I did the same thing but on my Kindle. When I heard about the new book, I was interested (since I enjoyed The Art of Deception), and got the sample for my kindle. When I was finished with the sample, I quickly clicked the link to purchase the whole book.
I really enjoyed it. While I'm fairly knowledgeable about computers, I know very little about the phone system. He did go into some technical detail, but I never found it difficult to follow. I think people without a background in computers may find some of the technical details to be a bit much, the rest of the story is enough to keep anyone entertained. I really found his descriptions about social engineering to be fascinating. I thought it was funny that people would tell him that they were not supposed to do something because of this hacker that was causing problems, but then they would go right along and give him the information anyway.
I manage people who have to do money services, and social engineering is still alive and well. People have to go into all kinds of training on what not to do, and how not to get tricked into sending money fraudulently, but people still do it all the time.
A monopoly is when you have 100 % control of the market. While amazon do not control all electronic distribution. They do control the distribution to all Kindles. Basically you can take everybody who owns a kindle and consider them a separate market. And this market they control.
First, your definition of a market in regards to monopoly power is to narrow. The market would include all ebook readers. You have the nook, the ipad, as well as other readers with a smaller user base. If amazon got to greedy, publishers could stop catering to them and sign contracts with their competitors. Without content, people wouldn't buy as many kindles...they would buy nooks, ipads, or some other device. This is competition, and what makes it so amazon does not have a monopoly.
Second, they don't control all distribution to the kindle. Yes, they control whispernet...because they are paying for it. However, they don't control the wifi connection, or the USB connection. On the kindle 3 you can use other programs (including my favorite...calibre) to put books or periodicals on your kindle. You can subscribe to the economist, or the WSJ and have calibre download it automatically every day. You can then have it sent via wifi (on your kindle 3) automatically for free as long as your have your kindle hooked up to your wifi network.
As for your distribution comment, you do have more of an argument when it comes to the ipad. Apple has it locked down tight. You can't install other apps on it, and they even prevent publishers from setting lower prices if they wish to set up subscriptions outside of the app store. I think apple is making an error in judgement with their current requirements. I think it harms both the publishers and the users of the ipad. However, the kindle doesn't suffer from the same problems. While whispernet is the most convenient way to get content on the kindle, it is not the only way.
I'm with you on that. I enjoy games, but at 30 I have a very busy life and only have so much time to play games. I work 50 hours a week, have a girlfriend (who will play rock band and guitar hero, but thats about it), and friends that want to go out. I just don't have the same amount of time to play games that I did 10 years ago (or at least I don't prioritize the same amount of time to gaming anymore).
I find myself playing games that I can pick up for 30 minutes at a time and put down. If it has a save system that I can save anywhere I'm more likely to play it. I really enjoyed the bioshock games, though it took me ages to beat them because I played them in short spurts. If a game has a checkpoint system where I have to get to a certain place before saving, I can guarantee that I won't keep playing it.
I'm not a lawyer, but from what I have read about entrapment if they tried to charge you for viewing porn because you clicked on the link, that would be entrapment. However, they are not doing that. They are using the fact that you clicked on the link as probable cause for searching your computer. They then charge you having the child porn on your computer that is unrelated to link that you clicked. If you didn't have any porn on your computer, then you likely would not be able to be charged for clicking on the link (since you could then claim entrapment).
Which kind of goes against the bullish argument that they have no debt and large cash reserves, doesn't it? If they've burned through $40 billion of reserves in 3 years, if they do the same over the next 3 years they be around $20 billion in debt.
They have been paying out a lot of dividends over the last few years, and have been putting money into new tech. Depleting their cash reserves is not a sign of weakness, it is a purposeful response to shareholder complaints. A few years back they faced a lot of criticism from shareholders because they had to large of a cash reserve. Why is this a problem? Cash reserves are not making the company (or shareholders) any money. If a company can't find anything to do with their cash reserves that they think will meet their required rate of return on investment (ie: invest in R&D, capital, or other ways to improve the future profitability of the company), they should return that money to shareholders via dividends.
