Again, it's important do note the strategic placement of the key phrase.
Text of the ad (emphasis mine):
Microsoft software
is carefully designed to keep your company's valuable information in, and unauthorised people and viruses out.
This is not a lie, unless you believe the software designer made no attempt to make the software secure (unlikely). It only states that an attempt was made to accomplish the goal of writing secure software. This is similar to saying:
The Edsel is carefully designed to be the best car in the world
No claim is made as to whether the design goal was achieved or not. This statement, on the other hand, is a bald faced lie:
Microsoft software
will keep your company's valuable information in, and unauthorised people and viruses out.
Notice the difference?
Havind said all this, an earlier poster correctly stated that the ad was judged to be deceptive based on whether an adverage person would be decieved, not on the basis of false claims within the advertisement.
My point in all of this is simply that, having worked with Microsoft software and having dealt with Microsoft software designers, I don't have an expectation that they would meet their design goals with the software. I have no reason to doubt that they tried, but given their past track record, I can't believe it's vary likely they succeeded in achieving their design goals. Certainly the advertisment is disengenuius, but I can't believe the adverage person would be decieved by it.
Argumentation and Rhetoric is a fascinating subject. The tools of rhetoric were applied skillfully in the caption of this ad. The key clain in the text of the ad is
Microsoft software is carefully designed to keep your company's valuable information in, and unauthorised people and viruses out.
This statement has a factual basis. Any reasonable person would agree that any software company would attempt to secure it's products and that any forward-thinking company would design their procucts with security in mind. The rest of the caption is an interpretation of the meaning of the above statement, and is fraised as such, the key stanza being Which means that...
Any logical person would conclude that what follows will be a conclusion presented by the advertiser, based on the afore-mentioned fact.
I have no doubt that some will argue that Microsoft software designers do not take security into consideration when designing software, or that Microsoft intentionally introduces security holes, so as to promote the purchase of upgrades to it's products (although msot security patches are distributed freely, think SUN and their policy of many years ago, requiring that companies wanting a bug fixes in Solaris were required to pay for the patch to be created).
The other issue is code change. The products to which the advertisement refers MUST be based on new code, because we know that in the past Microsoft did not design software with security in mind, because Craig Mindie said so:
"Many of the products we designed in the past have been less secure than they could have been because we were designing with features in mind rather than security," - Craig Mundie
For this reason, IF the products are all based on new code, and IF you think that Microsoft would act in it's own best interest to sell more software and IF you believe that designing security in mind is likely to sell more product, then the ad is not misleading at all.
The key here is to see that Microsoft is NOT CLAIMING that their software IS SECURE they are claiming that they try to design it so that it is secure, and then draw the conclusion (however ridiculous it may be) that it is in fact more secure than a vault, but this is a conclusion, not a statement of fact.
So in your universe privately held companies don't have shareholders? Think carefully about that. What exactly is the instrument of ownership of a corporation?
It is both a value and the greatest risk introduced by the advent of the web, that now fringe ideas can be sought out and the relitively few indeviduals who share these ideas can congregate and cooperate to advance their ideals in a society where those ideas are in the extreme minority. In fact, you can now insulate yourself from reality by seeking out nerws sources and those of similar fringe ideoligies, and limiting your world view, by surrounding yourself with those who share your fringe ideals.
This allows the crackpots who were once spread thinly throughout society, to become a meaningful force within modern social styructures.
Google has positioned itself as one of the few gatekeepers between the majority of internet users, and these fringe ideas. It is neither right nor wrong, that the management of google has deemed certain material, not worthy of delivery to users. Google as a corporation has a mission; to deliver the greatest shareholder value. Google management has decided that in order to deliver the greatest value, they must provide results which the greatest number of users, find acceptable, appealing, or otherwise paletteable. They're in this to make money, not as a public service. That's what the Mozilla Directory Project is for.
I look forward to reading more about the respective positions of Sone Electronics and Sony music with regard to these types of products. The article cited provided no further insight over and beyond what is esentially a product announcement. This raises a larger issue. As journalism covering technological subjects becomes more provasive in line with new technologies themselves, it appears that the calibre if journalism is declining at an ever-faster rate. Vary disappointing...
