While the OP did say "old dog new tricks" and all that. I'd also consider maybe asking Bob, as the creator of the system, to maybe learn a new technology, and compare it to his own, to make a side-by-side comparison of the features and possiblities of a new vs old system. Maybe even ask him to port a few of the documents to show feasibility of doing this. Then have him present his findings to the rest of the team. If he's a professional, he'll either come up with a whole new set of changes he wants on the old system (because I'll bet any new system has a lot fo smart features his hasn't being 10 years old and all), or he'll see that the new system is a good way to store stuff, and clean up the old documents at the same time.
If Bob has the gatekeeper syndrome, then putting him in charge of the transition, will simply make him the gatekeeper of a new and improoved system. Which if he can see the benefits of the transition, would make him feel even more appreciated.
In my view: The important part is to not criticise his system, but let him do it himself. He KNOWS the flaws of the old system. Getting him to admit them will make it easier for him to see why the system needs to be updated.
Well, You're absolutely correct. That IS the problem with xDSL. That the DSLAM is too far away to provide decent connection. Many countries/areas in Europe and Asia that doesn't use fiber, "simply" places a LOT of DSLAMs close to the customers. Admittedly, if you can only service 2-3 people with it, you'll likely not want to make that investment as a provider.
My guess here is that with the fiber close by, and if this is a small town, the effort of setting up a new DSLAM or other infrastructure might not be that big, compared to the extra earnings from selling higher speeds to the customers.
Hence the reason for my suggestion to get the neighbours to sign LOIs that they'll buy the higher speed or better service if it's offered to them. This might show a good business case to the current provider. I'll go out on a limb too, and believe that the area might not have competitors simply because it's so scarecly populated that there's little incentive for competition.
Well, the projects I have been running have all been based on either wifi or xDSL. So I can pretty much only provide my expertise in these areas, BUT...... I see a couple of possibilities:
1) Contact the preexisting DSL provider in your area, and tell them that fiber is now available in the area. Ask them if they would be willing to provide a new DSLAM in the area connected to the fiber, which would boost the speed of the internet considerably (if the DSLAM is within a mile or two you should easily be able to get a stable 20 Mbit connection, which I assume is better than what you have now). Its always easier to lobby someone else to do the job they're supposed to, than it is to start competing with them......
2) Contact the people providing the fiber and ask them what servicepartners they have that are last-mile providers. Contact some of them and ask if they would be intrested in setting up shop in your town. Get the local populace to sign a letter of intent, that they will switch providers, if they can get better or faster internet at the same or lower cost..... Again with the lobbying, but it's an easy way out
3) Consider setting your own lastmile service up. But use xDSL connections or wifi, because FTTH would require that you start digging fiber to each house. I doubt you could make a profit on that if you're a one-man operation. In a hilly area, get a permit to set up repeater antennas on the highest areas. I'm sure you have cell service in the area too, so ask the local cell providers if you could use their towers. Usually, they have the permits in place, and you'd just have to pay rent, or simply swap services with them (your internet for their towers), if you can find someone who'll go for a straight swap..... This option requires a lot of footwork, and negotiation, but it's possible even in an industrialized and regulated society, it's just a lot harder than in Africa;)
4) Get a group of friends together and work out a division of labour, make plans and set them into motion... More people = less burden on the individual.
I'd say it's possible, but if the market was big enough that you could live of it, then I'm sure you'd have more than one provider covering your area at the moment. So dont expect to get rich in anything except experiences:D
True. As a matter of fact. Speed doesn't kill. At least over here in Europe it doesn't. Speedlimits have just been raised on local danish highways from 80 to 95 mph. (110 kph to 130 kph), and what we saw was that the number of fatalities actually went DOWN....
While politician scrambled to reverse their positions on speed kills, a few smart people actually noted that what had happened during that same period of time was that general traffic safety measured had gone way up. Including speed control. ie. we no longer had a lot of people doing 150-200 mph, because now the police meticulously stopped pretty much everyone going faster than the limit.
So while the number of accidents still went up last year, the number of injured and fatalities went down, because of increased traffic safety and awareness. So I'm all for higher speed limits, as long as traffic safety is still number 1....
Unfortunately, I dont think the article is available in english, but feel free to use google translate:
This algorithm may be able to idenify sideeffects when combining medicines.
However, sideeffects are by definition only negative. Once "results" rather than side effects are put through the same algorithm, we may be able to identify better and cheaper ways to combat disease. And we may even be able to find cures for known diseases with combinations of drugs that have never been tested before.
In my country it's common to talk about salaries openly, for the express reason that this way as employees, you understand that if someone gets more than you, they're likely contributing more, so if you want more, you have to increase your value.
Now, in "street speak", this translates to: older employees have to learn new skills. As a consultant, I often have to learn stuff before everyone else, because it's expected of me that I can teach the stuff that everyone else has just heard about. And I'm ok with that. My salary isn't as high as it has been, but its still ok. MY problem is that IF the company I work with decides to bring in a couple of new kids with some hot skills, then the minute their skills are no longer hot, who gets the boot when that's all THEY know, and they're also the most expensive colleagues around ? If they were paid the same, the choice would not be one of money, but of skill and compatability. And if everything keeps going strong, and the expensive new kids are not fired, then everyone else in the department will start asking: "Hey, if we can afford to pay THEM this much, then why can't we afford to pay US the same ?" And THAT will be expensive for the company.