Their current depletion of cash does not suggest that they will be in debt in a few years. Once they have lowered their cash reserves to a level deemed appropriate by their shareholders, they will change their strategy. So to answer your question, yes there is a huge difference in eliminating 40 billion in reserves and taking on 40 billion into debt.
"but will an eBook publisher sell me, say 20 years from now, a book published this year? "
Well, those at project Gutenberg would argue that it is not impossible to find electronic versions of books that are over 20 years old. My guess is that will not be anymore of a problem in the future.
some schools put an extra strip on the card to be used to put bank info. I went to University of Florida, and they did that. You could take it into the bank, and have them put your info on the second strip. Your ID card would then work as a Student ID and a bank card.
Maybe this will cause me to get nailed by mods, but I feel that it needs to be said.
The blog rant that is linked to complains that apple's DRM is "terrible." I simply don't understand the argument. The DRM is as lax as possible while still keeping the music industry from having a fit. Sure there are limits to how many times you can burn a playlist, but if you change the list by only one song you the counter resets. How many times have you burned more than a couple copies of the exact same playlist anyway? Perhaps the sound isn't exactly the same as a CD, but it is good enough that it really doesn't matter on most sound systems. What the blogger really misses is the fact that itunes gives you what you can't get at the CD shop. The ability to buy just one song off of a CD. If an artist makes one good song and the rest crap, you only pay.99 and get that one song.
Since you can burn your ACC files and then rip them to mp3 if you want, there is no danger of not being able to play your music in the future like the blogger claims. Yes you have to pay for the songs, yes there are some restrictions to prevent piracy, but itunes is still a great thing. It should be something that slashdot readers support, it gives us cheap music and DRM that has plenty of flexibility.
If/When it comes to this it will be interesting to see the responses of the major news sources. Since most news articles seem to be cut/paste jobs of AP and reuters stories, google could easily cut out those that complain and still be getting all the stories. Of course then some of the bigger media outlets could try to pressure the smaller outlets to stop letting google utilize their variants of the AP stories.
My guess is overall they will have a tough time fighting the text excerpts, but with effort could likely prevent google from using images from stories.
Though, there is a real danger for the big newspapers if they go after google in court. If they win, they may shut down google news...but piss off readers who might go to google news clones that are likely to pop up. Online papers are already loosing people to the news blogs.
The even bigger risk is if they go after google and fail. If google news is able to stay in business, they could easily push the people who went after them to the bottom of the results, or take them out all together. Since google news doesn't contain articles, but only links to articles this would be a huge deal. As google news got bigger, more and more traffic would be driven to the sites that didn't piss of google, and away from those who did. People may question the ethics of this, but google could always say that they are simply respecting the wishes of the news sites who don't want to be included in the program.
You forget, you only collect SS if you put money into it (excepting disability and such). That piece of paper that you get every year letting you know how much you have put in, and how many points you have is sent out for a reason. In their case, if they don't put the money in the SS, then they won't get it when they retire. Of course they won't need it, but why should they pay into a system that they won't be using?
As for capital gains rates...the rate only applies to long term investment. If you are a day trader, you still pay the normal income tax rate. You only get the 15% rate on stocks that you sell if you held them for over a year. This rewards long term investors. This makes logical sense, because these are the people who are taking the risks to fund our economy.
As for dividends, they were already taxed once. Dividends are simply a way that a company gives cash that they earned but will not be using to expand back to the shareholders (who put money into the company). This dividend money was ALREADY taxed once when the company earned the money. Not to mention that the money that made up the shareholder's original investment was taxed at the time that the individual shareholder earned it.
