Hmm.... how much will taxpayers (consumers) lose nationwide if Microsoft continues on with it's practices, that should be the question.
I think that the federal government is afraid to go after Microsoft, because it's a US company and a cashcow for us.... but there plans (ie palladium, going against companies that install Linux or anything else by giving them bad prices, etc.) are plain scary and it will cost us computer users big time in the future if they are allowed to implement them by continuing to use their strongarm tactics so they can make a few dollars more, while controlling our entire computing experience in the future.
Beware when no one in the government is willing to fight this company, and they get the signal that they are allowed to do anything they want (as if they haven't already.) And once they move into controlling your hardware (with palladium and DRM) you can thank yourself and the federal government for that.
Fighting the inevitable
on
Cringely on P2P
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· Score: 5, Insightful
The RIAA and all those organizations are going to have to give in some time. They are not going to come up with their own P2P effectively, because it's been shown that most people want to shop at one place so to speak, but every company will want their own network (Sony, Columbia, etc.) and people simply don't want that.
Plus, I just don't see people willing to pay for music files, they are already used to getting it free off the net or hearing it on the radio, when I pay for music I expect a CD and something tangible. I know this isn't the case with software anymore, but music is different, when people buy music they don't just want to run it on their computer, but in their stereos, cars, etc and a DRM crippled file just won't let over 95% of the people do that, hence people will not migrate to these company offered P2P solutions when the free one offers them a "better" product in those regards.
I think to a certain extent, Piracy is good (Yes, someone throw me in jail please) because in any industry that has a near monopoly it keeps them semi-honest with prices and whatnot because then they have a competitor. Whoever says piracy drives prices up don't know what they are talking about- do they know what the profit margins on music cds are? Capitalism is based on normal human behavior, it's a model that lets natural selfishness benefit the whole within reason, and these companies are fighting this. And they will lose.
It's not their intention, it's too scare other downloader scared running to the hills, these people are just being made examples of, that is all there is to it. It's too much hassle to go after every pirate, so they'll figure to scare most people away from the dealers so to speak, instead of arresting the dealers themselves. I'm sure they won't care about the money itself, just had to make it big enough to get people crapping in their pants.
How on Kazaa will people tell if downloading your stuff is legally legit. Some small bands (nobody heard of) could be signed and still pirated even though they aren't famous, how will the audience know that it's ok to download yours? P2P ESP?
I don't think downloading copyrighted stuff is illegal, is it? I thought it's actually the "copying and distributing" of copyrighted material that is illegal (except for GPLed and similiar items of course).
If it were illegal to download copyright material, every person reading this right now is breaking the law, as most web sites are copyrighted, not only that, delete your cache sinces it's full of that nasty copyrighted html pages, gifs, jpegs, etc. Next time your at the local Walmart, and there playing a movie in a VCR, turn your head, you didn't pay for it!
Only asking since this is denmark we are talking about, but it sounds like blackmail or extortion, and I wouldn't be surprised that this group will get countersued. They may think they are spreading fear into downloaders, but personally I think it's only going to piss more people off into doing it. Anybody can send you an invoice, if it's legally owed to that person is another matter.
Especially about the "war on Iraq" not having anything to do with oil.
BEWARE CITIZEN! Due to national security concerns we cannot divulge all the reason we, the United States Government, attack Saddam Hussein, but we want to take this time to place certain denial and put certain undeniable facts on the table.
Consider that we did not complete our invasion and take over ^h^h^h^h^h^h^h^h^h^h^h^h^h^h^h^h^h^h police action and peacekeeping role for several reasons.
Please remember in the war documentary with satellite footage, unclassified in 1991, known as "Hot Shots!", that clearly a bomb has been dropped on Hussein, yet he is not dead.
For even more reference, please review that in the war documentary unclassified in 1993, known as "Hot Shot, Part Deux!" Saddam was also very clearly "killed."
Lastly, please note that in the hellish documentary unclassified in 1999, known as "South Park - Bigger, Longer & Uncut" Saddam is consorting with... Could it be.... SATAN! Also "Bill Gates" is also killed, right around the microsoft trials.
We have told you enough now citizen, crawl back into your holes and earn more taxable monies, we have things under control.
Note: Although I'm beginning to see signs of conspiracy theorist (General paranoia, distrust of my own government, a sinking feeling that all my civil liberties are disappearing quickly, a belief that my government values the greed of corporations over the needs of its people, etc)....
