If you notice, the duopoly/monopoly is coming back in a big way. Besides Cellular service, look at Airline consolidation, and across other industries. Small competitors are disappearing in just about every industry.
I guess right now we are in a "business-friendly" period, which tends to translate to the customer getting screwed, paying more for less, which should actually be Verizon's motto.
You know, the really reputable company, they would nevercripple their products. I wonder what all the conflict is about this time. Surely theyd never back out of opening the spectrum.
A false report wastes money and risks lives. I dunno.. I probably wouldnt have a problem with the $500/per person. But it seems like they are inserting a rich person rule to try to get extra money here. I am far from rich, however it seems somewhat unfair, especially considering her husband is now dead.
Did they always charge for searches, and if so, shouldnt she get a discount for the unrelated wrecks they found as a result? Also, if they are charging, is there some quality measure, I mean if you must pay for the search, then why no discount for finding dead vs. finding alive?
And I agree, we already pay more than plenty fees and taxes, not to mention the rapidly-inflating cost of goods of all sorts...
Allow me to rephrase your sig in context:
If you steal from one person, that is banditry; if you steal from many, well, that's just taxes.
I'd take this a step further and note that more taxes in the middle of an oncoming recession/depression seems like a pretty bad idea.
Wrong. Both parties have a love affair with spending lots of money.
The Democrats want to spend lots of money on stupid social programs that don't help anything, and make things worse (see welfare in the 70s).
The Republicans want to spend lots of money on stupid programs that don't help anything, and make things worse: foreign wars, and corporate welfare (Halliburton, Blackwater, etc.)
The Democrats want to pay for their ridiculous spending with ridiculous taxes. The Republicans want to pay for their ridiculous spending by borrowing from the Chinese, printing more money, increasing inflation, and neglecting our decrepit infrastructure (see: power grid, falling bridges, highway system, mass-transit, railroads) etc.
With either one of them, the end result is disaster.
If they have access to the desktops, whats to stop them from installing a keylogger or screen monitoring application or network packet capture utility to grab passwords and all matter of other data.
The SCADA network is not designed for browsing the internet. It should not be connected.
Security through dis-connectivity is a dangerous myth in most cases. In some cases, say military situations where you are willing to absorb the huge cost to re-implementing a complete replacement for just about every dang thing you might need on the inside (e.g. weather data, or radar data, say) then it may make sense. In just about every realistic corporate case - even power companies - its likely to only cause people to take their eye off the ball of implementing real security and proper firewalls etc. You make a good point here, but I'd argue that, for National Infrastructure Issues (including the power grid), the same security expected of the military should be required. These systems are just as critical. One of the primary diffrentiators between the modern world and the third world is the ability to provide reliable utilities. If the grid went down for any length of time on a national scale.. umm.. it would be a big problem.
I'm talking about commodities... take a look. And if you think the fact that a the value of a dollar is now about.6 Euros, while oil is priced in dollars, does not affect what we are paying, I have some beautful beachfront property in Nogales, Arizona that you may be interested in.
Reading the article (yes foreign for slashdot) it says that they can use the HDi for other things. My money says they're planning some form of distribution down to the road via X-Box live perhaps? Especially now that vendors like NetFlix do online video rental.
Of course, with HD content you have the not so insignificant issue of transferring many Gigabytes of data for any feature length content, and how many of them could you store on a stock 360?
In any case, this is probably a boneheaded move destined to backfire.
who thinks that is a good thing that something like this is deployed. On one hand, having not heard about it, it makes you wonder what other surveillance is going on and how intrusive it may be. At the same time, its difficult to see something like radiation detection equipment infringing on personal rights. I guess its a question of where to draw the line, but I dont have a problem with scanning cars on the highway for high levels of radiation, it doesnt harm the passengers (I assume - IANA Nuclear Engineer or Physicist).
I am sure someone somewhere will think that is infringing on their right to drive up the 5 with a radioactive cat. And, for the record, I think that is a bit ridiculous, and I would be the last person to say we should cede rights for security (I have heard Ben Franklin and others quotes already ad infinitum), I think this is a good thing(tm)
you would see that I did RTFA. If the state had purchased the correct type of thumb drives in the beginning this would not have been an issue. The headline says "State Agency to Destroy Unauthorized USB Drives", someone noted that the misguided headline and summary do not accurately reflect the content of the article. I followed that up by nothing the tagging was questionable. The gist of the summary is that the privacy issue is in the erasing of the thumb drives, whereas the article's point is that personal data isn't being adequately protected - this upgrade should improve on that.
Back to my original statement (with clarification - seems necessary) - Erasing the drives has nothing to do with the privacy of those who used them, the headline and summary are still bad.
Oh, I don't know, maybe erasing the drives makes sense because they contain case files and such?
The replacement drives might support encryption, which is a normal 'corporate' feature. Your sarcasm is duly noted and definitely misdirected - my point is that the state has the right to do what they please with their hardware. If they decide to erase the drives because they have purchased better equipment, that is their prerogative. Unfortunately the summary leads one to believe that the state gov't is saying, "you used your personal thumbdrive for work, so bring it in and we'll erase it" when actually, what appears to have happened is that they (stupidly/cheaply) purchased non-enterprise drives for enterprise purposes, then figured it out sometime later and decided to "fix" the problem - not really a big story... but like I said.. this is slashdot, where too many people believe in the process of "ready, fire, aim"
when it comes to commenting or responding... comprehension is not necessary.
