> give away all their content in a I only read that it was proposed to offer many of their shows, for download for private use, not copyright free. As I understand it, ABC already broadcasts their shows freely, in a unrestricted format, at least in my neighborhood.
> freely-editable, freely-redistributable format. That's NOT Tivo or ReplayTV. hmmm, both have PC application's available for free from sourceforge that does exactly that, and Tivo's now comes with a DVD recorder. My HD-Tivo, I click on a link from the webserver running on the Tivo, and it starts downloading the HD content in a editable format. Granted it didn't ship with the CD's to do that. But neither did my pc ship with a app to do the same with any other video type. > you can bet that their model will adapt yep, and thats what is being proposed.
>with no restrictions that can be archived, traded, and/or watched at your leisure.
>>Who the hell was saying that? That would be suicide for them if they did that.
well, Tivo, and Replay TV have offered this, and they download at realtime. instead of 1/8th speed (full T1 is 1.5MBps, DVD 1x is 11MB/s) I am sure a few people have the bandwith to download at real time, but not enough to feel.
So why would it be suicide, to provide this service directly, instead of through a 3rd party? maybe suicide to their servers if they didn't setup torrents. If they provide a decent service to find the shows, then people come to their pages, and they get more chances to get add revenue, not less.
>your patent protection is limited to, say 3 years. You either use it or lose it.
3 years from when would be my problem. I think companies like TIVO, 6 months after it was available, as the only product of it's kind, at best buy, the patent should have been rendered as fair use public domain.
but I can't think of a way to write a legal definition to match that in every instance, other than, "Ask Darren if the inventor has made enough profit, or had enough compensation yet."
>Its difficult to tell if you are for or against the patent, no competition thing.
the answer is: NO.:)
I think patents have a legitimate purpose, I hate this use of patents (netflix.)
Netflix, and TIVO are both doing the same thing: I am a customer of both. Netflix is much better than blockbuster at online rental, and TIVO also had the best overall product (for me.)
They can pull out their patent arsenols because they now have the money spend on lawyers without neglecting their product. Patents are bad at that level. once you got that far you should have to produce a better product. Until you get that far, you likely can't use patents. so ya I know of no major intrinsic value.
>I believe you are misinformed or know something that few do. I disapprove of the power the NCAA has, but I like the outcome. Just because they have good intentions with their money currently doesn't mean they are not a power hungry monopoly. Also pay close attention 95% of the revenue, is not necessarly meaningful, what difference does it make, if you pay yourself millions on payroll, or millions in profit as the lead?
>Ever seen a close basketball game or tennis match? Ever see people try to beat the traffic when their home team is killing the visitors? perfect analogy, basketball, like most US sports is a complete monopoly that uses trademarks, and practices that would be considered unfair in business, to avoid all competition, and yet produces a great exciting product. After all the game is the product, and NCAA basketball that goes to great lengths to make sure no teams outside the NCAA can compete, either against their merchadise, or their teams... Doesn't matter if they come to root against a team, or for the team, or if you win or lose, the money is the same.
They even try to avoid direct competition between teams, by making it difficult for players to switch teams, and limit teams, so that for the most part their is no competition in the same market area (NY, LA, etc are big enough markets to create a better monopoly by having 2 cross promoted teams...)
so which costs more an AK or $100 laptop. I could unload alott of AK's for well over $100, so we got a source. Probably not a coincidece that the developed countrys don't have the infection rates of undeveloped. Whats the best way to jump to developed country? Some think a laptop, let see, what options are their? they cant export/import physical items because of corrupt goverment controlls borders, no raw materials, lets see, that leaves money through communications only, which TODAY requires what? a computer, and computer skills.
sure.. education can help. The laptop isn't going to cure ignorance. I'm sure, a laptop wasn't used in communicating to him how the spread of AIDS occurs.
you have clearly shown to me a person who uses a computer can be clearly ignorant, so you get that point.
> Nobody that uses patents as their business model wants competition.
