I don't think so. I think it is about the requirements and what is acceptable to meet them (as I said.) It is not the actual requirements. You can read the foot notes to find out what expressly they're addressing, but good luck slogging through that stuff. The link I gave was 14 pages of mind numbing drudgery, but here's the (first four) footnotes that pretty well cover where to find the actual requirements:
1 Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System, Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation, National Credit
Union Administration, Office of the Comptroller of the Currency, and Office of Thrift Supervision.
2 Customer information means any record containing nonpublic personal information as defined in the
Interagency Guidelines Establishing Information Security Standards at section I.C.2. 12 CFR Part 30, app. B
(OCC); 12 CFR Part 208, app. D-2 and Part 225, app. F (FRB); 12 CFR Part 364, app. B (FDIC); 12 CFR Part
570, app. B (OTS); and 12 CFR Part 748, app. A (NCUA).
3 The Interagency Guidelines Establishing Information Security Standards that implement section 501(b) of the
Gramm–Leach–Bliley Act, 15 USC 6801, require banks and savings associations to safeguard the information of
persons who obtain or have obtained a financial product or service to be used primarily for personal, family or
household purposes, with whom the institution has a continuing relationship. Credit unions are subject to a
similar rule.
4 The regulations implementing section 326 of the USA PATRIOT Act, 31 USC 5318(l), require banks, savings
associations and credit unions to verify the identity of customers opening new accounts. See 31 CFR 103.121; 12
CFR 21.21 (OCC); 12 CFR 563.177 (OTS); 12 CFR 326.8 (FDIC); 12 CFR 208.63 (state member banks), 12
CFR 211.5(m) (Edge or agreement corporation or any branch or subsidiary thereof), 12 CFR 211.24(j) (uninsured
branch, an agency, or a representative office of a foreign financial institution operating in the United States
(FRB); and 12 CFR Part 748.2 (NCUA).
When you're preparing to make sure your company stays in business, links like the one I referenced are what you go by. You then ask your lawyers to see if what you are planning and doing meet the actual requirements. (Which is a lot of what lawyers get paid for and at least part of the reason I am not a lawyer.) When all is in place and you're grilled by examiners/auditors, you have references to back up your plan and the opinions of actual lawyers to refer them to. Do feel free to read through it on your own if you like of course. I've spent some time carefully researching some of the laws that are applicable to managing financial transactions and don't envy your next couple weeks if you decide to go that route. Of course you should also note that this is particularly focused on household rather than business relationships which I inferred to be the relationship in question by the poster I was replying to.
I don't think it explicitly requires RSA keys, but it does speak of multi-factor authentictation. RSA is often a reference to a specific company. The government guidelines would be rightly questionable if they endorsed a specific company as the potential solution. However, RSA the company does do a job of (possibly) providing multi-factor authentication.
Generally it works like this: The user is prompted for a username which is then used to check credential information and displays a particular image to the user (previously selected by the user) before the password is entered. That ensures that the user is prompted to enter information, and then is given a chance to recognize or back out of a transaction based on their recognition of their custom image before a password is entered. This provides positive verification in addition to the password requirement. The second factor is based on the device in use by the user where a cookie has been stored if the user has displayed the ability to add additional layers of known information, generally the answers to questions the user has selected and answered previously.
This layered authentication process, username, positive verification, device validation, conditional challenges, is generally considered consistent with the requirement for multiple factors of authentication. I'm not sure that it meets the goals of the guidlines published by the FFIEC, but it does provide layers of authentication which is generally all a financial instutition can implement without running afoul of patents (a whole separate painful issue) which is generally acceptable in a competitive market. Instutitions which require a second channel of authentication, such as a phone number communication, key fob, remote key or other device generally are seen as unnecessarily annoying by customers. Essentially the problem boils down to a compromise between convenience demanded by end users vs security demanded by legislative guidelines. As always, the real problem is the users who don't actually want the hassle of a more secure system.
This says nothing about the security compromises in financial instutitions where a maximum number of password characters defies sanity coupled with a limitation of potential characters. That's just stupid. Also common.
A representative for the U.S. State Department told Viteri [the journalist writing the story] it is illegal to travel to Iran with laptops or satellite cellphones without U.S. authorization.
The seller may have misunderstood the situation, but it is understandable since the buyer stated that she was from Iran. Note that the seller didn't ask where the buyer was from; she volunteered that information unprompted.
The seller may have incorrectly inferred that the buyer was intending to travel to Iran with it, which is why Apple could change the restriction based on learning the buyer was a US citizen and lives in the US from the news coverage. The fact that the buyer stated to the journalist that she intended to do something illegal with it adds a layer of complexity to the situation. It makes me wonder if Apple needs to get their lawyers to review their policy before they go about advising customers how to get around the law.
Are you suggesting that it should be that way? I think there is a good case to be made that law enforcement should be left to the people our society employs in that capacity. I skimmed your homepage and gather that's a consistent stand for you to take.
If that's all you were trying to say, then it doesn't add much to the conversation since it has been said before and many times and in many ways. Most of the posters had more passion or more information to add to the discussion. In most of your 31 posts in fact, you had more to add.
I'd hope you've read enough of the comments here to realize there is at least a common belief that selling something comes with an obligation to refuse sales when you have knowledge the buyer intends to break the law. I'm going to assume that with 31 posts, you know that, so your stance is that the US policy is wrong or that Apple is not following it correctly.
For background, lets take a couple quotes from the featured articles:
"[A store clerk heard them talking and asked what language they were speaking] When we said 'Farsi, I'm from Iran,' he said, 'I just can't sell this to you. Our countries have bad relations,'" Sabet said. The employee showed them Apple's corporate policy on export sales...
and then this:
A representative for the U.S. State Department told Viteri [the journalist writing the story] it is illegal to travel to Iran with laptops or satellite cellphones without U.S. authorization.
In a related but not featured article, we see:
State Department representative told WSBTV it's illegal to travel with the electronics to Iran without federal permission
Consider that the sales clerk had reason to believe from the statement of the buyer that the buyer was a citizen of Iran. The sales clerk could reasonably assume that somebody that said they were from Iran would take the purchase with them back to Iran when they returned to where they said they were from. The fact that the buyer intended to do something that was illegal with it that didn't match the incorrect assumption of the seller just clouds the issue.
I think the best approach by Apple would be to modify their policy to include a list of questions to be asked if they were refusing a sale, but I think you've taken this as a little more personal than it was intended. The clerk was following US policy based on what he understood from what the buyer told him.
I guess I missed that part... maybe it depends on what you define as 'netwar'
that doesn't mean you can encourage people to hack my website,
Oh, that. Well, I'm pretty sure he didn't do that so I don't see the relevance.
to brute force my WordPress installation so I have to change my password.
Seriously? That's a terrible example of hacking. I might disagree with the term use generally because it ignores the honorable history of the word, but I can accept modern usage. That's not hacking by either definition. Seriously, shouldn't you use a good password anyway?
You can't encourage people to violate my trademark
Has anyone done this? Now that I think of it, actually he could, couldn't he? I don't think it would be illegal to encourage other people to take that action.
and violate my twitter name
Somebody violated your twitter? Shocking! Outrageous! Somewhat humorous!
and associate me with incompetence with stupidity, and douchebaggery.
