America Online acquired Netscape Communications $4.2 billion dollars in 1998...
And that $4.2 billion dollars has might as well be written off as entirely lost. Netscape Navigator is more or less a trivia entry in the browser wars, handing off the MS-fighting role to its child named Mozilla. Netscape's now mostly being used as a content portal...
Netscape could fold from the browser business and it wouldn't give a monopoly to Microsoft anymore.
Re:Those who can, do. Those who can't, buy.
on
Microsoft Eyeing AOL?
·
· Score: 3, Interesting
Besides having to sell over Netscape (I think I have $10 here...) wouldn't there be a problem with Microsoft's existing deals with Comcast?
What problem would that be? Nothing really prevents Comcast and Time Warner Cable from merging if that's what they wanted to do, since there's no place in which the two cable companies compete with each other.
One of AOL's greatest strengths at the moment is the fact that it has easy access to the TV, movie, music, and magazine content empire that is Time Warner. Microsoft just doesn't have as large of a content machine.
This is important because AOL's not really just an ISP anymore. Many people who have a fully functional ISP connection are still paying AOL just for it's boatload of exclusive content. AOL without the Time Warner content base would look something like MSN, and just not have as many members as it has now.
Any MS-AOL would need to license more content than it would have in house. AOL's worth more inside a media company than it is inside Microsoft, I can't see how this deal makes sense.
If you can't beat 'em, try to buy 'em.
on
Microsoft Eyeing AOL?
·
· Score: 2, Insightful
This is typical Microsoft behavior. MSN has always been meant to be an AOL-killer, but despite having the Microsoft promotions machine behind it, they've never come close to defeating AOL. If you can't beat 'em, try to buy 'em.
So what happens when you combine CAPPS II or similar with random screening?
You realize that the random selection is just as likely or more likely as CAPPS II to come up with finding something in the secondary screening, and therefore it's just as effective to only select people randomly. Logically, the screenings resources used by the CAPPS system should therefore be reassigned randomly selected passengers as well.
Unless CAPPS can prove that it's more likely to find somebody carrying something illegal than random selection, it serves no purpose. Red flagging a terrorist from an organized group will just cause them to send somebody else in their place...
That would be the "gold standard" such a program should be tested about. No fair writing programs to intentionally find those 19 people... but if your program does not red-flag those 19 people it is back to thr drawing boards for you.
Although I do not like this new program, I disagree with this statement. Do you have any idea how big the United States border is? It's freakin' huge! It's much easier to sneak in to the United States than it is to sneak into, say, through the security gate at the airport.
And we're doing nothing to correct that... and further "securing" the airport is just nothing but a smoke and mirrors diversion from the point that really needs to be secured. If we can support Israel building a wall, why can't we build a wall at the Mexican border?
Somebody could forever lose their license to drive their car forever as a penalty for repeated drunk driving, in addition to whatever jail time is assigned. However, that's a part of sentance that has to be imposed at the time of the sentancing, it can't be retroactively added... that'd be what the Constitution is talking about when they say that "ex post facto" laws are not allowed.
Those who have "outstanding state or federal warrants for violent crimes" should never be allowed to fly anywhere. Delay such a person at the counter long enough until a police officer can be found to slap the cuffs on them.
There's nobody's rights being violated in such a situation. A person with an outstanding warrent is somebody who an officer has convinced a judge that they would be in their rights to arrest if they could just get their hands on them, so a notice goes out to all law enforcement officers that should they find this individual, they are to be arrested with no need for further crimes to be comitted.
And just where is the office that those who are wrongly accused by this system go to in order to get their good names back? Having a business trip busted up by a little red light is going to cause damage to quite a few unluckly people...
It's extremely easy to figure out whether you're on the security list or not... just go flying on a couple round trip flights. If you don't get stopped for the "extra screening", then you're clearly not on the question-every-time or never-fly-ever list.
What if they send the equipment with the least likely hijacker to be screened, everybody else can be checked and found to have nothing on them... contraband can be passed in the terminal among conspiritors.