Then who wants competition? Only if I had a business, with a ligitiment patent would I then want competition, and lots of it. So that they can do all the work, and license the patent from me.
without competition (or at least the threat of it), I don't even see how having a patent would be a business model.
Re:I Think This Can Be Summed Up In Five Words
on
Life or Death for Tivo
·
· Score: 2, Informative
> not until I can copy the timeshifted show to my (Linux) PC, PocketPC. or a CD or DVD
I agree, however you should have said supported, not can, you can:
your process sounds like it would work for any OS, possibly except for the windows registry.
I don't have your experience, but... I thought the beauty of *nix is they have done a better job (standard installs anyway) of a truely seperate partition for data, and system. IE if I can't get in as root, then reinstall linux, don't format the user partition that has all the app/data files their that change.
If you can run as root, then it's a user issue. Backup their configs, then delete, and restore the configs until the issue is found.
XP, and linux distros have both gotten better in being able to grow filesystems, moving space to where it's needed. I havent tried that on XP yet, not sure I trust it, only cause I have seen nowhere thats it's been suggested. But it does seam that microsoft is working toward being able to seperate the data/program configs from the executables by default.
>if your servers are always online for data retrieval, they can copy themselves over there. There is no panacea no matter how hard you try.
I use for my PC, and all users PC's at my work:
http://backuppc.sourceforge.net/ daily images of all on your harddisk, just a click on the log will show the day all your exe files changed, take the files from the day before, clean what else you need from the latest...
>That's good, but "good" malware will... well bad malware would be similar to bad drm, it would go right to the boot sector... thats what I assumed the article meant, until I RTFA, their just worried about difficulty of installing windows, apps, etc. Even my solution isn't so good at that, we got apps that generated some magical PC-ID, that is tied to gosh knows what, and that just doesn't come back without pain.
boot sector malware is where I think the $100 PC may take over in corporate, throw out the crap to some school/police/investigators/etc, and just buy a standard installed hardware/software package avaliable from multiple vendors for less than a 1/2 day of MIS time, click on my backuppc data files from a good date, gives a zip file, done.
>>Who wants to pay $5 per minidisc in order to listen to music when CD-R's are $0.25 >I would at one time the MinyDisk probably had a advantage over competing products, now $5 for a degradeable moving parts 100mb disk? why not spend $23 for 5* that ? http://www.digi4me.com/home.php?cat=148 A smaller more compatible 512mb CF card? (or $30 for a 1 gig CF) and the reader wont wear out near as quick. (thats the one I would worry about, how long the reader last, not the cheap replaceable media.
> Also it is small and cheap and you can play the same discs on your stereoset, walkman and car stereo. thats where the C.D. takes back the advantage, for portabilty do the CF, for comatibilty do the CD, you can have all your music on a CD, and a CF, and still be cheaper than just on MinyDisk (pretty much still needed to buy the CD to get legal music to the MinyDisk anyway.) probably faster to transfer to these 2 formats for downloaded music than just to many disk also, I already have a $30 CD/DVD writer, and a $10 CF card reader attached to my computer. and of course a DVD player to the stereo...
>Who the hell would make an MP3 CD? Make a damned ordinary CD... MP3 sounds bloody awful on a decent hifi many advantages for MP3 CD,
I)theirs more sound per bit so
1) more music per disc
2) you can spin the disc slower or less duty cycle.
a) longer battery life
b) less prone to skipping
c) longer cd life (less likely to rub: spinning slower = less momentum, so less disk distortion, and easier to read a scratched disc at slower spin rates
II) more future format flexibilty,
1) mp3 now can support 5.1 surround sound (high bit rate rip from a DVD)
2) categories: my car mp3 disc player supports directories, etc in the mp3 format discs, so you can easily catagories, no such thing on inflexible audio CD format.
3)file name is more supported than the CD name system, the CD burn programs I currnelty use don't even support the dual mode disks you have to create to make those.id files or whatever show up so you get names of the music your playing on a few supported players.