Microsoft has enough methods for getting their products time in front of your eyes, through Windows Media Player, and virtually every other bundled app within windows, without deluging you with junkmail, but the fact remains that generation of email marketing materials is far cheaper than any other marketing materials except perhaps newspaper ads. Consumer eye-share is a valuable thing, and ther is no better medium than through that through which consumers expect to recieve valuable and meaningful correspondence thus are more likely to focus their attention on as they review what they've recieved. The fact of the matter is, SPAM works. This is our fault as consumers. I've never bought anything based on SPAM I've recieved and I doubt anyone who frequents/. has either, but obviously many consumers have. Say what you will about Microsoft, but the company is a collection of some of the shrewdest business people out there who'll be damned to hell before they abandon a potential marketing channel. It's just good business.
The Implementation Calendar is reasonably agressive, which is suprising. By October we should be getting getting significantly fewer calls. Frankly, I'm suprised that the legislation was signed at all, but having been signed, It's admirable that any republican administration would allow such an agressive track to implementation. I guess the Direct Marketing Association didn't contribute enough to the Bush campeign, or, perhaps direct marketers have pissed off enough people on both sides of the isle, that no level of lobbying would have altered the outcome.
This should come as a siprise to no one. 'innovation' is the strategy by which platform vendors differentiate themselves in a bid for greater market share. It's beneficial to the vendors so we won't see this sort of thing end any time soon. It locks their customers into tyheir platform for the long haul, which is why you will never see the same 'innovation' made to all or even several platforms at the same time. Leveraging innovation to facilitate greater synergy is the IT industry's answer to advertising verbage such as 'new and improved' you often see on any consumer product marketing materials. It certainly is harmful, but it isn't going to stop any time soon. There was something of a backlash to ptoptietary innovation back in '98 and '99 so vendors began to work more with open standards, as a half measure to apease consumers. Microsoft is a good example of this. Their strategy to 'embrace and extend' open standards, to again differentiate their product offerings has worked out extremely well to date. It certainly isn't ideal for the IT consumer, but this is where modern marketing and business practices meet the IT industry's little piece of the world-wide technology market.
The big sunk cost is that for initial acceptance by ICANN as a registrar. I believe the costs there approach $250,000. Then, there are typical server, bandwidth and administration costs, plus the cost of running a call center and probably some softwar development for establishing the user domain registration and management interface. After that, a portion of the registration fees go to the organization managing the particular RLDs you're registering domains for, and as far as I know, that's about it. I'm not certain of tha accuracy of the above, but this is what I recall reading a few years back. The folks over at ICANN Watch probably have more authoritative information on the subject.
Say what you want about Verisign, they had it right, and so it should come as no shock that Amazon.com has entered the domain registration business. Verisign operates in the two markets that are at the gateway to the net. they are the premier SSL certificate authority and the the primary (although far from the best) domain registrar. Amazon - as a well run business - is seeking to mazimize proffits so it follows that they would enter the domain registration business, since it has one of the highest margins of any known internet business with the possible exception of the sale of pornography, and, yes, sales of SSL certificates. If the bariers to entry int othe Certificate Authority weren't so high, I'm sure Amazon.com would have attempted entry into that market as well.
It's great to see legislation of this type appear on the scene, however I'm not sure which state's stategy is going to be most effective. Charging spammers for access to a do-not-email list which could potentially protect them from lawsuits is a good thing, but there has to be an incentive for the consumer, other than to screw over the spammers, for them to sue the offenders. Personally, $10/UBE message for at least two days effort on my part (with a lawyer, and in court), which translates into at least $1200 of my time (at a reasonable rate of $75/hour) doesn't make it worth my while to spend my time sueing a spammer in Colorado.
Payment of $5,000 per violation in Missouri on the other hand, makes it worth while for consumers to sue spammers. FOr this reason, it seems to me that the Colorado law is designed as a state regenue generation mechanism, rather than legislation designed to compensate the victims of spammers.
In his editorial, Janis Ian says of the ruling the RIAA sought on behalf of it's membership:
f this ruling stands, many smaller musicians will be hurt financially, and many will be pushed out of the music business altogether.
This shouldn't suprise anyone. The RIAA doesn't care about small artists. It generates revenue for it's board of directors (elected by the artists that generate revenue for the RIAA) based on licenses paid for broadcast of the musig of the music of it's most popular member artists, who are the only ones who ever see any of the money collected by the cartel. This process is detailed in a fascinating if somewhat dated article by Harvey Reid. Definately worth a read.
