You have to "touch" a whole bunch of little networks. The US isn't just NYC, Chicago, LA, Houston and DC. There is a LOT of stuff in between. Miles and miles of empty space and all of a sudden - a 30,000 person city in the middle of nowhere.
Now multiply that by a 1000 and you get an idea of the problem. How do you get to Del Rio, Texas? Or Hayes, KS? Or Pueblo, CO? And those are the BIG cities in those areas.
I think it's clear he has - at a minimum - "left the reservation", don't you think?
Look, I see the CIA link and yes, it appears to be true. So be it. The CIA funds all kinds of bad people at various times. Always has, always will. But, if you are suggesting that the CIA is still actively encouraging Bin Laden and his ilk, then I think you are a nut.
Is that what you are suggesting? If so, it really doesn't pass the smell test and probably falls in the "kooky conspiracy" category. But if not, then my apologies. I jumped the gun. Please explain.
Major league baseball is a protected monopoly. At least in that it is protected from anti-trust suits. Link here.
I can find no information on the NFL and I am suspicious of that one because of the XFL, USFL, etc. There have been football leagues in competition with the NFL. Not so for baseball, unless you count the negro leagues.
If it's alright for them to "shut down a bot" on MY machine, then answer me this:
Why can't I break into Sprint to fix a billing mistake that keeps coming up on my bill?
How is that any different? It's definitely a mistake on their end. No doubt about that. So why can't I just get into their system and fix it for them? Oh yea, that's right: because we have laws against that.
In sum, shutting off the network connection: fine. Directly hacking into a customer's machine to "fix" whatever problem there is: not fine. This is not a matter of opinion. This is a matter of what is legal and what is not. Unauthorized computer tampering is, most decidedly, illegal. In almost all cases. That is the line that was crossed here. Rationalizing it does not change the facts.
In general, new US military advances do result in more death.
Then please explain why combat deaths have gone down since WWII? This is not a matter of opinion, it is a matter of historical fact. Korea had less kills than Vietnam than Beirut/Panama than Iraq I. Right up until Iraq II, it had gone down in every single war.
If what you said was true, we would have seen MORE death over that period. Because nobody doubts significant military advancements have happened since WWII.
Ok, so maybe "touring" is not what I am thinking about, but lots and lots of people go to unfamiliar cities all the time. Business travel is loaded with people like this.
I would use it and I go to places I am already familiar with. I would use it even more if I had never been to that city. Hell, I use it in my own city for that matter.
Imagine, you are looking at your smartphone (whatever flavor)...."Let's see...where is my hotel in relation to the city? Now show me steakhouses within walking distance. Cool, just found a dinner place for tomorrow night. Actually, show me Italian also in case I am not in the mood for steak. Let's see - how about something to do tomorrow night. Is there a theater nearby? What movies are on? How about a ballpark or stadium nearby. Anybody playing?"....and on...and on.
Don't underestimate the need to fill boredom and lack of familiarity in business travelers. This will be HUGE, with spam or without.
YOUR interpretation of this is not relevant so I don't want to hear it. Only the Supreme Court's is, and if you have a problem with that, good luck with your constitutional amendment or revolution.
You are exactly right - it's already decided. And that is precisely why you are witnessing a "revolution" in this area. Unenforceable laws are MORE dangerous than enforceable ones because they allow for selective enforcement. Just like we are seeing now.
The only way to fight is through civil disobedience -- and that's exactly what you are seeing. No more. No less. It's just a fact that people are NOT willing to pay $17/cd anymore. No matter how hard you legislate that. Methinks you misunderstand what you are seeing here. It's not a case of simple "stealing". There is much much more going on here.
What about cases where there is no choice. Where the alternative is death? If the person can't pay - under your system - they die. Does it really have to be that way? Surely, we as a Great Country, can do better than that. If someone is injured in a car accident, do we really want to be first asking, "maam, can you pay?? Maam? Can you pay? Please maam....just answer....can you pay?".
No, that is not how things should be.