> sitting in front of the computers the whole time, the chances of any social engineering hacks were pretty limited and real systems admins can't be at every computer all the time.
every collegiate social event I attended served alcahol, were they allowed to buy drinks? (having a a little nip now, thanks for noticing my great spelling.)
> more warranties have to be honored forcing Snapper to increase 'support' for their machines. I know nothing about snapper warranty/parts margin, but in general: more sales = more parts sales, which tend to have a much higher profit margin than new sales. Without a sales person/sales support, most who bought at walmart are unlikely to keep all the paper work, etc to capitalize on the warranty. but may correlate a snapper brand with a snapper dealer, and get a snapper repair job.
I definitely qualify on the above statement, ie what I buy at walmart/radioshack/bestbuy must be cheap enough (or discounted enough) to throw away without triggering a "I got screwed" response. Otherwise I will buy somewhere that will give me the after sale support I need (since I refuse on principle to pay for extended warranty to get support for something sold with a factory supported warranty.)
a few exceptions, if it's a desirable enough product, etc only available (within reason) from these places...
> Which it will be, because pieces of metal in the back of that voting machine aren't going to suddenly change. My parents were voting clerks with mechanical machines, they were very expensive, difficult to setup, expensive to fix, and with the lever pulled 1000's of times a day, did suddenly change on occasion (didn't change back, but...) Also they took a big room to gather enough together to make a decent number of people voting.
now I realize all my arguments are based on experience with one design of a mechanical voting machine, and their are opportunities for much better design, but the same is true of your generalization of "electric" voting machines. seams to be a true statement for the diebold machines, but no reason that a good battery backed up electric based machine can't have all the truths you just attributed to mechanical. Actually the only reason I don't go design and build such a machine, is because I don't think I could get a fair entry into that marketplace.
>So you agree that doing so is evil? >Don't get upset with me because they set the bar so high for themselves, then failed to meet it.
if their bar is to do no evil as seen by Slashdot posters, then thats would indeed be a impossible bar. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Evil Evil is a term describing that which is regarded as morally bad, intrinsically corrupt, wantonly destructive, inhumane, or wicked. In most cultures, the word is used to describe acts, thoughts, and ideas which are thought to (either directly or causally) bring about affliction and death
Thats a good definition of evil for me, taking out patents on wifi is not evil by that definition. I would think you would have to violate something that is at least illegal to be doing evil, as a corporation. Now a person could easily do evil by not taking action... that would not necissarily be illegal.
>you're so fucking self centered and selfish it is definitly no more self centered to throw away than to keep when not in use. true, passing it along (which throwing in the trash did acomplish for this person) may open that book up to a new audience (or just cost the author a % of a new sale.)
> you can't see all the embodied energy that went into the production and transportation of that book
transportation: so if your not throwing the book away, then you have to re-create the transportation to another user, nothing lost production: if the book is still in print (all of Piers Anthony would likely qualify), then 98% of the production is not lost, only the re-printing part, which will be re-created.
I get the same effect from my plasma TV, it is in the corner of the room surrounded by white walls, the reflected light truly does match the average color of whats on the edges of the TV, with no fire or software on a much cheaper TV. I see now their adding a white frame behind those TV's for those with dark walls to get better ambilight reflection, I hope it's removeable, it does look nice, sort of framed, if it otherwise matches your interior decor.
>I can't imagine too many shops being happy to use cards for all transactions, their are many many costs associated with cash also, the merchants exposure to fraud (counterfeit/theft) has a price. Granted most of the costs with cash are taken care of by our government, so we probably don't know what those costs of cash are. I think I read the average life of cash (paper money) is 3 months, but I believe enough cash is lost/destroyed/collected to pay for the governments expense.
> what the "$100 laptop" offers already available throughout the third world,
With that logic, if the $500 MSN/AOL rebates returned to best buy/circuit city, then the $100 laptop goal would be accomplished. those phones aren't $100, their $20-50 per month.