Well, technically that's freedom of speech. There are some limits on it but I'm pretty sure you can call someone stupid, incompetent and a douchebag. Lets try it: You, Charles Carreon, are a stupid and incompetent douchebag.
Note that I didn't say anything about bravery. I think it takes an amazing level of bravery to set yourself up as the target instead of your client for the rage of a good old fashioned flame war. Bravery and stupidity are not exclusive, in fact, I think they may have a very open relationship. (I do see that there is a tempting reference there to Kodiak romance, but I'm not quite willing to make it.)
Use Java for the server coding and Dart for the client coding. JSP is an obvious choice if you haven't already considered it. Dart is going to feel very familiar but compiles to JavaScript so you can build in an enviornment you are already comfortable in and still avoid the pitfalls of client side Java.
Personally, I'd like to see you do your project to also work as a plug-in for Vosao. While I am not a fan of Java, it's still what I'm using for my CMS on Google AppEngine because it's good at what I care about. That's kind of key to the advice I'm giving you. Of all the programming languages I've used, and there are several, I'm least fond of Java but what matters is the quality of the result. You'll do your best work if you spend your time on the project instead of on learning new tools.
iGoogle is fine as a portal and I like having my Facebook friends statuses in it via RSS, recent email plus my daily news interests, but Google+ has status information, tracking of associates, share controls, auto-backup of my pictures and sites with full blown CMS.
A watch, a computer and a phone are tools. There are no watches, phones or computers that are ideal for all circumstances. The best advice is to decide what you really need for the circumstances you're in and get the right tools for those circumstances. With the right choices and multiple tools, you will be happy with your tools.
For me, the right choices are a reasonably modern desktop, an older computer, a laptop, a decent Android smart phone, a nearly dumb small cheap phone, a rugged mixed digital and analog watch with lots of functions and a classy watch that just tells time.
My desktop has large dual monitors and I use an older computer as a router, they do my real geek work. When I'm designing sites, writing software or manipulating images, I need the screen real estate and full keyboard and mouse. If I'm working on router stuff, I want a variety of programming languages available and I want a variety of software that isn't easy to shove on a small single purpose device, but I work on it from my regular desktop so screen space isn't an issue.
I have an inexpensive laptop for any significant work somewhere besides home. It doesn't have the same screenspace, but I have the resources of my other computers when I need them and enough screen space to do most things, if perhaps not so comfortably. It does sling over my sholder and isn't terrible to set up in a coffee shop as the important upsides. There are few things I can do with it that I couldn't on my Android brick, but the physical keyboard, touchpad and larger screen make it a lot more comfortable for serious tasks.
I have an HTC Inspire. (It's an Android phone with a large touchscreen, decent processor, "4G" and metal case that feels like holding a thin slice of brick.) It does all my geek stuff that isn't labor intensive, with a mix of fun and work for my normal daily routines. It has apps for games, a compass, a star map, email, web browsing, navigation, music and light reading. With Google Voice, I am not tied to that device alone and can pick up calls on my desk phone or recreation phone or house phones of family when I prefer those.
When I'm doing something recreational, I have a cheap tiny non-android phone that is rugged and comfortable to carry even in light shorts. It does basic stuff and I can check email, weather and texts and it has good call quality. Google Voice means callers don't need to care whether I am using it or the Android brick or the desk phone and if I break it, drop it in a lake or lose it, I won't cry about replacing it.
I have a Casio ASW90 with a stainless steal band and the blue solar analog dial, plus the digital readouts for the stopwatch, alarm and calendar. It looks good enough that I was satisfied to wear it to job interviews but it is rugged and inexpensive enough that I don't worry about wearing it recreationally. When I was deciding to replace my previous watch, I wanted something with an alarm, a stopwatch and a calendar that I didn't need to reset every couple months. (That calendar requirement eliminated a lot of classy watches that show the day of the month.) The downsides are that it isn't really elegant, it gains a couple seconds each month and it is heavy.
I found myself wanting a classy watch that was light, durable and didn't require regular maintenance. Most of the time when I might care how attractive my style is, I have my Android brick for my geek needs and thus don't really need the stopwatch, calendar, alarm and light. I admired the Citizen AR3015-53E (a very black, very thin and light solar powered analog watch with a steal band best described as sleek) but couldn't quite bring myself to part with the cash. I received it as a gift last Christmas and I simply love it. Now I wear it most days when I work around people because it looks good and meets my real watch requirements. When I'm going out on the bike or a hike, I switch back to the Casio.
If the technology ever catches up, I'll have a watch and a couple optional physical input
I could play "what if" and give counter potential examples, but honestly I feel like you make a fair point. I don't agree with it. I believe that the market for some types of service and some products isn't sufficient to support the cost of a minimum wage work force. That means that there are potential jobs that could offset unemployment, but it is arguable that those things that our society doesn't value enough to offset the good done by setting a minimum. We're coming to the same point I suspect, society determines what is a minimum value for work and for lower than that level, we pay our taxes to support those in the periods when they can't produce at that minimum level.
I think there is room for debate what the minimum value of a service or human labor is and I think you present the counterpoint eloquently. At the same time, I think it is reasonable to consider alternatives which would achieve a better result. I like the idea of a negative income tax of the sort proposed by Milton Friedman.
I think we agree that there is a reasonable minimum value for human labor necessary to preserve a desirable society. The question unresolved is how to best achieve that goal and I think that most people would agree our current system isn't the best possible. A quick read at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Negative_income_tax#Specific_models will give you an idea what I think would be an improvement.
Agree or disagree, I appreciate a well thought out and eloquently phrased response. In a forum where people all to often fail to do so, I salute your ability to focus and present a concept clearly.
I quite agree with the sentiment about paying for stuff you have no interest in watching. Offering me something I do want only if I agree to pay for something I don't isn't appealing to me. Like you, I choose to do without or find alternatives.
I suspect we even agree about the moral imperative to pay a fair wage.
I might quibble with you on the implementation that idea however. If a person works full time for you and still can't feed his family... it is better for you both to do without a job? What if you cannot hire him because the law mandates a higher wage than your business can sustain? You cannot stay in business is what happens. Now the potential employer, the potential employee and the families of both are without income. Forced unemployment is not always better in my mind.
On the other hand, it is observable that some people will seek to maximize their own profits even at the expense of being fair to their fellow man. Unregulated, some employers will opt to pay less than a fair wage. (On this point, we again agree.)
So you are left with a choice between regulation that forces unemployment or less regulation that allows greed to harm the people that most need protection. Complex problems often have simple solutions, but that doesn't make them good solutions. Minimum wage is a simple solution to a complex problem and even while it does some good, it also does some harm. It is not "plain and simple."
People get capitalism backwards. Who cares how much the actor gets paid, the question is whether I have the freedom to do what I want. If you mandate or cap salaries then you're limiting the ability of the consumers to support or abstain from supporting what they want.
I'm happy with actors being paid $5 million per episode if consumers are happy to support it.
I even understand what a lot of people are missing in responding to your comments. If a show is worth $1 million per episode, but broadcasters can't afford to pay that alone, then advertisers can support the cost of the show to increase the buying power of the broadcasters, making it possible for the viewer to receive entertainment that the broadcasters alone couldn't afford to offer. Even if the broadcasters could afford the full price, by offsetting the cost of offering shows with commercials, they have a larger budget to work with in other areas.
