True. And, it gets so eerily quiet who the person is not speaking.
I also find that on the cellphone a bit but esp. VOIP where it's dead quiet when no-one is speaking.
It's prudent to not send packets when no-one is speaking maybe on a squakbox on a videogame but on the phone is a different matter; esp. when you're paying by the minute!
On the other hand, the corporation could go out of buisness or lose large market share by being not price competative enough and devastate communnities like in Detroit.
The low hanging fruit just isn't as available in well established fields. Granted there are fields (even within computer engineering thankfully) where little work has been done, and large gains can be had. However even these fields all require significant background knowledge of all the complex systems involved.
Read Kuhn. Science doesn't progress like that, adding complexity over what is there ad infinitum. It comes in short bursts of insight. There will always be low hanging fruits, just in a different tree.
A modern programmer doesn't need to know anything about computer hardware or operating systems. 99.99% of the time a programmer doesn't have to even consider context switching or assembly instructions and how it works. The theory of programming language probably takes out all notions of that so it can exist on it's own.
This biggest problem I've seen while teaching calculus is that the students don't understand enough algebra. You CANNOT understand calculus without a solid basis in algebra. For that matter, you can't properly use a CAS unless you understand the fundamentals of the algebra you'd like it to perform.
What is understanding algebra? Is it rules like you cannot add the numerators or demoninators without this happening or that happening or just ideas that fractions exist? Look at calc 2. Most of the integrations are just tricks; CAS completely eliminates the need to memorize tricks. You know what a fraction looks like, you give it to a CAS to simplify it. It's the same as understanding what the square root of a number is and what it is to calculate it.
As a mathematician who also works on a compiler (gcc), I can say that an understanding of calculus *IS* important when working on a compiler. I sometimes need asymptotic approximations of complexity, which require calculus. A compiler and its runtime libraries deal with floating point arithmetic, and analyzing the stability of these algorithms requires calculus.
Working on a compiler and figuring out the complexity or working on numerical analysis is completely different. You can go on hyperbolas that you need to learn psychology because there is a human computer interface to it. Not every person who works on the compiler needs to analyze the stability of numerical algorithms.
Physics requires a lot of abstract algebra. Look at quantum mechanics, quantum computing, etc. Group theory (both finite and infinite, the linear groups, Lie groups, etc.), field theory, linear algebra (tensor algebras, Lie algebras, etc.), homological algebra & algebraic topology, and much more are all a part of modern physics.
You're missing the point here. Does a physicist learn everything and then decide that he will now study quantum mechanics? He chooses what he wants to do and figure out what he needs to learn to understand his chosen field. You can argue physics needs every branch of mathematics, every branch of everything because you can connect the dots somehow or the other. But, that's what I'm totally against. People telling you that you need to learn this and this before you even attempt quantum mechanics; whereas it should be more like attempt quantum mechanics and then figure out what you need to solve the problem that's been bugging you.
I'm just saying that the whole idea of making you learn a set of things to prepare you for something is maybe flawed or the way we go about it flawed. It should be more oriented towards figuring out a solution to a problem and equipping the tools needed to solve that problem rather than rolling out one thing after another.
This kind of reminds me of a media outlet gone wrong. Or American Idol informing people of what good music is
corporate boy bands with music written by teams of people
Look at Motown. Anonymous songwriters, musicians to create music. Same formula as boy bands. Even if you look at musicians who are deemed real, their sound is so much affected by the studio and the producer of their music that it's impossible to see where the band starts and where the production team ends. The product isn't completely done by the band, the artwork is done by someone else, the recording is done by someone else, the mastering is done by someone else and who knows what studio help they get.
Just look at bands or artists that have fallen out of public favor because their music is outdated. Their quality seems to take a huge nose dive even though they are the same band. They just don't have top notch producers working on them that without it, they're not as polished and good.
First of all, for reasearch, you need a good research environment and community. You cannot do research in a void. You need the competition and support and all that.
