No, it's not. Google has not engaged in any anticompetitive practices to hold on to that market share. Being successful simply because you're good at what you do is not a crime. Microsofts agreements with OEMs, other software makers and Intel were used to make it impossible for other OS makers to compete. It would be like if Google created a new standard called norobotsexceptgoogles.txt and lowered the page rank of any sites that didn't refuse to be crawled by anyone but google.
You've hit the nail on the head. There is nothing wrong with being a monopoly... they are perfectly legal.
The statutes don't accuse you of being a monopoly, they accuse you of being an "illegal monopoly"... one who engages in anti-competitive behaviour. Monopolies who play by the rules are free to carry on; those that don't are subject to restrictions and penalties which can include forced divesture.
By definition, Google isn't a monopoly. They aren't the only search engine in town, they just happen to be the most successful with a vast majority of the market share. That's not because they are erecting large barriers to entry, it's just because the other search engines aren't as smart as theirs.
Not sure what "definition" you are using. A monopoly doesn't necessarily have to be the only game in town; what it has to be is the player who calls the shots; an effective monopoly, if you will. Google qualifies, easily.
Now, with computer tech, to a large extent, the regulatory forces have embraced the idea that it is a fast moving, embryonic, evolving space, and thus not necessarily subject to monopoly restrictions that other, more mature, markets are subject to. They let the oil companies and the telecos run with it for a while, too, you know. Put another way, they are looking the other way, for now.
This is consistent with history and legal precedent... for a while, everyone gets to be a monopoly while the market sorts things out... after all it's not a crime to be the first to figure something out. But you could say that the regulatory patience is limited; that essentially sums up how this whole thing has worked out in the past.
Fear not, at some point in time the regulators will use the usual tests, and if at this moment in time they did (or in some future moment assuming nothing has changed), Google gets painted with the monopoly brush, and the courts surely must agree, since they fit the model.
It seems Nokia tried to buy Palm... it was a persistent rumour and the ebb and flow of the speculation and various reports introduced swings in Nokia stock, one time rising 8% in one day), probably for the same reasons HP wanted it (software) but somehow failed there too.
There is also a certain sensitivity within Norway and within Nokia about how the company has operated in the past. At one time Nokia was a computer manufacturer... closed that division. At one time Nokia was a big CRT monitor manufacturer... closed that division. The company itself was formed in 1967 in a 3-way merger as a Tire and Rubber firm. They later spun off that into Nokian Tyres in 1998 and sold their remaining stake in 2003. There has been a certain history of failure some employees attribute to mismanagement.
"... Worse, Apple had been rumored to be designing a mobile phone as early as late 2002. For the industry (Nokia et al) to not have made any plans to circumvent this (shut them out with some exclusive contracts, start development of a touch screen phone themselves, etc.) was another example of "falling asleep at the switch."
Although you are probably right, I find the reasons why they felt they could safely ignore an Apple smartphone somewhat interesting.
There is a leaked memo from an executive meeting at RIM where they sat down and had an iPhone in hand to evaluate for the first time, just after launch. I'd give a link, but it wasn't widely reported and I'm not sure where it's at (so feel free to call it bull, but I did read about it somewhere I no longer recall a few months ago; I use a Blackberry).
Their hardware engineers had been telling them that the User Interface and enhanced features (beyond simply making a call) would be limited and easy to add to existing RIM products because there was no way you could put the necessary processing power into the phone and maintain battery life while still having a usable compact form factor. They had estimated battery life to be on the order of 2 to 3 hours if you actually used a feature that didn't involve a simple cell call.
So, prior to it's actual launch they saw it as lightweight competition and of no real threat. Combine that with RIM's belief (and Palm's) that a smartphone had to have a keyboard, although that doesn't really apply to Nokia, perhaps, and there's a recipe for complacency.
On the teardown report discussed in the meeting, the RIM engineers admitted they were taken by surprise at the level of miniaturization and compact layout of the PCB and components, which allowed Apple to stuff a huge battery inside; one much larger than RIM believed could fit prior to the launch. So there was a scramble on two fronts (hardware and software), not just one as they had somewhat expected. One is said to describe the first unit they were able to get a look at as "it's all battery". One can imagine a similar meeting at Nokia.
Some have suggested the delay in releasing a non-GSM version of the iPhone was essentially due to the difficulty of reducing the component footprint to allow for sufficient battery size.
A quick glance at the Craigslist main page shows about 350 US cities listed.
From the article: "... And we understand thousands or even tens of thousands of transactions happen safely between Craigslist aficionados...."
Thousands? That's as little as three transactions A YEAR per city. Tens of thousands? That's one transaction every few days per city.
Twelve murders? A year? Twelve too many, I know, but since these are almost certainly some kind of robbery-related murders... well, call me crazy, but there are places where a dozen robberies resulting in murder would be considered a massive drop in crime... people in local government in plenty of places would be running for re-election on those numbers, and winning in a landslide to boot.
Sounds like Craigslist is a paragon of virtue. There's probably more than three 'crimes' committed every day at the average flea market.
Oh, I could call them. They had humans in the commercial accounts, in the contract phone support departments, and a few other places. I did talk to them about it, actually (aside from the eMail conversations in the original post). What you couldn't do is add minutes to the phone by calling them. And I had one of their prepaid cards... I just had to enter the number. To the robot. No other way. Really.
"Not a Bank" might not be the absolute correct phrase, at least in terms of what we think of as banking. Broadly speaking, the reasons Paypal gives as "not a bank" would not be enough to be considered 'not a bank' in most countries.
However, those reasons Paypal cites are the same ones that allow certain banks worldwide to avoid reporting rules. There are banks in some countries that are used to launder money or avoid reporting income, and they can do this because they are not subject to certain reporting rules which can be summed up thusly: if you don't pay interest or make loans, you don't have to tell regulators who your customers are... thus numbered bank accounts and offshore tax havens.
Since the US has vastly different banking rules than most nations, I don't know exactly where that puts Paypal... I don't think you can avoid reporting rules, interest payments or no interest payments, loans or no loans, with a US bank.
However, I do know that Paypal originally incorporated in the state of Louisiana specifically because of that state's lax banking regulations. As it was organized at first, apparently it would have been illegal in most states at the time. No idea if that's changed substantially in the meantime.