Nope, those are not signs of a conspiracy theorist, just a realist, after all I hardly think the people doing these things even really bother to hide it anymore.
I think these frustrations are being vented at the wrong people. Before I started using mozilla, all I did with pop-ups were trying to beat them back like crazed student protesters at a WTO meeting, I never ever looked at them. What the hell is the difference whether they pop-up or not, actually I'm saving them bandwidth.
They are the ones putting up the site on the internet for all to see, not me. If they think their site is so important to people, make it a pay site, if not, don't complain.
Just like the content industry, they see their business model just does not work, so they demonize their customers instead of looking at the root cause. If the way they are doing it doesn't rake in the dough, find another way or just shut down, don't slander your customers and expect any sympathy in return. They should be glad to get the hits they are, contrary to popular opinion, eyeballs on the internet is a valuble commodity for more than popping up ads.
I think people who are most likely to make use of PDAs are the ones already organized, who use paper schedulers, notepads, and notebooks to keep their life in order.
My life's a mess, and I never bothered to put what I should on paper, or kept a schedule, and for me or anybody like me, a PDA probably would be a "gadget purchase" that will end up collecting dust in the closet. This'll be true, no matter how good the tech gets, hand writing and voice recognition and all that, some people can manage it and some prefer to let that type of stuff fly.
I think it's more personal working style than the actual tech.
I think you are putting to much faith in musicians, they need to make a buck like any of us and will follow the money trail. If the company starts seriously impeding them in that regard or they see another channel as more lucrative, they'd follow that. Ask half of the serious musicians at mp3.com, they'd probably love to get signed onto a label.
About hardware protection:
That's if you can get hardware manufacturers to agree to it. The only reason DVD has any protections is that a consortium invented the protocol and you have to license it for that. AFAIK,there is nothing on the horizen going to replace CDs.
True it OO was a static project not evolving, but for now OO can replace it elsewhere, for people who only need to read docs (enough of those), students, schools (who mostly need it internally, why buy multiples of MS Office, when you'd only need one for outside contacts in these cases), and people who just don't give a damn over a few characters screwed up (aka the Mozilla, opera, netscape crowd).
I think they should fired the heads of the RIAA for such poor tactics, I mean come on.
First off, these constant lawsuits and actions made the RIAA one of the most despised and hated organizations among music lovers. And as they keep on doing it, it only provides more press for kazaa (like they did napster), gnutella, etc. making it grow faster. These P2P organizations *depend* on users, the more users the more quanity and variety files shared, the more it thrives.
That simple, in end effect, their constant berating of it made more and more people check it out, who wouldn't have otherwise, and legitimized it as an alternative to going to the local music store.
Second, these DRM on CDs is plain stupid. I bought 5 cds this year, and returned 4 of them, since they wouldn't play on my computer, (threatened fraud since it doesn't play on a cd player like it's supposed to.)
RIAA, do the math. It takes 1 person to hack and post that cd onto kazaa, and wallah, it's out there, spreading like a virus.
While droves of normal users end up returning your cds or not buying any more since they don't play. Hell, who knows, it might even drive them to P2P since they can't get the freaking things to work like they should.
Face it, RIAA, P2P is here to stay, adapt to it, or die. That simple, and legislation won't kill it off now.
Some suggestions to keep sales up, if you please:
For 15-20+ a pop, music companies should be regular packing some extra goodies with the cds regularly, hell make some knicknack crap in china for 10cent a pop, people love that shit. Or include 50% coupons off that artists next gig, whatever? It's not that hard. Or include a multimedia DVD with studio footage and all that, that shit is too much for 95% us to download right now.
Any thing that is cheaper than what your doing now, with your hundreds of lawyers flooding the courts, because even if it's shut down here in the US of A it'll happen in all the other countries.
As much as I am pro freedom and privacy, and hate the power of the state and big corporations like a good leftish boy, there are good reasons to have some kind of identification on the 'net... No CC fraud, less spam (accountability for one's actions), and a definate way to prove who you are.
Yeah, and taking the guns away from all citizen will drop the crime rate, and all that. Did you think the net may be composed of more than US citizens, how do we get around that? Are will there suddenly be "US zoned" web sites and internet traffic. And since no one else outside the US would need the cord, how would it reduce CC fraud, spam, increase accountability, and proving who you are. By the way, if you lose that card, any one can "prove" who they are pretending to be. DON'T INSTITUTE SOLUTIONS THAT WILL BECOME ONLY MUCH BIGGER PROBLEMS THAN THE ORIGINAL.
