The problem is that my neighbor (who doesn't want nor need broadband) would be forced to pay for it - through taxes - even if he doesn't subscribe at all.
Yeah but that's not nearly as good as being the person who provides the BoD the money that they get to use. As the customer, I'm the one who controls the BoD, and I have full rights to withhold funds from them. If I had that feature with the gov't, maybe I'd think differently about that organization.
Frankly, I'm not concerned about having a say in what governing officials do. What I really want is a say in what those officials do with my money. With the gov't, I get one chance to express my opinion every X years. And if my opinion is the minority opinion, it gets ignored. With a private company - even a monopoly - I get complete say every day to decide what's going to happen with my money.
One gives me choice. The other does not. I prefer choice.
I don't trust any monopolies. But that's my point. The gov't is a monopoly which has the ability to forcibly make me pay through taxes.
If I have a choice between a public monopoly with taxation power and a private monoply without, I'd choose the private monopoly. In both cases, I probably have sucky service. But in the latter case, I can choose not to participate.
FWIW, the US Postal service is no longer funded through taxes. They're run entirely through the revenue that they generate from there service. IOW, they're run as a private company even though their history is public. As for tap water, I would argue that I have my faucet turned on much less that I have my TV turned on, and I pay about the same.
And finally, when it comes to public transportation, where I live this is an absolutely horrible example. They run at a loss every year, and every year they ask for more and more tax money to cover that loss. I don't use the service but I pay for it through taxes. How much should I be paying for something that I don't use? In my opinion a sucky service that I don't use should not cost me anything.
Yeah, but I only get to stop paying if everyone around me agrees to stop paying also. E.g. we all have to vote to replace the local gov't and we must make sure make sure that new gov't undertands that the issue is the sucky broadband service, and not some other issue. This of course, makes the prospect of voting out the gov't next to impossible. Because they're likely to provide something that I like and something that I don't like. So I'll never be able to convince the people who don't care about broadband to vote against them if they do care about something else.
But if my telco stops providing decent DSL or my cable co stops providing decent cable modem, I can decide all by myself to not pay that fee. Putting this into a gov't removes the daily choice. Instead I'm only allowed to make that choice every X years and only if I can convince everyone else to agree with me. Which, given the practicalities of the situation, is another way of saying that I no longer get any effective choice in the matter.
I don't really understand the hue and cry from folks on this forum to have their broadband run by the a local government. Aren't you just trading one monopoly (the telco's and cable company) for another (the municipality)? In the latter case, it strikes me that you don't have the choice not to pay the government, where as if the telco and/or cable company sucks, you can decide not to pay them, which gives them an incentive to at least make sure that there service doesn't suck too bad. But with the gov't I don't see what incentive they'll have to provide good services. You're legally required to pay your taxes whether the service is good or bad.
Personally, where I live, I wouldn't mind seeing the gov't reeled in a bit. That way that can't force my neighbor (who is happy as a clam w/out broadband) to subsidize my broadband. If my broadband provider starts to suck, I'd like the option of not subsidizing someone else's broadband. I don't see any way to do this latter part if it's run by a gov't.
For a group of people strongly opposed to monopolies (e.g. micorosft), I don't really understand why you'd prefer to have some other monopoly (e.g. the local gov't) running your lives.
This guy's bank is Bank of America. Here's a notable quote from the BofA Website:
$0 liability
With our Online Banking service, you can be confident that your Bank of America accounts will be secure and protected. We guarantee $0 liability for any unauthorized activity originating from Online Banking, including Bill Payment. Read Your Responsibilities for information about reporting unauthorized transactions to preserve your rights under this guarantee.
Unless I'm missing it, I don't see anywhere that it says the customer is responsible for running virus protection. Is there some reason that I'm missing as to why this very public guarantee does not apply?
Contrast with "The Wisdom of Crowds"
on
Blink
·
· Score: 4, Insightful
Gladwell and James Surowiecki, the author of "The Wisdom of Crowds" got into an interesting co-review of each other's work on slate. I would think that the slashdot crowd would associate more with Crowds since it could be used to laud the value of the FLOSS development models.
I know we can't outlaw everything. I don't think we should. I do, however, strongly believe that we simply do not approach the act of driving with the gravity and care it deserves, and that strong and vigilant regluation is the best way to make our roads safer and our lives better.
