As interesting as the song choices and the demographics are... the numbers in the right side bar are fascinating. Over 1 year to sell the first 100-million and ~67 days to sell the most recent 100-million ! Someone want to plot those dates and counts sold on a chart please ? There are still ~5.5 months left in 2005, I would expect (based on those numbers and the astounding rate of increase) to see at least another 300-million by Christmas (if not more).
In the beginning, Steve was beholding to the record labels for source material. Very soon now, Apple will own the primary means of music distribution, the shoe will proverbially be on the other foot. Somehow the SteveRDF has allowed the record companies to connive at their own destruction. Because the day is coming when downloaded distribution will be a bigger slice of the pie than physical CD's.
Because nearly 100% of the households in North America have electric power feeds. There are many places where there is no broadband or cable (like the rural spot I live in). The baby bell has shown no interest in making broadband available. Perhaps the rural electric coop would love to make a few extra bucks off the complacency of the ILEC. Thats why.
For many years, the US state that I live in (which shall rename anonymous) required all land deeds to have SSN's on the document filed at the county courthouse. That was yet another simplistic method of implementating a statewide ID number that the counties could use to tell who owned what, etc.
So.. down at the courthouse, on the microfilm (some counties may have it on optical I'm sure) is a land deed with my SSN on it. Exposed for all to see. You can't get at it over the internet (at least not in this county, some larger ones perhaps)... but I won't tell you which state I live in. Knowing this is bad enough, revealing the state would be criminal. The whole situation is FUBAR.
That's nothing. Apple was preparing an basicish object-oriented programming language for the Macintosh, with complete GUI API.
Now that you mention that, I seem to recall something about it. Very hazy recollection. I think it made it to alpha release. IIRC, someone handed me a floppy one night. Said something like "here, have fun !". Thats what was on it. I don't think the alpha/dev release that I had was very stable tho. Seems like it might have been in the Mac Plus timeframe. I might even still have the floppy somewhere... but whos got a floppy drive left to read it on ? I'm pretty sure it predated the first CodeWarrior release, probably even MPW 1.0. hmmmmm
Keep in mind that the original Macs were single tasking. Other than Desk Accessories, you ran one application at time (and the Finder was one of those one at a time applications). To go from MacPaint to MacWrite, you first had to quit MacPaint. The operating system could carry something on the clipboard from one app to another (assuming it wasn't too large) but you could only run one at a time. This has a downward effect on memory requirements. 128K was really squeezing things tho. The 512k was the first Mac that had enough memory to do anything useful.
A minor sidenote is that MS actually shipped a language for the Mac... Microsoft Basic. I used that, and a 512K Mac, to write an assembler/linker in basic. Basic also had a little known feature that allowed you to put object code in an array and run it (this may have been a leftover from the Apple// days). As I compiled the assembler, I started loading portions of into tables and executing them natively, eventually getting something that fully native.
IRC, and thinking wayyy back... the original color implementation on the earliest Macs (128k/512k and likely the Plus) was 8 colors only. It was put in there to support color printing on the Imagewriter. The original Macs were black and white (no gray scale). The first Mac with Color QD was the Mac II.
The problem with this is that it breaks Free Enterprise. By mandating that all of the other customers subsidize your connection, you really kind of hose a bunch of profits out from the bottom line of the company.
Agree and disagree both... If the FCC (or its predecessor.. DOC ?) had not mandated Universal Service oh so many decades ago, the rural areas would still be underserved for POTS. The situation we are in now is analguous to that... in the old days it was POTS vs no POTS, now its broadband vs no-broadband (i.e. POTS). Its a form of digital-divide. When broadband becomes a major distribution system for content (like it isn't already) then the underserved rural areas are going to look that much more like BFE.