If You need the skills now, but are not willing to increase Your general salary levels to a point where you can attract those skills, then you use consultants. Yes, they're more expensive, but You pay double for a year, after that your own guys should be able to take over at the normal costs, and then you only have to contend with inflation and normal payraises. Depending on the size of your staff, you'll have saved the extra cash spent in 2-3 years easily.
It is my understanding that most major (but timelimited) projects are staffed this way today.
It's not. Cosumer protection is very efficient in Europe. Only if he looses and wants to appeal will it cost him a bundle.Then again, if he looses it'll cost him a bundle anyway;)
I'll withhold judgement untill I get a decently translated version of his allegations, but frivolous suits are rarely brought in Europe, because only the accused have the right to free counsel, usually.So for the time being I'll assume that the company has tried to reason with the guy first.
I would be VERY worried if the italian consumer protection agency had anything to do with a case happening in Greece.
That said, true, they might want to refund him for a bad repair job, if in fact they charged him for it, and it had no effect. But I dont see how a cleaning would be the cause of the problem. The fact that the problem persists after an attempted repair does NOT give you the right to sue someone (That is, you can try, but You'll get laughed out in court). While the problem might seem to get worse after the attempted repair, there's absolutely no evidence of that. So given that the customer is being a jackass and complaining left and right about "bad service", which is probably at least up to par, or would have been if he had been nice about it, I'd still offer my version:
"Do NOT do unto others". There's no amount of justification for being a bitch about things, and even less so for slandering people or businesses. There's a reason it's called "slander" and not "facts in evidence", and yes, you get sued for slander.
Not having read the criticism, how can you tell if it violates greek law ?
Agree, there's no news value to the fact that someone is being sued, but I find it troubling that everyone is ready to stand on eachother shoulders to defend "the little guy", who from experience, I know is more frequently wrong than right in matters of consumer law (at least here in Europe, where the laws are clearly defined and upheld by the EU)
Fact of the matter is that the service provider carries the costs of replacing parts, including labour, so it's not an unreasonable claim for them to ask the customer to have his parts replaced by the reseller he choose to purchase the product from, as they have the right to refuse service if said service incurs an "unreasonable" cost for them, which surely a replacement computer would be. So if the consumer complains about only getting the service he's entitled to, AND is being a bitch about it, I can see why the company wants him to shut the f**k up. I dont care if he bought an imac or a number 2 pencil. That doesn't give him the right to be an ass, so if what he's saying is utter bull AND it violates local law I'd slap him with a suit too, if it was my company.
That said, my greek it bad enought that I might be misunderstanding the finer points of his twitters etc. But I'll leave the translation in more capable hands than mine, and reserve judgement until then.
I totally agree. Your work, your money. But it's the age of greed, and a lot of people get suckered in by the big names, or their lack of marketing skills. But unfortunately it's usually the larger, more established publishers and companies that seem to be overly greedy and trying to protect a failing business model.
I have a friend who's a musician, and he has tried self publishing, with a pay what you think it's worth model for his music. It doesn't keep food on the table for him, even though he is pretty decent. But his physical discs also dont do this for him, it does however increase HIS cut of the takes, because he doesn't pay a publisher for distribution costs etc. And I know that a large group (Radiohead) tried the same thing in 2007 with their album "in Rainbows" (If I recall correctly). And from what I know majority of fans preordered the physical version regardless, and those who settled for the download version generally paid retail prices anyway. While there were some leeches getting it for a penny, on average the band had higher earnings on that one album than any of their predessors (to my knowledge).
So I'd say the business model works under the right circumstances. True, You may need to use a greedy bastard publisher to get to the point where you're famous first..... But I'm sure we'll find a way to get around that hurdle in time, too.
I've just done this with the book Modern Perl. Rather than punishing paying customers with DRM or trying to track down and stop copyright infringement, my publisher gives away electronic versions for free and asks readers to spread them to other people, to write reviews, and to consider donating a reasonable value for the information.
So far I've earned more money more quickly than I would have with the traditional publishing model.
And this works fine for selfpublishing or if you're hugely famous. But theres an entire lobby of MPAA, RIAA and various book publishers who want s a piece of the cake, and if theres' only one slice available, then how can they afford to pay the author ? I totally agree that pretty much any business model is better than having a publicist steal majority of your income and running around suing Your fans over licensing fees and piracy. But that's the current business model. It will hopefully evolve soon. Unlimited streaming for a fixed amount of cash is a novel approach they're trying here in my country. And it's working pretty decently so far. But like in Russia, someone will start a fight over who gets how much, because streaming and purchasing is not he same thing etc. Always publisher vs. artist. Sad really.
By the logic of the music industry here, if I tell you there's a jewelry store at the mall, I am now guilty of robbing it.