The fact is, we as human beings, are always going to want more medical care and longer lives. There are always going to be people who can't pay the going rate. You can't ignore them, for they are too many so the next best alternative is to provide SOME level of healthcare to the maximum amount of people. And that takes money and a system that is fair. Yes, there will be waste and inefficiencies but the overall level of healthcare will go up and you will have achieved your goal (more healthy population). If all you are focused on, is the bottom line -- well....there isn't much point to any of this, is there?
So where do you draw the line between "wasted" money and money well spent?????
This is the problem when you start thinking like you do. The moment you start qualifying who should and shouldn't get medical care, then you have to start making HARD decisions -- like who gets it and who doesn't.
So, in this case -- the guy goes out, gets drunk, and cuts his hand. You complain about footing the bill because he was drunk and did something stupid. All I am saying is that if you are going to do this, you'd better be prepared to start drawing lines in cases where it isn't so clear. How about a car accident that wasn't their fault? Would you be comfortable paying for that? Is that wasted money? After all, maybe they were stupid and pulled out in front of someone. What about an accident where someone fell off a ladder? That's pretty dumb if you ask me. So is that money any more or less wasted than the guy who cut his hand while drunk?
My point is this: the moment you start qualifying *why* someone should or shouldn't get care, it forces you to clearly define those lines. And by doing that -- you have to leave someone out. Lines get drawn for a reason, otherwise, your answer would simply be "healthcare for all people, regardless of why". So how do you draw those lines and determine what is "wasted" vs. "well spent???
I am one of those types, as well. After being in IT for a while (CS, UT-Austin), I finally decided that getting my MBA was the way to have the most flexibility in my career. I have coded, I have team lead, I have project managed, and I have program managed -- all things near and dear to the IT world.
But as I have said before, IT is one of those jobs that has all of the responsibility and none of the authority. This makes it a crappy career path unless you are absolutely 100% devoted to IT and computers -- and if you are one of those people, you are probably not all that concerned with getting to the top of the food chain anyway. Just for fun, go out and google how many CIO's become CEO's vs. other C-level offices. You will find that CIO is an exceptionally bad way to "get to the top".
Simply put, IT is just a bad career path if you want to eventually come up through the ranks and have an executive position of somekind. Most companies only have a few, if any, executive level IT jobs. And even if you were to get one of those, you would - once again - be the low man on the totem pole (compared to CFO, CEO, Chief of HR, etc), fighting for ever-decreasing resources so your division can get it's work done.
I finally said screw it and went into an entirely different industry. I am still in a technical industry (so it's interesting) and that was the best decision I might have ever made in my life. I make more money. I work less. And I have lots of free time to do stuff on computers that I actually want to do.
It's a hard pill to swallow but the truth of the matter is that business just doesn't value IT all that much. Certainly not as much as it is truly worth. Maybe that will change in the future but for most companies, IT is a means to an end only -- and it is treated as such.
It wasn't the culture that brought these places down, it was the spending. I *was* a project manager during 1997-2001 and I, personally, had hundreds of $100/head dinners during that time. I flew (mostly) first class to client locations (Chicago, LA, San Fran, NYC, Houston) and I stayed at some great hotels (W, Hiltons, Marriotts, Sheratons, etc). I just got lucky on my project assignments being in great cities but that's another story. Since I was in Dallas, we had plenty of 4-star and 5-star restaurants and we definitely used them! Del Friscos, The Mansion on Turtle Creek, 3 forks, etc.
In all of that time, I can't remember a single instance of anyone questioning how much money was being spent. As long as (some) money kept coming in the door, this cycle continued until - duh - the company went out of business. It was no shock to ANYONE who saw the actual books and what we were spending. It was truly astounding (ie: $1300 of wine in one meal at the Mansion on TC, 8 ppl attending, not including food)
I will never understand, no matter how hard you try, why someone would spend $50K to go win a project that would make $15K in profit. It's kinda like selling dollar bills for $0.95 and making it up on volume...