So yes, it is fair that TV shows and movies cost whatever they can sell for and actors get paid whatever they can earn, not because it is fair to them, but to do otherwise is an oppression of the consumer's ability to control the market. Yes, commercials make sense as part of a method of maximizing the entertainment value that can be offered. Yes, I have the right to choose to not watch whatever I like.
We agree in so many ways and still split on one issue. Nobody should have the right to tell me how to watch. Do you even realize you're supporting taking away my rights? I wonder exactly at what point you support suppresssing the freedom of the consumer:
Would you support making VCRs illegal because they allow skipping commercials?
Would you support making it illegal to own or sell any device that can fast forward?
Would you support making it illegal for other people at my home to watch such a device?
Would you support making it illegal for me to pay somebody else to come to my home and do it for me?
Would you support making it illegal for me to pay somebody else to do it for me if they didn't come to my home?
Would you support making it illegal for me to pay a company to do it for me?
What makes you think UCAVs haven't moved beyond testing? Are you sure that the cost "overruns" aren't payment for the UCAVs already added to the fleet? I miss the SR-71, mostly because it was awesome and I wanted (correction: want) one, but also because it was an example of the military keeping some pretty awesome tech secret.
Even if they never manage that sort of secret keeping again, it will always keep me wondering what is really possibly out there. The Aurora? Yeah, I believe it is in service now. UCAVs? I believe they are onboard our carriers and sitting in hangers around the world. I also suspect that there are a couple planes I can't seem to find out even what to call. There is this ultra high altitude flying wing design that I remember reading about but can't find anything on now. If I remember correctly (and I need to find something to refresh my memory) it was designed to stay up for extended periods of time. It ties in nicely with another weapon I remember reading about somewhere, essentially large metal poles in space. The idea is that if dropped from high enough altitude they would have devistatingly large kinetic impacts but as unguided chunks of metal without a payload, they were not in violation of various armament treaties.
I loathe coming to the defense of MS. If MS was a person, I'd avoid any and all relationships I could, but MS is made up of many people, many departments and far from homogenous so when they are evil in one area, I try not to let it poison my opinion of others. That said, MS in the 90's wasn't as solid a monopoly as implied, and in fact, even at the time I wrote a newsletter explaining how after carefully reading Jackson's opinion I didn't think I agreed with his application of the Sherman Antitrust Act. There are real reasons to be critical of MS, and I'll get to those last, but first a moment to set the record straight.
Linux was alive and an option despite having very little market share. Apple didn't choose to compete in the x86 market, but they could have. BeOS was in the same boat, but as shown later, they could have ported to x86. I agreed with Jackson about the anticompetitive practices but bundling IE seemed like a reasonable choice to me then and still does. I used Phoenix (later became Firefox) and Opera and Netscape (until the horror of version 6.) I didn't feel like I was denied choices and if I wanted to buy a computer that wasn't subsidized by Microsoft OEM agreements, I could and did.
Milton Friedman thought the decision would usher in more government intervention in the software industry. I'm not sure that was the reason, but in retrospect he certainly got the timing right and I'm not happy to see it.
Pretty much every major software system tries to offer something that competitors can't. I like Smitty, but it's AIX only. I like iptables but have only ever had them when using Linux. I like Ports and think I'd like ZFS but I don't get to appreciate them often since I rarely work with BSD. There are usually ways to accomplish the same thing on each different OS, but it is hardly fair to criticize Linux because MS hasn't got something like iptables. In the same way, I hardly blame MS for having IE. (For making it use non-standard functions, the suckage that is ActiveX, the insecurity and anti-user features, yes, I do blame them for that.)
If I was hired to admin an AIX system but refused to run it, I'd be fired. If I took a class in MS Office and refused to use MS Office, I'd expect to fail. When those things came up, I used what was appropriate for the issue at hand. If I took a course on Apache or Cisco, I'd expect to have to use them too and criticizing MS for having products that you take classes in isn't fair.
By the same token, I can use Google tools or not and if I want something that Google has and nobody else can match, I have to. I don't blame Google for that. I use App Engine and can't port my work like I wish I could, but as frustrating as it is, it isn't fair to criticize Google. I use Google Sites and I can't just port my system to a competitor. If you're using Google's Picnik, Latitude, Sketchup or Orkut, I suspect you have the same non-portability issue, but I'm glad Google offers them and I don't think Google is attacking competitors.
Blame where blame is due: MS has made agreements with OEM restrictions on how many non-MS systems they could sell before being penalized. OOXML is an attempt to block the consumer's ability to interoperate with competitors and was unethically and possibly illegally pushed. They've pushed patent fears (FUD) to discourage people from seeking competitors. IBM was punished for selling competing systems by withholding support, delaying agreements and charging them higher licensing fees.
Lets compare the real issues:
Penalizing restrictions for selling competing products:
Microsoft - Yes
Google - No
Pushing "standards" that lock out competition:
Microsoft - Yes
Google - No
FUD on patents:
Microsoft - Yes
Google - No
Punishing competitors:
Microsoft - Yes
Google -... Not to my knowledge
Who would want to hire a hosting company or learn HTML; just use Google Sites.
Whether you're using Google Drive or Google Sites or Google App Engine the files still need to be uploaded if you create them on your computer. If you're creating them online, Google Sites is better suited to the purpose. As a downside and in support of the unsearchable/unlinkable concern, I've encountered a couple MS Office files lately that Google Docs couldn't handle, but I think your point is still valid, it makes it easier for the average man to share.
If your goal is to reimplement everything as a web service, then this may seem as innovation. But there is arguably little advantage in doing the same things we did 10 years ago but in a generalized platform that serves as the lowest common denominator.
Arguably. Challenge accepted.
There is one overwhelming advantage. It works for non-pc devices. It works on tablets, netbooks, and most importantly, smart phones. Native clients must have an update cycle with a resulting bandwidth consumption by end user. I've got a good handful of apps on my phones and they're constantly updating. If the web version is good, I never have to update, it works on any device with a web browser and I don't need any special permissions to install it. If security is important, and it is to me, I also appreciate that my data doesn't have to be stored on my device. Plus, the online version is always the current version and doesn't have a security hole that I need to update to fix. (It may have security holes, but at least they're fixed ASAP, not on patch Tuesday.)
I don't really want to install a PDF reader and a Doc reader and an XLS reader on my phone, and thanks to Google Docs I don't have to.
Then there are all the things that they've just made better and/or free. I don't want to pay AT&T or MetroPCS $10/month for their navigation app, and thanks to Google I don't have to. I really liked Yahoo maps, but their interface was getting stale and now I can use Google street view to get a look at where I want to go and what I can expect to see and recognize when I get there. I used Yahoo mail (and still keep it) for years, but they were trying to charge for everything I was interested in and their space was getting constrictive, until Gmail came along. Thanks to Google entering the webmail market, Yahoo, Hotmail and others suddenly started offering reasonable amounts of space.
