Yeah, great, now it's harder to get a good cup of hot coffee served AT THE PROPER TEMPERATURE.
Yes, I'm sure you're going to McDonald's for that quality cup of coffee. Especially that coffee that's served immediately or within 15 minutes just like your supplied link notes.
There are a lot of culinary practices that are far too hazardous for restaurants to follow. They lead to better tasting food. But you're not going to find it done at McDonald's.
What is the money amount going to punish? They just calculate it into marketing budget.
Exactly. And next time they sit in the conference room discussing a new ad campaign, someone will note "let's not do Option B - last time it cost us $10 mil more than we expected. Options A and C will be much cheaper."
And by the way - the coffee wasn't just hot. It was exceptionally hot; scalding hot. During the court case it was noted that coffee served at home is usually 135 - 140 degrees. McDonald's required it's coffee to be maintained at 185 degrees plus or minus 5 degrees. The victim suffered 3rd degree burns - from coffee. Burns that are unlikely to come from coffee even at 155 degrees. In addition, McDonald's was aware of the safety involved with their policy and had been aware of it for 10 years with over 700 reports of injuries (including other cases of 3rd degree burns). This wasn't a simple case of getting rich with a frivolous lawsuit - it was clear negligence on McDonald's part. Investigations after the verdict showed local area McDonald's serving coffee at a much safer 158 degrees. Clearly the punitive damages worked.
I'll offer two (devoid of any actual insider insight - but there's a long tradition of that in not only the Internet, but the printed word) theories:
Some executive at Microsoft made a name for themselves (and thus a career play) by putting together some really nice slides showing how much money Microsoft can make by "monetizing" all the "pirated" copies of their software. This would fly as the culture of Microsoft drifts further and further away from it's old technical base and the reigns are held more by bean counters. That message would also find more fertile ground as Microsoft's numbers start taking hits due to economic changes and market saturation.
Another, even wilder, theory is propaganda. Microsoft is fighting the perception that the OS is a commodity. Once the OS becomes a interchangeable layer, a lot of the lock-in strategy that's prevalent in Microsoft's products starts to fall apart. "Piracy" once played in to Microsoft's strategy of ubiquity. Illegal copies were helping push market share which put critical weight behind Microsoft's products (which might not been a deliberate tactic, but if it's not broken, why fix it). But as the market has changed, we have this push to commoditize the next layer of computing: the OS. Microsoft is not keen to become the next IBM. So they need to ensure people don't see Windows as this freebie thing you toss on a machine but rather one of the points to having that machine. So even if they know their anti-piracy measures won't stop "piracy", they don't care so long as it provides a way to introduce the idea that Windows has special value; people have a very different attitudes depending on perceived value.
...given the serious topic, but this is IMHO another typical case of American fantasy: a war without casualties. I mean, without American casualties, of course. Wishful thinking, whatever technologies you throw at the problem.
That might be part of it. There's some speculation of that in the article. And there's mention of losses that resulted in no pilot deaths. But go read the article and you'll see the real interest: cheap aircraft that are cheap to run and can remain over target something like 24x longer than manned craft.
How can they be 100% sure it was the restrainee that did the poking?
(Yes, I'm serious.)
If restraining orders include Internet contact, then it means you can send someone to jail if you can forge a packet from their machine. That's really scary. Sure the restrainee shouldn't have done whatever they did to get the restraining order in the first place, but making it so anyone in the world can send them to jail seems excessive.
You'd be amazed with what you can do with a piece of paper, a typewriter, an envelope, and a stamp. Just because it involves the Internet, doesn't mean it's ground that hasn't been covered before.
Also, what if they're both bidding on the same online auction? What if they're both Anonymous Cowards on/. ? What if they meet by accident on an online game? Does teabagging in Halo violate the restraining order?
What if they're both submitting write-in bids to a well-established auction house? What if they're both writing commentary to their local newspaper? What if they're both competitive Scrabble players climbing through the ranks of the local Scrabble circuit? As for teabagging - that's the sort of immature behavior that leads to retraining orders as it is. Once again - this isn't scary or even all that novel. What's scary is that people will treat it as if it is.