Lowering capital gains taxes is not about letting the rich screw the poor, it is about lowering the amount of double taxation.
you have the wrong kind of stem cells. Umbilical cord blood stem cells (which the article discusses) can still receive federal funding. It is new lines of embryonic cells that cannot receive federal funding in the USA. The restrictions are not relevent for this kind of research.
while I am using Opera right now (I downloaded it back when they had the party where they gave away free codes), I doubt I will keep it. While some pages that didn't work for firefox do work for Opera, I have noticed the oposite as well...and the pages that don't work for Opera are more important to me than the ones that don't work for firefox. Opera has also crashed on me several times, and I have never had a problem with firefox crashing.
I honestly don't care about the whole open source thing. I don't have a problem with companies keeping their source private. Hell, they wrote it. However, it seems to me that firefox is simply a better product that either IE or Opera.
"In what ways is it legal for them to use the logs of Suprnova and Lokitorrent?"
the article says that they got the LokiTorrent server logs via a court order. Though, this case does not involve the use of these logs...they may/will use them in the future. Since the courts gave them the logs, I doubt they would find it to be illegal to use the logs.
The real question is what is a public library funded with public dollars doing by being in the business of censorship. Adult-oriented material should be freely accessible from publicly-funded. In some cases, libraries should implement measures to ensure that non-adults are not exposed to adult-oriented material but, then again, there are no limitations on what books one may check out from a public library, regardless of age.
Though the person doing the viewing was a sex offender, and there are limitations on what sex offenders can view. The article also said that he was found with child porn (though it wasn't clear if he got it from the library). It is not a cut and dry case about information being free, and censorship.
"I'm normally a Diet Coke drinker, but I was really really thirsty and Diet Pepsi is what I have available to me. If somebody described that as Diet Pepsi saving my day, I'd roll my eyes."
true, but it would make it more amusing if you were giving a speech to coke execs while drinking a diet Pepsi. Perhaps it would not have saved the day, but it would be amusing. I remember websites put up pictures of Brittney Spears drinking coke when she was the Pepsi spokesperson.
" Satellite Radio you pay a monthly fee and is free from the FCC's censoring. My Cable Television is also paid per month. Is this not a subscription? The only difference is satellite radio owns all the stations they provide"
The FCC doesn't control cable TV, the FCC can regulate broadcast TV (NBC, CBC, ABC...). While your TV signal may come to you through a subscription service...the broadcast signals are also sent over the public airwaves where anyone with an antenna can get them. If comedy central wants to swear, or even show Janet Jackson's breasts, they can do it. Of course if they go too far they might loose advertisers due to protests and threats of boycotts, but they won't get fined.
I think the mainstream media is important, and they will never go away. However, I do think the big blogers help keep the media honest...which tends to annoy the mainstream media.
"Anyone reading this, start the change by putting down some places where you've felt like you got an AWESOME deal without any tricks, from a sales guy that you trusted and who didn't try to sell you with a bunch of technobabble (that you know is false)."
Honestly, very few brick and mortor chains would fit your requirements. You'd need to find locals stores that have people you trust. Of course not ALL locals stores are trustworthy. Talk to your friends in the area.
I used to do most my shopping on buy.com, though I had some problems with DVDs ariving scratched. While they replaced them free of charge (including shipping) both times, it was a hassle. Since then I have used amazon.com and have been very happy with them.
It is not surprising that they are pushing for more taxes, though my guess is if they brought this to the courts it would be a tough sell.
Right now people get twitchy about taxing internet technology for fear that they will look 'anti progress.' What we need is for the VOIP companies to fight the cities, and see where things go from there.
Of course, being in california will make things tough for those trying to fight the tax.
When you look under the info under each school, they sometimes get information incorrect.
For example, University of Florida does require computers of new students (and has for a couple of years), this listing says they don't.
They also do stream some classes over the internet (mostly buisness classes), the listing says that there are not classes streamed.
Also, while they are listed as having campus wide wireless internet...it is not really campus wide. The heart of campus is covered...as are many of the classroom's...but there are still a lot of areas and buildings were you can't get wireless access.
Slashdot Mirror
I did the same thing but on my Kindle. When I heard about the new book, I was interested (since I enjoyed The Art of Deception), and got the sample for my kindle. When I was finished with the sample, I quickly clicked the link to purchase the whole book.