While it's true that many users may not be able to fully utilized a high performance web service like this protocol would allow, right now, it's astonishing and disturbing how how poorly this solution is being recieved. the article quotes one respondant:
"Web services is currently held up--in my opinion--by things like security and reliability," said Stephen O'Grady, an analyst at RedMonk. Once those concerns are addressed, people will "turn their attention to something like this protocol, which would offer incremental improvements in performance."
On the contrary, performance is always an issue, both for web services which have already resolved their security and reliability issues. Developers of web services need to paralelize their their development focus, paying equal attention to all the issues of performance as well as security and reliability.
To set priorities that limit development in certain areas serializes progress and has the potential of slowing ptogress by as much as 10 times that of parelelized service development.
The art argument is quite a novel approach and the more I think about it the more i like it. If you accept the premise that games are works of art based on the creative effort that goes into their creation, then if follows that they should be treated as protected speech, much as any art form such as paintings of nudes, displayed in galleries, or the work of war photographers, who try to capture the horrors of war (and sometimes exteemely violent scenes) on film.
Art is perhaps the most carefully protected speech, so if it's possible to successfully argue that video games are a form of art, this represents a powerful protection for the games themselves.
As for preventing children from playing such games, this responsibility should most definately lie with parents, much as the choice not to take a child to an art gallery exhibiting nude photography, or the choice not to place marble statue of a nude female (or male) in the bedroom of a small child.While these art forms are not inherently objectionable, and are in many cases quite beautiful, it would be bad parenting to expose a young child to some of these works, until he/she has developed an understanding of the artwork and it's place in society.
The political winds have shifted in Washington over the past year, and a Hollings-style bill isn't expected to get far in the new Congress.
basing this argument on the idea that an entertainment industry lobying effort has become strained, as organized oposition has had sime to solidify. The counter-argument would be that the entertainment industry has a more powerful position now that both houses of congress are republican-controlled. It will be interesting to watch the republican pols pick their way through the now politically vary dangerous landscape littered with the carnage left by two of their biggest constituants, although the entertainment industry will have to shed the hollywood cloak, and present themselves as 'bug business' since hollywood has generally had a liberal bent over the past 40 years.
There are two responses we should consider. First, we could ally ourselves with the BSA, in an effort to demonstrate to third parties that the free software movement is not simply a collection of unreasoning zealots (a perception Stallman has managed to promote unfortunately), or we can just sit back and watch the carnage. Although the former is a more reasonable and politically benefitial stance, I favor the latter, just for it's sheer entertainment value.
The article mentions in it's simplistic way that the 1.7% of machines sold with Linux preinstalled is not representitive of the true number of desktop computers running Linux, but there must be a reasonable method for determining the number of desktops running Linux in a non-invasive way.
Microsoft is able to at least count if not gather demographics for every desktop machine running Windows95 or above, regardless of whether it is licensed or not, through WindowsUpdate. Redhat is able to track usage of their distribution through their UpToDate software (which is becoming more invasive with every release) and other distributions include similar mechanisms, but there must be a reasonable way to gather overall usage statistics for Linux based desktops. It would be a worthwhile endevour, from a PR standpoint similar to the automobile manufacturers who take a loss on every sale of certain models in an effort to have that model garner the title of "Most popular car" of a certain class, for the simple PR benefit of being able to say that toy are the manufacturer of the most popular product in the marketplace.
Likewise, for Linuux, it is important to demonstrate increases in marketshare quarter over quarter in order to firmly demonstrate that the product (such as it is) remains a force to be reconed with.
For this reason it is important to be able to accurately measure the Linux desktop userbase. Systems like that of redhat, which require registration in order for the user to gain some other benefit (in this case convenient updates) seems somewhat draconiaf for the Linux crowd, but a system must be devised to allow for reasonable, varibiable notification of installation of a linux system (regardless of distribution) so that centralized statistics can be maintained for the simple purpose of combating the massive Microsoft PR juggernaut.
Aparently OptimumOnline has done a rick analysis in which they concluded the rick of an RIAA lawsuit is greater than the rick of loss of business due to restricting the customer's online experience.
It is our job as customers to prove not only that the customer is always right, but that the loss of business (and revenue) due to failure to cater to customer, rather than the legally questionable demands of an organization borne of greed and nepotism, which seeks to control not only products of it's members but all music and other entertainment materials, over which it has no legal standing whatsoever.