Dropbox and Box.net offer a good free service, but 2GB and 5GB aren't really enough to make me comfortable, so I don't use then often. Google offers me 10GB for email storage, so that's handy if I need to store stuff online, but now they're entering the online drive market... it reminds me of when Gmail started, they are offering the same amount of space as my favorite competitor, but I expect them to expand and force others in the industry to keep up or lose customers.
Finally, don't forget Android. Certainly it existed without Google and personally I wish they'd adopted WebOS (Google, you still could!) but it is hard to argue that anybody but Google could have made Android what it is today. The last numbers I saw for smartphones put Android on about 43% of the smartphones active. The nearest competitor was iPhone with about 28%.
No rush to run Android, but there is a point. I got my daughter a Touchpad and she loved it instantly... but couldn't find all the Apps she wanted. She has never used an Android phone, so in her mind, Android did everything she couldn't with WebOS. We put Android on it, and it should be noted that it doesn't replace WebOS, it just gives you a dual boot option. She was excited, it was wonderful... for a couple days, then she was using mostly WebOS again. I ended up putting ICS on it and she was again thrilled... but today when I pried it from her clutching hands, she was using WebOS again.
It seems that there are some things that just don't have good options in WebOS, chiefly among them, video players. With Android, you get more video players and pretty good ones. Most anything you can do easily in WebOS is easy enough with Android, but look and feel are better with WebOS for someone who doesn't have a bias and battery life is longer (though that is likely a side effect of the hardware and designing choices of each.)
I don't have the invested time using either one that she does, so I don't have the same motivations and preferences. I do have an Android phone, so WebOS doesn't immediately seem easier to me. Open Sourcing it though and having looked a little bit at how it was designed makes me hope that it retains enough momentum that I can dual boot it if I ever cave into getting a tablet myself. It does seem likely that I'll get some experience with an iPad soon and I'm wondering if anybody has put a dual boot WebOS system on one.... anyone?
"Unlimited" means "as much as any device we support can use" rather than "any device anywhere that could exist could potentially use."
When you sell "Unlimited" to 500 uses who can potentially use 50GB daily, then you are stating that you have the hardware to support 500 users using 50GB daily. There is no abuse here; there is no misrepresentation here. When you sell it to 5000 users and advertise "Unlimited" then you are lying.
I really don't mind that I am sold tiered bandwidth allocations. I like knowing what I'm paying for and so long as they meter it fairly, I make the decision to buy and use or not buy the service. I do mind that they call it 4G ( 4G is a lie.)
Really annoying is thinking (but not having done sufficient research to know with certainty) that when I purchase 5GB/monthly service, what I'm really getting is sometimes maybe throttled without telling me and often insufficient for demand service. If I buy "5 free donuts daily" and I get "5 free donuts daily when maybe not everybody we sold them to is actually picking up their donuts and sorry, today you get 1 donut because it looks like a good dounut day" then yeah, they've sold me something they are incapable of guaranteeing delivery of. Fine. I can deal with that. You sell something thinking you can deliver it and you can't, then you failed; your bad, you broke the contract. GIVE ME MY MONEY BACK.
You sell me 5 donuts, I expect 5 donuts. You can only deliver 3? I don't care about your other customers, that is between them and you, but I have every right to depend on 5 donuts and you failed. You failed. GIVE ME MY MONEY BACK. Okay, so you acknowledge that you can't give 5 donuts a day to eveybody you sold 5 donuts daily to? Fine, you broke your contract, offer only what you really can deliver. Sell me 1 donut a day guaranteed and if you give me 5, then I'm your biggest fan.
So while the blame doesn't fall upon the customers who were sold and bought unlimited plans, neither do I think it's realistic for them (and me) to truly expect unlimited data.
You sell me A, you owe me A. It is that simple and I have every right to truly expect A.
The FTC needs to say "the new rule starting June 1, 2008 is: you sell only what you can really supply. You can say 'up to 5GB' but you must also say 'actual guaranteed rate of 'X' where X is what you can actually deliver if every customer you have is using everything you sold them."
The actual implication intended is that the countries in the Middle East are, as a group, not sane. I don't think that having nuclear weapons has made Israel's borders safe.
Spitballing here, so I freely acknowledge there are probably many issues I haven't thought through...
How about we sell lots of safe nuclear generators to Iran? I am interested in nuclear power because it has a tremendous potential for meeting energy demands, but I also acknowledge that creating safe nuclear plants that aren't a precursor to nuclear weapons requires a high level of technical expertise. The US and China and other highly developed countries have the expertise but face a lot of public opinion inertia. Maybe we should try to produce the generators in a box (google Hyperion) and sell them to Iran with built in safety precautions. Alternatively, set up a treaty to develop thorium reactors there, which I believe are hard or impossible to weaponize.
Either way, we could help them meet their energy goals while protecting the global interest of preventing them from developing weapons. As a side effect, we would get to use the pro-nuclear government there as a safety proving ground for new technologies. They want to take the risks and we need to show that the new technologies are safe and feasible, so we have coinciding interest, which can make a strong bond for peaceful trade.
Common misconception. When selling a product that you are going to expect to replace to stay in business, you charge the price to replace the product, else you end up losing sales to your competitors and holding the more expensive stock, and selling out when the price has gone up while your competitors continue making profits selling at market price. That's why it's called market price maybe? The trick is keeping your customers happy at the price you charge.
Gas prices that change every few minutes or food prices that change every few minutes are also perhaps both possible and optimal by the same theory. It may be that we'll see those, but people like being able to predict without effort what the cost of a ticket will be. Likely my local favourite theatre could make more money on a few tickets, but mostly I suspect people who are considering the value of the individual ticket would often pass on the same price they purchase now.
If you go to the grocery store and see milk priced at $8.95/gal when you saw it the day before at $1.98/gal, then you'll remember that higher price vividly. If it happens often enough for something you planned on purchasing, then you're likely to start shopping for milk somewhere else, even if the average is a little higher, because the security of being able to make the planned purchase is worth the higher stable price.
I have a couple choices of theatres to choose from, and if they were pricing some tickets at $18.50 and others at $9.48, then I'd be more likely to look at alternatives, considering the potential value of the movie rather than basing my purchase on my preference of theatre.
Movie tickets aren't really where the profit is anyway, profit comes from people like me who purchase the experience including overpriced (but surprisingly tasty) food and drink. I really enjoy the dining+bar+movie experience much more than the movie alone, else I'd be waiting until the movie was in the local $1 theatre.
I second the AC, you can use pretty much anything as long as you're good at it, but not ASP.NET. Every implementation I've seen has fared poorly when compared to similar projects done on other platforms. I can't really say why, after all it *seems* like it should do well and developers seem happy at first, but after a couple years, every one seems to falter and either start suffering performance wise (bloat? rot?) or climbing maintenance costs. It shouldn't be that way of course, but that seems to be the common trend.
PHP is fine if you enjoy working with it and can keep it up to date, particularly if you have a framework you like to use it with... to a point. If you expect the code to be maintained by a team of people in the future, and need the best possible performance you can squeeze out of it, then you might want to look at something else. It is nearly always easier and cheaper to buy more hardware than it is to rebuild code, but sometimes foresight before the project can give you better bang for the buck down the road.