Secondly, I think good research is done when it makes or breaks you. I mean, if you are comfortable and research doesn't really matter if you do well or fail, then it will slowly fall away. Plus, you can't do research part time. Hell, there was even a story here on SD few years ago about how family lives kills research.
For example, I regularly saw students take advanced calculus that had problems with basic algebra (like what is 1/a+1/b). Bright students at that - they simply were not taught in highschool properly.
I think the need for algebra skills will go away as the need to find the square root of a number by hand. CAS (Computer Algebra Systems) will completely eliminate the need to muck around with those algebriac fractions. CAS will take out the need for algebra as calculators did for long division and multipication.
I am sorry, but you are not going to appreciate modern research without knowing algebra so you can do it without thinking. You could get away with unsure calculus (by replacing it with computers and algebra - though this is not ideal either), but algebra is a must. And, to think of it, geometry would be nice too.
Maybe it's just me but I don't really subscribe to the solid foundation notion of learning. First of all, how solid is solid? There is so much material that applies to so many things. Where does algebra end? Do you end it with polynomials? Or group theory? If someone wants to work on discrete structures only - like compilers and databases, what's the point of force-feeding calculus to them? If someone wants to work in physics only, what's the point of force-feeding the finite group and field theory to them?
I think our brains were made to look for solutions to questions (my belief, no research material to support this); not store information so that when problems come along we have the solution handy. We make lots of little training exercises to simulate all the type of questions that may come along but it's little and really doesn't prepare to find answers on a bigger scale.
He said a departing aircraft so in the first minute of take-off.
I'm not an expert on guns or aircraft but wouldn't that change some of the statistics you mentioned? Coz' it seems like you were talking about airplanes that are flying by.
Maybe I'm wrong but I think advertising is more potent when you don't have a thorough knowledge of the product field.
Suppose you needed tampons for some reasons; you will always buy a familiar tampon - familiar because you saw it in a TV commercial. The logo will be sort of etched into your brain.
Now, if you were a specialist in tampons then you'd research and know which brand has the best quality and best price ratio and all that stuff so advertising would be less effective. You'd see beyong the happy girls and catchy song.
So, people who just decide they need an mp3 player will get an iPod. However, a person who's an expert in that field will evaluate all the features of the competitors and prices and make the judgement least based on advertising and most on the product features.
I know maybe you've never bought tampons. But, I think it's an extreme example. What about mattress brand or shoe brand? You might not care now but when you're in a rush and just want a matress or a shoe, you'll strongly gravitate towards the advertised product.
I don't know if that's what you meant. I don't think I'm arguing just for the sake of arguing (sometimes that happens:) )
But, I just think that the most advertised products or the most popular products aren't always the best products.
I disagree. For example, people buy Coke and Pepsi without even looking at any other brand. They are less expensive by a huge margin and don't taste all that significantly different.
It's amazing what advertising can do. In a marketplace with suppose 6 very similar products, one of the products can double it's price, advertise like crazy and sell twice as much as all the other combined. I've seen it happen.
Another extreme example, iPods. Other players have more features, lower prices but people will find things to justify the higher price of the iPod - they say the software is good, the clickwheel is nice etc etc. iPod has this huge market partly because they advertised like crazy and created this desire for the item beyond it's functional points.
Advertising works and it works very very very well.
I don't know why people even bother to say that advertising doesn't affect them. It absolutely does. Stop watching TV for a few months. Go to a movie theater and all the movies available seem like dumb random names.
Here's the problem: the new "business model" they talk about is that free music sometimes promotes something else (concerts, merchandise, or something new entirely). Ok, great. What if it's my music, and I don't want you to have it for free, regardless of how else it might "help" me? What if I've voluntarily signed on with a record label because I think that it's in my best interests (and no, I haven't been "brainwashed"), and that record label has a trade group that represents it, and what if the laws of my country support the protections of my creations?