What the $100 laptop would accomplish is 2 fold. a $100 laptop, with a sip phone/messanger speaker/mike, and wireless is a mobile call center for one, etc. In places without cheap cell phone, setup a wireless network for a lower setup cost, and lower monthly charge, with greater flexibilty, to enter data, answer questions, steal identity, mass produce atm cards,etc... worldwide.
second you don't have to protect those computers as diligently from theft, they got no re-sale value, they would all got a ban-able macaddress to kill the usefullness if lost...
> "Stupid admins - the patch was available - they weren't keeping up". Now it's "They should have tested before rolling them out."
I did say lazy didn't I:( > That's very funny. whats even funnier (to me): is that I am a system admin (small part of my job) for a dozen people. I got automatic updates of virus scan, and windows auto updates on for every PC but mine, guess I figure I'll hear of something bad before it hits my part (ok I do fit into the proud to be lazy crowd.) > vulnerabilities on the scale of Windows I am no defender of microsoft, but the biggest didn't update crowd taking heat was for months old (since patch) vulnerabilities being exploited (at msn.com also I recall.) I understand not taking the time to test every 2 weeks, but I did admit being lazy also.
I will add, in general I get very upset when I pay a premium for something that has big problems, but figure it was part of the fun when I am given something at little or no cost. probably why I run linux on the systems I know I'll get flack for problems with (probably not more stable than windows in my case, at least I got $2000 in our phone system for example instead of $30,000) I do run http://www.clamwin.com/ at home despite having access to norton, and mcafee corporate versions easily borrowable from work. ( I have no moral qualms since I do work from home PC's also... )
Slashdot Mirror
> don't use your laptop in public? I mean, if what you're doing is really that important you could do it at home/office?
but if we give in to terror the terrorist wins.
(what it was posted to every slashdot story in 2002, and 2003, is it too early to start again?)
> give away all their content in a
I only read that it was proposed to offer many of their shows, for download for private use, not copyright free. As I understand it, ABC already broadcasts their shows freely, in a unrestricted format, at least in my neighborhood.
> freely-editable, freely-redistributable format. That's NOT Tivo or ReplayTV.
hmmm, both have PC application's available for free from sourceforge that does exactly that, and Tivo's now comes with a DVD recorder.
My HD-Tivo, I click on a link from the webserver running on the Tivo, and it starts downloading the HD content in a editable format. Granted it didn't ship with the CD's to do that. But neither did my pc ship with a app to do the same with any other video type.
> you can bet that their model will adapt
yep, and thats what is being proposed.
>with no restrictions that can be archived, traded, and/or watched at your leisure.
>>Who the hell was saying that? That would be suicide for them if they did that.
well, Tivo, and Replay TV have offered this, and they download at realtime. instead of 1/8th speed (full T1 is 1.5MBps, DVD 1x is 11MB/s) I am sure a few people have the bandwith to download at real time, but not enough to feel.
So why would it be suicide, to provide this service directly, instead of through a 3rd party? maybe suicide to their servers if they didn't setup torrents. If they provide a decent service to find the shows, then people come to their pages, and they get more chances to get add revenue, not less.
sounds like a start to reform.
>your patent protection is limited to, say 3 years. You either use it or lose it.
3 years from when would be my problem. I think companies like TIVO, 6 months after it was available, as the only product of it's kind, at best buy, the patent should have been rendered as fair use public domain.
but I can't think of a way to write a legal definition to match that in every instance, other than, "Ask Darren if the inventor has made enough profit, or had enough compensation yet."
> I wonder if anyone's patented SMTP - via quantum entanglement! - yet, or if it's still up for grabs.
since your patent idea is now published, and soon locked into google, if you havent sent in the patent, your patent could be easily invalidated.
however, you apparently have time to profit between application and invalidation.
>holder a disability cheque!
holder? my employer doesn't even know they own my slashdot karma.
wow, now posting from work may be valuable to the company!!!
>if you pay for something you can get for free, you're a sucker anyway.
free?
Their are plenty of girls that can get whatever they want, just to show some B00Bs, but I sure would prefer they be suckers.