I really enjoyed it. While I'm fairly knowledgeable about computers, I know very little about the phone system. He did go into some technical detail, but I never found it difficult to follow. I think people without a background in computers may find some of the technical details to be a bit much, the rest of the story is enough to keep anyone entertained. I really found his descriptions about social engineering to be fascinating. I thought it was funny that people would tell him that they were not supposed to do something because of this hacker that was causing problems, but then they would go right along and give him the information anyway.
I manage people who have to do money services, and social engineering is still alive and well. People have to go into all kinds of training on what not to do, and how not to get tricked into sending money fraudulently, but people still do it all the time.
A monopoly is when you have 100 % control of the market. While amazon do not control all electronic distribution. They do control the distribution to all Kindles. Basically you can take everybody who owns a kindle and consider them a separate market. And this market they control.
First, your definition of a market in regards to monopoly power is to narrow. The market would include all ebook readers. You have the nook, the ipad, as well as other readers with a smaller user base. If amazon got to greedy, publishers could stop catering to them and sign contracts with their competitors. Without content, people wouldn't buy as many kindles...they would buy nooks, ipads, or some other device. This is competition, and what makes it so amazon does not have a monopoly.
Second, they don't control all distribution to the kindle. Yes, they control whispernet...because they are paying for it. However, they don't control the wifi connection, or the USB connection. On the kindle 3 you can use other programs (including my favorite...calibre) to put books or periodicals on your kindle. You can subscribe to the economist, or the WSJ and have calibre download it automatically every day. You can then have it sent via wifi (on your kindle 3) automatically for free as long as your have your kindle hooked up to your wifi network.
As for your distribution comment, you do have more of an argument when it comes to the ipad. Apple has it locked down tight. You can't install other apps on it, and they even prevent publishers from setting lower prices if they wish to set up subscriptions outside of the app store. I think apple is making an error in judgement with their current requirements. I think it harms both the publishers and the users of the ipad. However, the kindle doesn't suffer from the same problems. While whispernet is the most convenient way to get content on the kindle, it is not the only way.
I'm with you on that. I enjoy games, but at 30 I have a very busy life and only have so much time to play games. I work 50 hours a week, have a girlfriend (who will play rock band and guitar hero, but thats about it), and friends that want to go out. I just don't have the same amount of time to play games that I did 10 years ago (or at least I don't prioritize the same amount of time to gaming anymore).
I find myself playing games that I can pick up for 30 minutes at a time and put down. If it has a save system that I can save anywhere I'm more likely to play it. I really enjoyed the bioshock games, though it took me ages to beat them because I played them in short spurts. If a game has a checkpoint system where I have to get to a certain place before saving, I can guarantee that I won't keep playing it.
I'm not a lawyer, but from what I have read about entrapment if they tried to charge you for viewing porn because you clicked on the link, that would be entrapment. However, they are not doing that. They are using the fact that you clicked on the link as probable cause for searching your computer. They then charge you having the child porn on your computer that is unrelated to link that you clicked. If you didn't have any porn on your computer, then you likely would not be able to be charged for clicking on the link (since you could then claim entrapment).
They have been paying out a lot of dividends over the last few years, and have been putting money into new tech. Depleting their cash reserves is not a sign of weakness, it is a purposeful response to shareholder complaints. A few years back they faced a lot of criticism from shareholders because they had to large of a cash reserve. Why is this a problem? Cash reserves are not making the company (or shareholders) any money. If a company can't find anything to do with their cash reserves that they think will meet their required rate of return on investment (ie: invest in R&D, capital, or other ways to improve the future profitability of the company), they should return that money to shareholders via dividends.
Their current depletion of cash does not suggest that they will be in debt in a few years. Once they have lowered their cash reserves to a level deemed appropriate by their shareholders, they will change their strategy. So to answer your question, yes there is a huge difference in eliminating 40 billion in reserves and taking on 40 billion into debt.