From a developer standpoint, I've had really good luck with my own PHP. Years after it was written, I've been able to go back in and do maintenance with little effort. Mostly that's because my programming tendencies tend to be pretty static (stagnant?) and I do comment. Facebook is running on PHP and Wikipedia is running on PHP, so there is no question that it *can* handle the big jobs, just a lot of questions as to whether it is best suited or not.
The same can be said for Perl. If you can handle maintaining it well, and you're good at it, you can work with Perl for years and years and get good performance from it. It runs/. after all, so it can handle a pretty serious load and scale if it really needs to. It has much the same issues as PHP, it *can* but is it *best* is the question.
By far the best web experiences I've had from the consumer side were compiled code. C, C++, C#, Go, Visual Basic, or whatever floats your boat as long as you're good at it and can manage the support for it. Yet, the difference in performance isn't all that great, so I still do recommend Java or Python. I don't particularly love using either one, but both perform well and seem to be enterprise capable, in fact, I really recommend looking at AppEngine if you can stomach it because it will give you a good testing platform and huge scalability later if you need it.
It is very apt that they're referring to it as a nuclear option, because it harms much more than just the intended target. Every visitor to a site with blackout boxes or censorship warnings will consider for a moment what their other options are. This action would be to inform people of something they probably don't realize they care about. It will cost the participants real money as customers switch to alternatives and even those who don't switch will be a little more aware that they need alternatives.
There will be fallout.
You fear corporate action to influence behavior? Many people seem to think that they have a right to the services provided, rather than realizing it can be revoked or changed at whim, and I welcome the education of the masses.
Slashdot Mirror
I don't think so. I think it is about the requirements and what is acceptable to meet them (as I said.) It is not the actual requirements. You can read the foot notes to find out what expressly they're addressing, but good luck slogging through that stuff. The link I gave was 14 pages of mind numbing drudgery, but here's the (first four) footnotes that pretty well cover where to find the actual requirements:
When you're preparing to make sure your company stays in business, links like the one I referenced are what you go by. You then ask your lawyers to see if what you are planning and doing meet the actual requirements. (Which is a lot of what lawyers get paid for and at least part of the reason I am not a lawyer.) When all is in place and you're grilled by examiners/auditors, you have references to back up your plan and the opinions of actual lawyers to refer them to. Do feel free to read through it on your own if you like of course. I've spent some time carefully researching some of the laws that are applicable to managing financial transactions and don't envy your next couple weeks if you decide to go that route. Of course you should also note that this is particularly focused on household rather than business relationships which I inferred to be the relationship in question by the poster I was replying to.
You can find information about the requirement on the FFIEC site at http://www.ffiec.gov/pdf/authentication_guidance.pdf.
I don't think it explicitly requires RSA keys, but it does speak of multi-factor authentictation. RSA is often a reference to a specific company. The government guidelines would be rightly questionable if they endorsed a specific company as the potential solution. However, RSA the company does do a job of (possibly) providing multi-factor authentication.
Generally it works like this: The user is prompted for a username which is then used to check credential information and displays a particular image to the user (previously selected by the user) before the password is entered. That ensures that the user is prompted to enter information, and then is given a chance to recognize or back out of a transaction based on their recognition of their custom image before a password is entered. This provides positive verification in addition to the password requirement. The second factor is based on the device in use by the user where a cookie has been stored if the user has displayed the ability to add additional layers of known information, generally the answers to questions the user has selected and answered previously.
This layered authentication process, username, positive verification, device validation, conditional challenges, is generally considered consistent with the requirement for multiple factors of authentication. I'm not sure that it meets the goals of the guidlines published by the FFIEC, but it does provide layers of authentication which is generally all a financial instutition can implement without running afoul of patents (a whole separate painful issue) which is generally acceptable in a competitive market. Instutitions which require a second channel of authentication, such as a phone number communication, key fob, remote key or other device generally are seen as unnecessarily annoying by customers. Essentially the problem boils down to a compromise between convenience demanded by end users vs security demanded by legislative guidelines. As always, the real problem is the users who don't actually want the hassle of a more secure system.
This says nothing about the security compromises in financial instutitions where a maximum number of password characters defies sanity coupled with a limitation of potential characters. That's just stupid. Also common.
You're right:
The seller may have misunderstood the situation, but it is understandable since the buyer stated that she was from Iran. Note that the seller didn't ask where the buyer was from; she volunteered that information unprompted.
The seller may have incorrectly inferred that the buyer was intending to travel to Iran with it, which is why Apple could change the restriction based on learning the buyer was a US citizen and lives in the US from the news coverage. The fact that the buyer stated to the journalist that she intended to do something illegal with it adds a layer of complexity to the situation. It makes me wonder if Apple needs to get their lawyers to review their policy before they go about advising customers how to get around the law.
Are you suggesting that it should be that way? I think there is a good case to be made that law enforcement should be left to the people our society employs in that capacity. I skimmed your homepage and gather that's a consistent stand for you to take.
If that's all you were trying to say, then it doesn't add much to the conversation since it has been said before and many times and in many ways. Most of the posters had more passion or more information to add to the discussion. In most of your 31 posts in fact, you had more to add.
I'd hope you've read enough of the comments here to realize there is at least a common belief that selling something comes with an obligation to refuse sales when you have knowledge the buyer intends to break the law. I'm going to assume that with 31 posts, you know that, so your stance is that the US policy is wrong or that Apple is not following it correctly.
For background, lets take a couple quotes from the featured articles:
and then this:
In a related but not featured article, we see:
Consider that the sales clerk had reason to believe from the statement of the buyer that the buyer was a citizen of Iran. The sales clerk could reasonably assume that somebody that said they were from Iran would take the purchase with them back to Iran when they returned to where they said they were from. The fact that the buyer intended to do something that was illegal with it that didn't match the incorrect assumption of the seller just clouds the issue.
I think the best approach by Apple would be to modify their policy to include a list of questions to be asked if they were refusing a sale, but I think you've taken this as a little more personal than it was intended. The clerk was following US policy based on what he understood from what the buyer told him.
I guess I missed that part... maybe it depends on what you define as 'netwar'
Oh, that. Well, I'm pretty sure he didn't do that so I don't see the relevance.
Seriously? That's a terrible example of hacking. I might disagree with the term use generally because it ignores the honorable history of the word, but I can accept modern usage. That's not hacking by either definition. Seriously, shouldn't you use a good password anyway?
Has anyone done this? Now that I think of it, actually he could, couldn't he? I don't think it would be illegal to encourage other people to take that action.
Somebody violated your twitter? Shocking! Outrageous! Somewhat humorous!
Well, technically that's freedom of speech. There are some limits on it but I'm pretty sure you can call someone stupid, incompetent and a douchebag. Lets try it: You, Charles Carreon, are a stupid and incompetent douchebag.
Note that I didn't say anything about bravery. I think it takes an amazing level of bravery to set yourself up as the target instead of your client for the rage of a good old fashioned flame war. Bravery and stupidity are not exclusive, in fact, I think they may have a very open relationship. (I do see that there is a tempting reference there to Kodiak romance, but I'm not quite willing to make it.)
Do what you do best.
Use Java for the server coding and Dart for the client coding. JSP is an obvious choice if you haven't already considered it. Dart is going to feel very familiar but compiles to JavaScript so you can build in an enviornment you are already comfortable in and still avoid the pitfalls of client side Java.
