Re:I refer you to a very old post I wrote
on
Drafting GPL3
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· Score: 1
Because of the license, the Software has gained Freedom from being exploited in a commercial sense. It is Free from the possibility of being exploited for personal gain of a company.
I think you're confusing the GPL with CC-NC. The GPL has nothing to do with commercial exploitation or "personal gain of a company". Even then, though, exploiting for commercial purposes or "personal gain of a company" is fine, so long as that exploitation involves use, not copying or distribution.
I dunno, you handled the reasons people previously wouldn't buy a Mac, except for the most obvious one that they just plain cost more. But you haven't really given any reason why someone would buy a Mac. As you said, there are relatively few applications that users run, and Windows runs all of them just fine.
I really don't think most users care about the OS all that much. Yes, there are a few necessities, it has to run their apps, their games, render their websites correctly (you didn't mention it, but fortunately the vast majority of websites today don't require IE, though there are a few that still do). But once you get past all that, people really don't care. And it's not like we're talking about Linux here, we're talking about OS X, and Apple will never be able to compete with Windows (or Dell) on price.
The best Apple could do with regard to price is switch to completely generic hardware, but even then, they'd be forced to charge much more than Microsoft - they just don't have the volume to compete, and software is an industry where nearly the entire cost of production is start-up costs. Eliminate the hardware profits, and Apple would already be required to charge 2-5 times as much as Microsoft or more. If Microsoft saw a threat and decided to start a price war they could probably charge 1/20th to 1/50th the price of Apple and still remain profitable. That's why Apple doesn't, and shouldn't, even can't, become a purely software company. It's why OS X can never be anything more than a luxury operating system.
Maybe once the stock comes crashing back to reasonable levels. But considering Apple makes less than 1/10 as much in net income compared to Intel, and that they are currently going through a transition period which nearly every analyst agrees is going to be costly, I wouldn't touch them with a ten-foot pole at today's valuation (and the larger merger company usually has to overvalue the company in order for a merger to go through). Go figure, I guess that's why I own INTC, and don't own AAPL. And why I'd be sure to vote my shares against the merger if management ever actually brought such a deal to the table.
What would Microsoft care? And even if they did care, what could Microsoft do about it? It seems to me the majority of Microsoft's interaction with Intel from a revenue standpoint is filtered through the OEMs. That said, that's who Intel would need to worry about pissing off. Not Microsoft, but Dell (who is arguably a more direct competitor of Apple anyway).
Apple may (or may not) need them, but Intel doesn't need them.
Once Apple makes the switch to x86 they won't really be reliant on Intel, as they could quite easily switch to AMD if they needed to. As for Intel not needing Apple, this is certainly true. Apple will potentially give Intel a 5-10% revenue boost if they switch over fully (and don't lose too many customers), but that's not significant enough for Intel to dillute their stock to the tune of tens of billions of dollars just to keep that revenue stream intact.
Forget their relationship with Microsoft, it would make no sense from a business standpoint. Apple is a niche player in a completely different market from Intel. The synergies would be minimal, so basically Intel would be diluting its stock by 31 billion dollars to rescue a company which accounts for about 2% of the market.
You've obviously never dealt with having to clean up your credit report.
Incorrect.
Despite the laws, it is a "you are guilty until proven innocent" type ordeal. Not until you learn the laws that are on your side, anyway... and the CC companies sure don't volunteer them.
Well, I've already learned that the lawas are on my side, so I guess I don't have to worry about that.
Between phone calls, ordering reports (for free), letter writing and recordkeeping, I spent over 40 hours taking care of a credit card theft from years ago. Do I get reimbursed for my time? heck no.
You have my sympathy, but that doesn't mean the same thing would happen to someone who regularly checks their credit report and knows the law.
Bottom line: If someone is loose with my information, they can end up costing me a lot of time.
Maybe so, but that doesn't change my statement, which was about me, not about you.
There should be HUGE penalties for companies who let it fall into unauthorized hands.
No, there should be HUGE penalties for companies that refuse to remove false information from your credit report when informed that the information is false. Protecting information is difficult to impossible. Stopping people from from spreading false statements about other people is much simpler by comparison.
If you post it, it becomes YOUR problem, not the credit card company's.
Well yeah, exactly.
So, bottom line: You realize your original statement is BS, and don't want to admit it.
No, not at all. My original statement was that I don't care if someone else leaks my social security number/credit card number/etc. This doesn't imply that I'm going to leak this information myself. As you've said yourself, the situation would be completely different if I leaked the information myself.