PMBI, but I have to disagree with this. Incentives are impacted when you regulate. I would like to encourage you to read the first chapter of The
Armchair Economist, which is available online through amazon. The chapter is titled: "The Power of Incentives: How Seat Belts Kill".
Being a safe driver is more than just reaction times. It's being able to anticipate the need to react. IMHO, this is not something that is maximized after only 4 years of driving. The evidence that this is true comes from the insurance industry, who charge very high rates for anyone under 25. Why? Because even though a 20 year old (on average) probably has better reaction times than a 25 year old, the 25 year old has more experience to know to avoid certain situations that require the use of that reaction.
Which is why the older you get, the more likely (on average) you are to slow down. After driving for 20 years, you have a lot more memories of close calls than you do after driving for 1 year. After driving for 50 years, it's even worse. AND you know that your reaction times have slowed down so you compensate by trying to give yourself more time to react.
Microsoft Money on the other hand still works since it connects directly to the bank's OFX server. Although my bank only supports 2001 and newer, we have users that are actually connecting with Money 1999 with no problems.
Right. But that only works for Money 2002 and earlier. Starting with 2003, M$ started putting time bombs into their software to cripple the download functionality after a certain amount of time. See the text below from the EULA for Money 2004. It doesn't matter that Microsoft is not involved in the transaction at all - because as you say, Money connects directly to the financial institution and doesn't talk through Microsoft - Microsoft has a timebomb built into their software to prevent users from using it.
And if you've seen MS Money 2005, the direction they're taking this software completely sucks. Under certain conditions, Money 2005 will upload all of your financial data to the MSN Money website!
Expiration of Online Services. In accordance with the Microsoft Money 2004 Online Services Policy, you will not be able to use the Online Services of the SOFTWARE PRODUCT (such as the ability to automatically and online: 1) track and update your accounts and investment values inside the SOFTWARE PRODUCT, 2) synchronize financial data with MSN® Money, 3) pay bills, and 4) communicate with your financial institutions) after expiration of the following time periods:
Microsoft Money 2004 Deluxe/Microsoft Money 2004 Premium/Microsoft Money 2004 Small Business: The earlier of three (3) years after your activation of the SOFTWARE PRODUCT or September 1, 2007.
Microsoft Money 2004 Standard: The earlier of two (2) years after your activation of the SOFTWARE PRODUCT or September 1, 2006.
...had a policy. He said, "You can tell me anything, as long as you say it skillfully." What he meant by that was that I had to take into account the way he would react to what I said when I said it. And I had to at least make some effort to ensure that what I said would not raise an emotional response, such that what I said and what he heard were not the same thing.
Here's an example. I'm feeling frustrated because my manager is giving me too much work and not enough time to do it. First, the non-skillful way:
ME (to my manager): How do you expect me to do all of this work?!?! I've got blah, and flubber, and meetings, and bullsh*t that I'm supposed to be doing for you, and what are you doing all day long?
This doesn't work because cursing raises the emotional content of the message. Accusing my manager of not doing anything puts him on the defensive. What I intended to communicate was that I can't do everything. What he hears is that he's the source of my problems. I want a solution and he feels the need to justify himself. Not good.
Here's the same thing said better:
ME (to my manager): I think that I can complete the following three things this month: blah, flubber and meetings. I don't think I'll be able to complete this new task that you want. Is there anything in my existing tasks that you'd like me to put off until next month? Is there another way that you can think of to handle this?
MANAGER (to me): Why can't you complete all four of these things by the end of the month.
ME: Well, I estimate that I've got approximately 80 hours left in the month. I've got 10 meetings scheduled which will take about 15 hours. It's going to take me about 40 hours to finish blah. And I'm going to really struggle to get flubber done in 25 hours, but I think I can make it. This additional task you're asking for is at least 25 hours and maybe even as much as 40 hours. Is there some way that you can see that I can do all of these, because I will if you can help me figure out how to manage the time.
MANAGER: Ok. Lets move blah off to next month. Get this new task in ASAP.
ME: OK. Thanks.
As soon as I take the emotion out of it and explain my problem in such a way that he can hear it in exactly the same way I intended it to be spoken, then we can BOTH work on trying to solve it. In this case, I'm asking my manager to help me figure out how to solve the problem. In the previous case, I was making him the source of the problem.
