Seriously, no-one thought of sandboxing the holodeck? Even after the first 10 times the ship got pwned by it?
Moriarty: first to successfully virtualize the Holodeck. (Granted, he also had root on the holodeck, and the Enterprise computer). Point is, someone *thought* of it, and the first "person" to do so was a Holodeck program, and the ugly bags of mostly water couldn't figure it out.
Anyone who has visited the Dell website with any recency knows that Word is not bundled as a default "freebie-included-in-price" option. The default option is "No Productivity Software Added." Adding MS Works (which includes MS Word 2003) costs $79.
So what's the "imaging" problem? Are we supposed to pretend this particular retailer, whose model is different from others because of user-customization options, is incapable of providing machines without a software option (particularly given that this is their default configuration?)....
The place this impacts Dell the most I'd imagine is in relation to Enterprise level customers, and all those Colleges and Universities they are partners with --- who sell pre-configured machines with Word installed to their students.
Of course, everyone has moved into their dorms in the next "120 days" and it's not like Enterprise customers in Canada won't deal with this from every PC retailer.
I smell a rat.
What did the "Web Hype" do for Snakes on a Plane, oh thats right, NOTHING. Just like some bad press will not kill the PS3.
That's because Snakes on a Plane web hype also appealed to people who leave the house a lot less and are more apt to wait and download then pay and sit next to joe-joe the idiot circus boy and his ringing cell phone.
To deny that "web hype" has any effect on the real world is just silly. Ask those folks in Alaska whose little pork project just fell apart if blogs have power over public opinion. They will undoubtedly say, "Yes."
This doesn't mean that the PS3 will fail, and by all accounts "SoaP is not a "failure." But to deny that the Internet bailed out what was likely to be another Deep Blue Sea is inaccurate. The impact was nowhere near as big as expected, but people certainly saw that movie because of hype. Imagine what the box office would have been *without* the hype...
Nevertheless, inaccurate box office projections will likely hurt some people. It doesn't mean that New Line Cinema or anyone else is going to "fail." It does mean that someone somewhere will probably lose a job or two. It does mean that some people with lofty endorsement contracts or marketing tie-ins may not make as much money.
So too, it could be with Sony and negative web hype. This does not necessarily mean Sony dies. It just means they ain't in first. Internet hype has power. It is important. It's just not magical, or special.
There were secondary mail servers, but secondary mail servers become difficult to implement when your employees can't move via mass transit, car, taxi, etc due to a massive terrorist attack that shuts down New York City. Network lines, telephone infrastructure etc. were compromised both inside and outside the company. Verizon had a large telecommunications building that was directly impacted by 9/11 debris and closed due to structural issues...
Point being, when your city is under a cloud of carcinogenic smoke and dust and all transportation into the city closes down - when phone lines and fiber lines are not just down but incinerated - when the military, FBI, CIA, FEMA and whatever governmental acronyms you can think of come rolling down the street that you work on - secondary mail servers become somewhat irrelevant.
I'm somewhat disgusted that this even needed to be explained. Perhaps you can hook up with my buddy in Minnesota - who also couldn't understand this concept.
The Internet is instantly gratifying. The things/people that make it go for you may not be - and often because of something completely beyond their control. Learn to live with it.
I used to work for a large IT firm doing internal support. On the morning of 9/11/2001 I received a phone call from a manager in the manufacturing division. I was based in NY and he was based in MN. He demanded to know why he had not been able to access his e-mail for the last hour and a half. I explained to him that our mail servers were located in building #2 of the World Trade Center, which no longer existed.
He demanded to speak to my supervisor because he could not believe our response time to correct the problem and reboot the mail server was so slow.
I pointed out that three targets on American soil had just been attacked, two of them civilian and completely destroyed. He still didn't get it. I pointed out that 3000 people died. He again demanded to speak to my supervisor, screaming about our Service Level Agreements and such.
I hung up and walked out.