Those who are dangerous to the highway system lose their ability to drive on the highway system. It's called taking away ones driver's license, and it can be invoked for nearly any repeated moving violation, and for some it even comes on the first offense. But the thing is, in order for that to happen, one has to be convicted in a court of having committed the offense, or at least plead guilty by not contesting a ticket.
I have no problem with those who intentionally cause a security scare being barred from ever flying again, but they should at least have been convicted of an air-security related crime first. The reason why the spooks want to use a system that profiles and acts preemptively is because they say that the first crime they committ will kill everybody on the plane if not more. However, the majority of the 9/11 hijackers were already comitting a crime just by being in the United States of America. If we bothered to have security at the borders, we wouldn't need to be over-securing our airport to the point that some law-abiding Americans get locked out.
Just what does make a terrorist profile? They'll never get it to a 100% science, so what will happen is that there will always be some people who have done nothing wrong but spook the database who will get the red flag, and nearly any journalist who ever challenges the Department of Homeland Security will constantly invoke the yellow flag.
Security-by-annoying-everybody is not a working model. It might spend the allocated money and fool some people into feeling safer, but it really doesn't do anything.
Nowhere shows the real phones on the stands because they're so prone to being nicked, but if you show some real interest they'll bring out the real things for you to try.
The real problem is that if they put a real phone on the stands, they tend to get stolen. Their options are either to go with a glass box, or the plastic models... which still need to be chained down to keep them from being stolen often.
I know that at both of the T-Mobile stores at my local malls, there's a T-Moblie mini-tower in the back room that transmits on the normal frequencies, but isn't quite as high-powered as a normal tower.
I mean, how embarassing would it be for them to hand you a demo phone in the store and to have it show up with one-knotch less than full signal strength? The mini-tower is not locked down for demo users only, paying customers on that side of the mall get absolutely perfect signal there too, while on the far side of the mall they get a B-level signal that works but isn't perfect which is what would have naturally occured without the mini-tower.
I don't see anything wrong with this practice... it'd be outright silly for a company that has dark spot removal tools that they can distribute to corperate clients to use them to make sure there's never a dark spot covering their own store locations... and again, it does add coverage to their network throughout that wing of the mall, which also takes some of the burden of the in-mall off of the towers that surround the mall.
Testing a phone's quality inside a store is not the test you want to run. What you really want to do is to make sure the phone never says "No Service" on any of the roads you drive on in a typical day.
AT&T Wireless is presently a dead company walking. The deal is signed, they're on the way of being folded into Cingular. So, I wouldn't expect any major upgrades to their network... they're not going to get any better.
Most RadioShack locations have fully working units of every model they have underneath their glass case, just walk anywhere near said glass case and a salespersion will attac.. er, assist you. You'll have the rep's attention because selling a phone earns them a bonus that usually doubles their pay for the shift.
Because having four or five standards for effectively the same thing floating in the marketplace makes a mess. Consumers start to think the technology is just plain broken when they try to insert a type A disc into a type B reader and it doesn't work.
When we start having to say "D-V-D-dash-R-W" and "D-V-D-plus-R-W" and now start to get word that new larger-capacity discs of the same physical size are going to come out, the market starts to get really confused.
I'd say that PHP would be the selection to make if somebody were to start/. today, but when this site was started PHP wasn't a viable option and Perl ruled the day.
I don't think it'd be possible to write the Slashcode in any new language without risking small features that work now breaking down and upsetting the few users who use that feature. Any gains from switching would be overriden by that unavoidable mess at the conversion.
That's the bottom line, Internet-capable computers are getting very close to joining the telephone, running water, and television as being assumed to be in every home in the USA.
Slashdot Mirror
The article says that AOL can buy 2 million shares... but what percentage of the company would that translate to?
could be very very bad... Say goodbye to AIM!
Microsoft's not that stupid. They'd likely shutter the MSN Messenger operation and transition its userbase over to AIM.
