If he hadn't shown the Cliq XT, I would have called bullshit. As you can tell from the graph, I'm quite angry about this whole fiasco, and I'll never again buy a Motorola phone.
Hopefully things will improve once Google's purchase of Motorola goes through.
And almost all Europeans can afford a smart phone...I thought that it was the US, rather than Europe, where customers couldn't pay their own bills anymore...
Irrelevant. Americans will buy smart phones even if they can't afford them.
I would be thrilled if consumers actually got outraged and boycotted when companies treated them like shit, but they just seem to roll over and take it. To see why I am skeptical, look at the responses to my comment about GOG.com here.
Either a niche will open for an ethical credit card...
There is a huge barrier to entry here -- nobody is going to use a credit card that most merchants won't accept, and no merchant is going to bother accepting a card that nobody uses.
What if your computer is plugged into a UPS, and you are using the power button on the UPS to turn off a lot of other stuff (monitor, DSL modem, router, etc.)? You can't shut the UPS off until the computer is shut down, and the computer won't shut down until it is in the mood.
Including javascript written by somebody else on your website is about the most ass-rapingly huge consent that you can give anyone - it says "here, do anything you want with my readers' virtual machines".
Likewise, installing any software on your computer that you didn't write yourself says "here, steal my credit card info and encrypt my hard drive and hold it hostage until I pay ransom." You have disassembled Microsoft Office to ensure that Word won't wipe your hard drive if you type the magic words "Bing sucks," right? Because, after all, it could do that, and it is unreasonable to trust a software developer to provide software that only does what it claims to do, right?
With the consent of certain websites, the cookie mechanism is used to inform Facebook when users visit these sites.
Is that true? Did the website operators displaying a Facebook "like" button actually know that it allowed their site users to be tracked by Facebook even if the button was not clicked?
Well, in that situation, the person clicking the Like button is communicating with Facebook, not the hosting website, so wiretapping laws are even less applicable. How can Facebook be wiretapping a communication between a user and Facebook?
This isn't about tracking someone that clicks the "like" button (note that I said "was not clicked" in my previous post); it is about them tracking someone when the "like" button is displayed on some webpage. So, a website operator embeds a "like" button thinking that it does nothing but allow the user to like the page by clicking it, the user does nothing but load the page into the browser, and Facebook gets tracking info. How did the website user consent to tracking when he/she did nothing but load a webpage on a site that is not Facebook, and how did the website operator consent when he/she did not know that adding a "like" button to his/her webpage had the side-effect of adding tracking?
Is it facebook's fault that when given a piece of embeddable, executable javascript, they were too lazy and inept to see what a technically savvy person could have in 15 seconds?
If it intentionally does something significantly different than what Facebook tells the user it does, yes it is Facebook's fault. Is it the mechanic's fault if he plants a GPS tracker in your car during an oil change when you could find it with a 15 second inspection? It's ridiculous to expect everyone (including bloggers and other non-technical people) that posts something on the Internet to audit the tools provided by others to verify that they do what they claim. Furthermore, all a code inspection would tell you is what information could be transmitted to Facebook -- not whether or not Facebook stores/abuses it.
Oh wait, let me guess--you're like my old manager...
Bad guess. I've done web development, but my qualifications are irrelevant. This is about people pasting "like" buttons into their webpages, not me.
Sure, facebook didn't go out of their way to advertise this, but that's because it's irrelevant to the function they offered.
That's exactly my point.
If you're going to load my script, and my image, using my high-speed CDN and bandwidth--I can't help but fucking know about you.
There is a world of difference between your webserver receiving information in a HTTP header, which is unavoidable, and you choosing to store and utilize that information. You don't need to store a referrer or a cookie to serve an image of a button.
try looking at the little thing called google-analytics
The website operator that chooses to use Google analytics knows that it is tracking users, since that is its purpose. The website operator does not, I'm guessing, know that adding a "like" button implies tracking, since, as you pointed out, "it's irrelevant to the function they offered." That was my whole point -- how is the website operator giving consent if he/she doesn't know that the "like" button has functionality beyond what is advertised? That's what this whole discussion about the applicability of wiretap is about -- consent.
When your car automatically and programmaticaly stops at every fucking mcdonalds...
Please read my post again. I didn't say the mechanic was modifying your car's existing GPS. I said the mechanic added a GPS tracking device. The mechanic could, for example, sell data about how often you speed to your insurance company. The analogy is a lot more apropos than you give it credit for.
Your analogy has nothing in common with the situation in question at all.
Nothing at all? Facebook is given access to another website's users for one reason (to supply a "like" button), and it uses the opportunity to do something else (tracks the user). Likewise, the mechanic is given access to my car for one purpose (change oil) and uses the opportunity to do something else (install GPS tracker).