Well, yes, but only if I rob said store.;)
You're ofcourse free to link to legitimate sources of music, you're just not allowed to link to illegitimate ones (in the minds of these weirdos). While I support the IDEA that we should not propagate lawbreaking habbits or behavior, like most everyone else, I see this as huge misunderstanding of how the internet and linking works. Guilt by association is in most countries not a reasonable proof of guilt. Would google or bing then also be responsible because they in turn indexed the offending site that carried links to the illegal download ? If yes, then what about the sites linking to google ? The entire internet is filled with links, policing links rather than sources seems technologically impossible and hugely inefficient. It also messes with my sense of justice.
I get the part about lazy. Apparently the minister of transportation and roads is too. Here in Denmark, we've had nice functionaing algorithms, based on the length of the queue, and the speed at which it moves. And with some nice LED signs that says "traveltime x minutes from here to whereever", and we've had those for.... Well, at least 10-15 years now. A tried and proven system, what's the point of asking for a new algorithm ? Does he want something that makes a GUESS rather than bases itself upon the facts ?
1) That all the data in the bacteria can be overwritten. I highly doubt that, that would change the genetic makup of the bacteria, to where it may not be usable any more 2) That you maintain only ONE copy of your data, and this study is based upon both a lot of cheksums, and the fact that the bacteria it self will replicate your data. 3) That you can actually maintain your data on 1g, and never need to extend your storage
Considering these limitations, a factor 1:10000 does actually seem somewhat reasonable to me.
I can easily see a lot of limitations to this technology. First off: deleting bytes seems to be somewhat problematic, because you have multiple copies of your data. Selectively killing of individual cells in a bacteria is something a LOT of scientists would love to be able to do today, but still haven't got decent delivery systems for. Second, if data replicates itself repeatedly, you may run out of storage space before you've put very much data on your device, because it continually spawns multiple copies of your data.
All in all, a great WORM device, but not comparable to a harddrive, and certainly not to one of 900TB in any event.
Indeed they wear hoods. And disguise themselves. But if you dont catch the culprit, then what's the point of this particular peiece of invention ? I concur, when you gather up "the usual suspects", you're likely to get a hit once in a while, but IMO an ounce of prevention is orth a pound of cure. I dont really see this product as something the local macdonalds will want to invest in to protect their friers, or even households to protect their TV.
In essense (and I may be wrong here), this product only seems to be able to help with positively idetifying people as having been at a location at a specific time. This is all good and well, for identification and evidence. But we still need to solve the crime and catch the criminal first. So this technology might augment current security measures, but personally, I see a lot of limitations in the usability of the product as a countermeasure against theft.
For home owners, a dog might be cheaper and have a higher preventative effect. If you're not a dog person, marking all of your valuables will perhaps not catch the thief, but have some preventative effect, and let you have your stuff back when the police does their usual cleanups.
For businesses, again this tech is not standalone, so you still have to invest in alarms, cameras, security doors, sensors and what not.
Rahter than look at how well this holds up in court, I'm more intrested in seeing how many crimes this will help solve, that would otherwise have been dropped due to lack of evidence, as that seems to be the "target demographic"
Unfortunately I think you're right. while I wholeheartedly support multiplayer games being free of cheats, the suits brought seems on the surface to enable the companies to pretty much put "we own your a**" in their EULA and get it through court. I strongly oppose any such movement. Not because I feel everything should be open sourced to be toyed with as you like, but because when I buy a toaster, what I do with it after the time of purchase may or may not be legal, it may or may not invalidate my warranty, but it's not the MANUFACTURER who decides what I can and cannot use my toaster for, anything I do with MY property is MY responsibility, legally and morally. The same should hold true of immaterial products, like software. I suspect this is why they're trying to make this sound like a simple case of pirating.
Because in essence they're using copyright infringement as the sacrificial lamb, when in reality, no distribution is taking place, and as such cause the company no loss in sales. I dont see how this cannot be a case of simple fair-use. I hope this means that screwed up EULAs will finally die a slow and horrible death, because if they loose the case, that might set a presedence for EULAs being unreasonably strict.
Disclaimer: I have NOT read the indictment, only the article(s), which may or may not be portraying reality in a tinted light.
I understand new tech is nice and all.... But what's wrong with a simple camera ? Or a burglar alarm ? Why bother with these high flying ideas ? I understand that insurance is practically non existant for comanies, but how high costs do you really need to incur to "secure" yourself ? You can't even trace the burglar as I understand it, you have to actually find him, and then test people for the presense of the mist. I dont see this a commercially viable product, even if it pans out as permissable in a court of law.
It's a crime because you're exploiting a weakness in a computer system, and cheating people out of cash. Same as if you find a bug in MS and infect everyones computers with a trojan, intercept their paypal passwords, and steal the money in those accounts. The fact that you steal from cyberspace rather than a physical person, that's irrelevant. It's illegal, plain and simple.
"Cheating" the system is easy, but checking algorithms will catch you every time. A "simple" way to cheat around 80-90% of automated brokering systems, and likely what the two Norweigians did:
Get two accounts with the system Find a stock that rarely sells Buy a ton of this stock with account 1 (low priced is good) Place a BID for a few of the stocks significantly over current value with account 2 Price rises Now sell all of your cheaply purchased stocks on account 1 at the new price
Bingo, you just made a million bucks ! But good luck trying to collect it at the bank, as you'll have FCC (or whatever they're called in your local country) closing your accounts within the hour, and reporting you to the police.