Oh, it might work some of the time. But recognizing speech... as compared to memorizing a bunch of data and humiliating the puny memory of human Jeopardy contestants... is a massively complex task that humans do very, very well, and machines do only within very finite limits. Go outside those limits... say, set up voice recognition on a quiet Sunday and then try to use it on a busy Monday with people, machines and the air conditioner on... and it craps out. Get a cold... it craps out. Change your mood... it always shows in your voice and humans get it instantly... and it craps out.
I bought a cellphone once. Not that long ago...about five years. It was a Pay-As-You-Go phone you load up with minutes from time to time. This was with Bell (Canada). Loaded it up with minutes, made some calls, I'm a happy camper. Until I ran out of minutes, that is.
About this time Bell had some fancy, multimillion-dollar software and computer thing going. They'd been working on it for years. It was a voice recognition thing. They decided it was ready for prime time, and implemented it for voice calls to their support and... Pay-As-You-Go phone minute reloading. I remember reading an article in the Globe & Mail (Toronto) with some Bell exec saying this was the greatest thing since individually wrapped cheeze in slices, Bell execs were so proud of this they were bragging about it in public, and it's the way they would be going system wide, as of... right this very second.
Now, being a sociopathic corporation, they concluded they would not be able to fire a bunch of phone answering employees if nobody used it. Naturally, the way to do this was to eliminate... completely... any method to get a human on the phone for certain tasks... like adding minutes to your Pay-As-You-Go phone, and also eliminating the old, alternate method using the phone keypad, which worked PERFECTLY. That's right... you could not enter a CC number using the keypad, you could not talk to a human, you talked to this ***BITCH*** (... oops, sorry )... "computer generated sweet female voice"... to renew your minutes.
Well, I tried. It actually worked, sort of. (See "Oh, it might work some of the time", above). But there were a number of steps that had to be done, and no matter how much I tried, really, really tried, this ***STunned C*NT*** (... oops, sorry)... "computer generated sweet female voice"... would eventually utter the dreaded words " I'm sorry, I didn't get that. Please try again." Of course, after three tries, she hangs up on you. Nice.
Well, at that point, you're done.
I probably made 30 calls to this robo-torture-queen before I finally just gave up. Couldn't return the phone, since it worked for the first two months before I ran out of minutes. Bell had no way... I mean this... to speak to a human about this. They cut off any and all methods to actual resolution... I did send eMails, got answers, but the answer was this " use the robo-bitch. It's the only way. There are no humans available for the Pay-As-You-Go phone system. This eMail isn't even from them, since they don't accept eMails in that department either. Sorry."
Sold the phone. Put the loss I couldn't recover on the phone into my "Never Again, and this is why" file. Needless to say, Bell Canada has no chance of ever having me as a customer without employing some illegal scheme involving an offer of many, many blowjobs from a suitably attractive and youthful female "contract employee".
A few months later, Bell moved back to the old methods that actually worked, like using the phone's keypad. Idiots.
Now, some might say "that was five years ago" and you
It's repeated in the PCPro article linked to in the OP, that Nokia is migrating to Windows Phone 7. There is a great deal of evidence that this is at least partly misleading. Nokia's new CEO (and former Windows exec) Stephen Elop has been careful to never, not even once, in print or via interview, say they are going to move to Windows Phone "Seven".
There is good evidence to suggest that whatever Windows mobile OS Nokia adopts, it will be different in significant ways than the WP7 available now. Nokia has committed to releasing just one Windows Mobile OS phone in 2011, and that is not slated for release until October 2011. There have been hints that whatever Windows Mobile OS it does have, it will be worthy of at a minimum, a 7.5 version number, although knowing Microsoft, that won't stop them from going all out and calling it version 8. It could even be a true version 8-worthy release. In any case, the feature set is expected to differ from the current v7x offering.
The "real" adoption of Windows Mobile and significant new phone releases won't be until 2012 at the earliest.
Like many people, I have serious doubts about the strategy and believe there is great danger going forward for Nokia. However, it's my opinion that there are some rather broad hints from both Nokia and Microsoft that whatever happens, it won't be Windows 7 as we now know it that powers the devices it eventually does release.
Well, since I know all the details, I may as well chime in about the procedure in Canada. First of all, it might be worthwhile to mention that Canada has had Gun Control legislation since the 1930's. What follows refers to the current incarnation.
You must pass a Firearms Safety Course before you can touch a loaded firearm. There are two Firearms Safety Courses, one for long guns (rifles, shotguns) and one for handguns.
The courses are not difficult and usually can be done in an afternoon or an evening. Most of the course instructors are the same gun hobbyists that would be active NRA members in the US, and they can make a nice little side income (but not a living) from teaching the courses. You just need to pass the instructor course, which is essentially no more difficult than the course you'd be teaching.
Armed with the proof of passing the course, you then apply for a license to possess firearms. That's where the you get the details a bit wrong with such things as "you had to have your wife sign a letter". One of the questions you must answer is about marriage or common-law relationship within the last 5 years (from the date of application). No wife, no live-in relationship, no problem. Otherwise the current or ex has to sign the application. The background check is performed after you apply.
It's a fairly simple Criminal Records check (for example, you won't be asked to submit fingerprints) that looks for violent crime offences plus serious non-violent offences that a US resident would probably refer to as a "serious felony". Lesser problems with the law won't be grounds for rejection. Expect it to take about 6 months to get your license. If that's what you refer to as "some amount of wait time", there you go. But, it seemed to me that could be interpreted as suggesting there was a law similar to some US states where you have to wait a short period before you can take possession of a gun after you buy in a store.
Not so in Canada. You do have to show the license to by a gun, but assuming that part is fine, you walk out with the long gun as soon as you pay for it. Handguns are somewhat different, in that you need a permit to convey for a handgun, so sort that out first, or buy first and then get the permit. Either way, there's no specific waiting period that needs to be adhered to. Handgun permits are issued by the local police.
There's been some changes over the years, there used to be an "possession only" license that allows you to buy ammunition but presumably either already owned a gun or don't plan on actually owning, just shooting, guns, but it's not offered anymore. You could not buy a new gun with that version. If you have one you can continue to use it.