If it's implemented in a way that I can decide to use this identification, when, where, and how I want, without any possibility of being forced to do so, there is no privacy problem. If you don't want to give the information, you don't. If you need to do it, you can.
The internet could use a way to identify people for who they really are; as long as it's not mandatory or enforcible, it's only a positive thing, in my eyes.
For websites, ever hear of WHOIS?, useful that tool. I don't envision a scenario where, people do that much business or whatever over someone they only met over email (w/o a website) other than something like ebay. Ebays solution, other than CC verification, is the feedback rating. Let people who are bold take the risk, and more cautious types find someone with a good reputation, like in real life. The government shouldn't implement these blanket solutions to problems that people could avoid if the used some brains.
BTW, anything voluntary that gets adopted enmasse soon isn't voluntary any more.
It could be used as an optional extra check to avoid CC fraud, for instance.
No, let the individual use his brain for once, I already know that Amazon.com is safe, so I can use my CC, I don't know if flybynight.com with it's offer of $30 Million of Nigerian Swiss bank account money for $10Gs is safe, so I can do a who is, ask around on reputation, find a comparable or cheaper scam, or use some common sense.
Yes, I got f'ed over on ebay (broken electronics) before for over 50 bucks, but you know what, it was a learning experience, and that blanket solution would not have helped me.
Sorry, but that's just wrong. Just because I work with computer be it a programmer/linux/mainframe person does not mean I can figure everything out.
Let take the examples of car mechanics, some shops do nearly everything and some don't but even then the work is subcategorized - some people do bodywork, some interior work (upholstery), stereos, engines, transmissions, etc. One guy is not replaceable for the other.
The same with computers, they are just way too complex. I'm a c/c++ programmer on linux, specifically apps. Do I know what the bios does, no, not really, do I know what the kernel does, barely - just the surface, do I know hardware, not at all, do I know what how to even work gimp, hell no, apps I don't work with can take me hours to get used to.
As for finding the network configuration on any OS, when I first started linux it took me weeks to get to that level, I don't expect a microsoft only user to know that, nor could I find it in a mac, or BeOs, or Atheos, etc.
I'd willingly help my family, esp. my parents but I say teach a man to fish, give him the tools (news groups, websites) to figure out the problems on their own setups or they'll always be in the dark.
In some parts I have to agree, I run 15 computers for a business, all 500-600 Mhz PIII or AMD chips, and with using linux feel no pressure to upgrade, at least for another 7-8 years, the chip upgrade cycle for most normal businesses probaly isn't what it used to be, (unless of course there will be a 64 bit switchover soon).
But the only economic sense for AMD to reallacate money elsewhere is if it actually pays more than sticking it into R&D, which is one of tricky things to measure, since it can take many years to make it into something useful. But simply piggybacking off Intel just seems like a throwback into the K5/K6 days, they actually didn't that big until they really had something competive in terms of speed.
If there was actually some info in the article what they wanted to branch out into, I'd be less skeptical, but from what they say it almost seems they want to do consulting like services.
They don't say they won't try to compete but are shifting their focus which I take it to mean branching out.
Intel did much the same thing by branching out into networking and other things.
The only impact was a re-allocation of the companies resources to other ventures, I wish the article would be so vague.
My whole perspective on AMD is that it only got so big by having a competitive chip cheap, I mean there probably is a 10 to 1 ratio to people who took up an Athlon based systems vs. a K6 systems.
If indeed they are not striving for a competitive chip anymore, that would be a huge mistake, since one of the lessons for the blue chips after the dotbomb crash was to keep on nurturing the core business, their goose that laid the golden eggs letting them finance other things in the first place.
A better argument, which one's rights have more precedence.
If by acting on their "right", how many other's people's rights are they infringing upon?
Who likely to take more damage, Verizon by not making some money in a way they never did before, or their PAYING customers who will be even more exploited.
I got my long distance bill from sprint yesterday. I make very few longdistance calls, and my bill was 78.55 - 62 of which was an 11 minute call to the phillipines which I didnt even make. They charged 5.60/minute for that call. but since I couldnt prove to them that I didnt make the call - all they allowed me to do was take 50% off the call.
Threaten to leave the company and use someone else if they don't take the call of your invoice. This happened to me several times with virtually same results, until I threatened to leave. If they start playing games, tell them your number and say you'll hang up if they don't stop (yes I know they are the phone company but they're stupid) and hang up.
