD (Currency I have) to CNY (Currencies I want)
In that time, the US had fueled the rise of China because of long-term currency manipulation of the Yuan by China. This has fueled Chinese manufacturing boom but completely screwed Chinese consumers by artificially reducing their buying power. So the Chinese now sit on a a huge chunk of US debt because the best way to continue the yuan's manipulation is buying Treasuries and selling yuan which helps China compete. That 50% has moved to 14% even though China's market grow rate has been multiple of the the US over that time almost 20 years ago.
The Chinese can't stop buying debt without putting themselves at significant risk. Of course, if the US goes down as you say - that would loot the Chinese Treasury. The Chinese have tried to diversify out of US debt see all base metals and other commodities, but every time they have increased that commodity pricing exponentially. USD debt is still the largest and most liquid market there is. You can go buy 3 - 4 billion in debt and not make a hiccup. Do that in Gold, Copper, Aluminum, Silver and you can move that market by 10% and cost you amazing amounts.
So we continue this charade. The Chinese talk about wanting to diversify from USD (they can't because they need the currency advantage still and doing so impacts their own). And the US continues to talk about the Chinese manipulating its currency but we don't care because they have to buy our debt.
Of course now all the near-sourcing that was going to Canada has dried up. I know of personally three companies that scaled back or completely abandoned Canadian projects to move US jobs to Southern Ontario and Calgary because of the exchange rate appreciation. Who knows maybe those jobs that moved to Canada will come back over the border. Now multiply that by 1000x when the Chinese can no longer artificially depress the yuan and you get an idea of what will happen to them. Of course this is why the Chinese can't stop buying US Treasuries.
I live in north DFW and have a 2700+sqft house for 1300 a month with a quarter-acre back yard. I love the suburbs.
Yea but you are also choking back $500 a month in property tax too (I lived in Texas). So unless you purchased your 2700 sqft house for 150K - which even for DFW is a stretch unless you live beyond Frisco or in Midlothian - your actual costs are closer to 1800 a month.
Tolkein was/is a public figure, feels like there isn't much to stand on here especially if its fiction and portrayed as such. Seems like this fall well within the fair use realm.
Depends on how you to define the market. This is always the problem when dealing with anti-trust issues. How narrow or broad the market is ultimately how a company is determined to be in a monopolistic position and thus the remedy. If you define the market as being the market for smartphones you have a point. IPhone is behind. However, if you define the market as phones and individuals that browse the Internet then IPhone is clearly the leader (cannot find the link at the moment but it was a Slashdot article by an ad network showing something in the neighborhood of 60% followed by RIM, WinMo, Android). If you further segment down to purchased apps then its probably 90% market share. That will be the argument Adobe makes.
With the passage of CARD Act and the accompanying Fed rules related to penalty fees customers are no longer opt-in, but automatically opt-out by default. Unless you specifically opt-in for overdraft protection your debit card will be declined if there are insufficient funds or the in the case of a check it will go NSF. This is the reason you should never have a recurring charge set against your debit card. A debit card has significantly restricted rights when it comes to chargeback. Chargeback is VERY, VERY powerful, instructing the issuer to deny the charge and recoup from the merchants bank who in turn takes it out of the merchants account, merchants then have only a few days to respond. The Acquiring bank can increase the interchange if a merchant is receiving a high number of chargebacks (or drop the merchant altogether) as well as pass along the network fines for chargeback (Visa, MasterCard, Amex, Discover, etc.) that in the case of serious offenders can go $100 per transaction.
Hopefully, this shows you how effective a weapon chargeback can be in the cases like this and why if their is any question as to the scruples of the merchant you should always use a credit card for the purchase.
From the immortal words of Joe Celko in response to a similar question you discuss and one of the most true statements ever written:
My SQL program is trying to compete with a flat file system.
If you want to get data to a single user, in a fixed format, you will lose. The reason we have databases is not speed. Databases are for sharing data (concurrency control and all that jazz), and keeping data integrity (normal forms, constraints and all that jazz).