Personally, I'd like to see you do your project to also work as a plug-in for Vosao. While I am not a fan of Java, it's still what I'm using for my CMS on Google AppEngine because it's good at what I care about. That's kind of key to the advice I'm giving you. Of all the programming languages I've used, and there are several, I'm least fond of Java but what matters is the quality of the result. You'll do your best work if you spend your time on the project instead of on learning new tools.
(sipping KoolAid)
iGoogle is fine as a portal and I like having my Facebook friends statuses in it via RSS, recent email plus my daily news interests, but Google+ has status information, tracking of associates, share controls, auto-backup of my pictures and sites with full blown CMS.
Succinctly put.
A watch, a computer and a phone are tools. There are no watches, phones or computers that are ideal for all circumstances. The best advice is to decide what you really need for the circumstances you're in and get the right tools for those circumstances. With the right choices and multiple tools, you will be happy with your tools.
For me, the right choices are a reasonably modern desktop, an older computer, a laptop, a decent Android smart phone, a nearly dumb small cheap phone, a rugged mixed digital and analog watch with lots of functions and a classy watch that just tells time.
My desktop has large dual monitors and I use an older computer as a router, they do my real geek work. When I'm designing sites, writing software or manipulating images, I need the screen real estate and full keyboard and mouse. If I'm working on router stuff, I want a variety of programming languages available and I want a variety of software that isn't easy to shove on a small single purpose device, but I work on it from my regular desktop so screen space isn't an issue.
I have an inexpensive laptop for any significant work somewhere besides home. It doesn't have the same screenspace, but I have the resources of my other computers when I need them and enough screen space to do most things, if perhaps not so comfortably. It does sling over my sholder and isn't terrible to set up in a coffee shop as the important upsides. There are few things I can do with it that I couldn't on my Android brick, but the physical keyboard, touchpad and larger screen make it a lot more comfortable for serious tasks.
I have an HTC Inspire. (It's an Android phone with a large touchscreen, decent processor, "4G" and metal case that feels like holding a thin slice of brick.) It does all my geek stuff that isn't labor intensive, with a mix of fun and work for my normal daily routines. It has apps for games, a compass, a star map, email, web browsing, navigation, music and light reading. With Google Voice, I am not tied to that device alone and can pick up calls on my desk phone or recreation phone or house phones of family when I prefer those.
When I'm doing something recreational, I have a cheap tiny non-android phone that is rugged and comfortable to carry even in light shorts. It does basic stuff and I can check email, weather and texts and it has good call quality. Google Voice means callers don't need to care whether I am using it or the Android brick or the desk phone and if I break it, drop it in a lake or lose it, I won't cry about replacing it.
I have a Casio ASW90 with a stainless steal band and the blue solar analog dial, plus the digital readouts for the stopwatch, alarm and calendar. It looks good enough that I was satisfied to wear it to job interviews but it is rugged and inexpensive enough that I don't worry about wearing it recreationally. When I was deciding to replace my previous watch, I wanted something with an alarm, a stopwatch and a calendar that I didn't need to reset every couple months. (That calendar requirement eliminated a lot of classy watches that show the day of the month.) The downsides are that it isn't really elegant, it gains a couple seconds each month and it is heavy.
I found myself wanting a classy watch that was light, durable and didn't require regular maintenance. Most of the time when I might care how attractive my style is, I have my Android brick for my geek needs and thus don't really need the stopwatch, calendar, alarm and light. I admired the Citizen AR3015-53E (a very black, very thin and light solar powered analog watch with a steal band best described as sleek) but couldn't quite bring myself to part with the cash. I received it as a gift last Christmas and I simply love it. Now I wear it most days when I work around people because it looks good and meets my real watch requirements. When I'm going out on the bike or a hike, I switch back to the Casio.
If the technology ever catches up, I'll have a watch and a couple optional physical input
I could play "what if" and give counter potential examples, but honestly I feel like you make a fair point. I don't agree with it. I believe that the market for some types of service and some products isn't sufficient to support the cost of a minimum wage work force. That means that there are potential jobs that could offset unemployment, but it is arguable that those things that our society doesn't value enough to offset the good done by setting a minimum. We're coming to the same point I suspect, society determines what is a minimum value for work and for lower than that level, we pay our taxes to support those in the periods when they can't produce at that minimum level.
I think there is room for debate what the minimum value of a service or human labor is and I think you present the counterpoint eloquently. At the same time, I think it is reasonable to consider alternatives which would achieve a better result. I like the idea of a negative income tax of the sort proposed by Milton Friedman.
I think we agree that there is a reasonable minimum value for human labor necessary to preserve a desirable society. The question unresolved is how to best achieve that goal and I think that most people would agree our current system isn't the best possible. A quick read at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Negative_income_tax#Specific_models will give you an idea what I think would be an improvement.
Agree or disagree, I appreciate a well thought out and eloquently phrased response. In a forum where people all to often fail to do so, I salute your ability to focus and present a concept clearly.
I quite agree with the sentiment about paying for stuff you have no interest in watching. Offering me something I do want only if I agree to pay for something I don't isn't appealing to me. Like you, I choose to do without or find alternatives.
I suspect we even agree about the moral imperative to pay a fair wage.
I might quibble with you on the implementation that idea however. If a person works full time for you and still can't feed his family... it is better for you both to do without a job? What if you cannot hire him because the law mandates a higher wage than your business can sustain? You cannot stay in business is what happens. Now the potential employer, the potential employee and the families of both are without income. Forced unemployment is not always better in my mind.
On the other hand, it is observable that some people will seek to maximize their own profits even at the expense of being fair to their fellow man. Unregulated, some employers will opt to pay less than a fair wage. (On this point, we again agree.)
So you are left with a choice between regulation that forces unemployment or less regulation that allows greed to harm the people that most need protection. Complex problems often have simple solutions, but that doesn't make them good solutions. Minimum wage is a simple solution to a complex problem and even while it does some good, it also does some harm. It is not "plain and simple."
People get capitalism backwards. Who cares how much the actor gets paid, the question is whether I have the freedom to do what I want. If you mandate or cap salaries then you're limiting the ability of the consumers to support or abstain from supporting what they want.
I'm happy with actors being paid $5 million per episode if consumers are happy to support it.
I even understand what a lot of people are missing in responding to your comments. If a show is worth $1 million per episode, but broadcasters can't afford to pay that alone, then advertisers can support the cost of the show to increase the buying power of the broadcasters, making it possible for the viewer to receive entertainment that the broadcasters alone couldn't afford to offer. Even if the broadcasters could afford the full price, by offsetting the cost of offering shows with commercials, they have a larger budget to work with in other areas.
So yes, it is fair that TV shows and movies cost whatever they can sell for and actors get paid whatever they can earn, not because it is fair to them, but to do otherwise is an oppression of the consumer's ability to control the market. Yes, commercials make sense as part of a method of maximizing the entertainment value that can be offered. Yes, I have the right to choose to not watch whatever I like.
We agree in so many ways and still split on one issue. Nobody should have the right to tell me how to watch. Do you even realize you're supporting taking away my rights? I wonder exactly at what point you support suppresssing the freedom of the consumer:
What makes you think UCAVs haven't moved beyond testing? Are you sure that the cost "overruns" aren't payment for the UCAVs already added to the fleet? I miss the SR-71, mostly because it was awesome and I wanted (correction: want) one, but also because it was an example of the military keeping some pretty awesome tech secret.