I have tried very hard to exhibit this style for the people I manage. And, of course, it goes both ways. I need to practice what I preach. I need to have the freedom to say to them anything, and I need to exercise skill in saying it.
The other thing that I did when I first became a manager was I told the people who I hired and who I inherited the same thing: I'm going to make mistakes. The only way that I can fix those mistakes is if you can work with me to make improvements. I may not always agree with your suggestions, but I'd like you to give them to me. And then this is the point that I would go into the "say anything as long as you say it skillfully" speech.
And the final thing I would recommend is that you set expectations in writing. Don't go overboard on formality. But write down what you expect from every project, and casually discuss them. At the end of that discussion ask, "Is this a reasonable set of expectations?" When they agree, you have something in your back pocket if they don't meet those expectations. Oh, and make sure that the expectations are reasonable for the person's job description. Set forth a clear definition of what success is.
Finally, religiously stick to quarterly semi-formal reviews (semi-formal means written and discussed, but not signed). That way no one is surprised at annual review time.
Or... if none of this works for you, don't do any of it.
By stating this, you automatically assume that each and every one of those users WILL donate that $100 to whatever charity cause. I guess the numbers that donate will be "a bit" lower.
No I'm not assuming this. I'm assuming that the value of an OS is $100. When Bill Gates gives $100 to someone and forces them to pay for their OS, they have exactly the same amount as if Linus Torvalds gives them their OS for free and lets them keep their $100.
Linux doesn't cost money, it costs effort. Linux also doesn't donate money, the community donates effort.
True, but you can quantify that effort by comparing it to the cost of the next most expensive substitute. Generally the cost of a windows license is around $100. So by using a free OS, someone has saved $100, which is equivalent of Bill selling them XP and giving them $100. So for every 1 million users of a free OS, the community has donated the equivalent of $100 million.
Excellent point! We should be able to quantify the donation that free operating system developers have already made to those same kids by counting the number of them that use a free OS. Multiply that number times the cost of a Win XP license and that's how much has already been donated.
But, of course, that number is really small in comparison to how much free OS developers have donated to the world in general. For every million users of a free operating system, that's a $100 million donation.
I don't use them with my TiVo now; why would I want to use a CableCard in my TV that bypasses my recorders so I can only watch that content live?
You definately want a CableCard integrated into your TiVo. That way you can simply download the digital stream and reply that through the cablecard, instead of having to encode the analog input. Additionally, the picture quality will be excellent instead of what you're currently getting with the (relatively cheap) builtin encoder.
So, does an XML SOAP message encrypted using WSSEC constitute binary XML? If the answer is "Yes", then how would a world w/out binary XML enable encryption? If the answer is "no", then what constitutes binary XML? What about XML wrapped in SSL?
The over 100 Billion pumped into the US economy alone
Uhm... I don't mean to be nit picky, but the $100B that you're talking about should be considered to have been a loss to the economy. In economics this is called the broken window falacy.
Well, you're the moral paradigm I've come to expect from C/R people.
Fucker.
However, I will take your offer of opting out, and carefully consider it before carefully spitting in your face.
Are you sure you want to try and take a moral position? I don't recognize a morality that allows somoene to disparage another person, and spit in their face, as a result of a discussion. You have not represented the anti-C/R people well at all. Most of the ones that I've spoken with disagree with me but they're at least civil.
Most of the time, I identifiy folks whom I disagree with as friends. Even though I disagree with them, they're clearly intelligent and well mannered people who simply want to come to a point of truth - even if we disagree about what that truth is. I have yet to mark anyone as a foe. But I can't seem to elicit civil conversation from you and what I'm getting instead is not really helpful to anyone. So congratulations on being my first foe. I can only assume that the action will be reciprocated.
Clever, but you're still failing the premise. The person who is doing you wrong is not me. It's the guy who joe-jobbed your email address. You should do everything you can to stop him. When someone joe-jobs your email and you get 10 gazillion bounces from sendmail, postfix, qmail and other MTAs, do you call all of those mail servers spammers, too? Because they fit your overly simplistic definition of spam in exactly the same way that a challenge fits it. It's email. It's unsolicited. It's bulk. Unsolicited Bulk Email == SPAM.