(I could probably get away with leaking my SSN without any personal liability, but I don't really want my SSN tied to my Slashdot account.)
Since you don't care if that information is leaked, you won't mind posting on slashdot, will you?
I wouldn't mind, but I won't do it, because it might hurt other people, namely, the credit card companies. If the information was leaked by a third party, I'd be quite happy, as it'd be one less piece of information that I have to worry about.
That "bunch of numbers" just happens to be social security numbers, account history, and loan information, of not only current, but former customers, and they just happen to be included with those customer's names. You might as well just mail your personal information to the identity theives.
Well, no, if I mailed it to identity theives, then I'd be to blame.
If not outrage, as customers, there should at least be call for more stringent rules.
In my opinion the way to solve this is with fewer rules, not more stringent ones. If everyone's credit report was public information, then there'd be nothing of value for the "identity theives" to get.
Maybe I'm dead wrong, but I doubt you'd feel so lenient towards these places if you had to deal with having your identity stolen from underneath you.
I'm not even sure what that means. If my identity was stolen, does that mean I'd be anonymous from then on? Sounds almost like a good thing.
The only way to solve this is to attach a cost to personal data.
Actually it'd be much easier to eliminate the value of personal data. Publish everyone's social security number in the phone book. Then thieves won't gain anything by knowing someone's social security number.
These are the people that would pay through the nose for armoured car to truck their cash around, but would send huge amount of customer information through UPS.
Go figure. Cash is more valuable than customer information.
If we create legistlation that makes losing customer's personal information a criminal offense, then maybe these giant megalomerates will stop collecting (and abusing) it.
Yeah, maybe we can go back to the barter system. That'll solve all our problems.
I especially love this line of thinking: if the banks lose my social security number, then I might wind up with bad credit which will make it difficult for me to get a loan. Therefore, let's make it illegal for banks to ask me for my social security number in the first place, this way it's difficult for everyone to get a loan.
Laws need to be passed that will make this type of carelessness illegal and/or compensate these customers for losing their info.
There are already laws to compensate people for losing their info, if those people actually suffer any damages. Otherwise, if no one is actually harmed by the information leak, why should anyone have to pay?
And on another note, why aren't more consumers, in this day of rampant identity theft, completely outraged by these events.
Personally I'm not outraged because it just doesn't matter. If I wanted some information to be kept strictly confidential, I wouldn't tell Citibank in the first place. It's just a bunch of numbers, after all.
This will affect nearly nothing (because most people won't hear about it and many who do won't care), and business will go on as usual. If the customers actually took a stand, maybe we'd see some improvement.
If it affects nearly nothing, why should we take a stand?
Personally I assume all the information known by my credit card company is already public information anyway. Why should I care if they actually leak that information?
This was one of those rumors that seemed too implausible to ever happen, but look at that -- it did!
The investment world pretty much knew this time it was going to actually be true. Just look at the INTC and AAPL stocks, they were basically unaffected by the "news". INTC is up over 16% since May. Yes, the story has come out over and over again, but I for had my money on the fact that it was going to actually happen this time.
I'm more than certain as soon as Apple starts selling Mac mini x86, or even before, there will be people who hack OS X and make it run on pretty much all the x86 boxes.
Sure, but so what? The vast majority of people don't download their operating system using some P2P software, they use whatever happens to come with their computer. That's why Microsoft is one of the few successful consumer software companies, people generally don't pirate OSes, it's too damn hard.
This is an invention. It is innovative, it solves a real problem, provides real value, and prior to this, did not exist. This is the kind of work that deserves patent protection.
Why? Do you think no one would have come up with the idea if it weren't for the fact that they could get a patent?
I don't think anything deserves a patent. If there's a problem that's really hard to solve, the people who want the solution can get together and offer a reward to whoever solves it.
Testing if it compiles on a certain platform is a test, yes. It's by no means the sole test which is sufficient to ship a product, but I'd definitely call it a test.
Slashdot Mirror
Because of the license, the Software has gained Freedom from being exploited in a commercial sense. It is Free from the possibility of being exploited for personal gain of a company.
I think you're confusing the GPL with CC-NC. The GPL has nothing to do with commercial exploitation or "personal gain of a company". Even then, though, exploiting for commercial purposes or "personal gain of a company" is fine, so long as that exploitation involves use, not copying or distribution.