>Its difficult to tell if you are for or against the patent, no competition thing.
:)
the answer is: NO.
I think patents have a legitimate purpose, I hate this use of patents (netflix.)
Netflix, and TIVO are both doing the same thing: I am a customer of both. Netflix is much better than blockbuster at online rental, and TIVO also had the best overall product (for me.)
They can pull out their patent arsenols because they now have the money spend on lawyers without neglecting their product. Patents are bad at that level. once you got that far you should have to produce a better product. Until you get that far, you likely can't use patents. so ya I know of no major intrinsic value.
>I believe you are misinformed or know something that few do.
I disapprove of the power the NCAA has, but I like the outcome. Just because they have good intentions with their money currently doesn't mean they are not a power hungry monopoly. Also pay close attention 95% of the revenue, is not necessarly meaningful, what difference does it make, if you pay yourself millions on payroll, or millions in profit as the lead?
>Ever seen a close basketball game or tennis match? Ever see people try to beat the traffic when their home team is killing the visitors?
perfect analogy, basketball, like most US sports is a complete monopoly that uses trademarks, and practices that would be considered unfair in business, to avoid all competition, and yet produces a great exciting product. After all the game is the product, and NCAA basketball that goes to great lengths to make sure no teams outside the NCAA can compete, either against their merchadise, or their teams... Doesn't matter if they come to root against a team, or for the team, or if you win or lose, the money is the same.
They even try to avoid direct competition between teams, by making it difficult for players to switch teams, and limit teams, so that for the most part their is no competition in the same market area (NY, LA, etc are big enough markets to create a better monopoly by having 2 cross promoted teams...)
>he can shoot an AK clear
so which costs more an AK or $100 laptop. I could unload alott of AK's for well over $100, so we got a source.
Probably not a coincidece that the developed countrys don't have the infection rates of undeveloped. Whats the best way to jump to developed country? Some think a laptop, let see, what options are their? they cant export/import physical items because of corrupt goverment controlls borders, no raw materials, lets see, that leaves money through communications only, which TODAY requires what? a computer, and computer skills.
sure.. education can help. The laptop isn't going to cure ignorance. I'm sure, a laptop wasn't used in communicating to him how the spread of AIDS occurs.
you have clearly shown to me a person who uses a computer can be clearly ignorant, so you get that point.
> Nobody that uses patents as their business model wants competition.
Then who wants competition? Only if I had a business, with a ligitiment patent would I then want competition, and lots of it. So that they can do all the work, and license the patent from me.
without competition (or at least the threat of it), I don't even see how having a patent would be a business model.
> not until I can copy the timeshifted show to my (Linux) PC, PocketPC. or a CD or DVD
i ent/
I agree, however you should have said supported, not can, you can:
http://armory.nicewarrior.org/projects/vstream-cl
http://sourceforge.net/projects/tivo-vlc
http://www.videolan.org/vlc/
>basicly the proccess is:...
your process sounds like it would work for any OS, possibly except for the windows registry.
I don't have your experience, but... I thought the beauty of *nix is they have done a better job (standard installs anyway) of a truely seperate partition for data, and system. IE if I can't get in as root, then reinstall linux, don't format the user partition that has all the app/data files their that change.
If you can run as root, then it's a user issue. Backup their configs, then delete, and restore the configs until the issue is found.
XP, and linux distros have both gotten better in being able to grow filesystems, moving space to where it's needed. I havent tried that on XP yet, not sure I trust it, only cause I have seen nowhere thats it's been suggested. But it does seam that microsoft is working toward being able to seperate the data/program configs from the executables by default.
>if your servers are always online for data retrieval, they can copy themselves over there. There is no panacea no matter how hard you try.
I use for my PC, and all users PC's at my work:
http://backuppc.sourceforge.net/
daily images of all on your harddisk, just a click on the log will show the day all your exe files changed, take the files from the day before, clean what else you need from the latest...