I disagree. Areas with high population densities (urban, etc) will now get duplicative BroadBand infrastructure. Goodie for them. Areas which are underserved (rural, no broadband, no cable) will see less capital investment, because all the capital is going into the slugfest in the high population density areas (gotta make that quick buck !). Had the court ruled that cable/broadband was an essential service (and it should be getting close to that), then the state PSCs could legitimately lean on the ILECs (and possibly the cable companies) to deploy into the rural areas. Which would mean that I could finally get something faster than POTS out here !
I'd consider stopping accepting non-electronic orders, by the way, but its your business.
Oh I do understand where you're coming from on that one, trust me I really do. The reality is that I'm doing 25% (maybe more) in paper oriented payments. Mostly from people who barely use the internet, and certainly don't want to use CC's/PayPal over the internet. Its not that easy to walk away from 25% of the business. To make matters worse (or better depending on your perspective), PayPal payments from non-US sources are completely exposed. PP gives no seller coverage for those payments. I think that is the real fraud exposure point.
I sell toys online (kids toys, not adult toys you pervs). I get about 5-10% bogus orders. Mostly from kids placing dubious orders without their parents knowledge. Of course, the kids (usually) cannot complete the order by making payment. But the site that takes the orders takes them anyway because some payment types are paper and not electronic. So what happens now if I get one from Utah (miscreant child or malicious adult) and I reply to the order with an invoice and amount due ?
And that may be the most astute comment of the day. Who gives a fsck about the processor (other than perhaps the driver geeks) so long as it hauls ass, doesn't cost an arm and a leg and generally gets the job done at a fair price. Thats the key here. Thats what apple is shooting for.
There must be something clever/neat/subversive, er special, about the google truck. I bet it has a terrorist sensor.
Right. Combine that with the face recognition software that the Tampa PD uses (used ?) and the real story here is that the google trucks are cruising the Castro looking for Usama Bin Laden and his buddy Omar. Any minute now HSD will announce the capture of the terrible twosome at an undisclosed location
They (eBay) would fight it (GBay) like you would not believe. About 5 years back a guy in HI started a site called BrickBay to sell LEGO toys and parts. After a year or two the powers that be noticed this upstart and dropped the legal hammer on him. He finally changed the site name to BrickLink to avoid spending tons of money on something that was a useless excersize. BrickLink has flourished. Probably does more than twice the LEGO business that eBay does. Serves em right !
Make sure your checking account is deposit only. You can have this specified in writing
In writing to who.. the bank or to PayPal ?
PayPal transfers to the bank are accomplished via ACH. ACH is very old (been around 20-30 years I think). My impression is that ACH, by definition, is bidirectional. How do you inform the bank to only accept deposits from PayPal and not withdrawls ? Anyone know the R/T number for PayPal ACH traffic ?
Anyway, for this sort of violation of rules, I think MasterCard (and other credit card companies) should terminate their contract with CardSystems. They won't, of course.
No they won't, because of all the little fry that send transactions through this processor. Questions I want answered...
How long was the 'trojan' capturing the data ? How on earth did MC/Visa/FBI decide when it first started monitoring the CC numbers ? They must have a start date, otherwise how did they come up with the 40m number ?
The general phrase here is that it was a 'hacker'... but was it ? Was it some organized crime outfit in eastern europe, russia or perhaps north korea ?
My guess is that the FBI knows alot more about the whole story that is being talked about. This episode should be a textbook study on security failure.
And while the "FBI investigating" story is at least a semi-plausible reason for silence, I suspect the real motivation was "OMFG, let's stall as long as we can and hope Jesus comes back before word gets out".
My guess would be that the FBI wanted to string along a bunch of these transactions and try to catch some of the folks using the stolen numbers. Might have worked too, only time will tell.
Also the various card security departments needed to get their shit together about what to do next. I wonder what percentage of all the cards in existance this is... 5%... 10% ?
In 1997, to aid in Apple's revival, Microsoft initially agreed to make new versions of Office for Mac in exchange for non-voting stock options, a token deposit of $150 M in Apple's account, and under-the-table dismissal of lawsuits that Apple filed. That agreement has since expired.