I think this is tantamount to the situation where suppose you buy a house by the road where motorists continually break the posted speed limit. That makes it not safe for your children and pets and that people are breaking the law.
In some sense, laws are compromises and copyright was devised as a compromise.
And for those in the "copyright is bad on works that can be effortlessly copied in the digital realm", consider that "art for art's sake" isn't the end-all be-all argument, either. Have you ever considered that since economics isn't a zero-sum game, that there are millions of people who have indirectly benefited economically from the industries that have sprung up around, support, and are supported by, music, television, books, and movies?
I don't think economics guareentees that if you made money last week or last year, you will make money this week and this year. As an example, what if apple blight destroys all the apples in the world? What about all the people who depend on apples as their livelihood?
The guy is clearly dumb as a rock. Who the hell takes a stolen credit card, buys stuff with it, and then has the stuff delivered to his doorstep???!!? I don't know jack about stealing identities, but this guy's MO is just plain stoopid.
That is what he got caught and charged on.
But consider this scenario. Suppose he uses Paypal to send money through credit cards to a fake account linked to a bank account created using a fake driver's license and social security number. I don't think the banks actually have a way to check the validity of either of them.
Now, if he got your online banking info and a maybe copy of your check (not sure about this part, my bank just started not using full numbers just last month in online banking), you're screwed. It can be emptied and no chargebacks - nothing.
The main evil is those phishing e-mails. If you get enter your info in there, you're screwed big time.
I suppose it's easier to get credit cards by buying lists from hackers who have gotten into e-commerce sites but maybe more dangerous to use?
But, this is not even identity theft; the real evil starts when people start taking loans in your name. This happened at our local housing complex. The parents of students going to school would co-sign the lease agreements that required a SSN and address and all that. A clerk working there would copy the document and request whatever amount of financial aid she wanted and just cash it in. She got caught only because she was too stupid to cover her trail. I'm sure there are a lot of experts out there who do it perfectly and cover their trail perfectly.
BTW, as a disclaimer, this is just stuff I've noticed. I don't visit or know of those ID theft sites.
No one here disagrees that Tuangou is really a good idea. But due to the way market works, if this trend catches on nationwide, soon there will be a slowly increase in prices, so that the discount they ask for will result in the current prices of today. Buying outside a Tuangou will become quite more expensive and impracticable.
Please, correct me if I am wrong.
Isn't that the whole point of the weekly circulars in the US?
You're basically manipulating towards group buy there.
People will buy something on sale even if it's 10 cents off because the sales have those bright red tags below them with the price in BIG font. Otherwise, you have to find the sticker with the price on it and half the time it's not there. The price marker on the bottom is almost always of the wrong product and you have to search like crazy bending down.
H1B is a visa to hire foreign workers in skilled labor positions THAT A COMPANY CANNOT FIND LOCALLY.
The visa expires after 3 years. It has to be renewed again for a further 3 years at which point it cannot be renewed again. The only path is to file for a green card with the company hiring sponsoring the green card.
The individual obtaining the H1B does not explicitly have to say that they want to immigrate or not immigrate.
Companies are required to post the salary and the job requirements in the public areas of the company of a newly hired H1B worker for a certain amount of time.
Does anyone seriously disagree with me that Windows Media Player is a bloated piece of shit? Ever since like.. version... 6.4? MS has been trying to add every possible little thing to it
Does anyone also disagree that iTunes on windows is also bloated? The video aspect of iTunes comes from Quicktime which is needs pro version to even play full screen. Plus, quicktime itself is bloated on windows as well. Plus, they even have to make it look like a Mac application in windows further making it slower.
... they are trying to make it so that it is the ONLY program you will ever need to run on your PC... personally I am all for decentralization but I realise there are some users who want to open up one program and then start typing an e-mail and buy movie tickets within the same app (a few years off in WMP)...
What about iTunes? It does everything WMP does.