So yea - poor management is the reason most of these companies failed. And by poor management, I really mean "just plain old bad business decisions". There is a reason 80% of startups fail. It's not because the market can not handle the supply, rather, it is usually because of a fatal business decision made early on. And the #1 culprit is: over spending.
Here's why: Slashdot tends to focus on technical and scientific discussions about various things. Many times, the things in these articles can be quantified and understood as to how they work and operate. That is very different from any discussion on evolution because there is more objectivity available to understand it. In simplest terms: there are right answers when it comes to science and technology, and especially computers. And by "right", I mean -- they can be verified or not.
Slashdot is an excellent forum to learn about these things. There are lots of smart people here so overall, this is an excellent place to study something like this. A highly educated readership with a very firm understanding of how the internet system works is exactly who should be discussing "holes" in this case. Once you get outside the trite "RIAA suxors" comments, I can think of few places that have a higher signal to noise ratio on this subject than Slashdot.
Funny enough, I remember wondering about the IP address = person since the very first court case I read about. Not surprisingly, I am not the only one who saw that issue --- Slashdot folks were all over it. That is just one example of thousands I can think of where the discussions on Slashdot identified serious issues with whatever story was being reported. In almost all of the cases, the information was important but not necessarily understood by the general public or mainstream media so the discussion on Slashdot was invaluable to understanding what was really going on.
Ver 1.0 is just to get a foot in the door. It didn't matter if it was wildly successful but the fact that it is, just means 2.0 will be easier (and more profitable).
You know, the kind used to digitally sign e-mail.
No. I don't know. I have no idea what you are talking about and I've been using e-mail since 1992. I've also setup and run my own simple pop3/smtp server back in the day.
I have no idea what a digital ID is and I have never, let me repeat, never seen one on an e-mail. Don't get me wrong, I've seen proprietary systems that do digital signing of somekind but I am not aware of anykind of large scale uptake by the general population
The darknets are already there. Available for anyone who wants to use them.
The question is: will we be able to keep them going in such a repressive environment?
Not without strong cryptography as well as "traffic hiding" through various means. We have those tools right now, so I think the Darknets will live on and prosper. I2P and Freenet are good ver 1.0 examples....
What you are describing is an attempt to create artificial scarcity.
That is precisely what the "sellers" of intellectual property want you to believe. That the license/item/product you purchased is scarce that it's value should be higher than what it is really worth. There is only one problem: this approach doesn't work in a digital world with digital assets (like songs, movies, etc).
The music publishing industry (RIAA) is currently built on artificial scarcity through control of the supply chain. That works in the real world where you have inventory and "real" CD's (and real costs too). But the entire idea of "scarcity of digital assets" is nuts because things can be copied and transferred so easily in the digital world. What this means is that the actual value of what they provide is lower than what it was, say, 20 years ago. Much lower. However, they continue to try to make you think that artificial scarcity (and therefore, higher value of them) is an achievable goal.
It isn't. The digital world does not work that way. Attempts to control it will be met with route-arounds, just like they always have.
Eventually, an equilibrium will be reached. Customers will be charged what the item's value really is, and over time, society will eventually agree on what that value is. Right now, it is a one-sided discussion, with the RIAA (and its congress critters) doing all the talking -- so we go through some pain and society routes-around accordingly. Someday we won't have to route-around....but not until prices come down to reflect the real value of what we are getting for our money. Right now, we're not getting enough. So route-arounds continue...
Slashdot Mirror
The fact that the country is larger does matter.
You have to "touch" a whole bunch of little networks. The US isn't just NYC, Chicago, LA, Houston and DC. There is a LOT of stuff in between. Miles and miles of empty space and all of a sudden - a 30,000 person city in the middle of nowhere.
Now multiply that by a 1000 and you get an idea of the problem. How do you get to Del Rio, Texas? Or Hayes, KS? Or Pueblo, CO? And those are the BIG cities in those areas.
I think it's clear he has - at a minimum - "left the reservation", don't you think?