I dunno, you handled the reasons people previously wouldn't buy a Mac, except for the most obvious one that they just plain cost more. But you haven't really given any reason why someone would buy a Mac. As you said, there are relatively few applications that users run, and Windows runs all of them just fine.
I really don't think most users care about the OS all that much. Yes, there are a few necessities, it has to run their apps, their games, render their websites correctly (you didn't mention it, but fortunately the vast majority of websites today don't require IE, though there are a few that still do). But once you get past all that, people really don't care. And it's not like we're talking about Linux here, we're talking about OS X, and Apple will never be able to compete with Windows (or Dell) on price.
The best Apple could do with regard to price is switch to completely generic hardware, but even then, they'd be forced to charge much more than Microsoft - they just don't have the volume to compete, and software is an industry where nearly the entire cost of production is start-up costs. Eliminate the hardware profits, and Apple would already be required to charge 2-5 times as much as Microsoft or more. If Microsoft saw a threat and decided to start a price war they could probably charge 1/20th to 1/50th the price of Apple and still remain profitable. That's why Apple doesn't, and shouldn't, even can't, become a purely software company. It's why OS X can never be anything more than a luxury operating system.
Maybe once the stock comes crashing back to reasonable levels. But considering Apple makes less than 1/10 as much in net income compared to Intel, and that they are currently going through a transition period which nearly every analyst agrees is going to be costly, I wouldn't touch them with a ten-foot pole at today's valuation (and the larger merger company usually has to overvalue the company in order for a merger to go through). Go figure, I guess that's why I own INTC, and don't own AAPL. And why I'd be sure to vote my shares against the merger if management ever actually brought such a deal to the table.
Also, wouldn't this alienate Microsoft?
What would Microsoft care? And even if they did care, what could Microsoft do about it? It seems to me the majority of Microsoft's interaction with Intel from a revenue standpoint is filtered through the OEMs. That said, that's who Intel would need to worry about pissing off. Not Microsoft, but Dell (who is arguably a more direct competitor of Apple anyway).
Apple may (or may not) need them, but Intel doesn't need them.
Once Apple makes the switch to x86 they won't really be reliant on Intel, as they could quite easily switch to AMD if they needed to. As for Intel not needing Apple, this is certainly true. Apple will potentially give Intel a 5-10% revenue boost if they switch over fully (and don't lose too many customers), but that's not significant enough for Intel to dillute their stock to the tune of tens of billions of dollars just to keep that revenue stream intact.
Forget their relationship with Microsoft, it would make no sense from a business standpoint. Apple is a niche player in a completely different market from Intel. The synergies would be minimal, so basically Intel would be diluting its stock by 31 billion dollars to rescue a company which accounts for about 2% of the market.
You've obviously never dealt with having to clean up your credit report.
Incorrect.
Despite the laws, it is a "you are guilty until proven innocent" type ordeal. Not until you learn the laws that are on your side, anyway... and the CC companies sure don't volunteer them.
Well, I've already learned that the lawas are on my side, so I guess I don't have to worry about that.
Between phone calls, ordering reports (for free), letter writing and recordkeeping, I spent over 40 hours taking care of a credit card theft from years ago. Do I get reimbursed for my time? heck no.
You have my sympathy, but that doesn't mean the same thing would happen to someone who regularly checks their credit report and knows the law.
Bottom line: If someone is loose with my information, they can end up costing me a lot of time.
Maybe so, but that doesn't change my statement, which was about me, not about you.
There should be HUGE penalties for companies who let it fall into unauthorized hands.
No, there should be HUGE penalties for companies that refuse to remove false information from your credit report when informed that the information is false. Protecting information is difficult to impossible. Stopping people from from spreading false statements about other people is much simpler by comparison.
If you post it, it becomes YOUR problem, not the credit card company's.
Well yeah, exactly.
So, bottom line: You realize your original statement is BS, and don't want to admit it.
No, not at all. My original statement was that I don't care if someone else leaks my social security number/credit card number/etc. This doesn't imply that I'm going to leak this information myself. As you've said yourself, the situation would be completely different if I leaked the information myself.
(I could probably get away with leaking my SSN without any personal liability, but I don't really want my SSN tied to my Slashdot account.)
Since you don't care if that information is leaked, you won't mind posting on slashdot, will you?
I wouldn't mind, but I won't do it, because it might hurt other people, namely, the credit card companies. If the information was leaked by a third party, I'd be quite happy, as it'd be one less piece of information that I have to worry about.