Maybe with your fast and expensive MacBook pro, everything runs like butter. But, there are a lot of instances when iTunes and iPod experience isn't all that wonderful.
However any music store that intends to compete with itms is going to have to support the iPod - there are just too many ipods aren't to try and do anything else.
iPods have a life of about 8-10 months. After that a new version of iPod comes out and makes the older ones un-cool and un-hip. There is no reason the iPod crowd won't upgrade their next iPod to a Microsoft product in the 8-10 months upgrade cycle.
The support guy who takes the initial customer phone call, and has to explain basic things like "identity theft" and "read your newspaper once in a while", and...
Paypal has little or non-existant telephone support. Have you ever tried calling Paypal?
The other support guy who now has to track down where the money went, and if possible put it back, and...
That's what a query in the system? They freeze the money and then let their fraud department take a look. Nothing special required.
The support guy who has to call the (possibly uncooperative) ISP, which may very well be in foreign country, and explain across a language barrier that one of their users/machines is part of a phishing scam, to get it shut down.
And, also have to hire a freelance ex-CIA mercenary to get the money back from the gangsters in the Russian mafia. Give me a break. Paypal doesn't do any of that.
That's just off the top of my head. Never mind the PR damage done, never mind the developer time invested in trying to prevent stuff... And what *could* PayPal do to make life easier? Seriously. There's only so much you can do before it's just down to a stupid user doing a stupid thing that other people have been shouting at them not to do for years. What then? Internet Driver's Licenses? (hmmm.... maybe not such a bad idea, if you automatically fail anyone who's ever signed up for AOL...:)
Driver's license? 25,000+ people die on the roads every year due to car accidents in the US. Passing a driver's test doesn't make you safe or immune from accidents or from doing stupid things.
Who's going to cover money lost on Paypal stories to create the bad PR? THere are already a billion and one such stories. Paypal is the only option and they're not competing with anyone else in the field.
Paypal's anti-fraud policy has been - if fraud or theft occurs, try and tell the user that he/she is stupid and cut off communication. Just experience 1 time when the seller in an ebay auction doesn't send you anything and see how hard it is to get your money back from Paypal.
PayPal tells never to click on a link to log in to their site. They say always type the url: https://www.paypal.com/
Paypal site is slow. Plus, it has nagware pages everytime you log in directly. Plus, if you want to find something a few days old, it's a pain since you have to to history and hit next and remember the amount and all, and did I mention the site is slow?
It's like saying when you contact AT&T, always call the main number and carefully select the options till you get to the technical assistance department instead of just directly calling the technical assistance department.
The bottom line is that Paypal doesn't lose anything from these sucessful phishing attacks and don't do anything to help make life easier.
Isn't this interesting, after all the noise the industry made about going after illegal music downloads, all in the name of helping the artists. They then turn around and pay the artist next to nothing for the iTunes download you are supposed to buy because you want to 'support the artist'.
Musicians will continue to "get the shaft" as long as they rely on majors.
The music industry isn't composed of just musicians and RIAA executives. There are the recording studios and enginners, the live venues and the people who work to pull off a show for thousands of people and so on.
Musicians are just hip people; they're not the most technically gifted nor are they most educated in music composition or anything like that. In order to make them a bamd or singer marketable there are thousands of people who make an honest living; from the studio engineer, producer to the artists and wardrobe people.
There is very little difference between a top 100 billboard band and a decent local band except millions of dollars being poured to make the signed band hip and marketable.
So I think it's no wonder RIAA has power to do whatever they want in this case. Without the RIAA, the band could never amount to anything.
Slashdot Mirror
True. And, it gets so eerily quiet who the person is not speaking.
I also find that on the cellphone a bit but esp. VOIP where it's dead quiet when no-one is speaking.
It's prudent to not send packets when no-one is speaking maybe on a squakbox on a videogame but on the phone is a different matter; esp. when you're paying by the minute!
What about the apothegm "evil will always prevail?"