This is exactly the reason why in the US, similar action has been limited to only one user pr day, due to the extreme costs put on the ISP.
In the french case, it's currently 10.000 users daily, and that number will soon rise to 150.000 (!) Imagine costs of say.... 5 euro to locate and send the information to the central location (Hadopi), then imagine sending registeret mail to the users at the cost of... Let's assume 20 euro. Some will have problems getting the registered mail, that's an added cost. Then there's the disconnect process, the court fees etc. All of which gets put on the ISPs. Even if it's only 1% of your users that gets hit with this, you're talking a large percentage of your income, when a broadband subscription can be had for less than 100 euro per year. With the competition amongst providers here in Europe, the budget providers will drown in expenses. I can't see a way for providers to survive without huge pricejumps, which is why I think the legislation is unfair in terms of costs. They're litterally killing the business of anyone following the law.
Similarly, in Denmark, someone convinced the government that it'd be a good idea to store information on what everyone transmits and sends over a broadband connections with a speed greater than 256kbps, for reasons of investigation and anti-terrorism (because it's a certain fact that terrorists EXCLUSIVELY uses fast broadband connections ?!?!?) This means that broadband connections jumped to more than double the price of the EU average for broadband connections.
If the accusers would carry the costs, then fine, let them accuse the entire world, let them tap every single IP adress, let them pay for postage to every person on earth, and for everyone to listen to what their neighbor is doing. Let's reinvent the stasi archives and digitize them, if that's what the people wants (!). But the businesses in these cases get everything for free, because the costs have been put on the ISPs, and consequently the consumers. Hopefully, these terrible laws will be repealed, or civil disobedience will become the norm. While I respect the right to protect your property and rights, these rights are extended to individuals aswell, and I feel trampled on when I read about this case.
My solution: Tell your government how you feel, tell them with your vote, and with your voice. Let them know this is not ok, and ask them to stand up for what's RIGHT. Tell them of injustice. Tell them of the enormous waste of money and time. Ask them to question if a law is for the good of the people, or for big business. The politicians are elected by US, not the corporations. Tell them today. If not now, when ?
This is why in the "good old days" You'd see stuff where READ-once rather than WRITE-once was desirable. For purposes of secrecy, you'd want to know if someone had intercepted your message. This wont be possible with a regular harddrive, because this would require that the hardware and/or bios supports it.
But while I support the idea of privacy, this guy in the article was presented with a court order to provide the key. In not doing so, he's in violation of the law. Your choice if you want to be in jail for one or the other. People looking at a fine for filesharing, or even a short prison sentence for kiddy porn, I ASSUME would be more likely to want to give up a password so they can get a "real" sentence rather than an indefinate one. Than say, freedom fighters holding a list of their accomplices.
The downside is that what's gibberish to you and me, may be legible to someone else, and what's worse is it may convey a terrible message.
While I've only HEARD of people who's had "chop suey £3.99" tatooed in chinesse, I've actually seen phtotos of a guy who thought he had some bitching Viking runes tatooed, and they were horribly mispelled (I will not divulge the nature of the error, but suffice to say, he's not likely to hook up with any women who can read any scandinavian language)
So I only hope it's not random, but rather something we have not decifered yet.
You can still be a leech. I dont see it as the originating article does, as an either/or situation. However, if the original content provider (say the game manufacturer publishing a patch) offers it as a torrent, WHICH THEY SEED, and as the regular FTP (or if you're really unlucky, some bandwithcapped 3rd party distro) download, then you as a consumer can choose both options. And for some remote locations, disconnections are frequent. For example a few years ago companies selling OS'es to various African governments, were required to harden their OS (and software) to be able to handle power brown-outs. Another reason why MS doesn't sell well in Africa;)
Also the bandwidth CAN be higher (but rarely lower) if there's more than one "download location" in a torrent. This is rarely the case with FTPs, so you're more likely to be able to find a faster seed, ofcourse depending on the popularity of the file.
If you look at some of the research into torrenting, there's actually been a larger network component seller, who has looked into the possiblity of segregating torrent peering by clustering people on a larger network together (essentially overriding the peering inforation shared by the tracker), in order to keep bandwidth on your local network if possible. Essentially creating a local swarm sharing, and only one or two members of the swarm exchanging bits with peers outside the ISPs network. I know this will only work with popular files (or very large ISPs), but the reason for a bandwidth cap is usually that the ISP pays for traffic leaving his network, so the more they can keep in house, and in caches, the better. This would also include torrented files, which to my understanding is now reaching a noticable percentage of a lot of ISPs traffic.
A well developed peer-2-peer protocol supported and correctly used by all involved parties would be to everyones benefit. (except ofcourse competing distributions channels).