Look, I see the CIA link and yes, it appears to be true. So be it. The CIA funds all kinds of bad people at various times. Always has, always will. But, if you are suggesting that the CIA is still actively encouraging Bin Laden and his ilk, then I think you are a nut.
Is that what you are suggesting? If so, it really doesn't pass the smell test and probably falls in the "kooky conspiracy" category. But if not, then my apologies. I jumped the gun. Please explain.
Major league baseball is a protected monopoly. At least in that it is protected from anti-trust suits. Link here.
I can find no information on the NFL and I am suspicious of that one because of the XFL, USFL, etc. There have been football leagues in competition with the NFL. Not so for baseball, unless you count the negro leagues.
Man, I wish I was born in the Victorian era. Sigh.
Uhh, you can have it man. I'd prefer to stick to my anti-biotics, refrigeration, and automobiles.
Is it true that iPods can only pair up with one computer? I don't have one but this seems like a pretty hard limitation, if true.
So what do you do if you have a work AND home computer? You can only synch on one?
I am so confused.
We used to call it "The Berkley of the Midwest" back when I was there.
Let's not forget that KU was where the student union was burnt down and classes were called early back during the Vietnam war. It was serious stuff.
Back in my day, we didn't even have color!. You kids and your fancy new gadgets...
This has already been done.
See Relakks.
I am sure there are more.
If it's alright for them to "shut down a bot" on MY machine, then answer me this:
Why can't I break into Sprint to fix a billing mistake that keeps coming up on my bill?
How is that any different? It's definitely a mistake on their end. No doubt about that. So why can't I just get into their system and fix it for them? Oh yea, that's right: because we have laws against that.
In sum, shutting off the network connection: fine. Directly hacking into a customer's machine to "fix" whatever problem there is: not fine. This is not a matter of opinion. This is a matter of what is legal and what is not. Unauthorized computer tampering is, most decidedly, illegal. In almost all cases. That is the line that was crossed here. Rationalizing it does not change the facts.
Ahhh...I missed it. Thanks for the heads up.
In general, new US military advances do result in more death.
Then please explain why combat deaths have gone down since WWII? This is not a matter of opinion, it is a matter of historical fact. Korea had less kills than Vietnam than Beirut/Panama than Iraq I. Right up until Iraq II, it had gone down in every single war.
If what you said was true, we would have seen MORE death over that period. Because nobody doubts significant military advancements have happened since WWII.
It's sugar beets. too.
Kind of deal killer.
Ok, so maybe "touring" is not what I am thinking about, but lots and lots of people go to unfamiliar cities all the time. Business travel is loaded with people like this.
I would use it and I go to places I am already familiar with. I would use it even more if I had never been to that city. Hell, I use it in my own city for that matter.
Imagine, you are looking at your smartphone (whatever flavor)...."Let's see...where is my hotel in relation to the city? Now show me steakhouses within walking distance. Cool, just found a dinner place for tomorrow night. Actually, show me Italian also in case I am not in the mood for steak. Let's see - how about something to do tomorrow night. Is there a theater nearby? What movies are on? How about a ballpark or stadium nearby. Anybody playing?"....and on...and on.
Don't underestimate the need to fill boredom and lack of familiarity in business travelers. This will be HUGE, with spam or without.
YOUR interpretation of this is not relevant so I don't want to hear it. Only the Supreme Court's is, and if you have a problem with that, good luck with your constitutional amendment or revolution.
You are exactly right - it's already decided. And that is precisely why you are witnessing a "revolution" in this area. Unenforceable laws are MORE dangerous than enforceable ones because they allow for selective enforcement. Just like we are seeing now.
The only way to fight is through civil disobedience -- and that's exactly what you are seeing. No more. No less. It's just a fact that people are NOT willing to pay $17/cd anymore. No matter how hard you legislate that. Methinks you misunderstand what you are seeing here. It's not a case of simple "stealing". There is much much more going on here.