Yeah - but that system is riddled with bugs. People are always finding exploits. And the development team is unreachable. I mean, sure - there are those who claim to be community managers but I think most of them are con-artists and trolls. I don't think I've ever managed to get in touch with a real GM. I'm not even sure how their ticketing system really works.
So sure - you have one example of a single world instance that's pretty popular. But it has so many flaws. And that is really driving a market for a different implementation. Otherwise, you wouldn't see all this competition trying to come up with alternatives.
It's really simple. If you want to be like a phone company, then you need to follow the rules of a telephone company.
At exactly what point is one "like a phone company"? When you enable communication? Voice? Connect to a phone network? Provide a phone number? Do I need to start following FCC carrier rules because I run a Mumble server?
Focused competition will beat apple (remember Palm vs Newton?), but unfocused, dispersed competition is going to have a hard time beating Apple at their own game.
Each sector of a market has it's own influences. So it's a little tricky (if not downright self deceptive) to draw conclusions from one and apply it to another. That being said...
The PDA sector was different. The Newton was cutting edge - but it was part of an emerging market. Things really didn't take off until Palm introduced the right form factor. So while it isn't fair to say Palm invented the PDA, they really set the market. But then, that market has ceased to exist along with Palm's domination.
Another example with some parallels is the microcomputer market. Apple defined that market. They weren't the first microcomputer. But they were, at the least, among the first to treat it as a consumer device. They were the first platform for the killer microcomputer business app - the spreadsheet. A market exploded around them. And while they were challenged by IBM's entry in to that market (after IBM realized what was going on in a sector they ignored), it wasn't until IBM lost control of their platform and the "PC" became commodity did Apple get truly buried. This despite the (arguably) superior product of the Mac.
Again - this doesn't mean that what happened in the PDA market or the Personal Computer market is guaranteed to be repeated with mobile computing. But it does provide enough parallels to keep in consideration when trying to make an educated guess at the future.
Let's just lay the blame squarely where it ought to, on the law that allows such an abomination to survive and feed.
I'm usually not keen to legislate morality. But there are situations where one has to put in place laws to limit damage to society. And there are times one has to address the fact that those laws may have provided tools with which immoral entities can further damage society.
This meme has to stop. No his stories weren't about how to subvert the 3 laws. The stories were about how robots were used by humans, who manipulated the robots to perform malicious acts without breaking those laws. There is a subtle difference. And due to the diligence of Elijah Bailey, or Wendell Urth, the humans responsible were *always* caught because the 3 laws defined the behaviour of the robots in such a dependable manner.
Not all the issues with the three laws were about manipulation. There were times when the robots fell in to undesired behavior due to the 3 laws all on their own accord. There are two examples that come to mind.
The first is when Powell and Donovan are assigned to revitalize a mining operation on Mercury (Runaround). One of their robots is given a simple instruction. However, they soon find it behaving in an erratic manner and thus the mystery is set. It turns out the robot set out to follow the initial order (second law: a robot must obey any orders given to it by human beings) but then finds out fulfilling that law would invalidate another law (third law: a robot must protect its own existence). The robot's behavior is due to following the 2nd law until the 3rd law comes in to conflict at which point it would retreat until the 2nd law came in to effect again. The humans had to invoke the 1st law (a robot may not injure a human being or, through inaction, allow a human being to come to harm) to finally break it out of it's cycle.
A second example is Dr. Calvin's analysis of a telepathic robot (Liar!). The telepathic ability is an unexplained anomaly but the humans interacting with the robot soon find it advantageous as the robot can tell them all manner of information about the people around them. Unfortunately for Calvin's social situation, the robot is also able to determine what people want to hear. The robot determines that telling a lie that a human wanted to hear avoids harming a human by telling a truth that would be distressful. This behavior ends up putting Calvin in an uncomfortable social situation until she gets her revenge by pointing out to the robot that it's attempts to avoid hurting a human by lying had ended up hurting a human, causing a logical paradox and destroying the robot's mind.
If your only argument is "But it's immoral!", sooner or later you'll find somebody who says, "So what?"
Today, that's Eolas. And yeah, it makes them bad guys.