Though it was the Flaming Lips who said it.
On the other hand, the corporation could go out of buisness or lose large market share by being not price competative enough and devastate communnities like in Detroit.
Read Kuhn. Science doesn't progress like that, adding complexity over what is there ad infinitum. It comes in short bursts of insight. There will always be low hanging fruits, just in a different tree.
A modern programmer doesn't need to know anything about computer hardware or operating systems. 99.99% of the time a programmer doesn't have to even consider context switching or assembly instructions and how it works. The theory of programming language probably takes out all notions of that so it can exist on it's own.
What is understanding algebra? Is it rules like you cannot add the numerators or demoninators without this happening or that happening or just ideas that fractions exist? Look at calc 2. Most of the integrations are just tricks; CAS completely eliminates the need to memorize tricks. You know what a fraction looks like, you give it to a CAS to simplify it. It's the same as understanding what the square root of a number is and what it is to calculate it.
Working on a compiler and figuring out the complexity or working on numerical analysis is completely different. You can go on hyperbolas that you need to learn psychology because there is a human computer interface to it. Not every person who works on the compiler needs to analyze the stability of numerical algorithms.
You're missing the point here. Does a physicist learn everything and then decide that he will now study quantum mechanics? He chooses what he wants to do and figure out what he needs to learn to understand his chosen field. You can argue physics needs every branch of mathematics, every branch of everything because you can connect the dots somehow or the other. But, that's what I'm totally against. People telling you that you need to learn this and this before you even attempt quantum mechanics; whereas it should be more like attempt quantum mechanics and then figure out what you need to solve the problem that's been bugging you.
I'm just saying that the whole idea of making you learn a set of things to prepare you for something is maybe flawed or the way we go about it flawed. It should be more oriented towards figuring out a solution to a problem and equipping the tools needed to solve that problem rather than rolling out one thing after another.
Look at Motown. Anonymous songwriters, musicians to create music. Same formula as boy bands. Even if you look at musicians who are deemed real, their sound is so much affected by the studio and the producer of their music that it's impossible to see where the band starts and where the production team ends. The product isn't completely done by the band, the artwork is done by someone else, the recording is done by someone else, the mastering is done by someone else and who knows what studio help they get.
Just look at bands or artists that have fallen out of public favor because their music is outdated. Their quality seems to take a huge nose dive even though they are the same band. They just don't have top notch producers working on them that without it, they're not as polished and good.
I don't think this will work.
First of all, for reasearch, you need a good research environment and community. You cannot do research in a void. You need the competition and support and all that.
Secondly, I think good research is done when it makes or breaks you. I mean, if you are comfortable and research doesn't really matter if you do well or fail, then it will slowly fall away. Plus, you can't do research part time. Hell, there was even a story here on SD few years ago about how family lives kills research.
I think the need for algebra skills will go away as the need to find the square root of a number by hand. CAS (Computer Algebra Systems) will completely eliminate the need to muck around with those algebriac fractions. CAS will take out the need for algebra as calculators did for long division and multipication.
Maybe it's just me but I don't really subscribe to the solid foundation notion of learning. First of all, how solid is solid? There is so much material that applies to so many things. Where does algebra end? Do you end it with polynomials? Or group theory? If someone wants to work on discrete structures only - like compilers and databases, what's the point of force-feeding calculus to them? If someone wants to work in physics only, what's the point of force-feeding the finite group and field theory to them?
I think our brains were made to look for solutions to questions (my belief, no research material to support this); not store information so that when problems come along we have the solution handy. We make lots of little training exercises to simulate all the type of questions that may come along but it's little and really doesn't prepare to find answers on a bigger scale.
Kevlar on laptops. I can imagine a conversation going like this -
Person 1 Hey, this laptop is bulletproof.
Person 2 Yeah, of course. It's got linux on it.
Person 1 No, I mean literally bulletproof. It's got kevlar.