"but will an eBook publisher sell me, say 20 years from now, a book published this year? "
Well, those at project Gutenberg would argue that it is not impossible to find electronic versions of books that are over 20 years old. My guess is that will not be anymore of a problem in the future.
some schools put an extra strip on the card to be used to put bank info. I went to University of Florida, and they did that. You could take it into the bank, and have them put your info on the second strip. Your ID card would then work as a Student ID and a bank card.
Maybe this will cause me to get nailed by mods, but I feel that it needs to be said.
.99 and get that one song.
The blog rant that is linked to complains that apple's DRM is "terrible." I simply don't understand the argument. The DRM is as lax as possible while still keeping the music industry from having a fit. Sure there are limits to how many times you can burn a playlist, but if you change the list by only one song you the counter resets. How many times have you burned more than a couple copies of the exact same playlist anyway? Perhaps the sound isn't exactly the same as a CD, but it is good enough that it really doesn't matter on most sound systems. What the blogger really misses is the fact that itunes gives you what you can't get at the CD shop. The ability to buy just one song off of a CD. If an artist makes one good song and the rest crap, you only pay
Since you can burn your ACC files and then rip them to mp3 if you want, there is no danger of not being able to play your music in the future like the blogger claims. Yes you have to pay for the songs, yes there are some restrictions to prevent piracy, but itunes is still a great thing. It should be something that slashdot readers support, it gives us cheap music and DRM that has plenty of flexibility.
If/When it comes to this it will be interesting to see the responses of the major news sources. Since most news articles seem to be cut/paste jobs of AP and reuters stories, google could easily cut out those that complain and still be getting all the stories. Of course then some of the bigger media outlets could try to pressure the smaller outlets to stop letting google utilize their variants of the AP stories.
My guess is overall they will have a tough time fighting the text excerpts, but with effort could likely prevent google from using images from stories.
Though, there is a real danger for the big newspapers if they go after google in court. If they win, they may shut down google news...but piss off readers who might go to google news clones that are likely to pop up. Online papers are already loosing people to the news blogs.
The even bigger risk is if they go after google and fail. If google news is able to stay in business, they could easily push the people who went after them to the bottom of the results, or take them out all together. Since google news doesn't contain articles, but only links to articles this would be a huge deal. As google news got bigger, more and more traffic would be driven to the sites that didn't piss of google, and away from those who did. People may question the ethics of this, but google could always say that they are simply respecting the wishes of the news sites who don't want to be included in the program.
You forget, you only collect SS if you put money into it (excepting disability and such). That piece of paper that you get every year letting you know how much you have put in, and how many points you have is sent out for a reason. In their case, if they don't put the money in the SS, then they won't get it when they retire. Of course they won't need it, but why should they pay into a system that they won't be using?
As for capital gains rates...the rate only applies to long term investment. If you are a day trader, you still pay the normal income tax rate. You only get the 15% rate on stocks that you sell if you held them for over a year. This rewards long term investors. This makes logical sense, because these are the people who are taking the risks to fund our economy.
As for dividends, they were already taxed once. Dividends are simply a way that a company gives cash that they earned but will not be using to expand back to the shareholders (who put money into the company). This dividend money was ALREADY taxed once when the company earned the money. Not to mention that the money that made up the shareholder's original investment was taxed at the time that the individual shareholder earned it.
Lowering capital gains taxes is not about letting the rich screw the poor, it is about lowering the amount of double taxation.
you have the wrong kind of stem cells. Umbilical cord blood stem cells (which the article discusses) can still receive federal funding. It is new lines of embryonic cells that cannot receive federal funding in the USA. The restrictions are not relevent for this kind of research.
while I am using Opera right now (I downloaded it back when they had the party where they gave away free codes), I doubt I will keep it. While some pages that didn't work for firefox do work for Opera, I have noticed the oposite as well...and the pages that don't work for Opera are more important to me than the ones that don't work for firefox. Opera has also crashed on me several times, and I have never had a problem with firefox crashing.