Gotta wonder how IBM feels about this...
on
Lenovo To Shun Linux
·
· Score: 5, Interesting
I used to work for IBM supporting other IBM employees. We certainly had users who ran Linux on Netvistas, Thinkpads, etc. or who ran AIX. You have to wonder what IBM's feelings are on this - after all, IBM has helped to push Linux out the door in the past. They've offered the OS as an installation option so that you boot into Linux fresh out of the box. They also offer support to clients running Linux - typically on IBM hardware.
They've also done substantial work developing a href="http://linux390.marist.edu">S/390 Linux [linux390.marist.edu] in partnership with Marist College. S/390 Linux runs on IBM mainframe systems and allows clients to connect to their own Linux "workstation" hosted off the mainframe (think VMWare - but now instead of running an additional workstation in a window on your own machine, you're running an additional workstation on your own machine but all the processing power and resource utilization is hosted on an OS390 mainframe).
There are a multitude of other places where one can see IBM's support, endorsement, and development of Linux. The big question is where is IBM getting its hardware for its own employees these days? If there's an agreement with Lenovo to purchase PCs from them, I would imagine that this decision will create some serious support problems. It's one thing to have technicians working on laptops that have been designed in house. When the specifications you're working with are open to the communities you serve, you're far more able to create workarounds to specific problems or resolve recurring issues between hardware and OS. If Lenovo is now designing their machines with a commitment to exclusive Windows compatibility, how will this affect the very business that sold the Thinkpad/Netvista etc. names to Lenovo in the first place? What kinds of kinks does this throw into continued IBM development and endorsement of Linux?
There's an underlying assumption at work here that games that are comical are inherently non-violent. When asked how his new title, Sam Suede, will stack up against the "Grand Theft Autos" of the world, Lowe comments:
I think the easiest comparison would be that where action games today have violence as their currency, we have humor. So picture every place that you would shoot somebody or slice somebody open or something else. Instead, put in a laugh there. That's what we're going to do. So there's going to be guards, but instead of slitting their throats, you'll give them a wedgie. And instead of conversations with long cutscenes, we'll have humorous dialogue with conversation trees, which may be a carryover from the old adventure games and RPGs.
The fact is, humor is not mutually exclusive from violence. Anyone who has played the latest Tony Hawk Underground titles will note that while the story mode is often amusing and is driven by humor, there are still elements of violence at play. Granted - we're not talking about whipping out a Desert Eagle and carving a cranial canoe into the heads of opposing skaters, but mild physical violence and humiliation of opposing characters are certainly depicted in the story mode narrative. This is more or less what Lowe is talking about doing with his latest title - creating a compelling and funny action game with minimal violence.
But let's back up a second and talk about that "violence as currency" idea that Lowe establishes, and lets also look at Gamasutra's point of comparison - Grand Theft Auto.
The Grand Theft Auto series is arguably one of the most violent depictions of reality ever brought to gamers' living rooms. While there are other games that celebrate gratuitious violence in great detail (like Mortal Kombat), GTA celebrates gratuitous violence in situations of far greater magnitude (ie. killing 50 cops in 5 minutes will get you "Respect" from the locals, whereas the MK series rewards you for one intensely gross kill). GTA also presents a far more real world setting for most gamers than most violent games on the market (sorry kids, but most of you playing Medal of Honor/Halo/Unreal/Cool FPS of the week are not marines living in a combat zone). The setting is a city designed with realism in mind. While the actions of characters within the game's narrative may not appear realistic, San Andreas, Liberty City, Los Santos, etc. look very much like the urban and suburban areas of the U.S. they are intended to represent. The game depicts realistic violence at a high order of magnitude in realistic settings and places players in the role of the anti-hero who kills with reckless abandon and without reason. GTA continues to be a hot seller and have great replay value not just because of its story mode, but also because anyone can fire it up and run off on an instantly gratifying rampage on a whim. For comparison's sake, I'll offer up any of the "Free Skate" options available in the Tony Hawk series as a game of the "non-violent" variety that offers the same ability for instantly gratifying non-goal-driven gameplay.