And I still want to know what exactly was it that Steve had on Bill that caused that to happen. Bill didn't do it out of the kindness of his heart, theres more to that story than has ever been told. Something that happened right after Steve came out of the woods from NeXT. I wanna hear that story before its my day to kick the bucket.
One would think that the facts are actually important sometimes... The HFS file format was documented in Inside Macintosh. That MS didn't put the effort into supporting it probably shows the disdain they held for Apple in those days. Oddly, Apple saw the reasons to implement the PC floppy format so the Mac could read and write PC floppies.
I wonder how many people will buy Apple hardware to run Windows (1%, 10%?).
Buy it to run Windows per se ? Not all that many.
Buy it because they can pick-n-choose OS deployment on one common hardware box ? More than you might expect. Especially if the price point is good enough for corporate and government accounts.
If you needed 5,000 boxes and you could not predict today what your exact usage will be 12 months from now, wouldn't you want flexibility ? Remember, buy the box, get OS-X for no extra charge !
I'll be very surprised if Intel fabricate a specialised x86 CPU just for them.
I would expect a special CPU chip only it it had added Apple-IP (like AltiVec for example).
Something to remember... Apple had OS-X on Intel running for 4-5 years prior to the announcement. I seriously doubt that they had special hardware. That means that special hardware isn't required to make this happen. however, there might be special hardware (chips, PALs, etc) only if Apple see a reason. That reason might be piracy protection or it might be performance.. or both.
Things get weird when songs are very, very long (or very, very short), but simple pricing is I think overall better than, say, per-second:)
Somewhere, either here or on Macintouch, there was a discussion about iTMS. Someone mentioned that the cost of much older tracks (distributor/rights cost) is supposed to be less than new tracks (much less). This is partly the basis why you see $3 and $4 compilation CDs at your favorite dollar store. So we are paying the same price for old stuff, that we are for new stuff. Maybe the old stuff doesn't sell as often as the new stuff, but guess which one has the best margins ?
Now, I have no evidence if we have Intel based Macs hiding anywhere. But, I do have evidence of the next PowerMac (yah, yah we just speed bumped them). But, it means at least one more generation of PowerMacs that are 970 based.
I've seen it happen before... I was working in a shop, must have been 7-8 years back now (pre OS-X), we had a prototype. We were getting ready for some minor hardware changes in it. Then one day, we were told to return it... and the model never saw the light of day. It happens. Been long enough that I can't recall the code name now.
Tapes ? I remember toggling the bootstrap loader on an Altair 8080 just to get the tapes started. At least the SWTPC-6800 had a ROM. That was real progress !
Ahhh, the good old days, back when BillG was getting busted in NM
Slashdot Mirror
As interesting as the song choices and the demographics are... the numbers in the right side bar are fascinating. Over 1 year to sell the first 100-million and ~67 days to sell the most recent 100-million ! Someone want to plot those dates and counts sold on a chart please ? There are still ~5.5 months left in 2005, I would expect (based on those numbers and the astounding rate of increase) to see at least another 300-million by Christmas (if not more).
In the beginning, Steve was beholding to the record labels for source material. Very soon now, Apple will own the primary means of music distribution, the shoe will proverbially be on the other foot. Somehow the SteveRDF has allowed the record companies to connive at their own destruction. Because the day is coming when downloaded distribution will be a bigger slice of the pie than physical CD's.
Because nearly 100% of the households in North America have electric power feeds. There are many places where there is no broadband or cable (like the rural spot I live in). The baby bell has shown no interest in making broadband available. Perhaps the rural electric coop would love to make a few extra bucks off the complacency of the ILEC. Thats why.
For many years, the US state that I live in (which shall rename anonymous) required all land deeds to have SSN's on the document filed at the county courthouse. That was yet another simplistic method of implementating a statewide ID number that the counties could use to tell who owned what, etc.
.. but I won't tell you which state I live in. Knowing this is bad enough, revealing the state would be criminal. The whole situation is FUBAR.