What about cases where there is no choice. Where the alternative is death? If the person can't pay - under your system - they die. Does it really have to be that way? Surely, we as a Great Country, can do better than that. If someone is injured in a car accident, do we really want to be first asking, "maam, can you pay?? Maam? Can you pay? Please maam....just answer....can you pay?".
No, that is not how things should be.
The fact is, we as human beings, are always going to want more medical care and longer lives. There are always going to be people who can't pay the going rate. You can't ignore them, for they are too many so the next best alternative is to provide SOME level of healthcare to the maximum amount of people. And that takes money and a system that is fair. Yes, there will be waste and inefficiencies but the overall level of healthcare will go up and you will have achieved your goal (more healthy population). If all you are focused on, is the bottom line -- well....there isn't much point to any of this, is there?
So where do you draw the line between "wasted" money and money well spent?????
This is the problem when you start thinking like you do. The moment you start qualifying who should and shouldn't get medical care, then you have to start making HARD decisions -- like who gets it and who doesn't.
So, in this case -- the guy goes out, gets drunk, and cuts his hand. You complain about footing the bill because he was drunk and did something stupid. All I am saying is that if you are going to do this, you'd better be prepared to start drawing lines in cases where it isn't so clear. How about a car accident that wasn't their fault? Would you be comfortable paying for that? Is that wasted money? After all, maybe they were stupid and pulled out in front of someone. What about an accident where someone fell off a ladder? That's pretty dumb if you ask me. So is that money any more or less wasted than the guy who cut his hand while drunk?
My point is this: the moment you start qualifying *why* someone should or shouldn't get care, it forces you to clearly define those lines. And by doing that -- you have to leave someone out. Lines get drawn for a reason, otherwise, your answer would simply be "healthcare for all people, regardless of why". So how do you draw those lines and determine what is "wasted" vs. "well spent???
I am one of those types, as well. After being in IT for a while (CS, UT-Austin), I finally decided that getting my MBA was the way to have the most flexibility in my career. I have coded, I have team lead, I have project managed, and I have program managed -- all things near and dear to the IT world.
But as I have said before, IT is one of those jobs that has all of the responsibility and none of the authority. This makes it a crappy career path unless you are absolutely 100% devoted to IT and computers -- and if you are one of those people, you are probably not all that concerned with getting to the top of the food chain anyway. Just for fun, go out and google how many CIO's become CEO's vs. other C-level offices. You will find that CIO is an exceptionally bad way to "get to the top".
Simply put, IT is just a bad career path if you want to eventually come up through the ranks and have an executive position of somekind. Most companies only have a few, if any, executive level IT jobs. And even if you were to get one of those, you would - once again - be the low man on the totem pole (compared to CFO, CEO, Chief of HR, etc), fighting for ever-decreasing resources so your division can get it's work done.
I finally said screw it and went into an entirely different industry. I am still in a technical industry (so it's interesting) and that was the best decision I might have ever made in my life. I make more money. I work less. And I have lots of free time to do stuff on computers that I actually want to do.
It's a hard pill to swallow but the truth of the matter is that business just doesn't value IT all that much. Certainly not as much as it is truly worth. Maybe that will change in the future but for most companies, IT is a means to an end only -- and it is treated as such.
Yep. You nailed it.
It wasn't the culture that brought these places down, it was the spending. I *was* a project manager during 1997-2001 and I, personally, had hundreds of $100/head dinners during that time. I flew (mostly) first class to client locations (Chicago, LA, San Fran, NYC, Houston) and I stayed at some great hotels (W, Hiltons, Marriotts, Sheratons, etc). I just got lucky on my project assignments being in great cities but that's another story. Since I was in Dallas, we had plenty of 4-star and 5-star restaurants and we definitely used them! Del Friscos, The Mansion on Turtle Creek, 3 forks, etc.