Even if they never manage that sort of secret keeping again, it will always keep me wondering what is really possibly out there. The Aurora? Yeah, I believe it is in service now. UCAVs? I believe they are onboard our carriers and sitting in hangers around the world. I also suspect that there are a couple planes I can't seem to find out even what to call. There is this ultra high altitude flying wing design that I remember reading about but can't find anything on now. If I remember correctly (and I need to find something to refresh my memory) it was designed to stay up for extended periods of time. It ties in nicely with another weapon I remember reading about somewhere, essentially large metal poles in space. The idea is that if dropped from high enough altitude they would have devistatingly large kinetic impacts but as unguided chunks of metal without a payload, they were not in violation of various armament treaties.
I loathe coming to the defense of MS. If MS was a person, I'd avoid any and all relationships I could, but MS is made up of many people, many departments and far from homogenous so when they are evil in one area, I try not to let it poison my opinion of others. That said, MS in the 90's wasn't as solid a monopoly as implied, and in fact, even at the time I wrote a newsletter explaining how after carefully reading Jackson's opinion I didn't think I agreed with his application of the Sherman Antitrust Act. There are real reasons to be critical of MS, and I'll get to those last, but first a moment to set the record straight.
Linux was alive and an option despite having very little market share. Apple didn't choose to compete in the x86 market, but they could have. BeOS was in the same boat, but as shown later, they could have ported to x86. I agreed with Jackson about the anticompetitive practices but bundling IE seemed like a reasonable choice to me then and still does. I used Phoenix (later became Firefox) and Opera and Netscape (until the horror of version 6.) I didn't feel like I was denied choices and if I wanted to buy a computer that wasn't subsidized by Microsoft OEM agreements, I could and did.
Milton Friedman thought the decision would usher in more government intervention in the software industry. I'm not sure that was the reason, but in retrospect he certainly got the timing right and I'm not happy to see it.
Pretty much every major software system tries to offer something that competitors can't. I like Smitty, but it's AIX only. I like iptables but have only ever had them when using Linux. I like Ports and think I'd like ZFS but I don't get to appreciate them often since I rarely work with BSD. There are usually ways to accomplish the same thing on each different OS, but it is hardly fair to criticize Linux because MS hasn't got something like iptables. In the same way, I hardly blame MS for having IE. (For making it use non-standard functions, the suckage that is ActiveX, the insecurity and anti-user features, yes, I do blame them for that.)
If I was hired to admin an AIX system but refused to run it, I'd be fired. If I took a class in MS Office and refused to use MS Office, I'd expect to fail. When those things came up, I used what was appropriate for the issue at hand. If I took a course on Apache or Cisco, I'd expect to have to use them too and criticizing MS for having products that you take classes in isn't fair.
By the same token, I can use Google tools or not and if I want something that Google has and nobody else can match, I have to. I don't blame Google for that. I use App Engine and can't port my work like I wish I could, but as frustrating as it is, it isn't fair to criticize Google. I use Google Sites and I can't just port my system to a competitor. If you're using Google's Picnik, Latitude, Sketchup or Orkut, I suspect you have the same non-portability issue, but I'm glad Google offers them and I don't think Google is attacking competitors.
Blame where blame is due: MS has made agreements with OEM restrictions on how many non-MS systems they could sell before being penalized. OOXML is an attempt to block the consumer's ability to interoperate with competitors and was unethically and possibly illegally pushed. They've pushed patent fears (FUD) to discourage people from seeking competitors. IBM was punished for selling competing systems by withholding support, delaying agreements and charging them higher licensing fees.
Lets compare the real issues:
Who would want to hire a hosting company or learn HTML; just use Google Sites.
Whether you're using Google Drive or Google Sites or Google App Engine the files still need to be uploaded if you create them on your computer. If you're creating them online, Google Sites is better suited to the purpose. As a downside and in support of the unsearchable/unlinkable concern, I've encountered a couple MS Office files lately that Google Docs couldn't handle, but I think your point is still valid, it makes it easier for the average man to share.
Arguably. Challenge accepted.
There is one overwhelming advantage. It works for non-pc devices. It works on tablets, netbooks, and most importantly, smart phones. Native clients must have an update cycle with a resulting bandwidth consumption by end user. I've got a good handful of apps on my phones and they're constantly updating. If the web version is good, I never have to update, it works on any device with a web browser and I don't need any special permissions to install it. If security is important, and it is to me, I also appreciate that my data doesn't have to be stored on my device. Plus, the online version is always the current version and doesn't have a security hole that I need to update to fix. (It may have security holes, but at least they're fixed ASAP, not on patch Tuesday.)
I don't really want to install a PDF reader and a Doc reader and an XLS reader on my phone, and thanks to Google Docs I don't have to.
Then there are all the things that they've just made better and/or free. I don't want to pay AT&T or MetroPCS $10/month for their navigation app, and thanks to Google I don't have to. I really liked Yahoo maps, but their interface was getting stale and now I can use Google street view to get a look at where I want to go and what I can expect to see and recognize when I get there. I used Yahoo mail (and still keep it) for years, but they were trying to charge for everything I was interested in and their space was getting constrictive, until Gmail came along. Thanks to Google entering the webmail market, Yahoo, Hotmail and others suddenly started offering reasonable amounts of space.
Dropbox and Box.net offer a good free service, but 2GB and 5GB aren't really enough to make me comfortable, so I don't use then often. Google offers me 10GB for email storage, so that's handy if I need to store stuff online, but now they're entering the online drive market... it reminds me of when Gmail started, they are offering the same amount of space as my favorite competitor, but I expect them to expand and force others in the industry to keep up or lose customers.
Finally, don't forget Android. Certainly it existed without Google and personally I wish they'd adopted WebOS (Google, you still could!) but it is hard to argue that anybody but Google could have made Android what it is today. The last numbers I saw for smartphones put Android on about 43% of the smartphones active. The nearest competitor was iPhone with about 28%.
No rush to run Android, but there is a point. I got my daughter a Touchpad and she loved it instantly... but couldn't find all the Apps she wanted. She has never used an Android phone, so in her mind, Android did everything she couldn't with WebOS. We put Android on it, and it should be noted that it doesn't replace WebOS, it just gives you a dual boot option. She was excited, it was wonderful... for a couple days, then she was using mostly WebOS again. I ended up putting ICS on it and she was again thrilled... but today when I pried it from her clutching hands, she was using WebOS again.
It seems that there are some things that just don't have good options in WebOS, chiefly among them, video players. With Android, you get more video players and pretty good ones. Most anything you can do easily in WebOS is easy enough with Android, but look and feel are better with WebOS for someone who doesn't have a bias and battery life is longer (though that is likely a side effect of the hardware and designing choices of each.)
I don't have the invested time using either one that she does, so I don't have the same motivations and preferences. I do have an Android phone, so WebOS doesn't immediately seem easier to me. Open Sourcing it though and having looked a little bit at how it was designed makes me hope that it retains enough momentum that I can dual boot it if I ever cave into getting a tablet myself. It does seem likely that I'll get some experience with an iPad soon and I'm wondering if anybody has put a dual boot WebOS system on one.... anyone?