I proviide my content on DVD. I searched the MPAA website and I don't see where I need to apply to get my cut of the proffiits collected for every sale of DVD-copying software that MIGHT be used to copy my DVD content.
If the MPAA is allowed to collect these funds, then under this theory, anyone who ever records original content on a DVD for distribution, should be allowed membership to the MPAA. If enough of us join the MPAA, we could elect board members more in tune with reality. This would be far more difficult within the RIAA, since -while anyone can join the organization- only those who recieve payments (based on radio airplay of their music) can actually vote to elect board members. They have a vary incestuous system as compared to the MPAA, but with regard to the MPAA, everyone should produce a short film, perhaps a flash animation, and distribute it on DVD, selling it on their own website or whatever, then join the MPAA. If we generate enough new membership, we should be able to install board members as we se fit.:)
My first year I got a nice christmas bonus. Mu send year I got a mini stocking containing various gift basket sorts of things (this was kind of weird). Each of these two years, we had a big holiday lunch. The next year (2000) I recieved a monogrammed foux-leather business card holder and a gift certificate ($10) to BestBuy. In subsequent years folks got nothing at all (or nothing that I remember - there may have been a few holiday lunches paid for by various departments).
I now work at an academic institution where I've been attending various holiday parties every day last week and there are a few next week as well. I'm not sure if there are holiday bonuses or other things to come.
--CTH
Since google isn't publicly held...
on
Google vs. Evil
·
· Score: 5, Interesting
The owners can set whatever policies they see fit. It is, of course in their interest to set policies that do not alienate their userbase, and do not drive away advertisers. Given google's past success, it's reasonable to assume these sorts of considerations play into all their business decisions.
Specifically, on the issue of accepting ads for adult content, this is reasonable in the specific case of a search engine and especially in the case of google's AdWords mechanism, because the users who will see the ads for adult content, will only be those who are specifically searching for adult content. Google has been quite successful with their targeted advertising program, which makes it all the more valuable to it's niche advertisers such as adult content providers. So long as the ads are effectively targeted to users who are currently viewing search results containing sited having such content, ads for similar content shouldn't be an issue.
This seems to be a long term play, since they're spenging huge amounts of money on extremely high end IBM hardware (server side), so logic dictates they;re in it for the long haul since the only way to realize the indicated cost recovery, is to retain this new platform choice for at least 10 years.This is great to see.
Also, several folks have mentioned their concerns regarding trusting open source software with their money. I presume custom banking software will be ported, from it's original platform, so open source vs. closed source is meaningless where the software is all custom developed anyway. Systems with specific definable requirements such as will be used here is significantly easier to secure than systems where hundreds various and sundry services are allowed to continue running. Microsoft won the antitrust suit so we can't expect to see a stripped down truly secure Microsoft OS any time toon. All in all, this seems like wise strategic move.
With the end-of-life nearing for DOS, Windows 3.1 and Windows95, leaving only Win2K and WinXP, from that other vendor, you'd think everyone would be happy to see that older hardware is still usable under Linuux using kernels that are inherently less resource-intensive.
The asumption being that you've multiplied the potential of being compromised, since SSH has a history of vulnerabilities. Remember, we're talking about the vast majority of users who may not be sufficiently vigilent about keeping patches up-to-date.
While I agree that the vast majority of home users will either lack the technical expertise or poise to flash the firmware, these are the people who will plug in the router and forget it, which means remote management won't be turned on so the attack won't be possible (unless the user opens up a telnet or SSH port for NAT pass-thru.
Slashdot Mirror
Havind said all this, an earlier poster correctly stated that the ad was judged to be deceptive based on whether an adverage person would be decieved, not on the basis of false claims within the advertisement.
My point in all of this is simply that, having worked with Microsoft software and having dealt with Microsoft software designers, I don't have an expectation that they would meet their design goals with the software. I have no reason to doubt that they tried, but given their past track record, I can't believe it's vary likely they succeeded in achieving their design goals. Certainly the advertisment is disengenuius, but I can't believe the adverage person would be decieved by it.
--CTH
I agree. I've grown dependant on spell checkers. I blame Microsoft. Bastards!
Any logical person would conclude that what follows will be a conclusion presented by the advertiser, based on the afore-mentioned fact.