>That's good, but "good" malware will...
well bad malware would be similar to bad drm, it would go right to the boot sector... thats what I assumed the article meant, until I RTFA, their just worried about difficulty of installing windows, apps, etc. Even my solution isn't so good at that, we got apps that generated some magical PC-ID, that is tied to gosh knows what, and that just doesn't come back without pain.
boot sector malware is where I think the $100 PC may take over in corporate, throw out the crap to some school/police/investigators/etc, and just buy a standard installed hardware/software package avaliable from multiple vendors for less than a 1/2 day of MIS time, click on my backuppc data files from a good date, gives a zip file, done.
>>Who wants to pay $5 per minidisc in order to listen to music when CD-R's are $0.25
>I would
at one time the MinyDisk probably had a advantage over competing products,
now $5 for a degradeable moving parts 100mb disk? why not spend $23 for 5* that ? http://www.digi4me.com/home.php?cat=148
A smaller more compatible 512mb CF card? (or $30 for a 1 gig CF) and the reader wont wear out near as quick. (thats the one I would worry about, how long the reader last, not the cheap replaceable media.
> Also it is small and cheap and you can play the same discs on your stereoset, walkman and car stereo.
thats where the C.D. takes back the advantage, for portabilty do the CF, for comatibilty do the CD, you can have all your music on a CD, and a CF, and still be cheaper than just on MinyDisk (pretty much still needed to buy the CD to get legal music to the MinyDisk anyway.) probably faster to transfer to these 2 formats for downloaded music than just to many disk also, I already have a $30 CD/DVD writer, and a $10 CF card reader attached to my computer. and of course a DVD player to the stereo...
>Who the hell would make an MP3 CD? Make a damned ordinary CD... MP3 sounds bloody awful on a decent hifi .id files or whatever show up so you get names of the music your playing on a few supported players.
many advantages for MP3 CD,
I)theirs more sound per bit so
1) more music per disc
2) you can spin the disc slower or less duty cycle.
a) longer battery life
b) less prone to skipping
c) longer cd life (less likely to rub: spinning slower = less momentum, so less disk distortion, and easier to read a scratched disc at slower spin rates
II) more future format flexibilty,
1) mp3 now can support 5.1 surround sound (high bit rate rip from a DVD)
2) categories: my car mp3 disc player supports directories, etc in the mp3 format discs, so you can easily catagories, no such thing on inflexible audio CD format.
3)file name is more supported than the CD name system, the CD burn programs I currnelty use don't even support the dual mode disks you have to create to make those
> sitting in front of the computers the whole time, the chances of any social engineering hacks were pretty limited and real systems admins can't be at every computer all the time.
every collegiate social event I attended served alcahol, were they allowed to buy drinks? (having a a little nip now, thanks for noticing my great spelling.)
> more warranties have to be honored forcing Snapper to increase 'support' for their machines.
I know nothing about snapper warranty/parts margin, but in general:
more sales = more parts sales, which tend to have a much higher profit margin than new sales.
Without a sales person/sales support, most who bought at walmart are unlikely to keep all the paper work, etc to capitalize on the warranty. but may correlate a snapper brand with a snapper dealer, and get a snapper repair job.
I definitely qualify on the above statement, ie what I buy at walmart/radioshack/bestbuy must be cheap enough (or discounted enough) to throw away without triggering a "I got screwed" response. Otherwise I will buy somewhere that will give me the after sale support I need (since I refuse on principle to pay for extended warranty to get support for something sold with a factory supported warranty.)
a few exceptions, if it's a desirable enough product, etc only available (within reason) from these places...
> Which it will be, because pieces of metal in the back of that voting machine aren't going to suddenly change.
My parents were voting clerks with mechanical machines, they were very expensive, difficult to setup, expensive to fix, and with the lever pulled 1000's of times a day, did suddenly change on occasion (didn't change back, but...) Also they took a big room to gather enough together to make a decent number of people voting.
now I realize all my arguments are based on experience with one design of a mechanical voting machine, and their are opportunities for much better design, but the same is true of your generalization of "electric" voting machines. seams to be a true statement for the diebold machines, but no reason that a good battery backed up electric based machine can't have all the truths you just attributed to mechanical. Actually the only reason I don't go design and build such a machine, is because I don't think I could get a fair entry into that marketplace.