Person 2 YOu mean if I shoot a bullet at you, you can block the bullet with your laptop.
Person 1 Yep. (satisfied grin)
http://www.thepiratebay.org/
The bad side effect would be that you'd start feeling that people don't make enough TV shows.
He said a departing aircraft so in the first minute of take-off.
I'm not an expert on guns or aircraft but wouldn't that change some of the statistics you mentioned? Coz' it seems like you were talking about airplanes that are flying by.
Oh come on, this is exciting new.
The google founders are buying a party plane! I mean, these are the guys who we are told live in apartments and drive hybrid cars!
It makes me a little happier inside since even the big rich founders of Google succumb to the extragavance of wealth.
Maybe I'm wrong but I think advertising is more potent when you don't have a thorough knowledge of the product field.
Suppose you needed tampons for some reasons; you will always buy a familiar tampon - familiar because you saw it in a TV commercial. The logo will be sort of etched into your brain.
Now, if you were a specialist in tampons then you'd research and know which brand has the best quality and best price ratio and all that stuff so advertising would be less effective. You'd see beyong the happy girls and catchy song.
So, people who just decide they need an mp3 player will get an iPod. However, a person who's an expert in that field will evaluate all the features of the competitors and prices and make the judgement least based on advertising and most on the product features.
I know maybe you've never bought tampons. But, I think it's an extreme example. What about mattress brand or shoe brand? You might not care now but when you're in a rush and just want a matress or a shoe, you'll strongly gravitate towards the advertised product.
I don't know if that's what you meant. I don't think I'm arguing just for the sake of arguing (sometimes that happens :) )
But, I just think that the most advertised products or the most popular products aren't always the best products.
I disagree. For example, people buy Coke and Pepsi without even looking at any other brand. They are less expensive by a huge margin and don't taste all that significantly different.
It's amazing what advertising can do. In a marketplace with suppose 6 very similar products, one of the products can double it's price, advertise like crazy and sell twice as much as all the other combined. I've seen it happen.
Another extreme example, iPods. Other players have more features, lower prices but people will find things to justify the higher price of the iPod - they say the software is good, the clickwheel is nice etc etc. iPod has this huge market partly because they advertised like crazy and created this desire for the item beyond it's functional points.
Advertising works and it works very very very well.
I don't know why people even bother to say that advertising doesn't affect them. It absolutely does. Stop watching TV for a few months. Go to a movie theater and all the movies available seem like dumb random names.
I think this is tantamount to the situation where suppose you buy a house by the road where motorists continually break the posted speed limit. That makes it not safe for your children and pets and that people are breaking the law.
In some sense, laws are compromises and copyright was devised as a compromise.
I don't think economics guareentees that if you made money last week or last year, you will make money this week and this year. As an example, what if apple blight destroys all the apples in the world? What about all the people who depend on apples as their livelihood?
That is what he got caught and charged on.
But consider this scenario. Suppose he uses Paypal to send money through credit cards to a fake account linked to a bank account created using a fake driver's license and social security number. I don't think the banks actually have a way to check the validity of either of them.
Now, if he got your online banking info and a maybe copy of your check (not sure about this part, my bank just started not using full numbers just last month in online banking), you're screwed. It can be emptied and no chargebacks - nothing.
The main evil is those phishing e-mails. If you get enter your info in there, you're screwed big time.
I suppose it's easier to get credit cards by buying lists from hackers who have gotten into e-commerce sites but maybe more dangerous to use?
But, this is not even identity theft; the real evil starts when people start taking loans in your name. This happened at our local housing complex. The parents of students going to school would co-sign the lease agreements that required a SSN and address and all that. A clerk working there would copy the document and request whatever amount of financial aid she wanted and just cash it in. She got caught only because she was too stupid to cover her trail. I'm sure there are a lot of experts out there who do it perfectly and cover their trail perfectly.
BTW, as a disclaimer, this is just stuff I've noticed. I don't visit or know of those ID theft sites.