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While the OP did say "old dog new tricks" and all that. I'd also consider maybe asking Bob, as the creator of the system, to maybe learn a new technology, and compare it to his own, to make a side-by-side comparison of the features and possiblities of a new vs old system. Maybe even ask him to port a few of the documents to show feasibility of doing this. Then have him present his findings to the rest of the team. If he's a professional, he'll either come up with a whole new set of changes he wants on the old system (because I'll bet any new system has a lot fo smart features his hasn't being 10 years old and all), or he'll see that the new system is a good way to store stuff, and clean up the old documents at the same time.
If Bob has the gatekeeper syndrome, then putting him in charge of the transition, will simply make him the gatekeeper of a new and improoved system. Which if he can see the benefits of the transition, would make him feel even more appreciated.
In my view: The important part is to not criticise his system, but let him do it himself. He KNOWS the flaws of the old system. Getting him to admit them will make it easier for him to see why the system needs to be updated.
Well, You're absolutely correct. That IS the problem with xDSL. That the DSLAM is too far away to provide decent connection. Many countries/areas in Europe and Asia that doesn't use fiber, "simply" places a LOT of DSLAMs close to the customers. Admittedly, if you can only service 2-3 people with it, you'll likely not want to make that investment as a provider.
My guess here is that with the fiber close by, and if this is a small town, the effort of setting up a new DSLAM or other infrastructure might not be that big, compared to the extra earnings from selling higher speeds to the customers.
Hence the reason for my suggestion to get the neighbours to sign LOIs that they'll buy the higher speed or better service if it's offered to them. This might show a good business case to the current provider. I'll go out on a limb too, and believe that the area might not have competitors simply because it's so scarecly populated that there's little incentive for competition.
Well, the projects I have been running have all been based on either wifi or xDSL. So I can pretty much only provide my expertise in these areas, BUT......
I see a couple of possibilities:
1) Contact the preexisting DSL provider in your area, and tell them that fiber is now available in the area. Ask them if they would be willing to provide a new DSLAM in the area connected to the fiber, which would boost the speed of the internet considerably (if the DSLAM is within a mile or two you should easily be able to get a stable 20 Mbit connection, which I assume is better than what you have now). Its always easier to lobby someone else to do the job they're supposed to, than it is to start competing with them......
2) Contact the people providing the fiber and ask them what servicepartners they have that are last-mile providers. Contact some of them and ask if they would be intrested in setting up shop in your town. Get the local populace to sign a letter of intent, that they will switch providers, if they can get better or faster internet at the same or lower cost..... Again with the lobbying, but it's an easy way out
3) Consider setting your own lastmile service up. But use xDSL connections or wifi, because FTTH would require that you start digging fiber to each house. I doubt you could make a profit on that if you're a one-man operation. In a hilly area, get a permit to set up repeater antennas on the highest areas. I'm sure you have cell service in the area too, so ask the local cell providers if you could use their towers. Usually, they have the permits in place, and you'd just have to pay rent, or simply swap services with them (your internet for their towers), if you can find someone who'll go for a straight swap..... This option requires a lot of footwork, and negotiation, but it's possible even in an industrialized and regulated society, it's just a lot harder than in Africa ;)
4) Get a group of friends together and work out a division of labour, make plans and set them into motion... More people = less burden on the individual.
I'd say it's possible, but if the market was big enough that you could live of it, then I'm sure you'd have more than one provider covering your area at the moment. So dont expect to get rich in anything except experiences :D
True. As a matter of fact. Speed doesn't kill. At least over here in Europe it doesn't. Speedlimits have just been raised on local danish highways from 80 to 95 mph. (110 kph to 130 kph), and what we saw was that the number of fatalities actually went DOWN....
While politician scrambled to reverse their positions on speed kills, a few smart people actually noted that what had happened during that same period of time was that general traffic safety measured had gone way up. Including speed control. ie. we no longer had a lot of people doing 150-200 mph, because now the police meticulously stopped pretty much everyone going faster than the limit.
So while the number of accidents still went up last year, the number of injured and fatalities went down, because of increased traffic safety and awareness. So I'm all for higher speed limits, as long as traffic safety is still number 1....
Unfortunately, I dont think the article is available in english, but feel free to use google translate:
http://jyllands-posten.dk/indland/trafik/article4776883.ece
This algorithm may be able to idenify sideeffects when combining medicines.
However, sideeffects are by definition only negative. Once "results" rather than side effects are put through the same algorithm, we may be able to identify better and cheaper ways to combat disease. And we may even be able to find cures for known diseases with combinations of drugs that have never been tested before.
It's all about the data.
In my country it's common to talk about salaries openly, for the express reason that this way as employees, you understand that if someone gets more than you, they're likely contributing more, so if you want more, you have to increase your value.
Now, in "street speak", this translates to: older employees have to learn new skills. As a consultant, I often have to learn stuff before everyone else, because it's expected of me that I can teach the stuff that everyone else has just heard about.
And I'm ok with that. My salary isn't as high as it has been, but its still ok. MY problem is that IF the company I work with decides to bring in a couple of new kids with some hot skills, then the minute their skills are no longer hot, who gets the boot when that's all THEY know, and they're also the most expensive colleagues around ? If they were paid the same, the choice would not be one of money, but of skill and compatability. And if everything keeps going strong, and the expensive new kids are not fired, then everyone else in the department will start asking: "Hey, if we can afford to pay THEM this much, then why can't we afford to pay US the same ?" And THAT will be expensive for the company.