I have no doubt that some will argue that Microsoft software designers do not take security into consideration when designing software, or that Microsoft intentionally introduces security holes, so as to promote the purchase of upgrades to it's products (although msot security patches are distributed freely, think SUN and their policy of many years ago, requiring that companies wanting a bug fixes in Solaris were required to pay for the patch to be created).
The other issue is code change. The products to which the advertisement refers MUST be based on new code, because we know that in the past Microsoft did not design software with security in mind, because Craig Mindie said so:For this reason, IF the products are all based on new code, and IF you think that Microsoft would act in it's own best interest to sell more software and IF you believe that designing security in mind is likely to sell more product, then the ad is not misleading at all.
The key here is to see that Microsoft is NOT CLAIMING that their software IS SECURE they are claiming that they try to design it so that it is secure, and then draw the conclusion (however ridiculous it may be) that it is in fact more secure than a vault, but this is a conclusion, not a statement of fact.
--CTH
So in your universe privately held companies don't have shareholders? Think carefully about that. What exactly is the instrument of ownership of a corporation?
--CTH
It is both a value and the greatest risk introduced by the advent of the web, that now fringe ideas can be sought out and the relitively few indeviduals who share these ideas can congregate and cooperate to advance their ideals in a society where those ideas are in the extreme minority. In fact, you can now insulate yourself from reality by seeking out nerws sources and those of similar fringe ideoligies, and limiting your world view, by surrounding yourself with those who share your fringe ideals.
This allows the crackpots who were once spread thinly throughout society, to become a meaningful force within modern social styructures.
Google has positioned itself as one of the few gatekeepers between the majority of internet users, and these fringe ideas. It is neither right nor wrong, that the management of google has deemed certain material, not worthy of delivery to users. Google as a corporation has a mission; to deliver the greatest shareholder value. Google management has decided that in order to deliver the greatest value, they must provide results which the greatest number of users, find acceptable, appealing, or otherwise paletteable. They're in this to make money, not as a public service. That's what the Mozilla Directory Project is for.
--CTH
I look forward to reading more about the respective positions of Sone Electronics and Sony music with regard to these types of products. The article cited provided no further insight over and beyond what is esentially a product announcement. This raises a larger issue. As journalism covering technological subjects becomes more provasive in line with new technologies themselves, it appears that the calibre if journalism is declining at an ever-faster rate. Vary disappointing...
--CTH
Microsoft has enough methods for getting their products time in front of your eyes, through Windows Media Player, and virtually every other bundled app within windows, without deluging you with junkmail, but the fact remains that generation of email marketing materials is far cheaper than any other marketing materials except perhaps newspaper ads. Consumer eye-share is a valuable thing, and ther is no better medium than through that through which consumers expect to recieve valuable and meaningful correspondence thus are more likely to focus their attention on as they review what they've recieved. The fact of the matter is, SPAM works. This is our fault as consumers. I've never bought anything based on SPAM I've recieved and I doubt anyone who frequents /. has either, but obviously many consumers have. Say what you will about Microsoft, but the company is a collection of some of the shrewdest business people out there who'll be damned to hell before they abandon a potential marketing channel. It's just good business.
--CTH
The Implementation Calendar is reasonably agressive, which is suprising. By October we should be getting getting significantly fewer calls. Frankly, I'm suprised that the legislation was signed at all, but having been signed, It's admirable that any republican administration would allow such an agressive track to implementation. I guess the Direct Marketing Association didn't contribute enough to the Bush campeign, or, perhaps direct marketers have pissed off enough people on both sides of the isle, that no level of lobbying would have altered the outcome.
--CTH
This should come as a siprise to no one. 'innovation' is the strategy by which platform vendors differentiate themselves in a bid for greater market share. It's beneficial to the vendors so we won't see this sort of thing end any time soon. It locks their customers into tyheir platform for the long haul, which is why you will never see the same 'innovation' made to all or even several platforms at the same time. Leveraging innovation to facilitate greater synergy is the IT industry's answer to advertising verbage such as 'new and improved' you often see on any consumer product marketing materials. It certainly is harmful, but it isn't going to stop any time soon. There was something of a backlash to ptoptietary innovation back in '98 and '99 so vendors began to work more with open standards, as a half measure to apease consumers. Microsoft is a good example of this. Their strategy to 'embrace and extend' open standards, to again differentiate their product offerings has worked out extremely well to date. It certainly isn't ideal for the IT consumer, but this is where modern marketing and business practices meet the IT industry's little piece of the world-wide technology market.