I honestly don't care about the whole open source thing. I don't have a problem with companies keeping their source private. Hell, they wrote it. However, it seems to me that firefox is simply a better product that either IE or Opera.
"In what ways is it legal for them to use the logs of Suprnova and Lokitorrent?"
the article says that they got the LokiTorrent server logs via a court order. Though, this case does not involve the use of these logs...they may/will use them in the future. Since the courts gave them the logs, I doubt they would find it to be illegal to use the logs.
Though the person doing the viewing was a sex offender, and there are limitations on what sex offenders can view. The article also said that he was found with child porn (though it wasn't clear if he got it from the library). It is not a cut and dry case about information being free, and censorship.
"This better not inspire some /. guy who RTFA to go out and buy a costume thinking he can beat up bad guys!"
Its a good thing that people on slashdot don't actually RTFA, so we don't have to worry about that happening.
"I'm normally a Diet Coke drinker, but I was really really thirsty and Diet Pepsi is what I have available to me. If somebody described that as Diet Pepsi saving my day, I'd roll my eyes."
true, but it would make it more amusing if you were giving a speech to coke execs while drinking a diet Pepsi. Perhaps it would not have saved the day, but it would be amusing. I remember websites put up pictures of Brittney Spears drinking coke when she was the Pepsi spokesperson.
"But if you had three troopers fire at the same time... ON TARGET... then there'd have been many less Jedi around."
:)
which is why by the time episode 4 started, there not many jedi left.
Sadly, you don't get the xbox if you put up anything obscene (or advertise any product).
" Satellite Radio you pay a monthly fee and is free from the FCC's censoring. My Cable Television is also paid per month. Is this not a subscription? The only difference is satellite radio owns all the stations they provide"
The FCC doesn't control cable TV, the FCC can regulate broadcast TV (NBC, CBC, ABC...). While your TV signal may come to you through a subscription service...the broadcast signals are also sent over the public airwaves where anyone with an antenna can get them. If comedy central wants to swear, or even show Janet Jackson's breasts, they can do it. Of course if they go too far they might loose advertisers due to protests and threats of boycotts, but they won't get fined.
""I'm not sure that that is the reality. I have seen comments around that, but there is nothing I can refer to that really supports that,""
I don't think I have seen the word "that" use so many times in a sentence in my entire life.
admit it, your entire post was just an excuse to type out this one line:
"my GF didn't quite get why I was going to do it"
gloating is not nice.
I think the mainstream media is important, and they will never go away. However, I do think the big blogers help keep the media honest...which tends to annoy the mainstream media.
"Anyone reading this, start the change by putting down some places where you've felt like you got an AWESOME deal without any tricks, from a sales guy that you trusted and who didn't try to sell you with a bunch of technobabble (that you know is false)."
Honestly, very few brick and mortor chains would fit your requirements. You'd need to find locals stores that have people you trust. Of course not ALL locals stores are trustworthy. Talk to your friends in the area.
I used to do most my shopping on buy.com, though I had some problems with DVDs ariving scratched. While they replaced them free of charge (including shipping) both times, it was a hassle. Since then I have used amazon.com and have been very happy with them.
It is not surprising that they are pushing for more taxes, though my guess is if they brought this to the courts it would be a tough sell.
Right now people get twitchy about taxing internet technology for fear that they will look 'anti progress.' What we need is for the VOIP companies to fight the cities, and see where things go from there.
Of course, being in california will make things tough for those trying to fight the tax.
When you look under the info under each school, they sometimes get information incorrect.
For example, University of Florida does require computers of new students (and has for a couple of years), this listing says they don't.
They also do stream some classes over the internet (mostly buisness classes), the listing says that there are not classes streamed.
Also, while they are listed as having campus wide wireless internet...it is not really campus wide. The heart of campus is covered...as are many of the classroom's...but there are still a lot of areas and buildings were you can't get wireless access.