If You need the skills now, but are not willing to increase Your general salary levels to a point where you can attract those skills, then you use consultants. Yes, they're more expensive, but You pay double for a year, after that your own guys should be able to take over at the normal costs, and then you only have to contend with inflation and normal payraises. Depending on the size of your staff, you'll have saved the extra cash spent in 2-3 years easily.
It is my understanding that most major (but timelimited) projects are staffed this way today.
It's not. Cosumer protection is very efficient in Europe. Only if he looses and wants to appeal will it cost him a bundle.Then again, if he looses it'll cost him a bundle anyway ;)
I'll withhold judgement untill I get a decently translated version of his allegations, but frivolous suits are rarely brought in Europe, because only the accused have the right to free counsel, usually.So for the time being I'll assume that the company has tried to reason with the guy first.
I would be VERY worried if the italian consumer protection agency had anything to do with a case happening in Greece.
That said, true, they might want to refund him for a bad repair job, if in fact they charged him for it, and it had no effect. But I dont see how a cleaning would be the cause of the problem. The fact that the problem persists after an attempted repair does NOT give you the right to sue someone (That is, you can try, but You'll get laughed out in court). While the problem might seem to get worse after the attempted repair, there's absolutely no evidence of that. So given that the customer is being a jackass and complaining left and right about "bad service", which is probably at least up to par, or would have been if he had been nice about it, I'd still offer my version:
"Do NOT do unto others". There's no amount of justification for being a bitch about things, and even less so for slandering people or businesses. There's a reason it's called "slander" and not "facts in evidence", and yes, you get sued for slander.
Not having read the criticism, how can you tell if it violates greek law ?
Agree, there's no news value to the fact that someone is being sued, but I find it troubling that everyone is ready to stand on eachother shoulders to defend "the little guy", who from experience, I know is more frequently wrong than right in matters of consumer law (at least here in Europe, where the laws are clearly defined and upheld by the EU)
Fact of the matter is that the service provider carries the costs of replacing parts, including labour, so it's not an unreasonable claim for them to ask the customer to have his parts replaced by the reseller he choose to purchase the product from, as they have the right to refuse service if said service incurs an "unreasonable" cost for them, which surely a replacement computer would be. So if the consumer complains about only getting the service he's entitled to, AND is being a bitch about it, I can see why the company wants him to shut the f**k up. I dont care if he bought an imac or a number 2 pencil. That doesn't give him the right to be an ass, so if what he's saying is utter bull AND it violates local law I'd slap him with a suit too, if it was my company.
That said, my greek it bad enought that I might be misunderstanding the finer points of his twitters etc. But I'll leave the translation in more capable hands than mine, and reserve judgement until then.
I totally agree. Your work, your money.
But it's the age of greed, and a lot of people get suckered in by the big names, or their lack of marketing skills. But unfortunately it's usually the larger, more established publishers and companies that seem to be overly greedy and trying to protect a failing business model.
I have a friend who's a musician, and he has tried self publishing, with a pay what you think it's worth model for his music. It doesn't keep food on the table for him, even though he is pretty decent. But his physical discs also dont do this for him, it does however increase HIS cut of the takes, because he doesn't pay a publisher for distribution costs etc. And I know that a large group (Radiohead) tried the same thing in 2007 with their album "in Rainbows" (If I recall correctly). And from what I know majority of fans preordered the physical version regardless, and those who settled for the download version generally paid retail prices anyway. While there were some leeches getting it for a penny, on average the band had higher earnings on that one album than any of their predessors (to my knowledge).
So I'd say the business model works under the right circumstances. True, You may need to use a greedy bastard publisher to get to the point where you're famous first..... But I'm sure we'll find a way to get around that hurdle in time, too.
I've just done this with the book Modern Perl. Rather than punishing paying customers with DRM or trying to track down and stop copyright infringement, my publisher gives away electronic versions for free and asks readers to spread them to other people, to write reviews, and to consider donating a reasonable value for the information.
So far I've earned more money more quickly than I would have with the traditional publishing model.
And this works fine for selfpublishing or if you're hugely famous. But theres an entire lobby of MPAA, RIAA and various book publishers who want s a piece of the cake, and if theres' only one slice available, then how can they afford to pay the author ? I totally agree that pretty much any business model is better than having a publicist steal majority of your income and running around suing Your fans over licensing fees and piracy. But that's the current business model. It will hopefully evolve soon. Unlimited streaming for a fixed amount of cash is a novel approach they're trying here in my country. And it's working pretty decently so far. But like in Russia, someone will start a fight over who gets how much, because streaming and purchasing is not he same thing etc. Always publisher vs. artist. Sad really.
By the logic of the music industry here, if I tell you there's a jewelry store at the mall, I am now guilty of robbing it.
Well, yes, but only if I rob said store. ;)
You're ofcourse free to link to legitimate sources of music, you're just not allowed to link to illegitimate ones (in the minds of these weirdos).