The situation is basically no different from the old 1x1px transparent web bugs of old. The tech savvy have known the implications of those for over a decade...
Please re-read the post by BitterOak that I was replying to, and you'll see that it is different. BitterOak claimed that it isn't wirefraud because wirefraud involves interception by a third party when neither party consents, and he claims that websites displaying a "like" button have consented. I've never posted a Facebook "like" button on a website, but if Facebook simply provides some HTML code and says "paste this into your website so users can 'like' your page" without explaining that pasting the code in will also allow Facebook to track the website's visitors, how can Facebook claim that the website operator gave consent for that tracking? It's like saying that I consented to a mechanic putting a GPS tracker in my car because I took it in for an oil change. If a website operator puts a 1x1 pixel web bug into his/her page, he/she almost certainly knows that it is being used for tracking -- there isn't much opportunity for him/her to think that it serves some simpler purpose like displaying a "like" button.
With the consent of certain websites, the cookie mechanism is used to inform Facebook when users visit these sites.
Is that true? Did the website operators displaying a Facebook "like" button actually know that it allowed their site users to be tracked by Facebook even if the button was not clicked? The tech-savvy ones might have realized that that was a possibility, but I would guess that a lot of website operators put the button on their pages to allow their users to "like" a page, not for the purpose of allowing Facebook to track them. Car analogy: If I give my car keys to a mechanic to change the car's oil, that doesn't mean I've consented to having him install a GPS tracker so he can monitor me.
My, how things have changed. When I was a high energy theory grad student, we used Zenith Z-29 terminals that were rescued from the chemistry department's trash dumpster.
IANAL, but it's OK for toasters, TVs, and refrigerators to look the same if there are no design patents on them. To reach a verdict in this case, I would think there would be two steps: 1) do they share the same design, and 2) was that design worthy of a design patent? I don't think the judge's test was necessarily bad as far as establishing (1) is concerned, and it is a huge embarrassment to Samsung's legal team that they failed there. I think Apple loses on step (2).
Is the content in the Zune marketplace DRMed? If it is, and your Zune breaks and you can't buy a replacement because they don't make them anymore, isn't the content you've purchased pretty useless?
Exactly. Exclusive deals are bad for consumers because they eliminate competition. Netflix surely could have negotiated a lower fee for a non-exclusive deal. Since the $30 million per film will ultimately be passed along as higher fees to the Netflix subscribers in some way, subscribers are paying extra for something (exclusivity) that does not benefit them at all -- it benefit's Netflix, the company, in a strategic way. A non-exclusive deal would have been just as beneficial to Netflix subscribers, and would have cost them less, and would have allowed people that don't use Netflix to access the content as well. This deal is worse than a non-exclusive deal for all consumers, whether they subscribe to Netflix or not. Exclusivity is only good for Netfix, the corporation, and it's shareholders (if they didn't overpay).
A negative of the renaming and separation is that the Qwikster.com and Netflix.com websites will not be integrated.
So, I think that's a "no" for your questions (2) and (3). I think that's the real disaster here. Too many people are concentrating on the dumb name, and overlooking the huge downgrade in convenience. If Netflix wants people to transition from DVD to streaming, it seems they've created a huge barrier to that by not sharing the ratings and viewing history between the sites. The strategy just makes no sense.
I think they are trying to get away from the "flix" part of the name because they are adding games now. Really, the name is the smallest part of the problem. Splitting the websites apart is unbelievably idiotic.
How does buying up another telco player encourage competition?
They'll have more customers and more infrastructure, so they'll be able to compete better. Isn't it obvious?
It reminds me of the time my brokerage sent me a letter saying it was adjusting its margin rates (the interest you pay them when you borrow money to buy securities) to be "more competitive." As the customer, I thought more competitive would be good for me. Then I looked at the rates and found that the rates were higher for all brackets except one, which was unchanged. Apparently, "more competitive" meant that they wanted their profitability to be more impressive compared to other brokers'.
Slashdot Mirror
What of these 23% are smartphones?
All of them. From the summary:
Samsung shipped 27.8 million smartphones in the last quarter, taking 23.8 percent of the market ... Apple’s 17.1 million shipments...
If he hadn't shown the Cliq XT, I would have called bullshit. As you can tell from the graph, I'm quite angry about this whole fiasco, and I'll never again buy a Motorola phone.
Hopefully things will improve once Google's purchase of Motorola goes through.
And almost all Europeans can afford a smart phone...I thought that it was the US, rather than Europe, where customers couldn't pay their own bills anymore...