I'll do whatever is possible to get joe-jobbers stopped. But, I don't plan on turning off my C/R system -- it's an effective tool. But I'll reconsider doing so after you've stopped that much bigger group of people who send UBE: email admins.
Ok. But the big problem that everyone has with C/R is joejobs. The people who seem to complain the loudest saying "C/R == SPAM" are those who have received a challenge that they didn't initiate. They call this spam because, from their perspective, the challenge is unsolicited bulk email.
I don't mind sending challenges to unknown people who send me email. What I want to cut down on is sending messages to momandpop@yahoo.com when what really happened was that their email address was joejobbed. I want to try (if I can) to prevent further abuse of their email. SPF (or DomainKeys or...) is the solution to this.
Of the 4000 unkown addresses that I received, I know how many of them were non-deliverable addresses. Roughly 95% or 3800 were from non-deliverable addresses. In other words 95% of the email I receive from unknown addresses, ends up being from a non-deliverable address. I can tell becuase when I try to deliver to that address it fails.
That leaves about 200 from that appear to have been deliverable. Now, of course, I don't know whether any of those 200 were just immediately dumped to the bitbucket. But I'd assume most of those are actual addresses, and for the most part, I annoyed 200 people with unnecessary challenges.
I'd very much like to cut that number down. I believe I have by implementing SPF filtering. If there are any ways that I can cut that number down further I'd love to hear them.
See my other post on how you can help me and help yourself deal with bounces/challenges resulting from forged email.
I'm sorry that it's such a huge inconvenience. I'm sorry that you don't approve. I can guarantee that I will never challenge a forged email from your domain. But it requires that you tell me about legitimate email from your domain. You do this by publishing and maintaining an SPF record. I do not challenge any email that fails SPF. Consequently, if I challenge your domain it's because your domain originated the email.
But even beyond that, you can do something to determine whether or not your domain issued the email that generated a bounce/challenge. TMDA can help with this even if you don't use the C/R portion. You simply tag the sender address in all outgoing email with a dated address that only you can generate. All bounces/challenges will come back to that address. If it passes, then you know it came from your site, and you should allow it. If it fails, drop it like a hot potato: you know you didn't originate it.
My recommendations:
Publish an SPF record
Deterministically ID legitimate bounces to your domain.
Slashdot Mirror
The problem is that my neighbor (who doesn't want nor need broadband) would be forced to pay for it - through taxes - even if he doesn't subscribe at all.
Yeah but that's not nearly as good as being the person who provides the BoD the money that they get to use. As the customer, I'm the one who controls the BoD, and I have full rights to withhold funds from them. If I had that feature with the gov't, maybe I'd think differently about that organization.
Frankly, I'm not concerned about having a say in what governing officials do. What I really want is a say in what those officials do with my money. With the gov't, I get one chance to express my opinion every X years. And if my opinion is the minority opinion, it gets ignored. With a private company - even a monopoly - I get complete say every day to decide what's going to happen with my money.
One gives me choice. The other does not. I prefer choice.
I don't trust any monopolies. But that's my point. The gov't is a monopoly which has the ability to forcibly make me pay through taxes.
If I have a choice between a public monopoly with taxation power and a private monoply without, I'd choose the private monopoly. In both cases, I probably have sucky service. But in the latter case, I can choose not to participate.
FWIW, the US Postal service is no longer funded through taxes. They're run entirely through the revenue that they generate from there service. IOW, they're run as a private company even though their history is public. As for tap water, I would argue that I have my faucet turned on much less that I have my TV turned on, and I pay about the same.
And finally, when it comes to public transportation, where I live this is an absolutely horrible example. They run at a loss every year, and every year they ask for more and more tax money to cover that loss. I don't use the service but I pay for it through taxes. How much should I be paying for something that I don't use? In my opinion a sucky service that I don't use should not cost me anything.
Yeah, but I only get to stop paying if everyone around me agrees to stop paying also. E.g. we all have to vote to replace the local gov't and we must make sure make sure that new gov't undertands that the issue is the sucky broadband service, and not some other issue. This of course, makes the prospect of voting out the gov't next to impossible. Because they're likely to provide something that I like and something that I don't like. So I'll never be able to convince the people who don't care about broadband to vote against them if they do care about something else.