You can get to the ground floor a lot faster by jumping down an empty elevator shaft instead of waiting for the car to arrive. However, there are trade-offs... --CELKO--
If data has little to no value for you then you do not need a relational database. However, if data is of any importance to you then you have to think beyond a flat file. Flat files, hierarchal databases have been around since the dawn of computing. Relational databases were brought about to solve concurrency and integrity problems inherent in these models not to make your application faster. Like the quote implies jumping out down the elevator shaft is faster then taking the car, but there are trade-offs. I think the better question would be is why does your database design or queries take so much time that flat files are faster when there are just a few users of the system?
"Leave it up to the IRS -- they probably have it figured out that if they pre-fill items on forms, that means less error and less money. Plus, this gives them more opportunity to audit and assess fees. Whee!"
Don't attribute to malice what can just as easily be attributed to incompetence.
You sound like a Microsoft developer I curse everyday. For those who actually have to be productive ie those of us in Finance Excel 2003 works great. Everyone knows where everything is and has modified the menus and buttons to make them more productive. Of course, the Ribbon is not for the power user its for the user who has no idea what they want thus its geared towards the lowest common demoninator ie the secretary or grandma. Anytime I have to drop into 2007 I lose 30 - 40% of my productivity because things that were one or two clicks away you have to first find then you are 4 - 5 clicks. Ribbon is just another word for unproductive mess.
In my former life I was a database programmer so while I was no C or Java wizard I did my best to get the people that understood databases not just someone who would do a SELECT * FROM Table1 and do everything else in the code of their choice.
My favorite question was this
SELECT FROM JOIN ON WHERE GROUP BY HAVING
In what steps do you think the database engine would go about the process of solving the SQL statement conceptually and why would the database do it that way? While I would consider the question more technical in nature it does bring out the critical thinking especially those who may not be introduced to it formally through education but understand how a database might react. I could then push the conversation and given difference instances and ask how they might do this and how might the database react. I interviewed and hired folks who got the actual problem wrong but reasonsed and explained enough that I could understand the thinking process they were going through. It was more about how the candidate thinks then what they can regurgitate. As long as any test is exploring the problem-solving nature of the candidate it should fine.
Simple test and the one that convinced me to try to eat organic when I can.
Grab two oranges at the grocery store - one organic and one regular and come home.
Have someone peel them and serve them on two plates as a blind taste test. After taking bites of both you will understand very quickly why I purchase organic when I can.
There will be a fuel + GPS Mileage tax. No bureaucrat will give up that revenue source no matter how small it is. BTW, I don't own an aluminum foil hat but I am not even comfortable with this. I fully recognize the government could conduct surveillance and track my whereabouts today. However, today its HARD to do so. Things like warrants and satellites and patching into the cellular phone system to triangulate must be done. While there are procedures to do so, I like the fact that its HARD and not easy. Having a repository of easily viewed and mined locational data is not my idea of a good time.
If you sent this guy back to 1999 with all the knowledge of the last 10 years at his disposal - I think he still screws it up and history repeats itself in terms of how the market plays out. This is a guy who cannot and will not change. The industry could have OWNED online distribution but instead decided to put its head and the sand now it deals with its gatekeeper and arbiter, Apple. Good job there sparky.
If they could both bury the hatchet for about 5 minutes, a joint bid by Oracle and IBM would actually make much more sense. IBM would take the Solaris platform and hardware, Oracle would take the ZFS, MySQL, and DTrace. They could then both jointly purchase and spin-off Java into an Open Source project or its own firm with each company taking a stake. Since both rely so heavily on Java and neither would enjoy the other firm owning the platform it makes perfect sense for it to continue as an independent entity.
Slashdot Mirror
http://www.cisco.com/web/siteassets/legal/connect_cloud_supp.html
I especially like how they get to keep your Internet history. Why do you think this is a good idea Cisco?