Wait a few hours, and if they don't call back, switch for real. You'll be surprised how accomodating some companies get with this tactic, it works with CC companies, phone companies, and the larger companies in general who have competition and don't need more bad word-of-mouth out there.
bmetzler wrote:
It's their information to use to server *you* better. It belongs to them because you are their customer, and it is irresponsible for then to not use it in order to serve you better.
hmm.... Funny, I should ask my lawyer, priest, doctor to start pitching around my information to serve me better with crap I don't ask for. That would be responsible of them. No, business want to make money, this has nothing to do with serving anybody better. They only want to serve themselve at your cost.
In the same way Verizon should be able to use sales records, and other data to create new services and products and offer them to me. Perhaps I make a lot of long distance calls, but only in the evening after 9pm. Then they should call up and offer me a plan that takes advantage of that. Or maybe I make a lot of long distance calls during the day, and they have a flat-rate plan that gives me 500 minutes of long distance a month. They should call and offer me that.
No, they are going to sell it, not offer you better service plans. The only time they'll offer you a cheaper service plan is when you are with a competitor, not with them. There's no incentive to make you pay less money to them if they already have you. Case in point, call a credit card company and threaten to drop them, if you are a decent customer suddenly they'll offer you a better interest rate than you had before. They don't go out of their way for this type of thing, by themselves.
I don't have the time to check out every possible scenario available with every company out there. It's their job to take the data they have and then present me with their best offers.
That's your fault, but Ignorance is bliss. I pity you, if you believe this. You are an ignorant fool consumer that believes that the company will provide you with an unbiased picture of their and the competitors. If this was the case, I'd still be using IE with ten million pop-ups, instead of Mozilla. My business would be on Microbloat Windoze upgrade treadmill, along with hardware upgrades every two years, instead of that "user unfriendly, hard to learn, non-compatible" linux. And I would be buying the Windows Office suite, whose CD costs more than it's weight in gold instead of using the "only 99.5% perfect" Open Office.
Maybe I'll say no. In fact, I usually do say no. But at least I know that it is available. It isn't just phone companies either. Basically every company that does business should feel obligated to collect the information available to them and use it to serve the customer better
I don't want to have to say no, infact I don't want to have to say anything at all, leave me alone, I want to be the one starting the business transaction. Leave me alone, unless there is something wrong with my account. Don't deluge me and waste my time with crappy offers. Don't send me junkmail, unless your willing to pay my entire trash pick-up bill. Don't call me, unless you want to pay for a $120 an hour consulting fee. Don't serve me better, serve me what I ask for.
Follow the money trail, if verizon loses this, it would have to provide customer information free of charge all of sudden, not to mention put up a department to handle these requests.
Then suddenly many copyright holders will start requesting info on the customers, and it'll be all downhill from there. Suddenly, consumers in the know, would start avoiding the service as well, it's a fight for all ISP, not just Verizon.
AFAIK, Verizon makes no money from the RIAA, thus has no inherent interest in cooperating with them.
When I sign on for phone service, I sign on for phone service, I don't want them tracking my calls period, I think a right to privacy amendment of some type needs to be passed, because it's getting out of hand. It used to be with businesses, that it was a simple transaction and it was a mutual respect professional relationship. The practices they use now is comparable to celebrity stalkers.
I mean, come on, next thing they'll be using computer software to listen in to all the calls to see what your talking about with others and sell that too. Let's see:
Jim said on the phone: "I'm going up to the cabin with my girlfriend next month, wanna come?" Then he gets a sample condom in the mail.
Mike called from the office: "I hate microsoft, we switched over to linux, you won't believe how much free software we can get." Microsoft comes over with a anal rape.... oops.... auditing squad.
Jane calls someone: "You know, I hate Bush, I hope he goes to hell." The FBI comes over and firebombs your house, then asks questions later, (Note: I'm not anti-bush, I feel the disillusionment towards all political types:)
The government was by the people for the people, not to protect moneyed interests. Now who do we have to protect us from them?
This link is the PA Do not call list, read their exceptions and how these political types protect their own asses while making everyone else submit to the law:
http://www.nocallsplease.com/index.cfm?page=except ions
On this I agree, how can entities like corporations have the same rights as us real people, yet not suffer the same punishments. I never heard of corporations going to jail, or anything, hell look at who pays taxes in this country (people, many corps use loopholes not to pay any).
And look at Enron, it seems that nobody went to jail for that, but if a private person did that, you'd see his ass hauled off.