--CTH
The big sunk cost is that for initial acceptance by ICANN as a registrar. I believe the costs there approach $250,000. Then, there are typical server, bandwidth and administration costs, plus the cost of running a call center and probably some softwar development for establishing the user domain registration and management interface. After that, a portion of the registration fees go to the organization managing the particular RLDs you're registering domains for, and as far as I know, that's about it. I'm not certain of tha accuracy of the above, but this is what I recall reading a few years back. The folks over at ICANN Watch probably have more authoritative information on the subject.
--CTH
Say what you want about Verisign, they had it right, and so it should come as no shock that Amazon.com has entered the domain registration business. Verisign operates in the two markets that are at the gateway to the net. they are the premier SSL certificate authority and the the primary (although far from the best) domain registrar. Amazon - as a well run business - is seeking to mazimize proffits so it follows that they would enter the domain registration business, since it has one of the highest margins of any known internet business with the possible exception of the sale of pornography, and, yes, sales of SSL certificates. If the bariers to entry int othe Certificate Authority weren't so high, I'm sure Amazon.com would have attempted entry into that market as well.
--CTH
It's great to see legislation of this type appear on the scene, however I'm not sure which state's stategy is going to be most effective. Charging spammers for access to a do-not-email list which could potentially protect them from lawsuits is a good thing, but there has to be an incentive for the consumer, other than to screw over the spammers, for them to sue the offenders. Personally, $10/UBE message for at least two days effort on my part (with a lawyer, and in court), which translates into at least $1200 of my time (at a reasonable rate of $75/hour) doesn't make it worth my while to spend my time sueing a spammer in Colorado.
Payment of $5,000 per violation in Missouri on the other hand, makes it worth while for consumers to sue spammers. FOr this reason, it seems to me that the Colorado law is designed as a state regenue generation mechanism, rather than legislation designed to compensate the victims of spammers.
--CTH
--CTH
To set priorities that limit development in certain areas serializes progress and has the potential of slowing ptogress by as much as 10 times that of parelelized service development.
--CTH
The art argument is quite a novel approach and the more I think about it the more i like it. If you accept the premise that games are works of art based on the creative effort that goes into their creation, then if follows that they should be treated as protected speech, much as any art form such as paintings of nudes, displayed in galleries, or the work of war photographers, who try to capture the horrors of war (and sometimes exteemely violent scenes) on film.
Art is perhaps the most carefully protected speech, so if it's possible to successfully argue that video games are a form of art, this represents a powerful protection for the games themselves.
As for preventing children from playing such games, this responsibility should most definately lie with parents, much as the choice not to take a child to an art gallery exhibiting nude photography, or the choice not to place marble statue of a nude female (or male) in the bedroom of a small child.While these art forms are not inherently objectionable, and are in many cases quite beautiful, it would be bad parenting to expose a young child to some of these works, until he/she has developed an understanding of the artwork and it's place in society.
--CTH
There are two responses we should consider. First, we could ally ourselves with the BSA, in an effort to demonstrate to third parties that the free software movement is not simply a collection of unreasoning zealots (a perception Stallman has managed to promote unfortunately), or we can just sit back and watch the carnage. Although the former is a more reasonable and politically benefitial stance, I favor the latter, just for it's sheer entertainment value.
--CTH
The article mentions in it's simplistic way that the 1.7% of machines sold with Linux preinstalled is not representitive of the true number of desktop computers running Linux, but there must be a reasonable method for determining the number of desktops running Linux in a non-invasive way.
Microsoft is able to at least count if not gather demographics for every desktop machine running Windows95 or above, regardless of whether it is licensed or not, through WindowsUpdate. Redhat is able to track usage of their distribution through their UpToDate software (which is becoming more invasive with every release) and other distributions include similar mechanisms, but there must be a reasonable way to gather overall usage statistics for Linux based desktops. It would be a worthwhile endevour, from a PR standpoint similar to the automobile manufacturers who take a loss on every sale of certain models in an effort to have that model garner the title of "Most popular car" of a certain class, for the simple PR benefit of being able to say that toy are the manufacturer of the most popular product in the marketplace.
Likewise, for Linuux, it is important to demonstrate increases in marketshare quarter over quarter in order to firmly demonstrate that the product (such as it is) remains a force to be reconed with.