AOL has always been a bigger name than MSN. I highly doubt Microsoft would aquire such a brand image then not use it.
America Online acquired Netscape Communications $4.2 billion dollars in 1998 ...
And that $4.2 billion dollars has might as well be written off as entirely lost. Netscape Navigator is more or less a trivia entry in the browser wars, handing off the MS-fighting role to its child named Mozilla. Netscape's now mostly being used as a content portal...
Netscape could fold from the browser business and it wouldn't give a monopoly to Microsoft anymore.
Besides having to sell over Netscape (I think I have $10 here...) wouldn't there be a problem with Microsoft's existing deals with Comcast?
What problem would that be? Nothing really prevents Comcast and Time Warner Cable from merging if that's what they wanted to do, since there's no place in which the two cable companies compete with each other.
One of AOL's greatest strengths at the moment is the fact that it has easy access to the TV, movie, music, and magazine content empire that is Time Warner. Microsoft just doesn't have as large of a content machine.
This is important because AOL's not really just an ISP anymore. Many people who have a fully functional ISP connection are still paying AOL just for it's boatload of exclusive content. AOL without the Time Warner content base would look something like MSN, and just not have as many members as it has now.
Any MS-AOL would need to license more content than it would have in house. AOL's worth more inside a media company than it is inside Microsoft, I can't see how this deal makes sense.
This is typical Microsoft behavior. MSN has always been meant to be an AOL-killer, but despite having the Microsoft promotions machine behind it, they've never come close to defeating AOL. If you can't beat 'em, try to buy 'em.
So what happens when you combine CAPPS II or similar with random screening?
You realize that the random selection is just as likely or more likely as CAPPS II to come up with finding something in the secondary screening, and therefore it's just as effective to only select people randomly. Logically, the screenings resources used by the CAPPS system should therefore be reassigned randomly selected passengers as well.
Unless CAPPS can prove that it's more likely to find somebody carrying something illegal than random selection, it serves no purpose. Red flagging a terrorist from an organized group will just cause them to send somebody else in their place...
That would be the "gold standard" such a program should be tested about. No fair writing programs to intentionally find those 19 people... but if your program does not red-flag those 19 people it is back to thr drawing boards for you.
Although I do not like this new program, I disagree with this statement. Do you have any idea how big the United States border is? It's freakin' huge! It's much easier to sneak in to the United States than it is to sneak into, say, through the security gate at the airport.
And we're doing nothing to correct that... and further "securing" the airport is just nothing but a smoke and mirrors diversion from the point that really needs to be secured. If we can support Israel building a wall, why can't we build a wall at the Mexican border?
Somebody could forever lose their license to drive their car forever as a penalty for repeated drunk driving, in addition to whatever jail time is assigned. However, that's a part of sentance that has to be imposed at the time of the sentancing, it can't be retroactively added... that'd be what the Constitution is talking about when they say that "ex post facto" laws are not allowed.
Those who have "outstanding state or federal warrants for violent crimes" should never be allowed to fly anywhere. Delay such a person at the counter long enough until a police officer can be found to slap the cuffs on them.
There's nobody's rights being violated in such a situation. A person with an outstanding warrent is somebody who an officer has convinced a judge that they would be in their rights to arrest if they could just get their hands on them, so a notice goes out to all law enforcement officers that should they find this individual, they are to be arrested with no need for further crimes to be comitted.
And just where is the office that those who are wrongly accused by this system go to in order to get their good names back? Having a business trip busted up by a little red light is going to cause damage to quite a few unluckly people...
It's extremely easy to figure out whether you're on the security list or not... just go flying on a couple round trip flights. If you don't get stopped for the "extra screening", then you're clearly not on the question-every-time or never-fly-ever list.
What if they send the equipment with the least likely hijacker to be screened, everybody else can be checked and found to have nothing on them... contraband can be passed in the terminal among conspiritors.