In all of that time, I can't remember a single instance of anyone questioning how much money was being spent. As long as (some) money kept coming in the door, this cycle continued until - duh - the company went out of business. It was no shock to ANYONE who saw the actual books and what we were spending. It was truly astounding (ie: $1300 of wine in one meal at the Mansion on TC, 8 ppl attending, not including food)
I will never understand, no matter how hard you try, why someone would spend $50K to go win a project that would make $15K in profit. It's kinda like selling dollar bills for $0.95 and making it up on volume...
So yea - poor management is the reason most of these companies failed. And by poor management, I really mean "just plain old bad business decisions". There is a reason 80% of startups fail. It's not because the market can not handle the supply, rather, it is usually because of a fatal business decision made early on. And the #1 culprit is: over spending.
No, its not the same.
Here's why: Slashdot tends to focus on technical and scientific discussions about various things. Many times, the things in these articles can be quantified and understood as to how they work and operate. That is very different from any discussion on evolution because there is more objectivity available to understand it. In simplest terms: there are right answers when it comes to science and technology, and especially computers. And by "right", I mean -- they can be verified or not.
Slashdot is an excellent forum to learn about these things. There are lots of smart people here so overall, this is an excellent place to study something like this. A highly educated readership with a very firm understanding of how the internet system works is exactly who should be discussing "holes" in this case. Once you get outside the trite "RIAA suxors" comments, I can think of few places that have a higher signal to noise ratio on this subject than Slashdot.
Funny enough, I remember wondering about the IP address = person since the very first court case I read about. Not surprisingly, I am not the only one who saw that issue --- Slashdot folks were all over it. That is just one example of thousands I can think of where the discussions on Slashdot identified serious issues with whatever story was being reported. In almost all of the cases, the information was important but not necessarily understood by the general public or mainstream media so the discussion on Slashdot was invaluable to understanding what was really going on.
That's all they need.
The real money is in version 2.0
Ver 1.0 is just to get a foot in the door. It didn't matter if it was wildly successful but the fact that it is, just means 2.0 will be easier (and more profitable).
You know, the kind used to digitally sign e-mail.
No. I don't know. I have no idea what you are talking about and I've been using e-mail since 1992. I've also setup and run my own simple pop3/smtp server back in the day.
I have no idea what a digital ID is and I have never, let me repeat, never seen one on an e-mail. Don't get me wrong, I've seen proprietary systems that do digital signing of somekind but I am not aware of anykind of large scale uptake by the general population
That kinda makes me think its a non-starter...
The darknets are already there. Available for anyone who wants to use them.
The question is: will we be able to keep them going in such a repressive environment?
Not without strong cryptography as well as "traffic hiding" through various means. We have those tools right now, so I think the Darknets will live on and prosper. I2P and Freenet are good ver 1.0 examples....
You do realize you can transfer your account - in full - without trading out of positions, don't you?
:)
Whoever your new broker is, will have an account transfer form. There is a box for "move everything". Check it. Mail form.
No capital gains.
What you are describing is an attempt to create artificial scarcity.
That is precisely what the "sellers" of intellectual property want you to believe. That the license/item/product you purchased is scarce that it's value should be higher than what it is really worth. There is only one problem: this approach doesn't work in a digital world with digital assets (like songs, movies, etc).
The music publishing industry (RIAA) is currently built on artificial scarcity through control of the supply chain. That works in the real world where you have inventory and "real" CD's (and real costs too). But the entire idea of "scarcity of digital assets" is nuts because things can be copied and transferred so easily in the digital world. What this means is that the actual value of what they provide is lower than what it was, say, 20 years ago. Much lower. However, they continue to try to make you think that artificial scarcity (and therefore, higher value of them) is an achievable goal.
It isn't. The digital world does not work that way. Attempts to control it will be met with route-arounds, just like they always have.
Eventually, an equilibrium will be reached. Customers will be charged what the item's value really is, and over time, society will eventually agree on what that value is. Right now, it is a one-sided discussion, with the RIAA (and its congress critters) doing all the talking -- so we go through some pain and society routes-around accordingly. Someday we won't have to route-around....but not until prices come down to reflect the real value of what we are getting for our money. Right now, we're not getting enough. So route-arounds continue...