But if my telco stops providing decent DSL or my cable co stops providing decent cable modem, I can decide all by myself to not pay that fee. Putting this into a gov't removes the daily choice. Instead I'm only allowed to make that choice every X years and only if I can convince everyone else to agree with me. Which, given the practicalities of the situation, is another way of saying that I no longer get any effective choice in the matter.
I like having the choice.
I don't really understand the hue and cry from folks on this forum to have their broadband run by the a local government. Aren't you just trading one monopoly (the telco's and cable company) for another (the municipality)? In the latter case, it strikes me that you don't have the choice not to pay the government, where as if the telco and/or cable company sucks, you can decide not to pay them, which gives them an incentive to at least make sure that there service doesn't suck too bad. But with the gov't I don't see what incentive they'll have to provide good services. You're legally required to pay your taxes whether the service is good or bad.
Personally, where I live, I wouldn't mind seeing the gov't reeled in a bit. That way that can't force my neighbor (who is happy as a clam w/out broadband) to subsidize my broadband. If my broadband provider starts to suck, I'd like the option of not subsidizing someone else's broadband. I don't see any way to do this latter part if it's run by a gov't.
For a group of people strongly opposed to monopolies (e.g. micorosft), I don't really understand why you'd prefer to have some other monopoly (e.g. the local gov't) running your lives.
Is there something obvious that I'm missing?
Gladwell and James Surowiecki, the author of "The Wisdom of Crowds" got into an interesting co-review of each other's work on slate. I would think that the slashdot crowd would associate more with Crowds since it could be used to laud the value of the FLOSS development models.
Personally, I'm interested in reading both.
PMBI, but I have to disagree with this. Incentives are impacted when you regulate. I would like to encourage you to read the first chapter of The Armchair Economist, which is available online through amazon. The chapter is titled: "The Power of Incentives: How Seat Belts Kill".
Being a safe driver is more than just reaction times. It's being able to anticipate the need to react. IMHO, this is not something that is maximized after only 4 years of driving. The evidence that this is true comes from the insurance industry, who charge very high rates for anyone under 25. Why? Because even though a 20 year old (on average) probably has better reaction times than a 25 year old, the 25 year old has more experience to know to avoid certain situations that require the use of that reaction.
Which is why the older you get, the more likely (on average) you are to slow down. After driving for 20 years, you have a lot more memories of close calls than you do after driving for 1 year. After driving for 50 years, it's even worse. AND you know that your reaction times have slowed down so you compensate by trying to give yourself more time to react.
My point is that safe driving is a lot more than just reaction time. Scientific American Frontiers says so, too.
And if you've seen MS Money 2005, the direction they're taking this software completely sucks. Under certain conditions, Money 2005 will upload all of your financial data to the MSN Money website!
Here's an example. I'm feeling frustrated because my manager is giving me too much work and not enough time to do it. First, the non-skillful way:
This doesn't work because cursing raises the emotional content of the message. Accusing my manager of not doing anything puts him on the defensive. What I intended to communicate was that I can't do everything. What he hears is that he's the source of my problems. I want a solution and he feels the need to justify himself. Not good.Here's the same thing said better:
As soon as I take the emotion out of it and explain my problem in such a way that he can hear it in exactly the same way I intended it to be spoken, then we can BOTH work on trying to solve it. In this case, I'm asking my manager to help me figure out how to solve the problem. In the previous case, I was making him the source of the problem.I have tried very hard to exhibit this style for the people I manage. And, of course, it goes both ways. I need to practice what I preach. I need to have the freedom to say to them anything, and I need to exercise skill in saying it.
The other thing that I did when I first became a manager was I told the people who I hired and who I inherited the same thing: I'm going to make mistakes. The only way that I can fix those mistakes is if you can work with me to make improvements. I may not always agree with your suggestions, but I'd like you to give them to me. And then this is the point that I would go into the "say anything as long as you say it skillfully" speech.
And the final thing I would recommend is that you set expectations in writing. Don't go overboard on formality. But write down what you expect from every project, and casually discuss them. At the end of that discussion ask, "Is this a reasonable set of expectations?" When they agree, you have something in your back pocket if they don't meet those expectations. Oh, and make sure that the expectations are reasonable for the person's job description. Set forth a clear definition of what success is.