I think the law is that corporate officers can only be punished with civil suits for their decision on behalf of the corporation and that's a large part of the problem. The playing field would be levelled once they have to take the same responsibility as everyone else, corps or no corps.
Actually that's an interesting fraud, IMO, caller id.
Here they are selling you a product that promises (within reason) to tell you who is calling only to turn around and sell blocking for this very service to the very people you want to avoid.
If anybody else but the phone company offered caller id blocking, would it be considered a breach of the DMCA?
Slashdot Mirror
Hmm.... how much will taxpayers (consumers) lose nationwide if Microsoft continues on with it's practices, that should be the question. I think that the federal government is afraid to go after Microsoft, because it's a US company and a cashcow for us.... but there plans (ie palladium, going against companies that install Linux or anything else by giving them bad prices, etc.) are plain scary and it will cost us computer users big time in the future if they are allowed to implement them by continuing to use their strongarm tactics so they can make a few dollars more, while controlling our entire computing experience in the future. Beware when no one in the government is willing to fight this company, and they get the signal that they are allowed to do anything they want (as if they haven't already.) And once they move into controlling your hardware (with palladium and DRM) you can thank yourself and the federal government for that.
The RIAA and all those organizations are going to have to give in some time. They are not going to come up with their own P2P effectively, because it's been shown that most people want to shop at one place so to speak, but every company will want their own network (Sony, Columbia, etc.) and people simply don't want that.
Plus, I just don't see people willing to pay for music files, they are already used to getting it free off the net or hearing it on the radio, when I pay for music I expect a CD and something tangible. I know this isn't the case with software anymore, but music is different, when people buy music they don't just want to run it on their computer, but in their stereos, cars, etc and a DRM crippled file just won't let over 95% of the people do that, hence people will not migrate to these company offered P2P solutions when the free one offers them a "better" product in those regards.
I think to a certain extent, Piracy is good (Yes, someone throw me in jail please) because in any industry that has a near monopoly it keeps them semi-honest with prices and whatnot because then they have a competitor. Whoever says piracy drives prices up don't know what they are talking about- do they know what the profit margins on music cds are? Capitalism is based on normal human behavior, it's a model that lets natural selfishness benefit the whole within reason, and these companies are fighting this. And they will lose.
It's not their intention, it's too scare other downloader scared running to the hills, these people are just being made examples of, that is all there is to it. It's too much hassle to go after every pirate, so they'll figure to scare most people away from the dealers so to speak, instead of arresting the dealers themselves. I'm sure they won't care about the money itself, just had to make it big enough to get people crapping in their pants.
How on Kazaa will people tell if downloading your stuff is legally legit. Some small bands (nobody heard of) could be signed and still pirated even though they aren't famous, how will the audience know that it's ok to download yours? P2P ESP?
I don't think downloading copyrighted stuff is illegal, is it? I thought it's actually the "copying and distributing" of copyrighted material that is illegal (except for GPLed and similiar items of course). If it were illegal to download copyright material, every person reading this right now is breaking the law, as most web sites are copyrighted, not only that, delete your cache sinces it's full of that nasty copyrighted html pages, gifs, jpegs, etc. Next time your at the local Walmart, and there playing a movie in a VCR, turn your head, you didn't pay for it! Only asking since this is denmark we are talking about, but it sounds like blackmail or extortion, and I wouldn't be surprised that this group will get countersued. They may think they are spreading fear into downloaders, but personally I think it's only going to piss more people off into doing it. Anybody can send you an invoice, if it's legally owed to that person is another matter.
BEWARE CITIZEN! Due to national security concerns we cannot divulge all the reason we, the United States Government, attack Saddam Hussein, but we want to take this time to place certain denial and put certain undeniable facts on the table.
Consider that we did not complete our invasion and take over ^h^h^h^h^h^h^h^h^h^h^h^h^h^h^h^h^h^h police action and peacekeeping role for several reasons.
Please remember in the war documentary with satellite footage, unclassified in 1991, known as "Hot Shots!", that clearly a bomb has been dropped on Hussein, yet he is not dead.
For even more reference, please review that in the war documentary unclassified in 1993, known as "Hot Shot, Part Deux!" Saddam was also very clearly "killed."
Lastly, please note that in the hellish documentary unclassified in 1999, known as "South Park - Bigger, Longer & Uncut" Saddam is consorting with... Could it be.... SATAN! Also "Bill Gates" is also killed, right around the microsoft trials. We have told you enough now citizen, crawl back into your holes and earn more taxable monies, we have things under control.