So.. down at the courthouse, on the microfilm (some counties may have it on optical I'm sure) is a land deed with my SSN on it. Exposed for all to see. You can't get at it over the internet (at least not in this county, some larger ones perhaps).
Now that you mention that, I seem to recall something about it. Very hazy recollection. I think it made it to alpha release. IIRC, someone handed me a floppy one night. Said something like "here, have fun !". Thats what was on it. I don't think the alpha/dev release that I had was very stable tho. Seems like it might have been in the Mac Plus timeframe. I might even still have the floppy somewhere... but whos got a floppy drive left to read it on ? I'm pretty sure it predated the first CodeWarrior release, probably even MPW 1.0. hmmmmm
Keep in mind that the original Macs were single tasking. Other than Desk Accessories, you ran one application at time (and the Finder was one of those one at a time applications). To go from MacPaint to MacWrite, you first had to quit MacPaint. The operating system could carry something on the clipboard from one app to another (assuming it wasn't too large) but you could only run one at a time. This has a downward effect on memory requirements. 128K was really squeezing things tho. The 512k was the first Mac that had enough memory to do anything useful.
// days). As I compiled the assembler, I started loading portions of into tables and executing them natively, eventually getting something that fully native.
:P
A minor sidenote is that MS actually shipped a language for the Mac... Microsoft Basic. I used that, and a 512K Mac, to write an assembler/linker in basic. Basic also had a little known feature that allowed you to put object code in an array and run it (this may have been a leftover from the Apple
Ahhh.. the good ol days LOL
IRC, and thinking wayyy back... the original color implementation on the earliest Macs (128k/512k and likely the Plus) was 8 colors only. It was put in there to support color printing on the Imagewriter. The original Macs were black and white (no gray scale). The first Mac with Color QD was the Mac II.
Agree and disagree both... If the FCC (or its predecessor.. DOC ?) had not mandated Universal Service oh so many decades ago, the rural areas would still be underserved for POTS. The situation we are in now is analguous to that... in the old days it was POTS vs no POTS, now its broadband vs no-broadband (i.e. POTS). Its a form of digital-divide. When broadband becomes a major distribution system for content (like it isn't already) then the underserved rural areas are going to look that much more like BFE.
I disagree. Areas with high population densities (urban, etc) will now get duplicative BroadBand infrastructure. Goodie for them. Areas which are underserved (rural, no broadband, no cable) will see less capital investment, because all the capital is going into the slugfest in the high population density areas (gotta make that quick buck !). Had the court ruled that cable/broadband was an essential service (and it should be getting close to that), then the state PSCs could legitimately lean on the ILECs (and possibly the cable companies) to deploy into the rural areas. Which would mean that I could finally get something faster than POTS out here !
Oh I do understand where you're coming from on that one, trust me I really do. The reality is that I'm doing 25% (maybe more) in paper oriented payments. Mostly from people who barely use the internet, and certainly don't want to use CC's/PayPal over the internet. Its not that easy to walk away from 25% of the business. To make matters worse (or better depending on your perspective), PayPal payments from non-US sources are completely exposed. PP gives no seller coverage for those payments. I think that is the real fraud exposure point.
I sell toys online (kids toys, not adult toys you pervs). I get about 5-10% bogus orders. Mostly from kids placing dubious orders without their parents knowledge. Of course, the kids (usually) cannot complete the order by making payment. But the site that takes the orders takes them anyway because some payment types are paper and not electronic. So what happens now if I get one from Utah (miscreant child or malicious adult) and I reply to the order with an invoice and amount due ?
Am I liable (because I got joe-jobbed) ?
Inquiring minds, etc.
And that may be the most astute comment of the day. Who gives a fsck about the processor (other than perhaps the driver geeks) so long as it hauls ass, doesn't cost an arm and a leg and generally gets the job done at a fair price. Thats the key here. Thats what apple is shooting for.