So why are we not all in an uproar clamoring for the heads of the folks at Rockstar? (Yes, there are some people who have spoken out against GTA, but they have been largely ineffectual and often ill-supported or intentioned.)
BECAUSE IT'S FUNNY.
Don't get me wrong - I'm not saying that the content within any of the GTA games is appropriate for the average 8 year old. I'm also not saying that GTA in any way breaks us away from damaging societal norms pertaining to race/class/gender/etc. But face it - the first time you put down the controller to look up the "All weapons" cheat and heard a "bag lady" walking by your character exclaim, "You ain't gettin' none of my welfare check!" you laughed. When you heard the ads on the radio or the cheesy 80's station's soundtrack, you laughed. GTA goes out of its way to be downright hilarious and its evident in the
How the exploit functions (a loose theory)
1. It is widely accepted that the Corporate versions of the software are those that are affected. The major difference between the Symantec corporate and home use anti-virus clients is their ability to be managed by a centralized server. From the server environment one can initiate any number of tasks - including a remote installation of the client, remote scans, etc. IIRC this functionality is accomplished through connection to a listening port on the client machine. This would fit the theory of what it is that is so different and that a user needs to do absolutely nothing but have the machine on a network with the Symantec service running.
2. The current CNN coverage located here (http://www.cnn.com/2006/TECH/internet/05/25/antiv irus.flaw.ap/index.html) indicates that home use editions of the software are not affected, "though consumers who are provided Symantec's corporate edition antivirus software by their employers for use at home may be affected." Many of these same users are also granted secure access to remote servers behind their companies' firewalls...
3. This is a major concern because it means that we're not looking at a situation of massive numbers of zombie bots that are all deployed to do some low level inane task like e-mailing tons of spam to people. It means that the firewalls of the various institutions of power, privilege and profit around the globe who have purchased Symantec's products become functionally useless as employees head home to plug into their non-firewalled-my-cousin-set-it-up-for-me cable or DSL connection at home. It also means that any confidential data stored on those remote machines is more likely to theft. Consider the recent stories in the U.S. media of the theft of a laptop containing thousands of citizens social security numbers. Now magnify that situation by imagining that everyone with access to confidential data on a laptop running Symantec place the laptop on the front porch of their home each night.
It will be interesting to see how Symantec handles this. I am hopeful that a LiveUpdate can correct the situation and will be looking into turning off the remote management features on the client machines I manage as a precaution. I don't know that there's a link, but it seems like a fairly plausible source of exploit that is clearly delineated from the home version...
2.
Squig, I think there's still a few logical leaps to your argument:
You say: Let's insert 0) Raise money for (1) and (2), from investors who need a rough idea of what you're doing. This limits you to organized crime. Congratulations.
What you're not considering here is that the smart legitimate investor is probably not going to throw his money behind yet another generic mp3 player in an already saturated (and clearly brand name dominated) market. Yes, there are those of us in the slashdot community and others at large who are buying generic mp3 players because they are hackable, cheaper, or offer some minutae of features that the vast number of consumers don't care about. Why would any "legitimate investor" be compelled to provide the supporting captial to market a product that doesn't appeal to the vast number of consumers? Most (and I emphasize most because I don't mean ALL) consumers of MP3 related products are seeking the brand name commodity- we're really talking about the difference between the "Walkman" and the 20 dollar portable cassette player of the 1980's. Brand names and marketing are part of consumer culture and social identification. If you don't believe me, look to the fashion industry or consider how many people you know who called you up on Christmas morning to tell you "Not only did I get an iPod video, but it's BLACK!" Marketing has a TON to do with success of a product, and the pre-existing dominant forces in the mp3 player market will make investors less likely to back a generic product. To suggest that at this point a new "legitimate" entity with no prior association with consumers could enter the market with a new product and succeed is somewhat foolish.
You also say: Between 2) and 3) you need to insert "2.5) Find distributors for a product who know you're not Apple but will be selling a product branded as Apple, therefore putting themselves at risks of lawsuits. This limits you to organized crime, and they'll be demanding a high margin on the products. Which they'll be selling discounted anyway. Congratulations.
The problem here is that you're completely discounting the situation at hand. This group of pirates established themselves AS NEC. You imply that each and every one of the distributors KNEW that they weren't working with the "legitimate" NEC. Given the fact that this investigation has turned up a "replica" of the company, right down to official memos, letterheads, documents, ID cards, etc., how does your explanation that the only people involved in such practice are organized criminals? Is it not also possible that small mom and pop shops who meet with a legitimate looking NEC sales representative (who appears to have all the credentials one would expect) to be duped into purchasing products from an illegitimate source?
Finally, you conclude with: Your second example, of the legitimate company, is absolutely laughable. Have you seen Apple's profits lately?
Absolutely sir, Apple has huge profits. They also have over two decades of consumer history and influence under their belts. They also market their products to be "cool" and have been associated with "coolness" for quite a while. When your friend (regardless of computer experience) sees you with your new iBook and it's shiny white aerodynamic design and the apple logo clearly displayed across the lid, he/she notices it. This is not the phenomenon someone experiences when they purchase a Dell/Sony/IBM-Lenovo-Whatever/HP machine. My point here is that the fact that Apple is successful doesn't grant weight to your argument - it only illustrates the existing roadblocks any new entrant into the market must surpass to be profitable. Point me to a new start-up organization that has been able to conquer an existing technology market and I will be more than glad to rescind this argument and award you with many gold stars.
I'm not saying that what these guys are doing is defensible, but their business plan (while illegit) certainly makes for a profitable venture that allows them to avoid the hurdles of the market...
Probably because a long history of neoliberal economic engagement has placed us into an inevitable cold war with China. Our economies are significantly intertwined as a result of "more business = more democracy" policy making initatives both domestically and abroad. Our long hands off approach on holding corporations accountable for their actions in remote nations has allowed U.S. based entities to exact profits at the expense of people in places we'd like to be less aggressive with us and to develop democracies. Quality of life in these areas decline or remain equally as poor and no impetus to raise them (ie. fair wages, shorter hours, safer working conditions) is felt by the corporations. The way it's *supposed* to work is that the boon of having U.S. investment in a poor nation boosts the poor nation's economy. So, for example, a harsh regime in the third world without the resources to provide for its people enters into agreement with a U.S. corporation that makes widgets. The corporation raises quality of life and makes certain demands upon local bureaucracies. Middle class America propagates. Hoo-rah.
But this isn't the way it works because most corporations are not in the business of democratizing. They are in the business of making money. In China, the U.S. and it's Multinational corpoations do not have the bargaining chit: China does because of a staggering market for those corporations to tap. Moreover, Chinese legislation places demands upon corporations to get market access - throwing the whole works in reverse.
China's market draw of over 1 billion people outweighs the bargaining chit of democracy/free speech - in this case, the Internet problems we are seeing are based off of a contractual agreement that all Internationally owned corporations must agree to in order to conduct business. The contract obligates these corporations to enforce Chinese censorship laws and turn over information in order to gain market access. Sit in the seat of the U.S. corporation: If you don't sign, you don't do business there and China has no problem asking your U.S. competitors to block access to you. This means over 1 billion people on the globe do not know of your product and you aren't making any money off of them while your competitors are. No matter how much product you sell anywhere else in the world, your competitors will always have more market share and more resources to compete (or outcompete) with you.
Simultaneously, if these U.S. based corporations that make up such a large percentage of our economic foundation and resulting global hegemony don't gain access to these markets, others will and the entire nation becomes less competitive. We lose superpower status faster than we will in the long run. Call it buying time. There's a lot more to it than this, and the levels of engagement operate both at state and private actor levels (there is much American money floating around in the Chinese economy that has been offered as engagement/assistance on AIDS issues for example) but the reality is that to cut off all trade with China is dooms the U.S. economy. We've made it that way, but we also gave weapons to Iraq, trained the terrorists that want to kill us, etc. etc. I in no way support these sorts of policies. We Americans have an undeniable track record of ingenuity and innovation in finding ways to be wasteful, thoughtless, counterintuitive, and downright stupid.
Slashdot Mirror
Seriously, no-one thought of sandboxing the holodeck? Even after the first 10 times the ship got pwned by it?
Moriarty: first to successfully virtualize the Holodeck. (Granted, he also had root on the holodeck, and the Enterprise computer). Point is, someone *thought* of it, and the first "person" to do so was a Holodeck program, and the ugly bags of mostly water couldn't figure it out.
Correction, re-read tfa, get that this is Texas Court, and Canadian developer with rights... -- my bad.
Anyone who has visited the Dell website with any recency knows that Word is not bundled as a default "freebie-included-in-price" option. The default option is "No Productivity Software Added." Adding MS Works (which includes MS Word 2003) costs $79. So what's the "imaging" problem? Are we supposed to pretend this particular retailer, whose model is different from others because of user-customization options, is incapable of providing machines without a software option (particularly given that this is their default configuration?).... The place this impacts Dell the most I'd imagine is in relation to Enterprise level customers, and all those Colleges and Universities they are partners with --- who sell pre-configured machines with Word installed to their students. Of course, everyone has moved into their dorms in the next "120 days" and it's not like Enterprise customers in Canada won't deal with this from every PC retailer. I smell a rat.
What did the "Web Hype" do for Snakes on a Plane, oh thats right, NOTHING. Just like some bad press will not kill the PS3.
That's because Snakes on a Plane web hype also appealed to people who leave the house a lot less and are more apt to wait and download then pay and sit next to joe-joe the idiot circus boy and his ringing cell phone.
To deny that "web hype" has any effect on the real world is just silly. Ask those folks in Alaska whose little pork project just fell apart if blogs have power over public opinion. They will undoubtedly say, "Yes."
This doesn't mean that the PS3 will fail, and by all accounts "SoaP is not a "failure." But to deny that the Internet bailed out what was likely to be another Deep Blue Sea is inaccurate. The impact was nowhere near as big as expected, but people certainly saw that movie because of hype. Imagine what the box office would have been *without* the hype...
Nevertheless, inaccurate box office projections will likely hurt some people. It doesn't mean that New Line Cinema or anyone else is going to "fail." It does mean that someone somewhere will probably lose a job or two. It does mean that some people with lofty endorsement contracts or marketing tie-ins may not make as much money.
So too, it could be with Sony and negative web hype. This does not necessarily mean Sony dies. It just means they ain't in first. Internet hype has power. It is important. It's just not magical, or special.
There were secondary mail servers, but secondary mail servers become difficult to implement when your employees can't move via mass transit, car, taxi, etc due to a massive terrorist attack that shuts down New York City. Network lines, telephone infrastructure etc. were compromised both inside and outside the company. Verizon had a large telecommunications building that was directly impacted by 9/11 debris and closed due to structural issues...
Point being, when your city is under a cloud of carcinogenic smoke and dust and all transportation into the city closes down - when phone lines and fiber lines are not just down but incinerated - when the military, FBI, CIA, FEMA and whatever governmental acronyms you can think of come rolling down the street that you work on - secondary mail servers become somewhat irrelevant.
I'm somewhat disgusted that this even needed to be explained. Perhaps you can hook up with my buddy in Minnesota - who also couldn't understand this concept.
The Internet is instantly gratifying. The things/people that make it go for you may not be - and often because of something completely beyond their control. Learn to live with it.
I used to work for a large IT firm doing internal support. On the morning of 9/11/2001 I received a phone call from a manager in the manufacturing division. I was based in NY and he was based in MN. He demanded to know why he had not been able to access his e-mail for the last hour and a half. I explained to him that our mail servers were located in building #2 of the World Trade Center, which no longer existed. He demanded to speak to my supervisor because he could not believe our response time to correct the problem and reboot the mail server was so slow. I pointed out that three targets on American soil had just been attacked, two of them civilian and completely destroyed. He still didn't get it. I pointed out that 3000 people died. He again demanded to speak to my supervisor, screaming about our Service Level Agreements and such. I hung up and walked out.
I used to work for IBM supporting other IBM employees. We certainly had users who ran Linux on Netvistas, Thinkpads, etc. or who ran AIX. You have to wonder what IBM's feelings are on this - after all, IBM has helped to push Linux out the door in the past. They've offered the OS as an installation option so that you boot into Linux fresh out of the box. They also offer support to clients running Linux - typically on IBM hardware.
They've also done substantial work developing a href="http://linux390.marist.edu">S/390 Linux [linux390.marist.edu] in partnership with Marist College. S/390 Linux runs on IBM mainframe systems and allows clients to connect to their own Linux "workstation" hosted off the mainframe (think VMWare - but now instead of running an additional workstation in a window on your own machine, you're running an additional workstation on your own machine but all the processing power and resource utilization is hosted on an OS390 mainframe).
There are a multitude of other places where one can see IBM's support, endorsement, and development of Linux. The big question is where is IBM getting its hardware for its own employees these days? If there's an agreement with Lenovo to purchase PCs from them, I would imagine that this decision will create some serious support problems. It's one thing to have technicians working on laptops that have been designed in house. When the specifications you're working with are open to the communities you serve, you're far more able to create workarounds to specific problems or resolve recurring issues between hardware and OS. If Lenovo is now designing their machines with a commitment to exclusive Windows compatibility, how will this affect the very business that sold the Thinkpad/Netvista etc. names to Lenovo in the first place? What kinds of kinks does this throw into continued IBM development and endorsement of Linux?
There's an underlying assumption at work here that games that are comical are inherently non-violent. When asked how his new title, Sam Suede, will stack up against the "Grand Theft Autos" of the world, Lowe comments:
I think the easiest comparison would be that where action games today have violence as their currency, we have humor. So picture every place that you would shoot somebody or slice somebody open or something else. Instead, put in a laugh there. That's what we're going to do. So there's going to be guards, but instead of slitting their throats, you'll give them a wedgie. And instead of conversations with long cutscenes, we'll have humorous dialogue with conversation trees, which may be a carryover from the old adventure games and RPGs.
The fact is, humor is not mutually exclusive from violence. Anyone who has played the latest Tony Hawk Underground titles will note that while the story mode is often amusing and is driven by humor, there are still elements of violence at play. Granted - we're not talking about whipping out a Desert Eagle and carving a cranial canoe into the heads of opposing skaters, but mild physical violence and humiliation of opposing characters are certainly depicted in the story mode narrative. This is more or less what Lowe is talking about doing with his latest title - creating a compelling and funny action game with minimal violence.
But let's back up a second and talk about that "violence as currency" idea that Lowe establishes, and lets also look at Gamasutra's point of comparison - Grand Theft Auto.
The Grand Theft Auto series is arguably one of the most violent depictions of reality ever brought to gamers' living rooms. While there are other games that celebrate gratuitious violence in great detail (like Mortal Kombat), GTA celebrates gratuitous violence in situations of far greater magnitude (ie. killing 50 cops in 5 minutes will get you "Respect" from the locals, whereas the MK series rewards you for one intensely gross kill). GTA also presents a far more real world setting for most gamers than most violent games on the market (sorry kids, but most of you playing Medal of Honor/Halo/Unreal/Cool FPS of the week are not marines living in a combat zone). The setting is a city designed with realism in mind. While the actions of characters within the game's narrative may not appear realistic, San Andreas, Liberty City, Los Santos, etc. look very much like the urban and suburban areas of the U.S. they are intended to represent. The game depicts realistic violence at a high order of magnitude in realistic settings and places players in the role of the anti-hero who kills with reckless abandon and without reason. GTA continues to be a hot seller and have great replay value not just because of its story mode, but also because anyone can fire it up and run off on an instantly gratifying rampage on a whim. For comparison's sake, I'll offer up any of the "Free Skate" options available in the Tony Hawk series as a game of the "non-violent" variety that offers the same ability for instantly gratifying non-goal-driven gameplay.
So why are we not all in an uproar clamoring for the heads of the folks at Rockstar? (Yes, there are some people who have spoken out against GTA, but they have been largely ineffectual and often ill-supported or intentioned.)
BECAUSE IT'S FUNNY.
Don't get me wrong - I'm not saying that the content within any of the GTA games is appropriate for the average 8 year old. I'm also not saying that GTA in any way breaks us away from damaging societal norms pertaining to race/class/gender/etc. But face it - the first time you put down the controller to look up the "All weapons" cheat and heard a "bag lady" walking by your character exclaim, "You ain't gettin' none of my welfare check!" you laughed. When you heard the ads on the radio or the cheesy 80's station's soundtrack, you laughed. GTA goes out of its way to be downright hilarious and its evident in the
How the exploit functions (a loose theory) 1. It is widely accepted that the Corporate versions of the software are those that are affected. The major difference between the Symantec corporate and home use anti-virus clients is their ability to be managed by a centralized server. From the server environment one can initiate any number of tasks - including a remote installation of the client, remote scans, etc. IIRC this functionality is accomplished through connection to a listening port on the client machine. This would fit the theory of what it is that is so different and that a user needs to do absolutely nothing but have the machine on a network with the Symantec service running. 2. The current CNN coverage located here (http://www.cnn.com/2006/TECH/internet/05/25/antiv irus.flaw.ap/index.html) indicates that home use editions of the software are not affected, "though consumers who are provided Symantec's corporate edition antivirus software by their employers for use at home may be affected." Many of these same users are also granted secure access to remote servers behind their companies' firewalls...
3. This is a major concern because it means that we're not looking at a situation of massive numbers of zombie bots that are all deployed to do some low level inane task like e-mailing tons of spam to people. It means that the firewalls of the various institutions of power, privilege and profit around the globe who have purchased Symantec's products become functionally useless as employees head home to plug into their non-firewalled-my-cousin-set-it-up-for-me cable or DSL connection at home. It also means that any confidential data stored on those remote machines is more likely to theft. Consider the recent stories in the U.S. media of the theft of a laptop containing thousands of citizens social security numbers. Now magnify that situation by imagining that everyone with access to confidential data on a laptop running Symantec place the laptop on the front porch of their home each night.
It will be interesting to see how Symantec handles this. I am hopeful that a LiveUpdate can correct the situation and will be looking into turning off the remote management features on the client machines I manage as a precaution. I don't know that there's a link, but it seems like a fairly plausible source of exploit that is clearly delineated from the home version...
2.
Squig, I think there's still a few logical leaps to your argument:
You say:
Let's insert 0) Raise money for (1) and (2), from investors who need a rough idea of what you're doing. This limits you to organized crime. Congratulations.
What you're not considering here is that the smart legitimate investor is probably not going to throw his money behind yet another generic mp3 player in an already saturated (and clearly brand name dominated) market. Yes, there are those of us in the slashdot community and others at large who are buying generic mp3 players because they are hackable, cheaper, or offer some minutae of features that the vast number of consumers don't care about. Why would any "legitimate investor" be compelled to provide the supporting captial to market a product that doesn't appeal to the vast number of consumers? Most (and I emphasize most because I don't mean ALL) consumers of MP3 related products are seeking the brand name commodity- we're really talking about the difference between the "Walkman" and the 20 dollar portable cassette player of the 1980's. Brand names and marketing are part of consumer culture and social identification. If you don't believe me, look to the fashion industry or consider how many people you know who called you up on Christmas morning to tell you "Not only did I get an iPod video, but it's BLACK!" Marketing has a TON to do with success of a product, and the pre-existing dominant forces in the mp3 player market will make investors less likely to back a generic product. To suggest that at this point a new "legitimate" entity with no prior association with consumers could enter the market with a new product and succeed is somewhat foolish.
You also say:
Between 2) and 3) you need to insert "2.5) Find distributors for a product who know you're not Apple but will be selling a product branded as Apple, therefore putting themselves at risks of lawsuits. This limits you to organized crime, and they'll be demanding a high margin on the products. Which they'll be selling discounted anyway. Congratulations.
The problem here is that you're completely discounting the situation at hand. This group of pirates established themselves AS NEC. You imply that each and every one of the distributors KNEW that they weren't working with the "legitimate" NEC. Given the fact that this investigation has turned up a "replica" of the company, right down to official memos, letterheads, documents, ID cards, etc., how does your explanation that the only people involved in such practice are organized criminals? Is it not also possible that small mom and pop shops who meet with a legitimate looking NEC sales representative (who appears to have all the credentials one would expect) to be duped into purchasing products from an illegitimate source?
Finally, you conclude with:
Your second example, of the legitimate company, is absolutely laughable. Have you seen Apple's profits lately?
Absolutely sir, Apple has huge profits. They also have over two decades of consumer history and influence under their belts. They also market their products to be "cool" and have been associated with "coolness" for quite a while. When your friend (regardless of computer experience) sees you with your new iBook and it's shiny white aerodynamic design and the apple logo clearly displayed across the lid, he/she notices it. This is not the phenomenon someone experiences when they purchase a Dell/Sony/IBM-Lenovo-Whatever/HP machine. My point here is that the fact that Apple is successful doesn't grant weight to your argument - it only illustrates the existing roadblocks any new entrant into the market must surpass to be profitable. Point me to a new start-up organization that has been able to conquer an existing technology market and I will be more than glad to rescind this argument and award you with many gold stars.
I'm not saying that what these guys are doing is defensible, but their business plan (while illegit) certainly makes for a profitable venture that allows them to avoid the hurdles of the market...
But this isn't the way it works because most corporations are not in the business of democratizing. They are in the business of making money. In China, the U.S. and it's Multinational corpoations do not have the bargaining chit: China does because of a staggering market for those corporations to tap. Moreover, Chinese legislation places demands upon corporations to get market access - throwing the whole works in reverse.
China's market draw of over 1 billion people outweighs the bargaining chit of democracy/free speech - in this case, the Internet problems we are seeing are based off of a contractual agreement that all Internationally owned corporations must agree to in order to conduct business. The contract obligates these corporations to enforce Chinese censorship laws and turn over information in order to gain market access. Sit in the seat of the U.S. corporation: If you don't sign, you don't do business there and China has no problem asking your U.S. competitors to block access to you. This means over 1 billion people on the globe do not know of your product and you aren't making any money off of them while your competitors are. No matter how much product you sell anywhere else in the world, your competitors will always have more market share and more resources to compete (or outcompete) with you. Simultaneously, if these U.S. based corporations that make up such a large percentage of our economic foundation and resulting global hegemony don't gain access to these markets, others will and the entire nation becomes less competitive. We lose superpower status faster than we will in the long run. Call it buying time. There's a lot more to it than this, and the levels of engagement operate both at state and private actor levels (there is much American money floating around in the Chinese economy that has been offered as engagement/assistance on AIDS issues for example) but the reality is that to cut off all trade with China is dooms the U.S. economy. We've made it that way, but we also gave weapons to Iraq, trained the terrorists that want to kill us, etc. etc. I in no way support these sorts of policies. We Americans have an undeniable track record of ingenuity and innovation in finding ways to be wasteful, thoughtless, counterintuitive, and downright stupid.