Nope, those are not signs of a conspiracy theorist, just a realist, after all I hardly think the people doing these things even really bother to hide it anymore.
I think these frustrations are being vented at the wrong people. Before I started using mozilla, all I did with pop-ups were trying to beat them back like crazed student protesters at a WTO meeting, I never ever looked at them. What the hell is the difference whether they pop-up or not, actually I'm saving them bandwidth.
They are the ones putting up the site on the internet for all to see, not me. If they think their site is so important to people, make it a pay site, if not, don't complain.
Just like the content industry, they see their business model just does not work, so they demonize their customers instead of looking at the root cause. If the way they are doing it doesn't rake in the dough, find another way or just shut down, don't slander your customers and expect any sympathy in return. They should be glad to get the hits they are, contrary to popular opinion, eyeballs on the internet is a valuble commodity for more than popping up ads.
I think people who are most likely to make use of PDAs are the ones already organized, who use paper schedulers, notepads, and notebooks to keep their life in order. My life's a mess, and I never bothered to put what I should on paper, or kept a schedule, and for me or anybody like me, a PDA probably would be a "gadget purchase" that will end up collecting dust in the closet. This'll be true, no matter how good the tech gets, hand writing and voice recognition and all that, some people can manage it and some prefer to let that type of stuff fly. I think it's more personal working style than the actual tech.
I think you are putting to much faith in musicians, they need to make a buck like any of us and will follow the money trail. If the company starts seriously impeding them in that regard or they see another channel as more lucrative, they'd follow that. Ask half of the serious musicians at mp3.com, they'd probably love to get signed onto a label.
About hardware protection: That's if you can get hardware manufacturers to agree to it. The only reason DVD has any protections is that a consortium invented the protocol and you have to license it for that. AFAIK,there is nothing on the horizen going to replace CDs.
True it OO was a static project not evolving, but for now OO can replace it elsewhere, for people who only need to read docs (enough of those), students, schools (who mostly need it internally, why buy multiples of MS Office, when you'd only need one for outside contacts in these cases), and people who just don't give a damn over a few characters screwed up (aka the Mozilla, opera, netscape crowd).
I think they should fired the heads of the RIAA for such poor tactics, I mean come on.
First off, these constant lawsuits and actions made the RIAA one of the most despised and hated organizations among music lovers. And as they keep on doing it, it only provides more press for kazaa (like they did napster), gnutella, etc. making it grow faster. These P2P organizations *depend* on users, the more users the more quanity and variety files shared, the more it thrives.
That simple, in end effect, their constant berating of it made more and more people check it out, who wouldn't have otherwise, and legitimized it as an alternative to going to the local music store.
Second, these DRM on CDs is plain stupid. I bought 5 cds this year, and returned 4 of them, since they wouldn't play on my computer, (threatened fraud since it doesn't play on a cd player like it's supposed to.)
RIAA, do the math. It takes 1 person to hack and post that cd onto kazaa, and wallah, it's out there, spreading like a virus.
While droves of normal users end up returning your cds or not buying any more since they don't play. Hell, who knows, it might even drive them to P2P since they can't get the freaking things to work like they should.
Face it, RIAA, P2P is here to stay, adapt to it, or die. That simple, and legislation won't kill it off now.
Some suggestions to keep sales up, if you please:
For 15-20+ a pop, music companies should be regular packing some extra goodies with the cds regularly, hell make some knicknack crap in china for 10cent a pop, people love that shit. Or include 50% coupons off that artists next gig, whatever? It's not that hard. Or include a multimedia DVD with studio footage and all that, that shit is too much for 95% us to download right now.
Any thing that is cheaper than what your doing now, with your hundreds of lawyers flooding the courts, because even if it's shut down here in the US of A it'll happen in all the other countries.
Yeah, and taking the guns away from all citizen will drop the crime rate, and all that. Did you think the net may be composed of more than US citizens, how do we get around that? Are will there suddenly be "US zoned" web sites and internet traffic. And since no one else outside the US would need the cord, how would it reduce CC fraud, spam, increase accountability, and proving who you are. By the way, if you lose that card, any one can "prove" who they are pretending to be. DON'T INSTITUTE SOLUTIONS THAT WILL BECOME ONLY MUCH BIGGER PROBLEMS THAN THE ORIGINAL.