For this reason it is important to be able to accurately measure the Linux desktop userbase. Systems like that of redhat, which require registration in order for the user to gain some other benefit (in this case convenient updates) seems somewhat draconiaf for the Linux crowd, but a system must be devised to allow for reasonable, varibiable notification of installation of a linux system (regardless of distribution) so that centralized statistics can be maintained for the simple purpose of combating the massive Microsoft PR juggernaut.
--CTH
Aparently OptimumOnline has done a rick analysis in which they concluded the rick of an RIAA lawsuit is greater than the rick of loss of business due to restricting the customer's online experience.
It is our job as customers to prove not only that the customer is always right, but that the loss of business (and revenue) due to failure to cater to customer, rather than the legally questionable demands of an organization borne of greed and nepotism, which seeks to control not only products of it's members but all music and other entertainment materials, over which it has no legal standing whatsoever.
--CTH
I proviide my content on DVD. I searched the MPAA website and I don't see where I need to apply to get my cut of the proffiits collected for every sale of DVD-copying software that MIGHT be used to copy my DVD content.
:)
If the MPAA is allowed to collect these funds, then under this theory, anyone who ever records original content on a DVD for distribution, should be allowed membership to the MPAA. If enough of us join the MPAA, we could elect board members more in tune with reality. This would be far more difficult within the RIAA, since -while anyone can join the organization- only those who recieve payments (based on radio airplay of their music) can actually vote to elect board members. They have a vary incestuous system as compared to the MPAA, but with regard to the MPAA, everyone should produce a short film, perhaps a flash animation, and distribute it on DVD, selling it on their own website or whatever, then join the MPAA. If we generate enough new membership, we should be able to install board members as we se fit.
--CTH
My first year I got a nice christmas bonus. Mu send year I got a mini stocking containing various gift basket sorts of things (this was kind of weird). Each of these two years, we had a big holiday lunch. The next year (2000) I recieved a monogrammed foux-leather business card holder and a gift certificate ($10) to BestBuy. In subsequent years folks got nothing at all (or nothing that I remember - there may have been a few holiday lunches paid for by various departments).
I now work at an academic institution where I've been attending various holiday parties every day last week and there are a few next week as well. I'm not sure if there are holiday bonuses or other things to come.
--CTH
The owners can set whatever policies they see fit. It is, of course in their interest to set policies that do not alienate their userbase, and do not drive away advertisers. Given google's past success, it's reasonable to assume these sorts of considerations play into all their business decisions.
Specifically, on the issue of accepting ads for adult content, this is reasonable in the specific case of a search engine and especially in the case of google's AdWords mechanism, because the users who will see the ads for adult content, will only be those who are specifically searching for adult content. Google has been quite successful with their targeted advertising program, which makes it all the more valuable to it's niche advertisers such as adult content providers. So long as the ads are effectively targeted to users who are currently viewing search results containing sited having such content, ads for similar content shouldn't be an issue.
--CTH
This seems to be a long term play, since they're spenging huge amounts of money on extremely high end IBM hardware (server side), so logic dictates they;re in it for the long haul since the only way to realize the indicated cost recovery, is to retain this new platform choice for at least 10 years.This is great to see.
Also, several folks have mentioned their concerns regarding trusting open source software with their money. I presume custom banking software will be ported, from it's original platform, so open source vs. closed source is meaningless where the software is all custom developed anyway. Systems with specific definable requirements such as will be used here is significantly easier to secure than systems where hundreds various and sundry services are allowed to continue running. Microsoft won the antitrust suit so we can't expect to see a stripped down truly secure Microsoft OS any time toon. All in all, this seems like wise strategic move.
--CTH
With the end-of-life nearing for DOS, Windows 3.1 and Windows95, leaving only Win2K and WinXP, from that other vendor, you'd think everyone would be happy to see that older hardware is still usable under Linuux using kernels that are inherently less resource-intensive.
You can't have it both ways folks...
--CTH
The asumption being that you've multiplied the potential of being compromised, since SSH has a history of vulnerabilities. Remember, we're talking about the vast majority of users who may not be sufficiently vigilent about keeping patches up-to-date.
While I agree that the vast majority of home users will either lack the technical expertise or poise to flash the firmware, these are the people who will plug in the router and forget it, which means remote management won't be turned on so the attack won't be possible (unless the user opens up a telnet or SSH port for NAT pass-thru.
--CTH