While I support the IDEA that we should not propagate lawbreaking habbits or behavior, like most everyone else, I see this as huge misunderstanding of how the internet and linking works. Guilt by association is in most countries not a reasonable proof of guilt. Would google or bing then also be responsible because they in turn indexed the offending site that carried links to the illegal download ? If yes, then what about the sites linking to google ? The entire internet is filled with links, policing links rather than sources seems technologically impossible and hugely inefficient. It also messes with my sense of justice.
I get the part about lazy.
Apparently the minister of transportation and roads is too. Here in Denmark, we've had nice functionaing algorithms, based on the length of the queue, and the speed at which it moves. And with some nice LED signs that says "traveltime x minutes from here to whereever", and we've had those for.... Well, at least 10-15 years now. A tried and proven system, what's the point of asking for a new algorithm ? Does he want something that makes a GUESS rather than bases itself upon the facts ?
Well, that would be dependent on a few things:
1) That all the data in the bacteria can be overwritten. I highly doubt that, that would change the genetic makup of the bacteria, to where it may not be usable any more
2) That you maintain only ONE copy of your data, and this study is based upon both a lot of cheksums, and the fact that the bacteria it self will replicate your data.
3) That you can actually maintain your data on 1g, and never need to extend your storage
Considering these limitations, a factor 1:10000 does actually seem somewhat reasonable to me.
I can easily see a lot of limitations to this technology. First off: deleting bytes seems to be somewhat problematic, because you have multiple copies of your data. Selectively killing of individual cells in a bacteria is something a LOT of scientists would love to be able to do today, but still haven't got decent delivery systems for.
Second, if data replicates itself repeatedly, you may run out of storage space before you've put very much data on your device, because it continually spawns multiple copies of your data.
All in all, a great WORM device, but not comparable to a harddrive, and certainly not to one of 900TB in any event.
seed plz !
Indeed they wear hoods. And disguise themselves. But if you dont catch the culprit, then what's the point of this particular peiece of invention ? I concur, when you gather up "the usual suspects", you're likely to get a hit once in a while, but IMO an ounce of prevention is orth a pound of cure. I dont really see this product as something the local macdonalds will want to invest in to protect their friers, or even households to protect their TV.
In essense (and I may be wrong here), this product only seems to be able to help with positively idetifying people as having been at a location at a specific time. This is all good and well, for identification and evidence. But we still need to solve the crime and catch the criminal first. So this technology might augment current security measures, but personally, I see a lot of limitations in the usability of the product as a countermeasure against theft.
For home owners, a dog might be cheaper and have a higher preventative effect. If you're not a dog person, marking all of your valuables will perhaps not catch the thief, but have some preventative effect, and let you have your stuff back when the police does their usual cleanups.
For businesses, again this tech is not standalone, so you still have to invest in alarms, cameras, security doors, sensors and what not.
Rahter than look at how well this holds up in court, I'm more intrested in seeing how many crimes this will help solve, that would otherwise have been dropped due to lack of evidence, as that seems to be the "target demographic"
Unfortunately I think you're right.
while I wholeheartedly support multiplayer games being free of cheats, the suits brought seems on the surface to enable the companies to pretty much put "we own your a**" in their EULA and get it through court. I strongly oppose any such movement. Not because I feel everything should be open sourced to be toyed with as you like, but because when I buy a toaster, what I do with it after the time of purchase may or may not be legal, it may or may not invalidate my warranty, but it's not the MANUFACTURER who decides what I can and cannot use my toaster for, anything I do with MY property is MY responsibility, legally and morally. The same should hold true of immaterial products, like software. I suspect this is why they're trying to make this sound like a simple case of pirating.
Because in essence they're using copyright infringement as the sacrificial lamb, when in reality, no distribution is taking place, and as such cause the company no loss in sales. I dont see how this cannot be a case of simple fair-use. I hope this means that screwed up EULAs will finally die a slow and horrible death, because if they loose the case, that might set a presedence for EULAs being unreasonably strict.
Disclaimer: I have NOT read the indictment, only the article(s), which may or may not be portraying reality in a tinted light.
I understand new tech is nice and all.... But what's wrong with a simple camera ? Or a burglar alarm ? Why bother with these high flying ideas ? I understand that insurance is practically non existant for comanies, but how high costs do you really need to incur to "secure" yourself ?
You can't even trace the burglar as I understand it, you have to actually find him, and then test people for the presense of the mist. I dont see this a commercially viable product, even if it pans out as permissable in a court of law.
It's called pricefixing. And it's illegal. Ask any broker. Software or no. It's illegal.
Not being an expert in Norweigian law, I would assume that malicious intent would need to be existant for there to be a case worth taking to court.
It's a crime because you're exploiting a weakness in a computer system, and cheating people out of cash. Same as if you find a bug in MS and infect everyones computers with a trojan, intercept their paypal passwords, and steal the money in those accounts. The fact that you steal from cyberspace rather than a physical person, that's irrelevant.
It's illegal, plain and simple.