>So you agree that doing so is evil?
>Don't get upset with me because they set the bar so high for themselves, then failed to meet it.
if their bar is to do no evil as seen by Slashdot posters, then thats would indeed be a impossible bar.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Evil
Evil is a term describing that which is regarded as morally bad, intrinsically corrupt, wantonly destructive, inhumane, or wicked. In most cultures, the word is used to describe acts, thoughts, and ideas which are thought to (either directly or causally) bring about affliction and death
Thats a good definition of evil for me, taking out patents on wifi is not evil by that definition. I would think you would have to violate something that is at least illegal to be doing evil, as a corporation. Now a person could easily do evil by not taking action... that would not necissarily be illegal.
>you're so fucking self centered and selfish
it is definitly no more self centered to throw away than to keep when not in use. true, passing it along (which throwing in the trash did acomplish for this person) may open that book up to a new audience (or just cost the author a % of a new sale.)
> you can't see all the embodied energy that went into the production and transportation of that book
transportation:
so if your not throwing the book away, then you have to re-create the transportation to another user, nothing lost
production:
if the book is still in print (all of Piers Anthony would likely qualify), then 98% of the production is not lost, only the re-printing part, which will be re-created.
I get the same effect from my plasma TV, it is in the corner of the room surrounded by white walls, the reflected light truly does match the average color of whats on the edges of the TV, with no fire or software on a much cheaper TV.
I see now their adding a white frame behind those TV's for those with dark walls to get better ambilight reflection, I hope it's removeable, it does look nice, sort of framed, if it otherwise matches your interior decor.
>I can't imagine too many shops being happy to use cards for all transactions,
their are many many costs associated with cash also, the merchants exposure to fraud (counterfeit/theft) has a price. Granted most of the costs with cash are taken care of by our government, so we probably don't know what those costs of cash are. I think I read the average life of cash (paper money) is 3 months, but I believe enough cash is lost/destroyed/collected to pay for the governments expense.
> what the "$100 laptop" offers already available throughout the third world,
With that logic, if the $500 MSN/AOL rebates returned to best buy/circuit city, then the $100 laptop goal would be accomplished. those phones aren't $100, their $20-50 per month.
What the $100 laptop would accomplish is 2 fold.
a $100 laptop, with a sip phone/messanger speaker/mike, and wireless is a mobile call center for one, etc. In places without cheap cell phone, setup a wireless network for a lower setup cost, and lower monthly charge, with greater flexibilty, to enter data, answer questions, steal identity, mass produce atm cards,etc... worldwide.
second you don't have to protect those computers as diligently from theft, they got no re-sale value, they would all got a ban-able macaddress to kill the usefullness if lost...
> "Stupid admins - the patch was available - they weren't keeping up". Now it's "They should have tested before rolling them out."
:(
I did say lazy didn't I
> That's very funny.
whats even funnier (to me): is that I am a system admin (small part of my job) for a dozen people. I got automatic updates of virus scan, and windows auto updates on for every PC but mine, guess I figure I'll hear of something bad before it hits my part (ok I do fit into the proud to be lazy crowd.)
> vulnerabilities on the scale of Windows
I am no defender of microsoft, but the biggest didn't update crowd taking heat was for months old (since patch) vulnerabilities being exploited (at msn.com also I recall.) I understand not taking the time to test every 2 weeks, but I did admit being lazy also.
I will add, in general I get very upset when I pay a premium for something that has big problems, but figure it was part of the fun when I am given something at little or no cost. probably why I run linux on the systems I know I'll get flack for problems with (probably not more stable than windows in my case, at least I got $2000 in our phone system for example instead of $30,000)
I do run http://www.clamwin.com/ at home despite having access to norton, and mcafee corporate versions easily borrowable from work. ( I have no moral qualms since I do work from home PC's also... )