That "bunch of numbers" just happens to be social security numbers, account history, and loan information, of not only current, but former customers, and they just happen to be included with those customer's names. You might as well just mail your personal information to the identity theives.
Well, no, if I mailed it to identity theives, then I'd be to blame.
If not outrage, as customers, there should at least be call for more stringent rules.
In my opinion the way to solve this is with fewer rules, not more stringent ones. If everyone's credit report was public information, then there'd be nothing of value for the "identity theives" to get.
Maybe I'm dead wrong, but I doubt you'd feel so lenient towards these places if you had to deal with having your identity stolen from underneath you.
I'm not even sure what that means. If my identity was stolen, does that mean I'd be anonymous from then on? Sounds almost like a good thing.
The only way to solve this is to attach a cost to personal data.
Actually it'd be much easier to eliminate the value of personal data. Publish everyone's social security number in the phone book. Then thieves won't gain anything by knowing someone's social security number.
These are the people that would pay through the nose for armoured car to truck their cash around, but would send huge amount of customer information through UPS.
Go figure. Cash is more valuable than customer information.
If we create legistlation that makes losing customer's personal information a criminal offense, then maybe these giant megalomerates will stop collecting (and abusing) it.
Yeah, maybe we can go back to the barter system. That'll solve all our problems.
I especially love this line of thinking: if the banks lose my social security number, then I might wind up with bad credit which will make it difficult for me to get a loan. Therefore, let's make it illegal for banks to ask me for my social security number in the first place, this way it's difficult for everyone to get a loan.
Well, there is such a thing as criminal negligence. Of course, I think it's pretty ridiculous to put someone in jail because they lost a number.
Laws need to be passed that will make this type of carelessness illegal and/or compensate these customers for losing their info.
There are already laws to compensate people for losing their info, if those people actually suffer any damages. Otherwise, if no one is actually harmed by the information leak, why should anyone have to pay?
And on another note, why aren't more consumers, in this day of rampant identity theft, completely outraged by these events.
Personally I'm not outraged because it just doesn't matter. If I wanted some information to be kept strictly confidential, I wouldn't tell Citibank in the first place. It's just a bunch of numbers, after all.
This will affect nearly nothing (because most people won't hear about it and many who do won't care), and business will go on as usual. If the customers actually took a stand, maybe we'd see some improvement.
If it affects nearly nothing, why should we take a stand?
Personally I assume all the information known by my credit card company is already public information anyway. Why should I care if they actually leak that information?
Sounds great. I'd like to live in Silicone Valley anyway. The women there probably have big boobs.
This was one of those rumors that seemed too implausible to ever happen, but look at that -- it did!
The investment world pretty much knew this time it was going to actually be true. Just look at the INTC and AAPL stocks, they were basically unaffected by the "news". INTC is up over 16% since May. Yes, the story has come out over and over again, but I for had my money on the fact that it was going to actually happen this time.
who is going to pay apple more for a machine with the exact same specs and 98% of the same components as a cheep ass dell.
Probably the same people who pay apple more for a machine with worse specs and 98% of the same components as a cheep [sic] ass dell.
I'm more than certain as soon as Apple starts selling Mac mini x86, or even before, there will be people who hack OS X and make it run on pretty much all the x86 boxes.
Sure, but so what? The vast majority of people don't download their operating system using some P2P software, they use whatever happens to come with their computer. That's why Microsoft is one of the few successful consumer software companies, people generally don't pirate OSes, it's too damn hard.
More importantly, they employ lawyers.
This is an invention. It is innovative, it solves a real problem, provides real value, and prior to this, did not exist. This is the kind of work that deserves patent protection.
Why? Do you think no one would have come up with the idea if it weren't for the fact that they could get a patent?
I don't think anything deserves a patent. If there's a problem that's really hard to solve, the people who want the solution can get together and offer a reward to whoever solves it.
It is never a problem to get back to the surface.
I think his question was whether or not you could get back to the surface without dying shortly thereafter.
UPS drivers make $49,691 starting salary? That's it, I'm becoming a UPS driver.
Because if the federal law supersedes the state law, companies could avoid state lawsuits altogether.
I seriously doubt the Supreme Court is going to let federal law supercede state negligence tort law any time soon.
If this law really put a hurt on companies, they'd be screaming and it would quietly die in committee.
I would sure hope so. The purpose of laws isn't to hurt companies.
Testing if it compiles on a certain platform is a test, yes. It's by no means the sole test which is sufficient to ship a product, but I'd definitely call it a test.