Finally, religiously stick to quarterly semi-formal reviews (semi-formal means written and discussed, but not signed). That way no one is surprised at annual review time.
Or... if none of this works for you, don't do any of it.
Excellent point! We should be able to quantify the donation that free operating system developers have already made to those same kids by counting the number of them that use a free OS. Multiply that number times the cost of a Win XP license and that's how much has already been donated.
But, of course, that number is really small in comparison to how much free OS developers have donated to the world in general. For every million users of a free operating system, that's a $100 million donation.
Dude (if you are a dude) that is one of the best slashdot depricating comments I've ever read! You rock!
So, does an XML SOAP message encrypted using WSSEC constitute binary XML? If the answer is "Yes", then how would a world w/out binary XML enable encryption? If the answer is "no", then what constitutes binary XML? What about XML wrapped in SSL?
Opaque doesn't always mean proprietary.
I'm really uncertain as to why Sanger's background in epistomology would call into question his motives. Could you elaborate?
- Well, you're the moral paradigm I've come to expect from C/R people.
- Fucker.
- However, I will take your offer of opting out, and carefully consider it before carefully spitting in your face.
Are you sure you want to try and take a moral position? I don't recognize a morality that allows somoene to disparage another person, and spit in their face, as a result of a discussion. You have not represented the anti-C/R people well at all. Most of the ones that I've spoken with disagree with me but they're at least civil.Most of the time, I identifiy folks whom I disagree with as friends. Even though I disagree with them, they're clearly intelligent and well mannered people who simply want to come to a point of truth - even if we disagree about what that truth is. I have yet to mark anyone as a foe. But I can't seem to elicit civil conversation from you and what I'm getting instead is not really helpful to anyone. So congratulations on being my first foe. I can only assume that the action will be reciprocated.
Clever, but you're still failing the premise. The person who is doing you wrong is not me. It's the guy who joe-jobbed your email address. You should do everything you can to stop him. When someone joe-jobs your email and you get 10 gazillion bounces from sendmail, postfix, qmail and other MTAs, do you call all of those mail servers spammers, too? Because they fit your overly simplistic definition of spam in exactly the same way that a challenge fits it. It's email. It's unsolicited. It's bulk. Unsolicited Bulk Email == SPAM.
I'll do whatever is possible to get joe-jobbers stopped. But, I don't plan on turning off my C/R system -- it's an effective tool. But I'll reconsider doing so after you've stopped that much bigger group of people who send UBE: email admins.
Good luck with that.
Ok. But the big problem that everyone has with C/R is joejobs. The people who seem to complain the loudest saying "C/R == SPAM" are those who have received a challenge that they didn't initiate. They call this spam because, from their perspective, the challenge is unsolicited bulk email.
...) is the solution to this.
I don't mind sending challenges to unknown people who send me email. What I want to cut down on is sending messages to momandpop@yahoo.com when what really happened was that their email address was joejobbed. I want to try (if I can) to prevent further abuse of their email. SPF (or DomainKeys or
Of the 4000 unkown addresses that I received, I know how many of them were non-deliverable addresses. Roughly 95% or 3800 were from non-deliverable addresses. In other words 95% of the email I receive from unknown addresses, ends up being from a non-deliverable address. I can tell becuase when I try to deliver to that address it fails.
That leaves about 200 from that appear to have been deliverable. Now, of course, I don't know whether any of those 200 were just immediately dumped to the bitbucket. But I'd assume most of those are actual addresses, and for the most part, I annoyed 200 people with unnecessary challenges.
I'd very much like to cut that number down. I believe I have by implementing SPF filtering. If there are any ways that I can cut that number down further I'd love to hear them.
See my other post on how you can help me and help yourself deal with bounces/challenges resulting from forged email.
But even beyond that, you can do something to determine whether or not your domain issued the email that generated a bounce/challenge. TMDA can help with this even if you don't use the C/R portion. You simply tag the sender address in all outgoing email with a dated address that only you can generate. All bounces/challenges will come back to that address. If it passes, then you know it came from your site, and you should allow it. If it fails, drop it like a hot potato: you know you didn't originate it.
My recommendations: