Education you thought was 'just for you' has somehow found it's way abroad.
Jobs you thought were 'just for you' have somehow found their way abroad.
What do you do?
What do you know? - now comes the important part...
You know: how to do the job, how much it costs to do the job, how much the companies you worked for pay to get the job done.
What do you do? - Organize. Create a consultancy. Identify 'offshore' companies who want to 'do the job'. Offer your expertise. Arrange to provide your 'expertise' to 10 to 100 companies in the States, while 'off-shoring' the work to some company where costs of living is $500 a month.
You get lemons, make lemonade!
The American dream is still alive.... accept it, manipulate it. Bam! It requires a little more thought to start, but seriously.... not that much effort. Get with the program, USA still owns the world;-p and I say that without any regrets, because it is still true... take advantage of our consumer base and all the rest of our advantages..... it just 'simply' is not that hard to do.
When was that Keynote? Two years ago? I think those percentages have at least flip-flopped by now and OS 9 users are in the minority or at least should be... If you have something that requires OS9 you should be able to use it in classic, if not then you should have a dedicated machine for that applications and move the rest of your machines to OS X. OS X is not going away and the sooner you admit it and move on the better it will be for all of us.
Why do browsing in OS 9? If Chewbacca lives on Endor, you must Switch!
"If we let legislation pass that would force companies to assume liability for security violations, then all OSS is doomed. Some people have suggested that OSS projects be exempt from such a law, but do you really think that Microsoft's lobbyists would allow for that? If individual programmers were liable for security problems, this would definitely kill OSS."
What you fail to mention is that Proprietary Software companies would also be hurt by this legislation... currently they don't have to assume any liability for security or even for bugs... they can offer indemnification but they don't have to, which means they can make money off of it whereas if it was mandatory they can not other than to charge more to everyone.
OSS on the other hand can put in place an indemnification organization wherein you can be a member, register your software and pay 'dues' which will go into the pool for use when and if your software is contestedor accused of security problems... in fact I think one such organization is already in place. This pool can be managed much like a fund and maintained as a non-profit fund for OSS so that it can grow beyond what the individual contributions will afford.
In fact I believe that such a fund could provide higher indemnity value than any single commercial company can afford, even Microsoft, give enough members. In return the org can provide various value added services for members to encourage enrollment, beyond their initial offerings.
I agree on principle that this is the wrong way to do this but also offer a compromise;
Give people an informed choice. Tell them that the website they are attempting to access has been identified as a security risk/spam house/pron site/etc then let them decide if they want to continue.
It is just as open to abuse but it also seems like it would fail gracefully in the event that the site is not a problem or that as an individual you don't have a problem with it's content.
Go one step further and allow the browser or your account to keep a white list of bookmarks which pass you straight through to the site... just set a cookie or similar.
The end result is that you give people a community knowledge-based opinion about the content of a site, then you give them the choice of whether they want to go with the crowd or go their own way and you make it convenient for them to go their own way from then on.
Many tools already do this with filtering for Ads... just extend it to apply to entire sites and return the bookmark option page instead and if you are AOL you can hook it up to your community database of opinions... "mod this site up, it has 'original' pron... not just the same set of crappy old pics";-p
The floppy disk as "save" is a convention... an unfortunate consequence of history. Conventions have no meaning, Symbols do. Conventions are cultural and periodic in that they will change across geography and time. Good symbols, universal symbols do not. The 'eject' symbol, 'power' symbol, they represent a verb, an action, a function... they are good symbols.
Save, record, keep, store... all synonyms which should have the same symbol... I think the record symbol is the best.... it is flexible and can be applied to context. A red button... a red circle with black outline.... perfect, simple, if it stays depressed it is recording a stream, if it depresses and then comes back it has recorded one version... one save.
Bam! I've solved the dillema...
Come on... it's so damn simple. Just use it already.
What better way to show Open Source as a viable resource... if nothing else it promotes progress in all the areas that commercial products apparently fail. Seriously, if there is one thing that OS software has promoted and succeeded at providing it is localization (i8n?).
This is a perfect example of the benefits of OS alternatives providing valid compeition to commercial apps.
I like this better than what I'd originally planned to say...
that patents without present useful application are often overturned...
for instance, the human genome patent applications were denied for the most part because the applicants couldn't show an immediate use for what they had discovered.
this is not a conspiracy... just a problem with method. Think about it for a few minutes. New system, new users, new admins. Problems with UI are inevitable.
As an OC citizen I found the system to be flawless, given that I was in fact given the correct ballot number/ID.
Question is, how many times has this happened when there was no auditing system in place? Surely an electronic version doesn't change logistical problems?
Seriously, when did your ID card become a credit card?
I've got 4 cards... 2 with no balance.. in fact one owes me $34.00 and 2 with 0% for 12 months with a balance of 8 grand. I'll pay it off within the year... 4900 is for an engagement ring;-p I paid 1200 cash for the balance.
I haven't paid more than 4% interest in 2 years... good haggling.
Still that's more credit than a mass transit card... what is he talking about?
Anybody know who made the OC systems. I also voted using them and thought they were reasonably well designed. Decent UI etc as you described. Also of note is that they used a paper slip with a PIN number printed out on the spot for you... no magnetic card or other sensitive method.
Any jobs worth my time in Denver? Why are so many people moving away? Sure if you are a small busness owner you might be able to pull it off, say in the liquor business... otherwise it sounds like all the opportunity has left the city high and dry;-p
It's not enough to know that jobs are moving over seas, you need to know why.
The simplest answer is that it is cheaper to hire people in (India), labor cost less. Materials cost nearly the same, transportation costs nearly the same, time runs at the same speed. Labor.
Why is labor cheaper in 2nd-3rd tier economies? Cost of living is cheaper. Why is cost of living cheaper? Imports cost the same, travel, utilities, products cost nearly the same barring local production costs being cheaper. What is the biggest expense month to month and year to year for anyone in the world?
Housing. Rent, Mortgage, Real Estate, Property. What can't be exported or imported? Housing and Land.
Home prices and in parallel rental expenses have been going up 12% - 24% year over year in all regions of the USA for at least a decade. What is the annual cost of living inflation rate or even the average annual wage increase? More along the lines of 3% - 8% annually. Compound this over ten years and you can see that housing expenses have become the number one increase in cost of living throughout this America.
How is this possible? People still 'buy' homes right? People still rent apartments? Yes and No. More people are renting than ever before. Homes are being mortgaged using 30 to 60 year payment plans. Nobody who has 'bought' a home in the last ten years, excepting the very wealthy, will even come close to owning their home in the next ten years. As mortgage rates go up cost of living goes up, as mortgage rates go up, comparable rental rates go up... they are directly manipulated to equal local mortgage rates.
We are a nation of debtors whose income barely equals our expenses and often does not meet it. Out of control real estate values are bankrupting our nation. The average home where I live is priced at $420,000... average, meaning 3 bedrooms, 2 baths, small yard, 1.5 car garage, built in the 1980s over 20 years old. It is worth barely half of that, most likely less.
People are still buying because the banks and credit companies let them... which encourages the value of real estate to continue increasing well beyond any reasonable expectations of anyone to pay for it and still save for retirement or for the childrens college funds. This means they have to borrow even more to pay for the 'cheap' imported products so they can save their cash for old age. Insanity.
Now real estate isn't to blame... they are simply following market forces, "what the market will bear". The problem is that the market can't really bear it without creating enormous amounts of debt to finance everything. We are spending money which won't be realized as real value for 30 to 60 years. This is billions if not trillions of dollars I'm talking about. The federal deficit is nothing compared with the amount of consumer debt which is building up quietly behind the scenes with no one watching or assuming accountability.
The worst part is that we can no longer afford to compete with the rest of the world because property holders and credit companies are holding our paychecks hostage for the rest of our lives. We are paying so much for the right to have our basic housing needs met that we can't afford to take a pay cut. Not if we want to live where there is work to be done.
Look into this. It's much scarier than I've let on.
Seriously... VOIP seems like an abstraction over an abstraction... it's all data, why not go straight to the source so to speak and simply send out a fax signal directly?
See though, that's where you are wrong... the reason MS has 95% market share is because they leverage their brand to compel OEM providers to install MS on all consumer machines and leverage their office suite extension to enforce a monopoly on commercial use of the OS. If MS ported Office to Linux or Unix/BSD/Solaris business would have an option of which OS to purchase for their hardware while still being able to run the preeminent Office suite.. while consumers have little choice at all as all the affordable hardware is pre-installed with Windows due to MS licensing contracts with the OEMs.
The wrong part is that this pseudo-monopoly enforced by contract and price manipulation does not mean that they are the only game in town... ie: their market share isn't related to customer demand, they've artificially created their market share through manipulative business dealings. There are plenty of viable alternatives for an OS, ask SUN, ask IBM, ask Apple, ask Redhat... if they could get Office and Exchange for their platforms, if MS offered them in an open market strategy as any normal software developer would, those platforms would have much higher market penetration in business. The OS matters much less than the applications that run on top of the OS... nobody cares which OS they run as long as they can get the job done. Hence MS has used their applicaton presence to unduly influence the OS market in preference of their own OS. It would be different if they offered Windows for free and simply sold Office and Exchange and their Server/SQL etc... that would work just fine... in fact that would be the best of all solutions for them. Expecially if they opened the API to 3rd parties... sorry I thought I was talking about Linux for a second there...
Instead what they do is offer Windows for free, with the caveat that you must purchase an annual service and upgrade contract while providing the most restrictive license possible and forcing you to depend upon them for any and all new innovation within the OS itself. Otherwise you have to pay for the OS at a prorated price level, just for the most basic functionality. R&D should be payed for by their application sales, not their OS contracts.
As for disaster... please. Companies have come and gone, services and products have changed hands from the beginning of man. New products have replaced the old... don't make me remind you of the buggy whip;-p Even if all MS software "vaporized" it would be mere months until workarounds came about and new solutions were found. Technology is no longer in it's infancy where one particular manifestation can cripple the general trend. There might be some setbacks in specific instances but in general life would go on and I believe new innovation would improve upon the old conventions as it has in the past.
"if Microsoft were to disappear tomorrow it would throw the entire world into chaos"
That is such bullshit! If Microsoft went away it would be no worse than if GE went down the tube, or if CBS or FOX went to hell... sure they have a singular product that a large portion of the world uses every day, whether it's a toaster, microwave, washer, dryer, sitcom, news cast, cartoon, or an operating system and an office software suite. Sure they have a monopoly of sorts and they abuse the hell out of it but the world would move on and rapidly... all the resources applied to integrating MS software and extending MS software would soon be applied to one of the other OS packages and within a year or two all the functionality would be replaced. No that year or two wouldn't be a disaster... it's not as if MS software would dissappear, even if MS did, it just wouldn't be updated, not to mention that all of their service contracts would still be in place...
What I see is that this is a great example of a truly global economy... instead of a US-centric gobal economy, ie: US companies get to be global but everyone else has to shut up and do what we say...
I'm glad that foreign governments are taking up the challenge of overseeing these huge international corporations, as they should. Why should the US government be the only authority and take all the blame for imposing sanctions on our home-bred companies.
In fact I foresee that governments will be begin working more closely with each other to regulate corporations by allowing and aiding each other in actions just like this... what better way to avoid reelection scandal regarding local economies and employments rates while still getting the effective results of having regulated locally.
Soon corporations will get the picture that they can't go about doing whatever they want. Regardless of the political environment of one particular country, they will get hit by stiffer sanctions in the rest of the world... where they don't play such a large role in politics and their money isn't nearly as significant.
It's global now boys... you're not in you're own backyard anymore.. time to learn how to play by new rules.
Why can't your neighbor find a recipe for making pizza out of you as long as he doesn't act upon it? Information is not criminal.. acting upon it may be.
If there is a site out there that is participating in a crime and documenting it's progress then there should be an investigation into their actions as described on their site. If they are found to be committing a crime, not just talking about committing a crime... then they get to go to jail. Otherwise it's just talk...
What about P2P for instance... many people think it is "massively detrimental to society as a whole" because it enables the sharing of music w/o acknowledging copyright laws... property laws which are the very foundation of capitalism.
Free expression is free expression... you can not pick and choose your 'acceptable' topics. One man's garbage is another man's treasure.
Finally, if you're neighbor is looking for a recipe, he's already decided to kill you and eat you... what does it matter that he finds a good recipe? The same follows for someone looking up a bomb recipe... that person has already decided to detonate a bomb of some sort. Obscuring the ingredients for a good bomb in a text book instead of having it online is not going to stop this person from building their bomb, they'll simply take a few more weeks to get a hold of the right book.
Unstable people will be unstable regardless of how informed they are.
The easiest method is to simply keep separate accounts!
Keep a thousand or less in your ATM account, whether it is a checking account or savings account regardless... keep it specifically for that purpose.
Use your online access to transfer funds from your secure non-card or pin number account to the card account as necessary. Find a bank that offers free transfers between your accounts. I believe that most of them do and only charge a fee for inter-bank transfers.
Don't forget to change your online account passwords at least once every other month, rotate them if you have to... unique would be better.
If your account is compromised you've lost very little and can easily open a new account or re-secure the original with new pin and card.
It's not all that inconvenient once you set it up and get into the routine of it....
"Do I have to keep batteries in my speakers now? "
Nope you still want to plug them in, BUT no more speaker wires, although this is a bad example since there are already existing wireless speakers on the market... however, the current models are one to one transmitter/receiver whereas with WUSB any device can transmit to the speakers, ie: your DVD/TV/PC/Satellite radio/iPod/Microwave/Washing Machine/Telephone get the idea?
Slashdot Mirror
It's a tough time.
;-p and I say that without any regrets, because it is still true... take advantage of our consumer base and all the rest of our advantages..... it just 'simply' is not that hard to do.
Education you thought was 'just for you' has somehow found it's way abroad.
Jobs you thought were 'just for you' have somehow found their way abroad.
What do you do?
What do you know? - now comes the important part...
You know: how to do the job, how much it costs to do the job, how much the companies you worked for pay to get the job done.
What do you do? - Organize. Create a consultancy. Identify 'offshore' companies who want to 'do the job'. Offer your expertise. Arrange to provide your 'expertise' to 10 to 100 companies in the States, while 'off-shoring' the work to some company where costs of living is $500 a month.
You get lemons, make lemonade!
The American dream is still alive.... accept it, manipulate it. Bam! It requires a little more thought to start, but seriously.... not that much effort. Get with the program, USA still owns the world
Sir your logic has a flaw... you have mentioned Windows and 'decent OS' in the same sentence... indeed.
When was that Keynote? Two years ago? I think those percentages have at least flip-flopped by now and OS 9 users are in the minority or at least should be... If you have something that requires OS9 you should be able to use it in classic, if not then you should have a dedicated machine for that applications and move the rest of your machines to OS X. OS X is not going away and the sooner you admit it and move on the better it will be for all of us.
Why do browsing in OS 9? If Chewbacca lives on Endor, you must Switch!
The funny part is that you can use the exact same solution on OS X, in fact 90% of OS X print drivers use CUPS now... just go here:
http://localhost:631/
on your OS X machine and enjoy, it's all there as you would expect and works like any other CUPS install.
Here's an alternative:
ZeroConf
Or you could spend even more and get a lossless hard copy with liner notes and album cover... ;-p
It's always a trade-off. Some people will make it, others will pay more to get more.
"If we let legislation pass that would force companies to assume liability for security violations, then all OSS is doomed. Some people have suggested that OSS projects be exempt from such a law, but do you really think that Microsoft's lobbyists would allow for that? If individual programmers were liable for security problems, this would definitely kill OSS."
What you fail to mention is that Proprietary Software companies would also be hurt by this legislation... currently they don't have to assume any liability for security or even for bugs... they can offer indemnification but they don't have to, which means they can make money off of it whereas if it was mandatory they can not other than to charge more to everyone.
OSS on the other hand can put in place an indemnification organization wherein you can be a member, register your software and pay 'dues' which will go into the pool for use when and if your software is contestedor accused of security problems... in fact I think one such organization is already in place. This pool can be managed much like a fund and maintained as a non-profit fund for OSS so that it can grow beyond what the individual contributions will afford.
In fact I believe that such a fund could provide higher indemnity value than any single commercial company can afford, even Microsoft, give enough members. In return the org can provide various value added services for members to encourage enrollment, beyond their initial offerings.
I agree on principle that this is the wrong way to do this but also offer a compromise;
;-p
Give people an informed choice. Tell them that the website they are attempting to access has been identified as a security risk/spam house/pron site/etc then let them decide if they want to continue.
It is just as open to abuse but it also seems like it would fail gracefully in the event that the site is not a problem or that as an individual you don't have a problem with it's content.
Go one step further and allow the browser or your account to keep a white list of bookmarks which pass you straight through to the site... just set a cookie or similar.
The end result is that you give people a community knowledge-based opinion about the content of a site, then you give them the choice of whether they want to go with the crowd or go their own way and you make it convenient for them to go their own way from then on.
Many tools already do this with filtering for Ads... just extend it to apply to entire sites and return the bookmark option page instead and if you are AOL you can hook it up to your community database of opinions... "mod this site up, it has 'original' pron... not just the same set of crappy old pics"
The floppy disk as "save" is a convention... an unfortunate consequence of history. Conventions have no meaning, Symbols do. Conventions are cultural and periodic in that they will change across geography and time. Good symbols, universal symbols do not. The 'eject' symbol, 'power' symbol, they represent a verb, an action, a function... they are good symbols.
Save, record, keep, store... all synonyms which should have the same symbol... I think the record symbol is the best.... it is flexible and can be applied to context. A red button... a red circle with black outline.... perfect, simple, if it stays depressed it is recording a stream, if it depresses and then comes back it has recorded one version... one save.
Bam! I've solved the dillema...
Come on... it's so damn simple. Just use it already.
What better way to show Open Source as a viable resource... if nothing else it promotes progress in all the areas that commercial products apparently fail. Seriously, if there is one thing that OS software has promoted and succeeded at providing it is localization (i8n?).
This is a perfect example of the benefits of OS alternatives providing valid compeition to commercial apps.
I like this better than what I'd originally planned to say...
that patents without present useful application are often overturned...
for instance, the human genome patent applications were denied for the most part because the applicants couldn't show an immediate use for what they had discovered.
I read that as "Are we exposed to the clap?" ;-p
this is not a conspiracy... just a problem with method. Think about it for a few minutes. New system, new users, new admins. Problems with UI are inevitable.
As an OC citizen I found the system to be flawless, given that I was in fact given the correct ballot number/ID.
Question is, how many times has this happened when there was no auditing system in place? Surely an electronic version doesn't change logistical problems?
more later....
In New York your card licenses you!
;-p I paid 1200 cash for the balance.
Seriously, when did your ID card become a credit card?
I've got 4 cards... 2 with no balance.. in fact one owes me $34.00 and 2 with 0% for 12 months with a balance of 8 grand. I'll pay it off within the year... 4900 is for an engagement ring
I haven't paid more than 4% interest in 2 years... good haggling.
Still that's more credit than a mass transit card... what is he talking about?
confused in OC
Anybody know who made the OC systems. I also voted using them and thought they were reasonably well designed. Decent UI etc as you described. Also of note is that they used a paper slip with a PIN number printed out on the spot for you... no magnetic card or other sensitive method.
Yes and if you'll give me one hamburger today, I'll gladly pay for two tomorrow... ;-p
Any jobs worth my time in Denver? Why are so many people moving away? Sure if you are a small busness owner you might be able to pull it off, say in the liquor business... otherwise it sounds like all the opportunity has left the city high and dry ;-p
It's not enough to know that jobs are moving over seas, you need to know why.
The simplest answer is that it is cheaper to hire people in (India), labor cost less. Materials cost nearly the same, transportation costs nearly the same, time runs at the same speed. Labor.
Why is labor cheaper in 2nd-3rd tier economies? Cost of living is cheaper. Why is cost of living cheaper? Imports cost the same, travel, utilities, products cost nearly the same barring local production costs being cheaper. What is the biggest expense month to month and year to year for anyone in the world?
Housing. Rent, Mortgage, Real Estate, Property. What can't be exported or imported? Housing and Land.
Home prices and in parallel rental expenses have been going up 12% - 24% year over year in all regions of the USA for at least a decade. What is the annual cost of living inflation rate or even the average annual wage increase? More along the lines of 3% - 8% annually. Compound this over ten years and you can see that housing expenses have become the number one increase in cost of living throughout this America.
How is this possible? People still 'buy' homes right? People still rent apartments? Yes and No. More people are renting than ever before. Homes are being mortgaged using 30 to 60 year payment plans. Nobody who has 'bought' a home in the last ten years, excepting the very wealthy, will even come close to owning their home in the next ten years. As mortgage rates go up cost of living goes up, as mortgage rates go up, comparable rental rates go up... they are directly manipulated to equal local mortgage rates.
We are a nation of debtors whose income barely equals our expenses and often does not meet it. Out of control real estate values are bankrupting our nation. The average home where I live is priced at $420,000... average, meaning 3 bedrooms, 2 baths, small yard, 1.5 car garage, built in the 1980s over 20 years old. It is worth barely half of that, most likely less.
People are still buying because the banks and credit companies let them... which encourages the value of real estate to continue increasing well beyond any reasonable expectations of anyone to pay for it and still save for retirement or for the childrens college funds. This means they have to borrow even more to pay for the 'cheap' imported products so they can save their cash for old age. Insanity.
Now real estate isn't to blame... they are simply following market forces, "what the market will bear". The problem is that the market can't really bear it without creating enormous amounts of debt to finance everything. We are spending money which won't be realized as real value for 30 to 60 years. This is billions if not trillions of dollars I'm talking about. The federal deficit is nothing compared with the amount of consumer debt which is building up quietly behind the scenes with no one watching or assuming accountability.
The worst part is that we can no longer afford to compete with the rest of the world because property holders and credit companies are holding our paychecks hostage for the rest of our lives. We are paying so much for the right to have our basic housing needs met that we can't afford to take a pay cut. Not if we want to live where there is work to be done.
Look into this. It's much scarier than I've let on.
c ya. Got to go pay the rent.
Why would you want this? Why not use a fax emulator over normal IP...
Seriously... VOIP seems like an abstraction over an abstraction... it's all data, why not go straight to the source so to speak and simply send out a fax signal directly?
See though, that's where you are wrong... the reason MS has 95% market share is because they leverage their brand to compel OEM providers to install MS on all consumer machines and leverage their office suite extension to enforce a monopoly on commercial use of the OS. If MS ported Office to Linux or Unix/BSD/Solaris business would have an option of which OS to purchase for their hardware while still being able to run the preeminent Office suite.. while consumers have little choice at all as all the affordable hardware is pre-installed with Windows due to MS licensing contracts with the OEMs.
;-p Even if all MS software "vaporized" it would be mere months until workarounds came about and new solutions were found. Technology is no longer in it's infancy where one particular manifestation can cripple the general trend. There might be some setbacks in specific instances but in general life would go on and I believe new innovation would improve upon the old conventions as it has in the past.
The wrong part is that this pseudo-monopoly enforced by contract and price manipulation does not mean that they are the only game in town... ie: their market share isn't related to customer demand, they've artificially created their market share through manipulative business dealings. There are plenty of viable alternatives for an OS, ask SUN, ask IBM, ask Apple, ask Redhat... if they could get Office and Exchange for their platforms, if MS offered them in an open market strategy as any normal software developer would, those platforms would have much higher market penetration in business. The OS matters much less than the applications that run on top of the OS... nobody cares which OS they run as long as they can get the job done. Hence MS has used their applicaton presence to unduly influence the OS market in preference of their own OS. It would be different if they offered Windows for free and simply sold Office and Exchange and their Server/SQL etc... that would work just fine... in fact that would be the best of all solutions for them. Expecially if they opened the API to 3rd parties... sorry I thought I was talking about Linux for a second there...
Instead what they do is offer Windows for free, with the caveat that you must purchase an annual service and upgrade contract while providing the most restrictive license possible and forcing you to depend upon them for any and all new innovation within the OS itself. Otherwise you have to pay for the OS at a prorated price level, just for the most basic functionality. R&D should be payed for by their application sales, not their OS contracts.
As for disaster... please. Companies have come and gone, services and products have changed hands from the beginning of man. New products have replaced the old... don't make me remind you of the buggy whip
"if Microsoft were to disappear tomorrow it would throw the entire world into chaos"
That is such bullshit! If Microsoft went away it would be no worse than if GE went down the tube, or if CBS or FOX went to hell... sure they have a singular product that a large portion of the world uses every day, whether it's a toaster, microwave, washer, dryer, sitcom, news cast, cartoon, or an operating system and an office software suite. Sure they have a monopoly of sorts and they abuse the hell out of it but the world would move on and rapidly... all the resources applied to integrating MS software and extending MS software would soon be applied to one of the other OS packages and within a year or two all the functionality would be replaced. No that year or two wouldn't be a disaster... it's not as if MS software would dissappear, even if MS did, it just wouldn't be updated, not to mention that all of their service contracts would still be in place...
No problem. No mistake.
What I see is that this is a great example of a truly global economy... instead of a US-centric gobal economy, ie: US companies get to be global but everyone else has to shut up and do what we say...
I'm glad that foreign governments are taking up the challenge of overseeing these huge international corporations, as they should. Why should the US government be the only authority and take all the blame for imposing sanctions on our home-bred companies.
In fact I foresee that governments will be begin working more closely with each other to regulate corporations by allowing and aiding each other in actions just like this... what better way to avoid reelection scandal regarding local economies and employments rates while still getting the effective results of having regulated locally.
Soon corporations will get the picture that they can't go about doing whatever they want. Regardless of the political environment of one particular country, they will get hit by stiffer sanctions in the rest of the world... where they don't play such a large role in politics and their money isn't nearly as significant.
It's global now boys... you're not in you're own backyard anymore.. time to learn how to play by new rules.
Why can't your neighbor find a recipe for making pizza out of you as long as he doesn't act upon it? Information is not criminal.. acting upon it may be.
If there is a site out there that is participating in a crime and documenting it's progress then there should be an investigation into their actions as described on their site. If they are found to be committing a crime, not just talking about committing a crime... then they get to go to jail. Otherwise it's just talk...
What about P2P for instance... many people think it is "massively detrimental to society as a whole" because it enables the sharing of music w/o acknowledging copyright laws... property laws which are the very foundation of capitalism.
Free expression is free expression... you can not pick and choose your 'acceptable' topics. One man's garbage is another man's treasure.
Finally, if you're neighbor is looking for a recipe, he's already decided to kill you and eat you... what does it matter that he finds a good recipe? The same follows for someone looking up a bomb recipe... that person has already decided to detonate a bomb of some sort. Obscuring the ingredients for a good bomb in a text book instead of having it online is not going to stop this person from building their bomb, they'll simply take a few more weeks to get a hold of the right book.
Unstable people will be unstable regardless of how informed they are.
The easiest method is to simply keep separate accounts!
Keep a thousand or less in your ATM account, whether it is a checking account or savings account regardless... keep it specifically for that purpose.
Use your online access to transfer funds from your secure non-card or pin number account to the card account as necessary. Find a bank that offers free transfers between your accounts. I believe that most of them do and only charge a fee for inter-bank transfers.
Don't forget to change your online account passwords at least once every other month, rotate them if you have to... unique would be better.
If your account is compromised you've lost very little and can easily open a new account or re-secure the original with new pin and card.
It's not all that inconvenient once you set it up and get into the routine of it....
"Do I have to keep batteries in my speakers now? "
Nope you still want to plug them in, BUT no more speaker wires, although this is a bad example since there are already existing wireless speakers on the market... however, the current models are one to one transmitter/receiver whereas with WUSB any device can transmit to the speakers, ie: your DVD/TV/PC/Satellite radio/iPod/Microwave/Washing Machine/Telephone get the idea?