If it's implemented in a way that I can decide to use this identification, when, where, and how I want, without any possibility of being forced to do so, there is no privacy problem. If you don't want to give the information, you don't. If you need to do it, you can.
The internet could use a way to identify people for who they really are; as long as it's not mandatory or enforcible, it's only a positive thing, in my eyes.
For websites, ever hear of WHOIS?, useful that tool. I don't envision a scenario where, people do that much business or whatever over someone they only met over email (w/o a website) other than something like ebay. Ebays solution, other than CC verification, is the feedback rating. Let people who are bold take the risk, and more cautious types find someone with a good reputation, like in real life. The government shouldn't implement these blanket solutions to problems that people could avoid if the used some brains.
BTW, anything voluntary that gets adopted enmasse soon isn't voluntary any more.
It could be used as an optional extra check to avoid CC fraud, for instance.
No, let the individual use his brain for once, I already know that Amazon.com is safe, so I can use my CC, I don't know if flybynight.com with it's offer of $30 Million of Nigerian Swiss bank account money for $10Gs is safe, so I can do a who is, ask around on reputation, find a comparable or cheaper scam, or use some common sense.
Yes, I got f'ed over on ebay (broken electronics) before for over 50 bucks, but you know what, it was a learning experience, and that blanket solution would not have helped me.
Sorry, but that's just wrong. Just because I work with computer be it a programmer/linux/mainframe person does not mean I can figure everything out. Let take the examples of car mechanics, some shops do nearly everything and some don't but even then the work is subcategorized - some people do bodywork, some interior work (upholstery), stereos, engines, transmissions, etc. One guy is not replaceable for the other. The same with computers, they are just way too complex. I'm a c/c++ programmer on linux, specifically apps. Do I know what the bios does, no, not really, do I know what the kernel does, barely - just the surface, do I know hardware, not at all, do I know what how to even work gimp, hell no, apps I don't work with can take me hours to get used to. As for finding the network configuration on any OS, when I first started linux it took me weeks to get to that level, I don't expect a microsoft only user to know that, nor could I find it in a mac, or BeOs, or Atheos, etc. I'd willingly help my family, esp. my parents but I say teach a man to fish, give him the tools (news groups, websites) to figure out the problems on their own setups or they'll always be in the dark.
In some parts I have to agree, I run 15 computers for a business, all 500-600 Mhz PIII or AMD chips, and with using linux feel no pressure to upgrade, at least for another 7-8 years, the chip upgrade cycle for most normal businesses probaly isn't what it used to be, (unless of course there will be a 64 bit switchover soon).
But the only economic sense for AMD to reallacate money elsewhere is if it actually pays more than sticking it into R&D, which is one of tricky things to measure, since it can take many years to make it into something useful. But simply piggybacking off Intel just seems like a throwback into the K5/K6 days, they actually didn't that big until they really had something competive in terms of speed.
If there was actually some info in the article what they wanted to branch out into, I'd be less skeptical, but from what they say it almost seems they want to do consulting like services.
They don't say they won't try to compete but are shifting their focus which I take it to mean branching out. Intel did much the same thing by branching out into networking and other things. The only impact was a re-allocation of the companies resources to other ventures, I wish the article would be so vague. My whole perspective on AMD is that it only got so big by having a competitive chip cheap, I mean there probably is a 10 to 1 ratio to people who took up an Athlon based systems vs. a K6 systems. If indeed they are not striving for a competitive chip anymore, that would be a huge mistake, since one of the lessons for the blue chips after the dotbomb crash was to keep on nurturing the core business, their goose that laid the golden eggs letting them finance other things in the first place.
Sorry, my parents signed away all my human rights to the hospital I was born in, Verizon will have to go to them^-^
A better argument, which one's rights have more precedence. If by acting on their "right", how many other's people's rights are they infringing upon? Who likely to take more damage, Verizon by not making some money in a way they never did before, or their PAYING customers who will be even more exploited.
Threaten to leave the company and use someone else if they don't take the call of your invoice. This happened to me several times with virtually same results, until I threatened to leave. If they start playing games, tell them your number and say you'll hang up if they don't stop (yes I know they are the phone company but they're stupid) and hang up.
Wait a few hours, and if they don't call back, switch for real. You'll be surprised how accomodating some companies get with this tactic, it works with CC companies, phone companies, and the larger companies in general who have competition and don't need more bad word-of-mouth out there.
hmm.... Funny, I should ask my lawyer, priest, doctor to start pitching around my information to serve me better with crap I don't ask for. That would be responsible of them. No, business want to make money, this has nothing to do with serving anybody better. They only want to serve themselve at your cost.