"Cheating" the system is easy, but checking algorithms will catch you every time. A "simple" way to cheat around 80-90% of automated brokering systems, and likely what the two Norweigians did:
Get two accounts with the system
Find a stock that rarely sells
Buy a ton of this stock with account 1 (low priced is good)
Place a BID for a few of the stocks significantly over current value with account 2
Price rises
Now sell all of your cheaply purchased stocks on account 1 at the new price
Bingo, you just made a million bucks !
But good luck trying to collect it at the bank, as you'll have FCC (or whatever they're called in your local country) closing your accounts within the hour, and reporting you to the police.
This is exactly the reason why in the US, similar action has been limited to only one user pr day, due to the extreme costs put on the ISP.
In the french case, it's currently 10.000 users daily, and that number will soon rise to 150.000 (!) Imagine costs of say.... 5 euro to locate and send the information to the central location (Hadopi), then imagine sending registeret mail to the users at the cost of... Let's assume 20 euro. Some will have problems getting the registered mail, that's an added cost. Then there's the disconnect process, the court fees etc. All of which gets put on the ISPs. Even if it's only 1% of your users that gets hit with this, you're talking a large percentage of your income, when a broadband subscription can be had for less than 100 euro per year. With the competition amongst providers here in Europe, the budget providers will drown in expenses. I can't see a way for providers to survive without huge pricejumps, which is why I think the legislation is unfair in terms of costs. They're litterally killing the business of anyone following the law.
Similarly, in Denmark, someone convinced the government that it'd be a good idea to store information on what everyone transmits and sends over a broadband connections with a speed greater than 256kbps, for reasons of investigation and anti-terrorism (because it's a certain fact that terrorists EXCLUSIVELY uses fast broadband connections ?!?!?) This means that broadband connections jumped to more than double the price of the EU average for broadband connections.
If the accusers would carry the costs, then fine, let them accuse the entire world, let them tap every single IP adress, let them pay for postage to every person on earth, and for everyone to listen to what their neighbor is doing. Let's reinvent the stasi archives and digitize them, if that's what the people wants (!). But the businesses in these cases get everything for free, because the costs have been put on the ISPs, and consequently the consumers. Hopefully, these terrible laws will be repealed, or civil disobedience will become the norm. While I respect the right to protect your property and rights, these rights are extended to individuals aswell, and I feel trampled on when I read about this case.
My solution: Tell your government how you feel, tell them with your vote, and with your voice. Let them know this is not ok, and ask them to stand up for what's RIGHT. Tell them of injustice. Tell them of the enormous waste of money and time. Ask them to question if a law is for the good of the people, or for big business. The politicians are elected by US, not the corporations. Tell them today. If not now, when ?
This is why in the "good old days" You'd see stuff where READ-once rather than WRITE-once was desirable. For purposes of secrecy, you'd want to know if someone had intercepted your message. This wont be possible with a regular harddrive, because this would require that the hardware and/or bios supports it.
But while I support the idea of privacy, this guy in the article was presented with a court order to provide the key. In not doing so, he's in violation of the law. Your choice if you want to be in jail for one or the other. People looking at a fine for filesharing, or even a short prison sentence for kiddy porn, I ASSUME would be more likely to want to give up a password so they can get a "real" sentence rather than an indefinate one. Than say, freedom fighters holding a list of their accomplices.
The downside is that what's gibberish to you and me, may be legible to someone else, and what's worse is it may convey a terrible message.
While I've only HEARD of people who's had "chop suey £3.99" tatooed in chinesse, I've actually seen phtotos of a guy who thought he had some bitching Viking runes tatooed, and they were horribly mispelled (I will not divulge the nature of the error, but suffice to say, he's not likely to hook up with any women who can read any scandinavian language)
So I only hope it's not random, but rather something we have not decifered yet.
You can still be a leech. I dont see it as the originating article does, as an either/or situation. ;)
However, if the original content provider (say the game manufacturer publishing a patch) offers it as a torrent, WHICH THEY SEED, and as the regular FTP (or if you're really unlucky, some bandwithcapped 3rd party distro) download, then you as a consumer can choose both options. And for some remote locations, disconnections are frequent. For example a few years ago companies selling OS'es to various African governments, were required to harden their OS (and software) to be able to handle power brown-outs. Another reason why MS doesn't sell well in Africa
Also the bandwidth CAN be higher (but rarely lower) if there's more than one "download location" in a torrent. This is rarely the case with FTPs, so you're more likely to be able to find a faster seed, ofcourse depending on the popularity of the file.
If you look at some of the research into torrenting, there's actually been a larger network component seller, who has looked into the possiblity of segregating torrent peering by clustering people on a larger network together (essentially overriding the peering inforation shared by the tracker), in order to keep bandwidth on your local network if possible. Essentially creating a local swarm sharing, and only one or two members of the swarm exchanging bits with peers outside the ISPs network. I know this will only work with popular files (or very large ISPs), but the reason for a bandwidth cap is usually that the ISP pays for traffic leaving his network, so the more they can keep in house, and in caches, the better. This would also include torrented files, which to my understanding is now reaching a noticable percentage of a lot of ISPs traffic.
A well developed peer-2-peer protocol supported and correctly used by all involved parties would be to everyones benefit. (except ofcourse competing distributions channels).