If not you could have applied for the "acquisition" type which allows you to buy both guns and ammunition, as of now it's the only kind. Done all at once, you could get the handgun version if you have both courses, otherwise you get the long gun acquisition licence and would have to apply for a new license if you subsequently took the handgun course and wanted to buy handguns.
There is also a decade-old law requiring registration of all guns, although it's widely ignored by gun owners and with many provinces stating clearly they won't be charging anyone for failure to register violations (Ontario, BC and Quebec probably would though), and with the current Federal Government intent on abolishing it (although so far, mostly due to having a minority government, they've not succeeded). I personally have never heard of anyone being charged with not registering a weapon, but if you lived in, say, Toronto, your experience might be different.
Handguns have always had to be registered in Canada going back to the 1930's and have always required permits issued by the local Police Department to transport or store. Ironically, prior to the new safety course requirement, you occasionally heard of local police refusing to issue permits to certain individuals. Now, if you have the proper license, it's basically a rubbe
Another good chunk of what would be considered "knowledge"... my suspicion is "chunk" is woefully inadequate and perhaps this 295 excabytes pales in comparison... is what humans know but have not committed to another recorded form.
Call me crazy, but "the sum total of the world's knowledge" doesn't imply just "some form" of it; it pretty much states boldly that it's the works.
From TFA:
"... The researchers calculated the figure by estimating the amount of data held on 60 technologies from PCs and and DVDs to paper adverts and books...."
Secondly, that's the data that once existed in 2007... three years is a VERY long time in the modern world of data accumulation.
They can operate... the courts gave them 60 days (I think... something like that) and there is no interest to shut them down (by anyone, regulators, competitors, consumers, you name it)... more competition in wireless is desired, not less. So an extension will almost certainly be offered to allow them time to sort the issue out.
The court case centred around how GlobalLive was financed. Through a bit of creative reading of the law, GlobalLive is structured so that almost 100% of the financing is foreign (Egyptian billionaire) while the control and operating firm has sufficient Canadian resident board members and shareholders and as long as the company is fine financially, just pays off the loan.
The law basically states that majority control of telecom must always reside with Canadian entities or individuals. Foreign ownership is fine as long as it stays below controlling interest with that particular industry.
So, as it sits now, GlobalLive is fine, but if there's a default in the loan, the foreign entity could end up with basically 100% ownership. The court basically said this was effectively a scheme to circumvent the legislation.
The lawsuit was brought by a rival carrier... a small, new entrant who also got spectrum in the same auction... who felt that this gave GlobalLive access to capital that it could not, since (as I said earlier) the law pretty much says you can't do it that way. The carrier who brought the suit doesn't want to shut down GlobalLive, but if GlobalLive is allowed to do it, then they feel they should also be able to finance in the same manner, since this opens up access to capital that they felt they could not use under the existing law, consistent with their legal advice when forming their own firm.
In essence, GlobalLive through Order-In-Council obtained the right to obtain financing the other entrants are still prohibited from obtaining... the law itself hasn't changed, but one carrier was given a special right not enjoyed by the others.
So, the short answer is GlobalLive will probably have to either obtain new financing that offsets the amount of equity that the Egyptian firm could acquire via loan default so that such a default won't give the foreign firm a majority stake, or the other carriers will have to be given access to the same capital terms. Either way will work.
Chances are GlobalLive will find enough new capital to pay off the Egyptian firm to the extent that default won't allow a majority stake, or they could modify the terms with the existing financier so that even without new financing there will be a limit on how much equity the Egyptian firm could acquire in default.
Well, I explain SPAM with the phrase "it's too easy".
As for the "real purpose of the internet" thing, it's what brought commercial sites to the 'net in the first place, long before eCommerce actually worked or was used by, say, 10% of users (circa 2000).
Before that, the first thing they wanted back in the day was your eMail address. Coincidence?
And I'm not sure about the "communication tool" thing. What is Facebook all about?
The service they provide is just the bait as far as I can see. And it's become universal... to comment on some sites now, you require a Facebook or some similar login... these sites don't even allow registration with a username and password anymore.
I don't see that going away, I see it becoming more common, perhaps even universal.
I don't see your point. If he's sharing the home connection, and it's a problem due to his use, then the father needs a backbone. I don't care how old the son is.
Absolutely correct. The thing is we now collect and store far more information than any human powered system can possibly use, so it's not perfectly correct to say every transaction is being scrutinized, but when said human decides to look for an individual's internet-derived data... there it is.
I'm not sure whether any Government, or perhaps every Government, is monitoring or "spying", if you will, on citizens and non-citizens alike.
But I am sure that you are a fool if you think they cannot, or if not them, then someone. Aggregation of personal information is the real purpose of the internet, just because it took 20 years for everyone to figure that out doesn't make it any less real, or inevitable.
Take care of what you post, and where, and assume it can all be on CNN tomorrow morning. it's that simple.
Try doing any programming or system administration related search and *not* have at least one of the first five results populated with the following worthless domains:
These sites don't necessarily scrape and repost content, but the content they do provide is invariably worthless...
I can't argue, but more often than not Google provides good results. When they don't, you have to go back to the "old school" search methods, and they work very well.
I hate the "fake review" websites where there may, or may not be a review of your search term, and if there is, they are consumer reviews which I find generally useless. Amazon reviews are generally good, so I do check them out.
So, for your example, your just go through the pages of Google results, eliminating the domains that give you junk.
Search Term:
Widget Review -ehow.com -about.com -scribed.com -itoolbox.com... and so on. After about 5 minutes of fairly easy work, you end up with very good results. Now, five minutes might be an eternity to some, but when you end up with good, useful information, it's a time saver in my mind. You can save the search and use it later. Now, the junk domains vary somewhat depending on what you're searching for, so there is no "one list" that works for everything, but it doesn't take much to create, say, a consumer electronics saved search where you just add the name of the product and go.
Kathryn Gray, a 10 year old girl from New Brunswick, Canada, discovered a previously unknown SuperNova over the Christmas holidays.
Neither Kathryn nor her dad own a telescope. They used images downloaded to her dad's computer, an astronomy buff. The images were taken via a backyard telescope owned by another amateur, David Lane of Halifax, Nova Scotia (Canada).
Note: in reference to "back when the common storage medium was a cassette".
Cassette, floppy, hard drive, CD-ROM, VHS tape, punch cards, bar napkins and pencil... they're all analog MEDIA that can store digital DATA. Shouldn't confuse the two.
Or the NCAA could patent the current system whereby no Playoff Game is possible.
The resulting pair of conflicting patents could kill all sport entirely; thus demonstrating the untold benefits the current USPTO regimen is surely designed to achieve.
I normally don't go to URL shortener links at all, having long ago seen how easy they are to hid the real URL of suspicious sites. Also, I've been using Safari for years, and although Firefox is installed it's my preferred browser. Normally I have the download window and the activity window active on the right side of my desktop. The Activity window in particular is very handy for monitoring any and all surfing activity.
Similarly, I have been a long-time user of Little Snitch to monitor and authorize/deauthorize outgoing connections, with the network activity window always showing upon outgoing network activity. I suspected one, or both, of these tools would be useful.
Little Snitch, as expected, shows the network activity as a fairly constant level of network activity, but since it's an authorized outgoing connection (your web browser, naturally, has to be allowed to make connections to the usual internet ports like 80, etc, or no browsing for you) there isn't much that would really seem unusual. Many requests and deliveries of data are of course visible, but this is relatively normal and probably would not really alert anyone; for example it is similar to what you would see with a streaming server delivering content on a page. It's there, but it's not obvious something nefarious is going on unless you were really paying attention, and there's really no reason to be, since it's a standard browser operation, more or less.
Safari's Activity window, however, reveals the activity quite obviously. In a few moments using the sample page outlined in the original article, you see a huge amount of requests to the target url. A normal webpage might have up to 100 or even 200 different components, but not a constant stream that gets to 100 in a few seconds, and keeps going. The urls are fairly obvious as well, taking the form of: http://www.example.com/?v=1292889926999...{continuous stream of... example/com/?v= [some incremental number]}... http://www.example.com/?v=1292889877790
The webpage does not fully load, but the stream continues until you close the page { [Command-W] or mouse click on the close button }
With the Activity Window open you should be able to monitor and react to being an unwitting party to the DDoS.
In the wake of the Gawker exploit, we're seeing lots of news articles in major papers consulting "security experts" and the reporter then quoting or suggesting using more than 8 character passwords.
Of course, none of them mention that Gawker threw away any characters beyond 8, so that (for example) 12345678 was just as secure as 12345678%#^*(&^&(**, and entering 12345678 would allow both accounts access. I find it hard to believe that others sites don't do similar things, and of course they're not going to tell you that (it's a security exploit clue) so there's a good chance that your attempt and effort is wasted anyway.
Don't get me started on sites that have so-called "security questions" which are a non-editable list of crap that anyone with a phone book or knows how to use Google can discover. My bank recently added a bank of 5 non-editable questions (although, they do give you a list of 10 stupid questions to select from) but my reasonably secure answers always failed a login... creating and using the questions became mandatory one day, and I was locked out of my account in the meantime, with bill due dates looming.
Turns out that they limited the characters for all answers in total to less than 60; apparently they wanted short, one-word answers, and called it "good". It took two days and phone calls to both my bank and from them to their outsourced IT guys to figure out that little problem, but a few hours before they called me I had managed to figure that out myself in about an hour (it took about 5 minutes each attempt to login, wade, select and answer, record the answers, test, logout, count characters, login... ). Even though they called later and told me 60 I had actually determined the limit to be 63, or 1 less than an average of 16 characters per answer.
Now, in contrast to your bank, low-value sites that require you to log in to comment, and where all you do is casually comment, don't deserve your time and effort to create and use good passwords, probably. Perhaps better advice is to create a throwaway eMail address in Gmail or some other free public eMail service, and have your mail program simply automatically delete every eMail from that address upon arrival in your inbox, eliminating the spam issue completely (for you). Use that eMail, and a correspondingly useless username and password, and don't worry about it. If you find later that you are going to actually use that site (ie by making a submission rather than just a comment) then reset or create anew with more secure credentials.
This is really a natural progression of the web itself; at one time you logged into sites that actually mattered, now every little crap site on the planet wants a login. If you follow that approach, you need to divide the expanse into what matters and what doesn't, keeping in mind that if you put one site into the "doesn't matter" category, then every site in that category can result in them all being compromised... so be sure that it's appropriate and you don't use throwaway credentials in a site that matters; in particular any social networking site should have it's own unique credentials, since "Sharing" is their middle names.
Taken in this light, it's also a corollary to the (not unreasonable) revelation that a lot of the usernames and passwords were low-value security-wise on Gawker. I mean, I understand that crap passwords are an irritant to IT Pros, but we all only have so much time. Maybe some of those users actually have the password thing right and do have good security in mind; just not for a site like a Gawker Media site. Of course, it appears the principals and staff of Gawker aren't in that category, since their credentials themselves should have been good practice examples.
I realize that IT pros who actually know what they're doing might cringe at the idea of deliberately creating insecure passwords, but we all have lives to lead and time to allocate, and as the Gawker Media incident shows, not e
People tend to assume things work elsewhere the same way they do locally or nationally. Reality is detention, arrest, being charged with an offence, and all the other aspects of due process vary widely, even amongst countries that are considered good examples of due process.
I often hear or read about stories where, in the US, someone is "held for questioning" for a period of at least multiple days. I have to admit I have no idea what the practical legal details involve... the point being it's not important to someone who lives elsewhere. Where I live, Police can't hold you any longer than, in practical terms, overnight, since they have to either lay a charge or release you by morning; there is no legal provision to hold someone any longer than is required to bring you before a judge... Police cannot hold you without laying a charge; you can demand to be charged or released immediately at any point.
But I would be foolish to think that same rule holds elsewhere. There are subtle differences in meaning from place to place when the news reports someone is being detained or charged, there are different rules regarding who can and cannot be held and for what reason, there are different rules of disclosure required.
As for there being a public record of someone's arrest, I'm pretty sure that you will find Police almost anywhere are not required to say anything they don't want to say; what public disclosure is required will probably be based on habeas corpus; in other words the only mandatory public record might be the first appearance before a judge or justice and not before.
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No, it's not. Google has not engaged in any anticompetitive practices to hold on to that market share. Being successful simply because you're good at what you do is not a crime. Microsofts agreements with OEMs, other software makers and Intel were used to make it impossible for other OS makers to compete. It would be like if Google created a new standard called norobotsexceptgoogles.txt and lowered the page rank of any sites that didn't refuse to be crawled by anyone but google.
You've hit the nail on the head. There is nothing wrong with being a monopoly ... they are perfectly legal.
The statutes don't accuse you of being a monopoly, they accuse you of being an "illegal monopoly" ... one who engages in anti-competitive behaviour. Monopolies who play by the rules are free to carry on; those that don't are subject to restrictions and penalties which can include forced divesture.
By definition, Google isn't a monopoly. They aren't the only search engine in town, they just happen to be the most successful with a vast majority of the market share. That's not because they are erecting large barriers to entry, it's just because the other search engines aren't as smart as theirs.
Not sure what "definition" you are using. A monopoly doesn't necessarily have to be the only game in town; what it has to be is the player who calls the shots; an effective monopoly, if you will. Google qualifies, easily.
Now, with computer tech, to a large extent, the regulatory forces have embraced the idea that it is a fast moving, embryonic, evolving space, and thus not necessarily subject to monopoly restrictions that other, more mature, markets are subject to. They let the oil companies and the telecos run with it for a while, too, you know. Put another way, they are looking the other way, for now.
This is consistent with history and legal precedent ... for a while, everyone gets to be a monopoly while the market sorts things out ... after all it's not a crime to be the first to figure something out. But you could say that the regulatory patience is limited; that essentially sums up how this whole thing has worked out in the past.
Fear not, at some point in time the regulators will use the usual tests, and if at this moment in time they did (or in some future moment assuming nothing has changed), Google gets painted with the monopoly brush, and the courts surely must agree, since they fit the model.
It seems Nokia tried to buy Palm ... it was a persistent rumour and the ebb and flow of the speculation and various reports introduced swings in Nokia stock, one time rising 8% in one day), probably for the same reasons HP wanted it (software) but somehow failed there too.
There is also a certain sensitivity within Norway and within Nokia about how the company has operated in the past. At one time Nokia was a computer manufacturer ... closed that division. At one time Nokia was a big CRT monitor manufacturer ... closed that division. The company itself was formed in 1967 in a 3-way merger as a Tire and Rubber firm. They later spun off that into Nokian Tyres in 1998 and sold their remaining stake in 2003. There has been a certain history of failure some employees attribute to mismanagement.
" ... Worse, Apple had been rumored to be designing a mobile phone as early as late 2002. For the industry (Nokia et al) to not have made any plans to circumvent this (shut them out with some exclusive contracts, start development of a touch screen phone themselves, etc.) was another example of "falling asleep at the switch."
Although you are probably right, I find the reasons why they felt they could safely ignore an Apple smartphone somewhat interesting.
There is a leaked memo from an executive meeting at RIM where they sat down and had an iPhone in hand to evaluate for the first time, just after launch. I'd give a link, but it wasn't widely reported and I'm not sure where it's at (so feel free to call it bull, but I did read about it somewhere I no longer recall a few months ago; I use a Blackberry).
Their hardware engineers had been telling them that the User Interface and enhanced features (beyond simply making a call) would be limited and easy to add to existing RIM products because there was no way you could put the necessary processing power into the phone and maintain battery life while still having a usable compact form factor. They had estimated battery life to be on the order of 2 to 3 hours if you actually used a feature that didn't involve a simple cell call.
So, prior to it's actual launch they saw it as lightweight competition and of no real threat. Combine that with RIM's belief (and Palm's) that a smartphone had to have a keyboard, although that doesn't really apply to Nokia, perhaps, and there's a recipe for complacency.
On the teardown report discussed in the meeting, the RIM engineers admitted they were taken by surprise at the level of miniaturization and compact layout of the PCB and components, which allowed Apple to stuff a huge battery inside; one much larger than RIM believed could fit prior to the launch. So there was a scramble on two fronts (hardware and software), not just one as they had somewhat expected. One is said to describe the first unit they were able to get a look at as "it's all battery". One can imagine a similar meeting at Nokia.
Some have suggested the delay in releasing a non-GSM version of the iPhone was essentially due to the difficulty of reducing the component footprint to allow for sufficient battery size.
A quick glance at the Craigslist main page shows about 350 US cities listed.
From the article: " ... And we understand thousands or even tens of thousands of transactions happen safely between Craigslist aficionados. ..."
Thousands? That's as little as three transactions A YEAR per city. Tens of thousands? That's one transaction every few days per city.
Twelve murders? A year? Twelve too many, I know, but since these are almost certainly some kind of robbery-related murders ... well, call me crazy, but there are places where a dozen robberies resulting in murder would be considered a massive drop in crime ... people in local government in plenty of places would be running for re-election on those numbers, and winning in a landslide to boot.
Sounds like Craigslist is a paragon of virtue. There's probably more than three 'crimes' committed every day at the average flea market.
Oh, I could call them. They had humans in the commercial accounts, in the contract phone support departments, and a few other places. I did talk to them about it, actually (aside from the eMail conversations in the original post). What you couldn't do is add minutes to the phone by calling them. And I had one of their prepaid cards ... I just had to enter the number. To the robot. No other way. Really.
"Not a Bank" might not be the absolute correct phrase, at least in terms of what we think of as banking. Broadly speaking, the reasons Paypal gives as "not a bank" would not be enough to be considered 'not a bank' in most countries.
However, those reasons Paypal cites are the same ones that allow certain banks worldwide to avoid reporting rules. There are banks in some countries that are used to launder money or avoid reporting income, and they can do this because they are not subject to certain reporting rules which can be summed up thusly: if you don't pay interest or make loans, you don't have to tell regulators who your customers are ... thus numbered bank accounts and offshore tax havens.
Since the US has vastly different banking rules than most nations, I don't know exactly where that puts Paypal ... I don't think you can avoid reporting rules, interest payments or no interest payments, loans or no loans, with a US bank.
However, I do know that Paypal originally incorporated in the state of Louisiana specifically because of that state's lax banking regulations. As it was organized at first, apparently it would have been illegal in most states at the time. No idea if that's changed substantially in the meantime.
Oh, it might work some of the time. But recognizing speech ... as compared to memorizing a bunch of data and humiliating the puny memory of human Jeopardy contestants ... is a massively complex task that humans do very, very well, and machines do only within very finite limits. Go outside those limits ... say, set up voice recognition on a quiet Sunday and then try to use it on a busy Monday with people, machines and the air conditioner on ... and it craps out. Get a cold ... it craps out. Change your mood ... it always shows in your voice and humans get it instantly ... and it craps out.
I bought a cellphone once. Not that long ago ...about five years. It was a Pay-As-You-Go phone you load up with minutes from time to time. This was with Bell (Canada). Loaded it up with minutes, made some calls, I'm a happy camper. Until I ran out of minutes, that is.
About this time Bell had some fancy, multimillion-dollar software and computer thing going. They'd been working on it for years. It was a voice recognition thing. They decided it was ready for prime time, and implemented it for voice calls to their support and ... Pay-As-You-Go phone minute reloading. I remember reading an article in the Globe & Mail (Toronto) with some Bell exec saying this was the greatest thing since individually wrapped cheeze in slices, Bell execs were so proud of this they were bragging about it in public, and it's the way they would be going system wide, as of ... right this very second.
Now, being a sociopathic corporation, they concluded they would not be able to fire a bunch of phone answering employees if nobody used it. Naturally, the way to do this was to eliminate ... completely ... any method to get a human on the phone for certain tasks ... like adding minutes to your Pay-As-You-Go phone, and also eliminating the old, alternate method using the phone keypad, which worked PERFECTLY. That's right ... you could not enter a CC number using the keypad, you could not talk to a human, you talked to this ***BITCH*** (... oops, sorry ) ... "computer generated sweet female voice" ... to renew your minutes.
Well, I tried. It actually worked, sort of. (See "Oh, it might work some of the time", above). But there were a number of steps that had to be done, and no matter how much I tried, really, really tried, this ***STunned C*NT*** (... oops, sorry) ... "computer generated sweet female voice" ... would eventually utter the dreaded words " I'm sorry, I didn't get that. Please try again." Of course, after three tries, she hangs up on you. Nice.
Well, at that point, you're done.
I probably made 30 calls to this robo-torture-queen before I finally just gave up. Couldn't return the phone, since it worked for the first two months before I ran out of minutes. Bell had no way ... I mean this ... to speak to a human about this. They cut off any and all methods to actual resolution ... I did send eMails, got answers, but the answer was this " use the robo-bitch. It's the only way. There are no humans available for the Pay-As-You-Go phone system. This eMail isn't even from them, since they don't accept eMails in that department either. Sorry."
Sold the phone. Put the loss I couldn't recover on the phone into my "Never Again, and this is why" file. Needless to say, Bell Canada has no chance of ever having me as a customer without employing some illegal scheme involving an offer of many, many blowjobs from a suitably attractive and youthful female "contract employee".
A few months later, Bell moved back to the old methods that actually worked, like using the phone's keypad. Idiots.
Now, some might say "that was five years ago" and you
It's repeated in the PCPro article linked to in the OP, that Nokia is migrating to Windows Phone 7. There is a great deal of evidence that this is at least partly misleading. Nokia's new CEO (and former Windows exec) Stephen Elop has been careful to never, not even once, in print or via interview, say they are going to move to Windows Phone "Seven".
There is good evidence to suggest that whatever Windows mobile OS Nokia adopts, it will be different in significant ways than the WP7 available now. Nokia has committed to releasing just one Windows Mobile OS phone in 2011, and that is not slated for release until October 2011. There have been hints that whatever Windows Mobile OS it does have, it will be worthy of at a minimum, a 7.5 version number, although knowing Microsoft, that won't stop them from going all out and calling it version 8. It could even be a true version 8-worthy release. In any case, the feature set is expected to differ from the current v7x offering.
The "real" adoption of Windows Mobile and significant new phone releases won't be until 2012 at the earliest.
Like many people, I have serious doubts about the strategy and believe there is great danger going forward for Nokia. However, it's my opinion that there are some rather broad hints from both Nokia and Microsoft that whatever happens, it won't be Windows 7 as we now know it that powers the devices it eventually does release.
Well, since I know all the details, I may as well chime in about the procedure in Canada. First of all, it might be worthwhile to mention that Canada has had Gun Control legislation since the 1930's. What follows refers to the current incarnation.
You must pass a Firearms Safety Course before you can touch a loaded firearm. There are two Firearms Safety Courses, one for long guns (rifles, shotguns) and one for handguns.
The courses are not difficult and usually can be done in an afternoon or an evening. Most of the course instructors are the same gun hobbyists that would be active NRA members in the US, and they can make a nice little side income (but not a living) from teaching the courses. You just need to pass the instructor course, which is essentially no more difficult than the course you'd be teaching.
Armed with the proof of passing the course, you then apply for a license to possess firearms. That's where the you get the details a bit wrong with such things as "you had to have your wife sign a letter". One of the questions you must answer is about marriage or common-law relationship within the last 5 years (from the date of application). No wife, no live-in relationship, no problem. Otherwise the current or ex has to sign the application. The background check is performed after you apply.
It's a fairly simple Criminal Records check (for example, you won't be asked to submit fingerprints) that looks for violent crime offences plus serious non-violent offences that a US resident would probably refer to as a "serious felony". Lesser problems with the law won't be grounds for rejection. Expect it to take about 6 months to get your license. If that's what you refer to as "some amount of wait time", there you go. But, it seemed to me that could be interpreted as suggesting there was a law similar to some US states where you have to wait a short period before you can take possession of a gun after you buy in a store.
Not so in Canada. You do have to show the license to by a gun, but assuming that part is fine, you walk out with the long gun as soon as you pay for it. Handguns are somewhat different, in that you need a permit to convey for a handgun, so sort that out first, or buy first and then get the permit. Either way, there's no specific waiting period that needs to be adhered to. Handgun permits are issued by the local police.
There's been some changes over the years, there used to be an "possession only" license that allows you to buy ammunition but presumably either already owned a gun or don't plan on actually owning, just shooting, guns, but it's not offered anymore. You could not buy a new gun with that version. If you have one you can continue to use it.
If not you could have applied for the "acquisition" type which allows you to buy both guns and ammunition, as of now it's the only kind. Done all at once, you could get the handgun version if you have both courses, otherwise you get the long gun acquisition licence and would have to apply for a new license if you subsequently took the handgun course and wanted to buy handguns.
There is also a decade-old law requiring registration of all guns, although it's widely ignored by gun owners and with many provinces stating clearly they won't be charging anyone for failure to register violations (Ontario, BC and Quebec probably would though), and with the current Federal Government intent on abolishing it (although so far, mostly due to having a minority government, they've not succeeded). I personally have never heard of anyone being charged with not registering a weapon, but if you lived in, say, Toronto, your experience might be different.
Handguns have always had to be registered in Canada going back to the 1930's and have always required permits issued by the local Police Department to transport or store. Ironically, prior to the new safety course requirement, you occasionally heard of local police refusing to issue permits to certain individuals. Now, if you have the proper license, it's basically a rubbe
Another good chunk of what would be considered "knowledge" ... my suspicion is "chunk" is woefully inadequate and perhaps this 295 excabytes pales in comparison ... is what humans know but have not committed to another recorded form.
Call me crazy, but "the sum total of the world's knowledge" doesn't imply just "some form" of it; it pretty much states boldly that it's the works.
From TFA: ... The researchers calculated the figure by estimating the amount of data held on 60 technologies from PCs and and DVDs to paper adverts and books. ..."
"
Secondly, that's the data that once existed in 2007 ... three years is a VERY long time in the modern world of data accumulation.
They can operate ... the courts gave them 60 days (I think ... something like that) and there is no interest to shut them down (by anyone, regulators, competitors, consumers, you name it) ... more competition in wireless is desired, not less. So an extension will almost certainly be offered to allow them time to sort the issue out.
The court case centred around how GlobalLive was financed. Through a bit of creative reading of the law, GlobalLive is structured so that almost 100% of the financing is foreign (Egyptian billionaire) while the control and operating firm has sufficient Canadian resident board members and shareholders and as long as the company is fine financially, just pays off the loan.
The law basically states that majority control of telecom must always reside with Canadian entities or individuals. Foreign ownership is fine as long as it stays below controlling interest with that particular industry.
So, as it sits now, GlobalLive is fine, but if there's a default in the loan, the foreign entity could end up with basically 100% ownership. The court basically said this was effectively a scheme to circumvent the legislation.
The lawsuit was brought by a rival carrier ... a small, new entrant who also got spectrum in the same auction ... who felt that this gave GlobalLive access to capital that it could not, since (as I said earlier) the law pretty much says you can't do it that way. The carrier who brought the suit doesn't want to shut down GlobalLive, but if GlobalLive is allowed to do it, then they feel they should also be able to finance in the same manner, since this opens up access to capital that they felt they could not use under the existing law, consistent with their legal advice when forming their own firm.
In essence, GlobalLive through Order-In-Council obtained the right to obtain financing the other entrants are still prohibited from obtaining ... the law itself hasn't changed, but one carrier was given a special right not enjoyed by the others.
So, the short answer is GlobalLive will probably have to either obtain new financing that offsets the amount of equity that the Egyptian firm could acquire via loan default so that such a default won't give the foreign firm a majority stake, or the other carriers will have to be given access to the same capital terms. Either way will work.
Chances are GlobalLive will find enough new capital to pay off the Egyptian firm to the extent that default won't allow a majority stake, or they could modify the terms with the existing financier so that even without new financing there will be a limit on how much equity the Egyptian firm could acquire in default.
Right you are. Font ... too ... small ... must ... complain.
Well, I explain SPAM with the phrase "it's too easy". As for the "real purpose of the internet" thing, it's what brought commercial sites to the 'net in the first place, long before eCommerce actually worked or was used by, say, 10% of users (circa 2000). Before that, the first thing they wanted back in the day was your eMail address. Coincidence? And I'm not sure about the "communication tool" thing. What is Facebook all about? The service they provide is just the bait as far as I can see. And it's become universal ... to comment on some sites now, you require a Facebook or some similar login ... these sites don't even allow registration with a username and password anymore.
I don't see that going away, I see it becoming more common, perhaps even universal.
I don't see your point. If he's sharing the home connection, and it's a problem due to his use, then the father needs a backbone. I don't care how old the son is.
Absolutely correct. The thing is we now collect and store far more information than any human powered system can possibly use, so it's not perfectly correct to say every transaction is being scrutinized, but when said human decides to look for an individual's internet-derived data ... there it is.
I'm not sure whether any Government, or perhaps every Government, is monitoring or "spying", if you will, on citizens and non-citizens alike. But I am sure that you are a fool if you think they cannot, or if not them, then someone. Aggregation of personal information is the real purpose of the internet, just because it took 20 years for everyone to figure that out doesn't make it any less real, or inevitable. Take care of what you post, and where, and assume it can all be on CNN tomorrow morning. it's that simple.
Try doing any programming or system administration related search and *not* have at least one of the first five results populated with the following worthless domains:
- experts-exchange.com - ehow.com - about.com - scribd.com - ittoolbox.com
These sites don't necessarily scrape and repost content, but the content they do provide is invariably worthless ...
I can't argue, but more often than not Google provides good results. When they don't, you have to go back to the "old school" search methods, and they work very well. I hate the "fake review" websites where there may, or may not be a review of your search term, and if there is, they are consumer reviews which I find generally useless. Amazon reviews are generally good, so I do check them out. So, for your example, your just go through the pages of Google results, eliminating the domains that give you junk. Search Term: Widget Review -ehow.com -about.com -scribed.com -itoolbox.com ... and so on. After about 5 minutes of fairly easy work, you end up with very good results. Now, five minutes might be an eternity to some, but when you end up with good, useful information, it's a time saver in my mind. You can save the search and use it later. Now, the junk domains vary somewhat depending on what you're searching for, so there is no "one list" that works for everything, but it doesn't take much to create, say, a consumer electronics saved search where you just add the name of the product and go.
Kathryn Gray, a 10 year old girl from New Brunswick, Canada, discovered a previously unknown SuperNova over the Christmas holidays. Neither Kathryn nor her dad own a telescope. They used images downloaded to her dad's computer, an astronomy buff. The images were taken via a backyard telescope owned by another amateur, David Lane of Halifax, Nova Scotia (Canada).
At least it's analog.
Note: in reference to "back when the common storage medium was a cassette".
Cassette, floppy, hard drive, CD-ROM, VHS tape, punch cards, bar napkins and pencil ... they're all analog MEDIA that can store digital DATA. Shouldn't confuse the two.
Or the NCAA could patent the current system whereby no Playoff Game is possible.
The resulting pair of conflicting patents could kill all sport entirely; thus demonstrating the untold benefits the current USPTO regimen is surely designed to achieve.
I normally don't go to URL shortener links at all, having long ago seen how easy they are to hid the real URL of suspicious sites. Also, I've been using Safari for years, and although Firefox is installed it's my preferred browser. Normally I have the download window and the activity window active on the right side of my desktop. The Activity window in particular is very handy for monitoring any and all surfing activity.
Similarly, I have been a long-time user of Little Snitch to monitor and authorize/deauthorize outgoing connections, with the network activity window always showing upon outgoing network activity. I suspected one, or both, of these tools would be useful.
Little Snitch, as expected, shows the network activity as a fairly constant level of network activity, but since it's an authorized outgoing connection (your web browser, naturally, has to be allowed to make connections to the usual internet ports like 80, etc, or no browsing for you) there isn't much that would really seem unusual. Many requests and deliveries of data are of course visible, but this is relatively normal and probably would not really alert anyone; for example it is similar to what you would see with a streaming server delivering content on a page. It's there, but it's not obvious something nefarious is going on unless you were really paying attention, and there's really no reason to be, since it's a standard browser operation, more or less.
Safari's Activity window, however, reveals the activity quite obviously. In a few moments using the sample page outlined in the original article, you see a huge amount of requests to the target url. A normal webpage might have up to 100 or even 200 different components, but not a constant stream that gets to 100 in a few seconds, and keeps going. The urls are fairly obvious as well, taking the form of: ...{continuous stream of ... example/com/?v= [some incremental number]} ...
http://www.example.com/?v=1292889926999
http://www.example.com/?v=1292889877790
The webpage does not fully load, but the stream continues until you close the page { [Command-W] or mouse click on the close button }
With the Activity Window open you should be able to monitor and react to being an unwitting party to the DDoS.
In the wake of the Gawker exploit, we're seeing lots of news articles in major papers consulting "security experts" and the reporter then quoting or suggesting using more than 8 character passwords.
Of course, none of them mention that Gawker threw away any characters beyond 8, so that (for example) 12345678 was just as secure as 12345678%#^*(&^&(**, and entering 12345678 would allow both accounts access. I find it
hard to believe that others sites don't do similar things, and of course they're not going to tell you that (it's a security exploit clue) so there's a good chance that your attempt and effort is wasted anyway.
Don't get me started on sites that have so-called "security questions" which are a non-editable list of crap that anyone with a phone book or knows how to use Google can discover. My bank recently added a bank of 5 non-editable questions (although, they do give you a list of 10 stupid questions to select from) but my reasonably secure answers always failed a login ... creating and using the questions became mandatory one day, and I was locked out of my account in the meantime, with bill due dates looming.
Turns out that they limited the characters for all answers in total to less than 60; apparently they wanted short, one-word answers, and called it "good". It took two days and phone calls to both my bank and from them to their outsourced IT guys to figure out that little problem, but a few hours before they called me I had managed to figure that out myself in about an hour (it took about 5 minutes each attempt to login, wade, select and answer, record the answers, test, logout, count characters, login ... ). Even though they called later and told me 60 I had actually determined the limit to be 63, or 1 less than an average of 16 characters per answer.
Now, in contrast to your bank, low-value sites that require you to log in to comment, and where all you do is casually comment, don't deserve your time and effort to create and use good passwords, probably. Perhaps better advice is to create a throwaway eMail address in Gmail or some other free public eMail service, and have your mail program simply automatically delete every eMail from that address upon arrival in your inbox, eliminating the spam issue completely (for you). Use that eMail, and a correspondingly useless username and password, and don't worry about it. If you find later that you are going to actually use that site (ie by making a submission rather than just a comment) then reset or create anew with more secure credentials.
This is really a natural progression of the web itself; at one time you logged into sites that actually mattered, now every little crap site on the planet wants a login. If you follow that approach, you need to divide the expanse into what matters and what doesn't, keeping in mind that if you put one site into the "doesn't matter" category, then every site in that category can result in them all being compromised ... so be sure that it's appropriate and you don't use throwaway credentials in a site that matters; in particular any social networking site should have it's own unique credentials, since "Sharing" is their middle names.
Taken in this light, it's also a corollary to the (not unreasonable) revelation that a lot of the usernames and passwords were low-value security-wise on Gawker. I mean, I understand that crap passwords are an irritant to IT Pros, but we all only have so much time. Maybe some of those users actually have the password thing right and do have good security in mind; just not for a site like a Gawker Media site. Of course, it appears the principals and staff of Gawker aren't in that category, since their credentials themselves should have been good practice examples.
I realize that IT pros who actually know what they're doing might cringe at the idea of deliberately creating insecure passwords, but we all have lives to lead and time to allocate, and as the Gawker Media incident shows, not e
People tend to assume things work elsewhere the same way they do locally or nationally. Reality is detention, arrest, being charged with an offence, and all the other aspects of due process vary widely, even amongst countries that are considered good examples of due process.
I often hear or read about stories where, in the US, someone is "held for questioning" for a period of at least multiple days. I have to admit I have no idea what the practical legal details involve ... the point being it's not important to someone who lives elsewhere. Where I live, Police can't hold you any longer than, in practical terms, overnight, since they have to either lay a charge or release you by morning; there is no legal provision to hold someone any longer than is required to bring you before a judge ... Police cannot hold you without laying a charge; you can demand to be charged or released immediately at any point.
But I would be foolish to think that same rule holds elsewhere. There are subtle differences in meaning from place to place when the news reports someone is being detained or charged, there are different rules regarding who can and cannot be held and for what reason, there are different rules of disclosure required.
As for there being a public record of someone's arrest, I'm pretty sure that you will find Police almost anywhere are not required to say anything they don't want to say; what public disclosure is required will probably be based on habeas corpus; in other words the only mandatory public record might be the first appearance before a judge or justice and not before.