Right. Combine that with the face recognition software that the Tampa PD uses (used ?) and the real story here is that the google trucks are cruising the Castro looking for Usama Bin Laden and his buddy Omar. Any minute now HSD will announce the capture of the terrible twosome at an undisclosed location
Remember, you heard it here first.
They (eBay) would fight it (GBay) like you would not believe. About 5 years back a guy in HI started a site called BrickBay to sell LEGO toys and parts. After a year or two the powers that be noticed this upstart and dropped the legal hammer on him. He finally changed the site name to BrickLink to avoid spending tons of money on something that was a useless excersize. BrickLink has flourished. Probably does more than twice the LEGO business that eBay does. Serves em right !
In writing to who.. the bank or to PayPal ?
PayPal transfers to the bank are accomplished via ACH. ACH is very old (been around 20-30 years I think). My impression is that ACH, by definition, is bidirectional. How do you inform the bank to only accept deposits from PayPal and not withdrawls ? Anyone know the R/T number for PayPal ACH traffic ?
No they won't, because of all the little fry that send transactions through this processor. Questions I want answered...
How long was the 'trojan' capturing the data ? How on earth did MC/Visa/FBI decide when it first started monitoring the CC numbers ? They must have a start date, otherwise how did they come up with the 40m number ?
The general phrase here is that it was a 'hacker'... but was it ? Was it some organized crime outfit in eastern europe, russia or perhaps north korea ?
My guess is that the FBI knows alot more about the whole story that is being talked about. This episode should be a textbook study on security failure.
My guess would be that the FBI wanted to string along a bunch of these transactions and try to catch some of the folks using the stolen numbers. Might have worked too, only time will tell.
Also the various card security departments needed to get their shit together about what to do next. I wonder what percentage of all the cards in existance this is ... 5% ... 10% ?
And I still want to know what exactly was it that Steve had on Bill that caused that to happen. Bill didn't do it out of the kindness of his heart, theres more to that story than has ever been told. Something that happened right after Steve came out of the woods from NeXT. I wanna hear that story before its my day to kick the bucket.
* sigh *
One would think that the facts are actually important sometimes... The HFS file format was documented in Inside Macintosh. That MS didn't put the effort into supporting it probably shows the disdain they held for Apple in those days. Oddly, Apple saw the reasons to implement the PC floppy format so the Mac could read and write PC floppies.
Buy it to run Windows per se ? Not all that many.
Buy it because they can pick-n-choose OS deployment on one common hardware box ? More than you might expect. Especially if the price point is good enough for corporate and government accounts.
If you needed 5,000 boxes and you could not predict today what your exact usage will be 12 months from now, wouldn't you want flexibility ? Remember, buy the box, get OS-X for no extra charge !
hmmm.. Nokia + Apple + Intel = iPad ??
I would expect a special CPU chip only it it had added Apple-IP (like AltiVec for example).
Something to remember... Apple had OS-X on Intel running for 4-5 years prior to the announcement. I seriously doubt that they had special hardware. That means that special hardware isn't required to make this happen. however, there might be special hardware (chips, PALs, etc) only if Apple see a reason. That reason might be piracy protection or it might be performance.. or both.
Somewhere, either here or on Macintouch, there was a discussion about iTMS. Someone mentioned that the cost of much older tracks (distributor/rights cost) is supposed to be less than new tracks (much less). This is partly the basis why you see $3 and $4 compilation CDs at your favorite dollar store. So we are paying the same price for old stuff, that we are for new stuff. Maybe the old stuff doesn't sell as often as the new stuff, but guess which one has the best margins ?
That reminds me so much of a MITS Altair (8800 or 680b, take your pick)
I've seen it happen before... I was working in a shop, must have been 7-8 years back now (pre OS-X), we had a prototype. We were getting ready for some minor hardware changes in it. Then one day, we were told to return it... and the model never saw the light of day. It happens. Been long enough that I can't recall the code name now.
Ahhh, the good old days, back when BillG was getting busted in NM
EG