Isn't that the whole point of the weekly circulars in the US?
You're basically manipulating towards group buy there.
People will buy something on sale even if it's 10 cents off because the sales have those bright red tags below them with the price in BIG font. Otherwise, you have to find the sticker with the price on it and half the time it's not there. The price marker on the bottom is almost always of the wrong product and you have to search like crazy bending down.
The 1,9% and $0,30 rate for Paypal is if you recieve more than $100,000 to your account and you have a merchant account!
Normally, it's 2.9% + $0.30 USD. https://www.paypal.com/cgi-bin/webscr?cmd=_display -receiving-fees-outside
H1B is a visa to hire foreign workers in skilled labor positions THAT A COMPANY CANNOT FIND LOCALLY.
The visa expires after 3 years. It has to be renewed again for a further 3 years at which point it cannot be renewed again. The only path is to file for a green card with the company hiring sponsoring the green card.
The individual obtaining the H1B does not explicitly have to say that they want to immigrate or not immigrate.
Companies are required to post the salary and the job requirements in the public areas of the company of a newly hired H1B worker for a certain amount of time.
Technically, it's both immigrant and non-immigrant visa.
Student visas are non-immigrant and there are no path to becoming a US citizen with a student visa.
However, there is a clear path to a green card from the H1B visa.
Does anyone also disagree that iTunes on windows is also bloated? The video aspect of iTunes comes from Quicktime which is needs pro version to even play full screen. Plus, quicktime itself is bloated on windows as well. Plus, they even have to make it look like a Mac application in windows further making it slower.
What about iTunes? It does everything WMP does.
Maybe with your fast and expensive MacBook pro, everything runs like butter. But, there are a lot of instances when iTunes and iPod experience isn't all that wonderful.
iPods have a life of about 8-10 months. After that a new version of iPod comes out and makes the older ones un-cool and un-hip. There is no reason the iPod crowd won't upgrade their next iPod to a Microsoft product in the 8-10 months upgrade cycle.
Paypal has little or non-existant telephone support. Have you ever tried calling Paypal?
That's what a query in the system? They freeze the money and then let their fraud department take a look. Nothing special required.
And, also have to hire a freelance ex-CIA mercenary to get the money back from the gangsters in the Russian mafia. Give me a break. Paypal doesn't do any of that.
Driver's license? 25,000+ people die on the roads every year due to car accidents in the US. Passing a driver's test doesn't make you safe or immune from accidents or from doing stupid things.
Who's going to cover money lost on Paypal stories to create the bad PR? THere are already a billion and one such stories. Paypal is the only option and they're not competing with anyone else in the field.
Paypal's anti-fraud policy has been - if fraud or theft occurs, try and tell the user that he/she is stupid and cut off communication. Just experience 1 time when the seller in an ebay auction doesn't send you anything and see how hard it is to get your money back from Paypal.
Paypal site is slow. Plus, it has nagware pages everytime you log in directly. Plus, if you want to find something a few days old, it's a pain since you have to to history and hit next and remember the amount and all, and did I mention the site is slow?
It's like saying when you contact AT&T, always call the main number and carefully select the options till you get to the technical assistance department instead of just directly calling the technical assistance department.
The bottom line is that Paypal doesn't lose anything from these sucessful phishing attacks and don't do anything to help make life easier.
The music industry isn't composed of just musicians and RIAA executives. There are the recording studios and enginners, the live venues and the people who work to pull off a show for thousands of people and so on.
Musicians are just hip people; they're not the most technically gifted nor are they most educated in music composition or anything like that. In order to make them a bamd or singer marketable there are thousands of people who make an honest living; from the studio engineer, producer to the artists and wardrobe people.
There is very little difference between a top 100 billboard band and a decent local band except millions of dollars being poured to make the signed band hip and marketable.
So I think it's no wonder RIAA has power to do whatever they want in this case. Without the RIAA, the band could never amount to anything.