Those who are dangerous to the highway system lose their ability to drive on the highway system. It's called taking away ones driver's license, and it can be invoked for nearly any repeated moving violation, and for some it even comes on the first offense. But the thing is, in order for that to happen, one has to be convicted in a court of having committed the offense, or at least plead guilty by not contesting a ticket.
I have no problem with those who intentionally cause a security scare being barred from ever flying again, but they should at least have been convicted of an air-security related crime first. The reason why the spooks want to use a system that profiles and acts preemptively is because they say that the first crime they committ will kill everybody on the plane if not more. However, the majority of the 9/11 hijackers were already comitting a crime just by being in the United States of America. If we bothered to have security at the borders, we wouldn't need to be over-securing our airport to the point that some law-abiding Americans get locked out.
Just what does make a terrorist profile? They'll never get it to a 100% science, so what will happen is that there will always be some people who have done nothing wrong but spook the database who will get the red flag, and nearly any journalist who ever challenges the Department of Homeland Security will constantly invoke the yellow flag.
Security-by-annoying-everybody is not a working model. It might spend the allocated money and fool some people into feeling safer, but it really doesn't do anything.
Nowhere shows the real phones on the stands because they're so prone to being nicked, but if you show some real interest they'll bring out the real things for you to try.
The real problem is that if they put a real phone on the stands, they tend to get stolen. Their options are either to go with a glass box, or the plastic models... which still need to be chained down to keep them from being stolen often.
I know that at both of the T-Mobile stores at my local malls, there's a T-Moblie mini-tower in the back room that transmits on the normal frequencies, but isn't quite as high-powered as a normal tower.
I mean, how embarassing would it be for them to hand you a demo phone in the store and to have it show up with one-knotch less than full signal strength? The mini-tower is not locked down for demo users only, paying customers on that side of the mall get absolutely perfect signal there too, while on the far side of the mall they get a B-level signal that works but isn't perfect which is what would have naturally occured without the mini-tower.
I don't see anything wrong with this practice... it'd be outright silly for a company that has dark spot removal tools that they can distribute to corperate clients to use them to make sure there's never a dark spot covering their own store locations... and again, it does add coverage to their network throughout that wing of the mall, which also takes some of the burden of the in-mall off of the towers that surround the mall.
Testing a phone's quality inside a store is not the test you want to run. What you really want to do is to make sure the phone never says "No Service" on any of the roads you drive on in a typical day.
AT&T Wireless is presently a dead company walking. The deal is signed, they're on the way of being folded into Cingular. So, I wouldn't expect any major upgrades to their network... they're not going to get any better.
T-Mobile's company-owned locations also offer the same 14-day bailout policy... it's starting to become an industry standard.
Most RadioShack locations have fully working units of every model they have underneath their glass case, just walk anywhere near said glass case and a salespersion will attac.. er, assist you. You'll have the rep's attention because selling a phone earns them a bonus that usually doubles their pay for the shift.
Because having four or five standards for effectively the same thing floating in the marketplace makes a mess. Consumers start to think the technology is just plain broken when they try to insert a type A disc into a type B reader and it doesn't work.
When we start having to say "D-V-D-dash-R-W" and "D-V-D-plus-R-W" and now start to get word that new larger-capacity discs of the same physical size are going to come out, the market starts to get really confused.
It seems like consumer DVD writing technology is coming out a bit too fast now. The format is fracturing more than it's uniting...
Whatever happened to the standard bodies who are supposed to prevent this?
I'd say that PHP would be the selection to make if somebody were to start /. today, but when this site was started PHP wasn't a viable option and Perl ruled the day.
I don't think it'd be possible to write the Slashcode in any new language without risking small features that work now breaking down and upsetting the few users who use that feature. Any gains from switching would be overriden by that unavoidable mess at the conversion.
A "release candidate", by definition, is thought to be stable, but they're not quite sure enough to declare it in the stable release yet.
That's the bottom line, Internet-capable computers are getting very close to joining the telephone, running water, and television as being assumed to be in every home in the USA.
Worse yet, your doctor get mad at you when you ask him to do things not in his job description.