Irrelevant. Americans will buy smart phones even if they can't afford them.
I would be thrilled if consumers actually got outraged and boycotted when companies treated them like shit, but they just seem to roll over and take it. To see why I am skeptical, look at the responses to my comment about GOG.com here.
Either a niche will open for an ethical credit card...
There is a huge barrier to entry here -- nobody is going to use a credit card that most merchants won't accept, and no merchant is going to bother accepting a card that nobody uses.
Can we invent vaccines for sexually transmitted diseases that get transmitted sexually?
Someone should invent a vaccine that could go on condoms. Could call them White Hats.
Problem: The people most in need of the vaccine are the ones that don't bother with condoms.
If it is a desktop, just walk away.
What if your computer is plugged into a UPS, and you are using the power button on the UPS to turn off a lot of other stuff (monitor, DSL modem, router, etc.)? You can't shut the UPS off until the computer is shut down, and the computer won't shut down until it is in the mood.
Including javascript written by somebody else on your website is about the most ass-rapingly huge consent that you can give anyone - it says "here, do anything you want with my readers' virtual machines".
Likewise, installing any software on your computer that you didn't write yourself says "here, steal my credit card info and encrypt my hard drive and hold it hostage until I pay ransom." You have disassembled Microsoft Office to ensure that Word won't wipe your hard drive if you type the magic words "Bing sucks," right? Because, after all, it could do that, and it is unreasonable to trust a software developer to provide software that only does what it claims to do, right?
With the consent of certain websites, the cookie mechanism is used to inform Facebook when users visit these sites.
Is that true? Did the website operators displaying a Facebook "like" button actually know that it allowed their site users to be tracked by Facebook even if the button was not clicked?
Well, in that situation, the person clicking the Like button is communicating with Facebook, not the hosting website, so wiretapping laws are even less applicable. How can Facebook be wiretapping a communication between a user and Facebook?
This isn't about tracking someone that clicks the "like" button (note that I said "was not clicked" in my previous post); it is about them tracking someone when the "like" button is displayed on some webpage. So, a website operator embeds a "like" button thinking that it does nothing but allow the user to like the page by clicking it, the user does nothing but load the page into the browser, and Facebook gets tracking info. How did the website user consent to tracking when he/she did nothing but load a webpage on a site that is not Facebook, and how did the website operator consent when he/she did not know that adding a "like" button to his/her webpage had the side-effect of adding tracking?
Is it facebook's fault that when given a piece of embeddable, executable javascript, they were too lazy and inept to see what a technically savvy person could have in 15 seconds?
If it intentionally does something significantly different than what Facebook tells the user it does, yes it is Facebook's fault. Is it the mechanic's fault if he plants a GPS tracker in your car during an oil change when you could find it with a 15 second inspection? It's ridiculous to expect everyone (including bloggers and other non-technical people) that posts something on the Internet to audit the tools provided by others to verify that they do what they claim. Furthermore, all a code inspection would tell you is what information could be transmitted to Facebook -- not whether or not Facebook stores/abuses it.
Oh wait, let me guess--you're like my old manager...
Bad guess. I've done web development, but my qualifications are irrelevant. This is about people pasting "like" buttons into their webpages, not me.
Sure, facebook didn't go out of their way to advertise this, but that's because it's irrelevant to the function they offered.
That's exactly my point.
If you're going to load my script, and my image, using my high-speed CDN and bandwidth--I can't help but fucking know about you.
There is a world of difference between your webserver receiving information in a HTTP header, which is unavoidable, and you choosing to store and utilize that information. You don't need to store a referrer or a cookie to serve an image of a button.
try looking at the little thing called google-analytics
The website operator that chooses to use Google analytics knows that it is tracking users, since that is its purpose. The website operator does not, I'm guessing, know that adding a "like" button implies tracking, since, as you pointed out, "it's irrelevant to the function they offered." That was my whole point -- how is the website operator giving consent if he/she doesn't know that the "like" button has functionality beyond what is advertised? That's what this whole discussion about the applicability of wiretap is about -- consent.
When your car automatically and programmaticaly stops at every fucking mcdonalds...
Please read my post again. I didn't say the mechanic was modifying your car's existing GPS. I said the mechanic added a GPS tracking device. The mechanic could, for example, sell data about how often you speed to your insurance company. The analogy is a lot more apropos than you give it credit for.
Your analogy has nothing in common with the situation in question at all.
Nothing at all? Facebook is given access to another website's users for one reason (to supply a "like" button), and it uses the opportunity to do something else (tracks the user). Likewise, the mechanic is given access to my car for one purpose (change oil) and uses the opportunity to do something else (install GPS tracker).
The situation is basically no different from the old 1x1px transparent web bugs of old. The tech savvy have known the implications of those for over a decade...
Please re-read the post by BitterOak that I was replying to, and you'll see that it is different. BitterOak claimed that it isn't wirefraud because wirefraud involves interception by a third party when neither party consents, and he claims that websites displaying a "like" button have consented. I've never posted a Facebook "like" button on a website, but if Facebook simply provides some HTML code and says "paste this into your website so users can 'like' your page" without explaining that pasting the code in will also allow Facebook to track the website's visitors, how can Facebook claim that the website operator gave consent for that tracking? It's like saying that I consented to a mechanic putting a GPS tracker in my car because I took it in for an oil change. If a website operator puts a 1x1 pixel web bug into his/her page, he/she almost certainly knows that it is being used for tracking -- there isn't much opportunity for him/her to think that it serves some simpler purpose like displaying a "like" button.
With the consent of certain websites, the cookie mechanism is used to inform Facebook when users visit these sites.
Is that true? Did the website operators displaying a Facebook "like" button actually know that it allowed their site users to be tracked by Facebook even if the button was not clicked? The tech-savvy ones might have realized that that was a possibility, but I would guess that a lot of website operators put the button on their pages to allow their users to "like" a page, not for the purpose of allowing Facebook to track them. Car analogy: If I give my car keys to a mechanic to change the car's oil, that doesn't mean I've consented to having him install a GPS tracker so he can monitor me.
My, how things have changed. When I was a high energy theory grad student, we used Zenith Z-29 terminals that were rescued from the chemistry department's trash dumpster.
There are currently 16 definitions for "professional" in the Urban Dictionary. Care to clarify the ones that apply?
How many of those 16 definitions involve prostitution, oral sex, or alcoholism? You must be able to narrow it down at least a little.
IANAL, but it's OK for toasters, TVs, and refrigerators to look the same if there are no design patents on them. To reach a verdict in this case, I would think there would be two steps: 1) do they share the same design, and 2) was that design worthy of a design patent? I don't think the judge's test was necessarily bad as far as establishing (1) is concerned, and it is a huge embarrassment to Samsung's legal team that they failed there. I think Apple loses on step (2).
Is the content in the Zune marketplace DRMed? If it is, and your Zune breaks and you can't buy a replacement because they don't make them anymore, isn't the content you've purchased pretty useless?
Exactly. Exclusive deals are bad for consumers because they eliminate competition. Netflix surely could have negotiated a lower fee for a non-exclusive deal. Since the $30 million per film will ultimately be passed along as higher fees to the Netflix subscribers in some way, subscribers are paying extra for something (exclusivity) that does not benefit them at all -- it benefit's Netflix, the company, in a strategic way. A non-exclusive deal would have been just as beneficial to Netflix subscribers, and would have cost them less, and would have allowed people that don't use Netflix to access the content as well. This deal is worse than a non-exclusive deal for all consumers, whether they subscribe to Netflix or not. Exclusivity is only good for Netfix, the corporation, and it's shareholders (if they didn't overpay).
Well, it was 60 billionths. It was "a few" in much the same sense that a teenager invites "a few" friends over when his parents are out of town.
Closed down 7.37% for the day. It seems Wall Street got a clue.
From the email they sent out about it:
A negative of the renaming and separation is that the Qwikster.com and Netflix.com websites will not be integrated.
So, I think that's a "no" for your questions (2) and (3). I think that's the real disaster here. Too many people are concentrating on the dumb name, and overlooking the huge downgrade in convenience. If Netflix wants people to transition from DVD to streaming, it seems they've created a huge barrier to that by not sharing the ratings and viewing history between the sites. The strategy just makes no sense.
No, he's having a race with Leo Apotheker to see who can destroy a company fastest. He was off to a slow start, but has pulled ahead.
Why not MailFlix/NetFlix
I think they are trying to get away from the "flix" part of the name because they are adding games now. Really, the name is the smallest part of the problem. Splitting the websites apart is unbelievably idiotic.
I believe they are asking for X in the equation: 0.11 * X = 7
How does buying up another telco player encourage competition?
They'll have more customers and more infrastructure, so they'll be able to compete better. Isn't it obvious?
It reminds me of the time my brokerage sent me a letter saying it was adjusting its margin rates (the interest you pay them when you borrow money to buy securities) to be "more competitive." As the customer, I thought more competitive would be good for me. Then I looked at the rates and found that the rates were higher for all brackets except one, which was unchanged. Apparently, "more competitive" meant that they wanted their profitability to be more impressive compared to other brokers'.
Good to know. Thanks.