Your new Cloud Connect contract ...When you use the Service, we may keep track of certain information related to your use of the Service, including but not limited to the status and health of your network and networked products; which apps relating to the Service you are using; which features you are using within the Service infrastructure; network traffic (e.g., megabytes per hour); Internet history; how frequently you encounter errors on the Service system and other related information ("Other Information"). We use this Other Information to help us quickly and efficiently respond to inquiries and requests, and to enhance or administer our overall Service for our customers. We may also use this Other Information for traffic analysis (for example, determining when the most customers are using the Service) and to determine which features within the Service are most or least effective or useful to you. In addition, we may periodically transmit system information to our servers in order to optimize your overall experience with the Service. We may share aggregated and anonymous user experience information with service providers, contractors or other third parties to assist us with improving the Service and user experience, but any shared information will be consistent with Cisco's overall Privacy Statement and will not identify you personally in any way....
Unless all employees are in the class and assumed to increase their salaries 10% during the time frame; the resulting lawsuit/settlement has little to no chance of being more expensive then if all the companies had been competing for talent as it will be extremely difficult to prove financial damages. I am very disappointed in the DOJ settling this one with little more then a "don't do it again" as they may have been the only way to stop this cold going forward.
"It's not a "health" choice, it's a lifestyle choice."
Your ignorance is deafening. Sorry, but the pill is not just a "life-style" choice. Please educate yourself.
My wife has poly-cystic ovaries (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polycystic_ovary_syndrome), a pre-cancerous condition. One of the fun things about PCOS is you don't menstruate. So my wife will literally go months without a menstrual cycle but when she does, oh boy. She is constantly cramping, imagine someone grabbing your insides and constantly squeezing. Then when a menstrual cycle starts it does so with even more incredible cramping that she can hardly get out of bed in the morning or even get through the day. Pain meds are the order of the day. Next up comes an extremely heavy and clotty flow that will continue for about 4 weeks that makes her tired and light headed most of the day. If she isn't on birth control she gets to look forward to that 2-3 times a year for a month at a time. In our lives there is no such thing as "lifestyle" choice just pain or no pain.
For those who were in mixed Apple / PC environments at the time (I was working on a college campus); the fact that you could still get Office was a major reason that folks got to keep their Macs and would start trading up to the their iMacs and G3 towers in the next two years. While Jobs gets all the credit for bringing the company back from the brink (and rightfully so) you have to remember where his reputation was at the time, ie weird dude that got kicked out earlier. For better or worse, MS blessing upon Apple made it ok to actually purchase Macs because their would always be a copy of Office to be had from Microsoft.
All the articles coming out about start-ups, being your own boss, writing your own iOS app and making money....sure smells like 1999 - 2000 to this Slashdot old-timer.
+2 for the Bruce Campbell reference!
I was sophomore in college when I found Slashdot, it was 1998. I had P2-266 with 128MB of RAM and 8GB hard drive and a dorm room T-1 connection that I saturated nightly because nobody had a computer hooked up to the Internet yet. I don't even remember how I got to Slashdot, but I know that it has been with me ever since. I don't comment as frequently as I once did, but I do come to the site everyday. In essence, Slashdot and the posting I have done here over the past 12 years is a record of how I have grown and changed as person. From starting out as MIS major (don't snicker Comp Sci guy - I can still run rings around your SQL code), to my first job at Enron, to going back to grad school to get my MBA (yea, a geek in suit's clothing) and finally to my current position - Slashdot has been there. Rob, thank you for what you have done, you gave us all a voice.
HT
That just brought a tear to my eye...
Freshman in college when announced...now married 7 years with a kid.
My UID is from late 2007 to early 2008
Fast question:
Its 1993, would you rather have US Dollars or Chinese Yuan for the next 20 years? If you said Yuan, then you owe me money. In October 2003, the Chinese devalued their currency by 50% versus the USD.
http://www.oanda.com/currency/historical-rates/
Currency Cross is USD (Currency I have) to CNY (Currencies I want)
In that time, the US had fueled the rise of China because of long-term currency manipulation of the Yuan by China. This has fueled Chinese manufacturing boom but completely screwed Chinese consumers by artificially reducing their buying power. So the Chinese now sit on a a huge chunk of US debt because the best way to continue the yuan's manipulation is buying Treasuries and selling yuan which helps China compete. That 50% has moved to 14% even though China's market grow rate has been multiple of the the US over that time almost 20 years ago.
The Chinese can't stop buying debt without putting themselves at significant risk. Of course, if the US goes down as you say - that would loot the Chinese Treasury. The Chinese have tried to diversify out of US debt see all base metals and other commodities, but every time they have increased that commodity pricing exponentially. USD debt is still the largest and most liquid market there is. You can go buy 3 - 4 billion in debt and not make a hiccup. Do that in Gold, Copper, Aluminum, Silver and you can move that market by 10% and cost you amazing amounts.
So we continue this charade. The Chinese talk about wanting to diversify from USD (they can't because they need the currency advantage still and doing so impacts their own). And the US continues to talk about the Chinese manipulating its currency but we don't care because they have to buy our debt.
Of course now all the near-sourcing that was going to Canada has dried up. I know of personally three companies that scaled back or completely abandoned Canadian projects to move US jobs to Southern Ontario and Calgary because of the exchange rate appreciation. Who knows maybe those jobs that moved to Canada will come back over the border. Now multiply that by 1000x when the Chinese can no longer artificially depress the yuan and you get an idea of what will happen to them. Of course this is why the Chinese can't stop buying US Treasuries.
I live in north DFW and have a 2700+sqft house for 1300 a month with a quarter-acre back yard. I love the suburbs.
Yea but you are also choking back $500 a month in property tax too (I lived in Texas). So unless you purchased your 2700 sqft house for 150K - which even for DFW is a stretch unless you live beyond Frisco or in Midlothian - your actual costs are closer to 1800 a month.
Tolkein was/is a public figure, feels like there isn't much to stand on here especially if its fiction and portrayed as such. Seems like this fall well within the fair use realm.
Really good article this past week on Japan's ebook industry.
In Cramped Japan, the iPad Is the Home Library
Families save space by paying startups to digitize their books
http://www.businessweek.com/magazine/content/11_08/b4216033233882.htm
For $1 a book, I would be digitizing darn near all my books.
Depends on how you to define the market. This is always the problem when dealing with anti-trust issues. How narrow or broad the market is ultimately how a company is determined to be in a monopolistic position and thus the remedy. If you define the market as being the market for smartphones you have a point. IPhone is behind. However, if you define the market as phones and individuals that browse the Internet then IPhone is clearly the leader (cannot find the link at the moment but it was a Slashdot article by an ad network showing something in the neighborhood of 60% followed by RIM, WinMo, Android). If you further segment down to purchased apps then its probably 90% market share. That will be the argument Adobe makes.
With the passage of CARD Act and the accompanying Fed rules related to penalty fees customers are no longer opt-in, but automatically opt-out by default. Unless you specifically opt-in for overdraft protection your debit card will be declined if there are insufficient funds or the in the case of a check it will go NSF. This is the reason you should never have a recurring charge set against your debit card. A debit card has significantly restricted rights when it comes to chargeback. Chargeback is VERY, VERY powerful, instructing the issuer to deny the charge and recoup from the merchants bank who in turn takes it out of the merchants account, merchants then have only a few days to respond. The Acquiring bank can increase the interchange if a merchant is receiving a high number of chargebacks (or drop the merchant altogether) as well as pass along the network fines for chargeback (Visa, MasterCard, Amex, Discover, etc.) that in the case of serious offenders can go $100 per transaction.
Hopefully, this shows you how effective a weapon chargeback can be in the cases like this and why if their is any question as to the scruples of the merchant you should always use a credit card for the purchase.
Getting slashdotted. Can someone throw this up on Flickr or something?
From the immortal words of Joe Celko in response to a similar question you discuss and one of the most true statements ever written:
My SQL program is trying to compete with a flat file system.