Actually, my only argument is that simply following the law does not negate moral judgement. To that end, Eolas are still bad guys - something you seem to agree with. In turn, I agree that laws need tweaking. But that's a different (albeit related) matter.
Eolas is not the bad guy here, they're just doing what is legally possible. You can't condemn a company for following the law, just because it seems wrong.
You probably have to see more episodes. Yeah - some ended along the lines of "wow - what was that - guess we'll never know." But a lot of them had pretty solid endings. A few that come to mind...
A passenger bus stops off at a small roadway diner with a problem - somehow they ended up with one more than the passenger manifest claims should be there. The mystery is solved after the bus leaves and all are presumed drowned when the bus crosses an unstable bridge. All, except for one gentleman who returns to the diner to smugly announce that not only is he the extra passenger, but he's from mars and colonization will begin soon. Only he finds out that the lonely Sodajerk is really from Venus and his people intercepted the Martian ship on their way to colonize earth.
A local policeman visits a high-strung independence-minded City girl trying to get away from it all. Odd things happen and eventually, it appears that a massive alien has landed and threatens them. But it turns out it's all a ruse - the monster alien is a decoy. The tiny aliens flee, realizing their attempts to conquer through terror have failed.
A wife accompanys her husband on a flight home after spending time at a hospital recovering from a nervous breakdown. Things are looking bright until the man sees a ape-like gremlin on the wing. He is alone in witnessing the creature slowly take interest in tearing the wing apart. Unable to get any help, he decides to take matters in his own hands, belts himself in, pops an escape hatch, and fires at the creature as the cabin decompression almost sucks him out of the aircraft. The aircraft makes an emergency landing and the audience is left wondering if this man was really unstable... until the camera pans over to some airport mechanics discovering a portion of the wing torn up in an unexplainable manner.
It's not resolution that you're missing. It's the fact that the Twilight Zone was a mix of scifi, horror, and fantasy when you're expecting nothing but scifi.
Shanter showed up in two episodes - the airplane one and one where his character and his newlywed wife discover a fortune telling machine in a small town.
Nimoy also showed up in an episode dealing with WWII and seeing things through the eyes of both American and Japanese troops.
I finally got a Tivo awhile back and Twilight Zone is one of the first shows I had it start recording. It's amazing the actors that have appeared on that show.
I remember more rumors of vulnerabilities than vulnerabilities. Not that there weren't any - there have been more than a dozen vulnerabilities over the last decade. But the fear of an exploit seemed to be the exploit as often as an actual bug discovery.
So then you agree that the OP shouldn't be modded troll for noting that Apple is a control freak. But you're willing to side-track that to discuss whether being a control freak is effective in the market.
Apple is a market leader and has already set the example of this kind of behavior (fulfilling the paranoid fears of many). When you start noting this behavior in a possible up-and-coming contender, it's not all that unusual to reference previous history even when that history is from said market leader. None of this happens in a vacuum despite your apparent desire to present it as if it does.
Personally I don't trust Google at all anymore with their data retention policy and sheer size. Perhaps that's a little paranoia on my part but it's the way I feel.
Theme song from "Jaws"... a knock sounds at the door. A woman answers, "Yes?"
A muffled voice sounds from the other side of the door, "Mrs. Arlsbergerhh?"
"Who?"
Again the voice is muffled, "Mrs. Johnannesburrrr?"
"Who is it?"
"Flowers."
"Flowers? From whom?"
"Plumber, ma'am.."
"I don't need a plumber. You're that clever Google, aren't you?"
"Candygram."
"Candygram, my foot! Get out of here before I call the proper authorities. You're Google, and you know it."
Slashdot Mirror
Isn't T-Mobile a branding of Deutsche Telekom?
Yeah, great, now it's harder to get a good cup of hot coffee served AT THE PROPER TEMPERATURE.
Yes, I'm sure you're going to McDonald's for that quality cup of coffee. Especially that coffee that's served immediately or within 15 minutes just like your supplied link notes.
There are a lot of culinary practices that are far too hazardous for restaurants to follow. They lead to better tasting food. But you're not going to find it done at McDonald's.
What is the money amount going to punish? They just calculate it into marketing budget.
Exactly. And next time they sit in the conference room discussing a new ad campaign, someone will note "let's not do Option B - last time it cost us $10 mil more than we expected. Options A and C will be much cheaper."
And by the way - the coffee wasn't just hot. It was exceptionally hot; scalding hot. During the court case it was noted that coffee served at home is usually 135 - 140 degrees. McDonald's required it's coffee to be maintained at 185 degrees plus or minus 5 degrees. The victim suffered 3rd degree burns - from coffee. Burns that are unlikely to come from coffee even at 155 degrees. In addition, McDonald's was aware of the safety involved with their policy and had been aware of it for 10 years with over 700 reports of injuries (including other cases of 3rd degree burns). This wasn't a simple case of getting rich with a frivolous lawsuit - it was clear negligence on McDonald's part. Investigations after the verdict showed local area McDonald's serving coffee at a much safer 158 degrees. Clearly the punitive damages worked.
I'll offer two (devoid of any actual insider insight - but there's a long tradition of that in not only the Internet, but the printed word) theories:
Some executive at Microsoft made a name for themselves (and thus a career play) by putting together some really nice slides showing how much money Microsoft can make by "monetizing" all the "pirated" copies of their software. This would fly as the culture of Microsoft drifts further and further away from it's old technical base and the reigns are held more by bean counters. That message would also find more fertile ground as Microsoft's numbers start taking hits due to economic changes and market saturation.
Another, even wilder, theory is propaganda. Microsoft is fighting the perception that the OS is a commodity. Once the OS becomes a interchangeable layer, a lot of the lock-in strategy that's prevalent in Microsoft's products starts to fall apart. "Piracy" once played in to Microsoft's strategy of ubiquity. Illegal copies were helping push market share which put critical weight behind Microsoft's products (which might not been a deliberate tactic, but if it's not broken, why fix it). But as the market has changed, we have this push to commoditize the next layer of computing: the OS. Microsoft is not keen to become the next IBM. So they need to ensure people don't see Windows as this freebie thing you toss on a machine but rather one of the points to having that machine. So even if they know their anti-piracy measures won't stop "piracy", they don't care so long as it provides a way to introduce the idea that Windows has special value; people have a very different attitudes depending on perceived value.
...given the serious topic, but this is IMHO another typical case of American fantasy: a war without casualties. I mean, without American casualties, of course. Wishful thinking, whatever technologies you throw at the problem.
That might be part of it. There's some speculation of that in the article. And there's mention of losses that resulted in no pilot deaths. But go read the article and you'll see the real interest: cheap aircraft that are cheap to run and can remain over target something like 24x longer than manned craft.
How can they be 100% sure it was the restrainee that did the poking?
(Yes, I'm serious.)
If restraining orders include Internet contact, then it means you can send someone to jail if you can forge a packet from their machine. That's really scary. Sure the restrainee shouldn't have done whatever they did to get the restraining order in the first place, but making it so anyone in the world can send them to jail seems excessive.
You'd be amazed with what you can do with a piece of paper, a typewriter, an envelope, and a stamp. Just because it involves the Internet, doesn't mean it's ground that hasn't been covered before.
Also, what if they're both bidding on the same online auction? What if they're both Anonymous Cowards on /. ? What if they meet by accident on an online game? Does teabagging in Halo violate the restraining order?
What if they're both submitting write-in bids to a well-established auction house? What if they're both writing commentary to their local newspaper? What if they're both competitive Scrabble players climbing through the ranks of the local Scrabble circuit? As for teabagging - that's the sort of immature behavior that leads to retraining orders as it is. Once again - this isn't scary or even all that novel. What's scary is that people will treat it as if it is.
Yeah - but that system is riddled with bugs. People are always finding exploits. And the development team is unreachable. I mean, sure - there are those who claim to be community managers but I think most of them are con-artists and trolls. I don't think I've ever managed to get in touch with a real GM. I'm not even sure how their ticketing system really works.
So sure - you have one example of a single world instance that's pretty popular. But it has so many flaws. And that is really driving a market for a different implementation. Otherwise, you wouldn't see all this competition trying to come up with alternatives.
Haven't you heard? The suit is back.
It's really simple. If you want to be like a phone company, then you need to follow the rules of a telephone company.
At exactly what point is one "like a phone company"? When you enable communication? Voice? Connect to a phone network? Provide a phone number? Do I need to start following FCC carrier rules because I run a Mumble server?
Yet there are entire segments of the entertainment industry (among others) based on this behavior. Not that it's healthy.
Focused competition will beat apple (remember Palm vs Newton?), but unfocused, dispersed competition is going to have a hard time beating Apple at their own game.
Each sector of a market has it's own influences. So it's a little tricky (if not downright self deceptive) to draw conclusions from one and apply it to another. That being said...
The PDA sector was different. The Newton was cutting edge - but it was part of an emerging market. Things really didn't take off until Palm introduced the right form factor. So while it isn't fair to say Palm invented the PDA, they really set the market. But then, that market has ceased to exist along with Palm's domination.
Another example with some parallels is the microcomputer market. Apple defined that market. They weren't the first microcomputer. But they were, at the least, among the first to treat it as a consumer device. They were the first platform for the killer microcomputer business app - the spreadsheet. A market exploded around them. And while they were challenged by IBM's entry in to that market (after IBM realized what was going on in a sector they ignored), it wasn't until IBM lost control of their platform and the "PC" became commodity did Apple get truly buried. This despite the (arguably) superior product of the Mac.
Again - this doesn't mean that what happened in the PDA market or the Personal Computer market is guaranteed to be repeated with mobile computing. But it does provide enough parallels to keep in consideration when trying to make an educated guess at the future.
Let's just lay the blame squarely where it ought to, on the law that allows such an abomination to survive and feed.
I'm usually not keen to legislate morality. But there are situations where one has to put in place laws to limit damage to society. And there are times one has to address the fact that those laws may have provided tools with which immoral entities can further damage society.
This meme has to stop. No his stories weren't about how to subvert the 3 laws. The stories were about how robots were used by humans, who manipulated the robots to perform malicious acts without breaking those laws. There is a subtle difference. And due to the diligence of Elijah Bailey, or Wendell Urth, the humans responsible were *always* caught because the 3 laws defined the behaviour of the robots in such a dependable manner.
Not all the issues with the three laws were about manipulation. There were times when the robots fell in to undesired behavior due to the 3 laws all on their own accord. There are two examples that come to mind.
The first is when Powell and Donovan are assigned to revitalize a mining operation on Mercury (Runaround). One of their robots is given a simple instruction. However, they soon find it behaving in an erratic manner and thus the mystery is set. It turns out the robot set out to follow the initial order (second law: a robot must obey any orders given to it by human beings) but then finds out fulfilling that law would invalidate another law (third law: a robot must protect its own existence). The robot's behavior is due to following the 2nd law until the 3rd law comes in to conflict at which point it would retreat until the 2nd law came in to effect again. The humans had to invoke the 1st law (a robot may not injure a human being or, through inaction, allow a human being to come to harm) to finally break it out of it's cycle.
A second example is Dr. Calvin's analysis of a telepathic robot (Liar!). The telepathic ability is an unexplained anomaly but the humans interacting with the robot soon find it advantageous as the robot can tell them all manner of information about the people around them. Unfortunately for Calvin's social situation, the robot is also able to determine what people want to hear. The robot determines that telling a lie that a human wanted to hear avoids harming a human by telling a truth that would be distressful. This behavior ends up putting Calvin in an uncomfortable social situation until she gets her revenge by pointing out to the robot that it's attempts to avoid hurting a human by lying had ended up hurting a human, causing a logical paradox and destroying the robot's mind.
While I admire his honesty, I must say that someone who is chock full of this much stupid should not be in any position of authority.
What if he's not honest? What if he's not really that stupid? What if this "confession" is part of an agenda; identifying with the public.
I'm just a few clicks away from installing that.
If your only argument is "But it's immoral!", sooner or later you'll find somebody who says, "So what?"
Today, that's Eolas. And yeah, it makes them bad guys.
Actually, my only argument is that simply following the law does not negate moral judgement. To that end, Eolas are still bad guys - something you seem to agree with. In turn, I agree that laws need tweaking. But that's a different (albeit related) matter.
Eolas is not the bad guy here, they're just doing what is legally possible. You can't condemn a company for following the law, just because it seems wrong.
Morality is not defined by law.
You probably have to see more episodes. Yeah - some ended along the lines of "wow - what was that - guess we'll never know." But a lot of them had pretty solid endings. A few that come to mind...
A passenger bus stops off at a small roadway diner with a problem - somehow they ended up with one more than the passenger manifest claims should be there. The mystery is solved after the bus leaves and all are presumed drowned when the bus crosses an unstable bridge. All, except for one gentleman who returns to the diner to smugly announce that not only is he the extra passenger, but he's from mars and colonization will begin soon. Only he finds out that the lonely Sodajerk is really from Venus and his people intercepted the Martian ship on their way to colonize earth.
A local policeman visits a high-strung independence-minded City girl trying to get away from it all. Odd things happen and eventually, it appears that a massive alien has landed and threatens them. But it turns out it's all a ruse - the monster alien is a decoy. The tiny aliens flee, realizing their attempts to conquer through terror have failed.
A wife accompanys her husband on a flight home after spending time at a hospital recovering from a nervous breakdown. Things are looking bright until the man sees a ape-like gremlin on the wing. He is alone in witnessing the creature slowly take interest in tearing the wing apart. Unable to get any help, he decides to take matters in his own hands, belts himself in, pops an escape hatch, and fires at the creature as the cabin decompression almost sucks him out of the aircraft. The aircraft makes an emergency landing and the audience is left wondering if this man was really unstable... until the camera pans over to some airport mechanics discovering a portion of the wing torn up in an unexplainable manner.
It's not resolution that you're missing. It's the fact that the Twilight Zone was a mix of scifi, horror, and fantasy when you're expecting nothing but scifi.
Shanter showed up in two episodes - the airplane one and one where his character and his newlywed wife discover a fortune telling machine in a small town.
Nimoy also showed up in an episode dealing with WWII and seeing things through the eyes of both American and Japanese troops.
I finally got a Tivo awhile back and Twilight Zone is one of the first shows I had it start recording. It's amazing the actors that have appeared on that show.
I remember more rumors of vulnerabilities than vulnerabilities. Not that there weren't any - there have been more than a dozen vulnerabilities over the last decade. But the fear of an exploit seemed to be the exploit as often as an actual bug discovery.
So then you agree that the OP shouldn't be modded troll for noting that Apple is a control freak. But you're willing to side-track that to discuss whether being a control freak is effective in the market.
Apple is a market leader and has already set the example of this kind of behavior (fulfilling the paranoid fears of many). When you start noting this behavior in a possible up-and-coming contender, it's not all that unusual to reference previous history even when that history is from said market leader. None of this happens in a vacuum despite your apparent desire to present it as if it does.
Modded as troll? Come on. Apple is control freak, iPhone is a really locked up device and you can only get software from their store.
The Pre and the G1 are already doing it 'the best way', according to you, and they're being left in the dust.
So you're saying that having market dominance means never being called a control freak?
Personally I don't trust Google at all anymore with their data retention policy and sheer size. Perhaps that's a little paranoia on my part but it's the way I feel.
Theme song from "Jaws"... a knock sounds at the door. A woman answers, "Yes?"
A muffled voice sounds from the other side of the door, "Mrs. Arlsbergerhh?"
"Who?"
Again the voice is muffled, "Mrs. Johnannesburrrr?"
"Who is it?"
"Flowers."
"Flowers? From whom?"
"Plumber, ma'am.."
"I don't need a plumber. You're that clever Google, aren't you?"
"Candygram."
"Candygram, my foot! Get out of here before I call the proper authorities. You're Google, and you know it."
"I'm only TomTom, ma'am.."
"TomTom? Well.. okay.."
Yup - that's a great bad analogy. But it's just not the same if it doesn't come from Badanalogyguy himself.