"Unlimited" means "as much as any device we support can use" rather than "any device anywhere that could exist could potentially use."
When you sell "Unlimited" to 500 uses who can potentially use 50GB daily, then you are stating that you have the hardware to support 500 users using 50GB daily. There is no abuse here; there is no misrepresentation here. When you sell it to 5000 users and advertise "Unlimited" then you are lying.
I really don't mind that I am sold tiered bandwidth allocations. I like knowing what I'm paying for and so long as they meter it fairly, I make the decision to buy and use or not buy the service. I do mind that they call it 4G ( 4G is a lie.)
Really annoying is thinking (but not having done sufficient research to know with certainty) that when I purchase 5GB/monthly service, what I'm really getting is sometimes maybe throttled without telling me and often insufficient for demand service. If I buy "5 free donuts daily" and I get "5 free donuts daily when maybe not everybody we sold them to is actually picking up their donuts and sorry, today you get 1 donut because it looks like a good dounut day" then yeah, they've sold me something they are incapable of guaranteeing delivery of. Fine. I can deal with that. You sell something thinking you can deliver it and you can't, then you failed; your bad, you broke the contract. GIVE ME MY MONEY BACK.
You sell me 5 donuts, I expect 5 donuts. You can only deliver 3? I don't care about your other customers, that is between them and you, but I have every right to depend on 5 donuts and you failed. You failed. GIVE ME MY MONEY BACK. Okay, so you acknowledge that you can't give 5 donuts a day to eveybody you sold 5 donuts daily to? Fine, you broke your contract, offer only what you really can deliver. Sell me 1 donut a day guaranteed and if you give me 5, then I'm your biggest fan.
So while the blame doesn't fall upon the customers who were sold and bought unlimited plans, neither do I think it's realistic for them (and me) to truly expect unlimited data.
You sell me A, you owe me A. It is that simple and I have every right to truly expect A.
The FTC needs to say "the new rule starting June 1, 2008 is: you sell only what you can really supply. You can say 'up to 5GB' but you must also say 'actual guaranteed rate of 'X' where X is what you can actually deliver if every customer you have is using everything you sold them."
The actual implication intended is that the countries in the Middle East are, as a group, not sane. I don't think that having nuclear weapons has made Israel's borders safe.
Doesn't Israel have them? Oh, you specified sane.
Spitballing here, so I freely acknowledge there are probably many issues I haven't thought through...
How about we sell lots of safe nuclear generators to Iran? I am interested in nuclear power because it has a tremendous potential for meeting energy demands, but I also acknowledge that creating safe nuclear plants that aren't a precursor to nuclear weapons requires a high level of technical expertise. The US and China and other highly developed countries have the expertise but face a lot of public opinion inertia. Maybe we should try to produce the generators in a box (google Hyperion) and sell them to Iran with built in safety precautions. Alternatively, set up a treaty to develop thorium reactors there, which I believe are hard or impossible to weaponize.
Either way, we could help them meet their energy goals while protecting the global interest of preventing them from developing weapons. As a side effect, we would get to use the pro-nuclear government there as a safety proving ground for new technologies. They want to take the risks and we need to show that the new technologies are safe and feasible, so we have coinciding interest, which can make a strong bond for peaceful trade.
Common misconception. When selling a product that you are going to expect to replace to stay in business, you charge the price to replace the product, else you end up losing sales to your competitors and holding the more expensive stock, and selling out when the price has gone up while your competitors continue making profits selling at market price. That's why it's called market price maybe? The trick is keeping your customers happy at the price you charge.
Gas prices that change every few minutes or food prices that change every few minutes are also perhaps both possible and optimal by the same theory. It may be that we'll see those, but people like being able to predict without effort what the cost of a ticket will be. Likely my local favourite theatre could make more money on a few tickets, but mostly I suspect people who are considering the value of the individual ticket would often pass on the same price they purchase now.
If you go to the grocery store and see milk priced at $8.95/gal when you saw it the day before at $1.98/gal, then you'll remember that higher price vividly. If it happens often enough for something you planned on purchasing, then you're likely to start shopping for milk somewhere else, even if the average is a little higher, because the security of being able to make the planned purchase is worth the higher stable price.
I have a couple choices of theatres to choose from, and if they were pricing some tickets at $18.50 and others at $9.48, then I'd be more likely to look at alternatives, considering the potential value of the movie rather than basing my purchase on my preference of theatre.
Movie tickets aren't really where the profit is anyway, profit comes from people like me who purchase the experience including overpriced (but surprisingly tasty) food and drink. I really enjoy the dining+bar+movie experience much more than the movie alone, else I'd be waiting until the movie was in the local $1 theatre.
You might as well ask which religion is the best one.
Oh, Judaism, clearly.
Please, please, please tell me that there is a programming language named Judaism!
I second the AC, you can use pretty much anything as long as you're good at it, but not ASP.NET. Every implementation I've seen has fared poorly when compared to similar projects done on other platforms. I can't really say why, after all it *seems* like it should do well and developers seem happy at first, but after a couple years, every one seems to falter and either start suffering performance wise (bloat? rot?) or climbing maintenance costs. It shouldn't be that way of course, but that seems to be the common trend.
PHP is fine if you enjoy working with it and can keep it up to date, particularly if you have a framework you like to use it with... to a point. If you expect the code to be maintained by a team of people in the future, and need the best possible performance you can squeeze out of it, then you might want to look at something else. It is nearly always easier and cheaper to buy more hardware than it is to rebuild code, but sometimes foresight before the project can give you better bang for the buck down the road.
From a developer standpoint, I've had really good luck with my own PHP. Years after it was written, I've been able to go back in and do maintenance with little effort. Mostly that's because my programming tendencies tend to be pretty static (stagnant?) and I do comment. Facebook is running on PHP and Wikipedia is running on PHP, so there is no question that it *can* handle the big jobs, just a lot of questions as to whether it is best suited or not.
The same can be said for Perl. If you can handle maintaining it well, and you're good at it, you can work with Perl for years and years and get good performance from it. It runs /. after all, so it can handle a pretty serious load and scale if it really needs to. It has much the same issues as PHP, it *can* but is it *best* is the question.
By far the best web experiences I've had from the consumer side were compiled code. C, C++, C#, Go, Visual Basic, or whatever floats your boat as long as you're good at it and can manage the support for it. Yet, the difference in performance isn't all that great, so I still do recommend Java or Python. I don't particularly love using either one, but both perform well and seem to be enterprise capable, in fact, I really recommend looking at AppEngine if you can stomach it because it will give you a good testing platform and huge scalability later if you need it.
It is very apt that they're referring to it as a nuclear option, because it harms much more than just the intended target. Every visitor to a site with blackout boxes or censorship warnings will consider for a moment what their other options are. This action would be to inform people of something they probably don't realize they care about. It will cost the participants real money as customers switch to alternatives and even those who don't switch will be a little more aware that they need alternatives.
There will be fallout.
You fear corporate action to influence behavior? Many people seem to think that they have a right to the services provided, rather than realizing it can be revoked or changed at whim, and I welcome the education of the masses.