If you want to get data to a single user, in a fixed format, you will
lose. The reason we have databases is not speed. Databases are for sharing
data (concurrency control and all that jazz), and keeping data integrity
(normal forms, constraints and all that jazz).
You can get to the ground floor a lot faster by jumping down an empty ...
elevator shaft instead of waiting for the car to arrive. However, there
are trade-offs
--CELKO--
If data has little to no value for you then you do not need a relational database. However, if data is of any importance to you then you have to think beyond a flat file. Flat files, hierarchal databases have been around since the dawn of computing. Relational databases were brought about to solve concurrency and integrity problems inherent in these models not to make your application faster. Like the quote implies jumping out down the elevator shaft is faster then taking the car, but there are trade-offs. I think the better question would be is why does your database design or queries take so much time that flat files are faster when there are just a few users of the system?
"Leave it up to the IRS -- they probably have it figured out that if they pre-fill items on forms, that means less error and less money. Plus, this gives them more opportunity to audit and assess fees. Whee!"
Don't attribute to malice what can just as easily be attributed to incompetence.
You sound like a Microsoft developer I curse everyday. For those who actually have to be productive ie those of us in Finance Excel 2003 works great. Everyone knows where everything is and has modified the menus and buttons to make them more productive. Of course, the Ribbon is not for the power user its for the user who has no idea what they want thus its geared towards the lowest common demoninator ie the secretary or grandma. Anytime I have to drop into 2007 I lose 30 - 40% of my productivity because things that were one or two clicks away you have to first find then you are 4 - 5 clicks. Ribbon is just another word for unproductive mess.
In my former life I was a database programmer so while I was no C or Java wizard I did my best to get the people that understood databases not just someone who would do a SELECT * FROM Table1 and do everything else in the code of their choice.
My favorite question was this
SELECT
FROM
JOIN ON
WHERE
GROUP BY
HAVING
In what steps do you think the database engine would go about the process of solving the SQL statement conceptually and why would the database do it that way? While I would consider the question more technical in nature it does bring out the critical thinking especially those who may not be introduced to it formally through education but understand how a database might react. I could then push the conversation and given difference instances and ask how they might do this and how might the database react. I interviewed and hired folks who got the actual problem wrong but reasonsed and explained enough that I could understand the thinking process they were going through. It was more about how the candidate thinks then what they can regurgitate. As long as any test is exploring the problem-solving nature of the candidate it should fine.
Simple test and the one that convinced me to try to eat organic when I can.
Grab two oranges at the grocery store - one organic and one regular and come home.
Have someone peel them and serve them on two plates as a blind taste test. After taking bites of both you will understand very quickly why I purchase organic when I can.
There will be a fuel + GPS Mileage tax. No bureaucrat will give up that revenue source no matter how small it is. BTW, I don't own an aluminum foil hat but I am not even comfortable with this. I fully recognize the government could conduct surveillance and track my whereabouts today. However, today its HARD to do so. Things like warrants and satellites and patching into the cellular phone system to triangulate must be done. While there are procedures to do so, I like the fact that its HARD and not easy. Having a repository of easily viewed and mined locational data is not my idea of a good time.
GPS Mileage tax = FAIL
If you sent this guy back to 1999 with all the knowledge of the last 10 years at his disposal - I think he still screws it up and history repeats itself in terms of how the market plays out. This is a guy who cannot and will not change. The industry could have OWNED online distribution but instead decided to put its head and the sand now it deals with its gatekeeper and arbiter, Apple. Good job there sparky.
If they could both bury the hatchet for about 5 minutes, a joint bid by Oracle and IBM would actually make much more sense. IBM would take the Solaris platform and hardware, Oracle would take the ZFS, MySQL, and DTrace. They could then both jointly purchase and spin-off Java into an Open Source project or its own firm with each company taking a stake. Since both rely so heavily on Java and neither would enjoy the other firm owning the platform it makes perfect sense for it to continue as an independent entity.
U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Texas, ding ding ding
I'm from Texas and I think every judge in that district should be removed.