In the same way Verizon should be able to use sales records, and other data to create new services and products and offer them to me. Perhaps I make a lot of long distance calls, but only in the evening after 9pm. Then they should call up and offer me a plan that takes advantage of that. Or maybe I make a lot of long distance calls during the day, and they have a flat-rate plan that gives me 500 minutes of long distance a month. They should call and offer me that.
No, they are going to sell it, not offer you better service plans. The only time they'll offer you a cheaper service plan is when you are with a competitor, not with them. There's no incentive to make you pay less money to them if they already have you. Case in point, call a credit card company and threaten to drop them, if you are a decent customer suddenly they'll offer you a better interest rate than you had before. They don't go out of their way for this type of thing, by themselves.
I don't have the time to check out every possible scenario available with every company out there. It's their job to take the data they have and then present me with their best offers.
That's your fault, but Ignorance is bliss. I pity you, if you believe this. You are an ignorant fool consumer that believes that the company will provide you with an unbiased picture of their and the competitors. If this was the case, I'd still be using IE with ten million pop-ups, instead of Mozilla. My business would be on Microbloat Windoze upgrade treadmill, along with hardware upgrades every two years, instead of that "user unfriendly, hard to learn, non-compatible" linux. And I would be buying the Windows Office suite, whose CD costs more than it's weight in gold instead of using the "only 99.5% perfect" Open Office.
Maybe I'll say no. In fact, I usually do say no. But at least I know that it is available. It isn't just phone companies either. Basically every company that does business should feel obligated to collect the information available to them and use it to serve the customer better
I don't want to have to say no, infact I don't want to have to say anything at all, leave me alone, I want to be the one starting the business transaction. Leave me alone, unless there is something wrong with my account. Don't deluge me and waste my time with crappy offers. Don't send me junkmail, unless your willing to pay my entire trash pick-up bill. Don't call me, unless you want to pay for a $120 an hour consulting fee. Don't serve me better, serve me what I ask for.
Follow the money trail, if verizon loses this, it would have to provide customer information free of charge all of sudden, not to mention put up a department to handle these requests. Then suddenly many copyright holders will start requesting info on the customers, and it'll be all downhill from there. Suddenly, consumers in the know, would start avoiding the service as well, it's a fight for all ISP, not just Verizon. AFAIK, Verizon makes no money from the RIAA, thus has no inherent interest in cooperating with them.
When I sign on for phone service, I sign on for phone service, I don't want them tracking my calls period, I think a right to privacy amendment of some type needs to be passed, because it's getting out of hand. It used to be with businesses, that it was a simple transaction and it was a mutual respect professional relationship. The practices they use now is comparable to celebrity stalkers. I mean, come on, next thing they'll be using computer software to listen in to all the calls to see what your talking about with others and sell that too. Let's see: Jim said on the phone: "I'm going up to the cabin with my girlfriend next month, wanna come?" Then he gets a sample condom in the mail. Mike called from the office: "I hate microsoft, we switched over to linux, you won't believe how much free software we can get." Microsoft comes over with a anal rape .... oops.... auditing squad.
Jane calls someone: "You know, I hate Bush, I hope he goes to hell." The FBI comes over and firebombs your house, then asks questions later, (Note: I'm not anti-bush, I feel the disillusionment towards all political types:)
The government was by the people for the people, not to protect moneyed interests. Now who do we have to protect us from them?
This link is the PA Do not call list, read their exceptions and how these political types protect their own asses while making everyone else submit to the law:
http://www.nocallsplease.com/index.cfm?page=except ions
On this I agree, how can entities like corporations have the same rights as us real people, yet not suffer the same punishments. I never heard of corporations going to jail, or anything, hell look at who pays taxes in this country (people, many corps use loopholes not to pay any). And look at Enron, it seems that nobody went to jail for that, but if a private person did that, you'd see his ass hauled off. I think the law is that corporate officers can only be punished with civil suits for their decision on behalf of the corporation and that's a large part of the problem. The playing field would be levelled once they have to take the same responsibility as everyone else, corps or no corps.
Actually that's an interesting fraud, IMO, caller id.
Here they are selling you a product that promises (within reason) to tell you who is calling only to turn around and sell blocking for this very service to the very people you want to avoid.
If anybody else but the phone company offered caller id blocking, would it be considered a breach of the DMCA?