The use of the word "personal" was obviously targetted at getting a rise out of the non-RTFA crowd, as the article itself never terms the drives - "personal drives". They called them "nonapproved thumb drives". We recently discussed "secure" thumb drives and I hope they arent wasting their (taxpayers') money on the version of the Cruzer reviewed in the article.
Your are very correct in the Apple doesnt have a monopoloy on Smartphones, or even smartphones on ATT. But, similar situations spawining lawsuits arent just about a monopoly, they are also about Anti-Competitive Behavior. Is this Anti-Competitive? IANAL, and IANA(Marketing Person), I am an engineer/researcher and I personally don't like it. And my opinion is only worth the energy expending in creating it.
I think that it could be argued from a common sense (common sense != legal sense) that it is anti-competitive because they have a product that is unique in that it is a monopoly as far as having the ability to access ones media via Itunes on the pc and all the other yaddah yaddah yah. I am sure Apple has the force of patents to back them up and prevent others from providing something similar (not just the phone, but the whole infrastructure that makes the phone more than a pretty shiny toy).
Is apple right or wrong? I honestly do not know, but something about it stinks to me. As much as I like some of their incredibly overpriced products - I own a MacBook and an Ipod Touch (my 3rd Ipod) - actions such as these prevent me from ever falling into fanboy land, I will say that.
On one hand, this reeks of the same type of behaviour microsoft have engaged in for the past two decades, and was rightfully sued over and over and over again about. At the same time, how is Apple's behaviour different from retarded mess that Verizon puts on its cellular phones to lock out developers and cripple the functionality. Noone goes after the cellular carriers and their enablers (handset makers). Also, where is the Zune SDK (not that Zune == IPod Touch/IPhone, but still)?
unless the GUI-less scriptable version of Server 2008 is offered as a free download with the source code released. I believe that when I get hit in the face with a snowball thrown by Bill Gates on July 4th in Miami.
All this will do is obfuscate Yahoo! (tm) that much more. I like this deal more than the MS one, just because I shudder to think of the effect of the loss of either hotmail or yahoo mail or yahoo IM or MSN Instant Messenger on millions of users. And to date, I havent seen much positive come from the companies MS has procured, usually their services wither and die, while some parts get "assimilated".
This potential deal does not make Yahoo/News Corp competitive with Google. Yahoo gets millions of hits from users who are looking for YAHOO CONTENT and SERVICES, Google gets millions of hits from users looking for other sites content or using Google's services which dont cleanly map against Yahoo. The only arguably competitive services are search, web email, and maps. I would argue that yahoo is already equal in search quality, close to parity in web email, and much superior in maps (google maps has given me faulty directions and even put addresses in the wrong places enough times that I switched back to Yahoo for that service). The thing is though, there is no incentive for users to switch over to Yahoo from Google. In order for them to actually line up competitively, Yahoo would require major architectural changes in the way they present themselves on the web, which would throw off many years of work for questionable results. I don't see it. I think if Yahoo! is going to be profitable again, they need to come up with "the next Big Thing", simply looking over at Google and saying were gonna compete with them isnt going to do it. Their web-presence is already cluttered to death, adding to it won't attract google's core search audience (people looking for clean simple accurate web search interface).
Slashdot Mirror
Can I bring my Playstation 3
Do they have cable/satellite
If you notice, the duopoly/monopoly is coming back in a big way. Besides Cellular service, look at Airline consolidation, and across other industries. Small competitors are disappearing in just about every industry.
I guess right now we are in a "business-friendly" period, which tends to translate to the customer getting screwed, paying more for less, which should actually be Verizon's motto.
You know, the really reputable company, they would never cripple their products. I wonder what all the conflict is about this time. Surely theyd never back out of opening the spectrum.
A false report wastes money and risks lives. I dunno.. I probably wouldnt have a problem with the $500/per person. But it seems like they are inserting a rich person rule to try to get extra money here. I am far from rich, however it seems somewhat unfair, especially considering her husband is now dead.
Did they always charge for searches, and if so, shouldnt she get a discount for the unrelated wrecks they found as a result? Also, if they are charging, is there some quality measure, I mean if you must pay for the search, then why no discount for finding dead vs. finding alive?
They mean exempt from labor laws, not exempt from taxes... would be nice though, lol.
You can get a firewire card for about 20 bucks give or take.
I'd take this a step further and note that more taxes in the middle of an oncoming recession/depression seems like a pretty bad idea.
Wrong. Both parties have a love affair with spending lots of money.
The Democrats want to spend lots of money on stupid social programs that don't help anything, and make things worse (see welfare in the 70s).
The Republicans want to spend lots of money on stupid programs that don't help anything, and make things worse: foreign wars, and corporate welfare (Halliburton, Blackwater, etc.)
The Democrats want to pay for their ridiculous spending with ridiculous taxes. The Republicans want to pay for their ridiculous spending by borrowing from the Chinese, printing more money, increasing inflation, and neglecting our decrepit infrastructure (see: power grid, falling bridges, highway system, mass-transit, railroads) etc.
With either one of them, the end result is disaster.
There, fixed that for ya...
If they have access to the desktops, whats to stop them from installing a keylogger or screen monitoring application or network packet capture utility to grab passwords and all matter of other data.
I'm not impressed, the bad guy in the last Die Hard took down the grid in a couple of minutes..
I'm talking about commodities... take a look. And if you think the fact that a the value of a dollar is now about .6 Euros, while oil is priced in dollars, does not affect what we are paying, I have some beautful beachfront property in Nogales, Arizona that you may be interested in.
I would add that any discussion on oil prices that does not account for inflation due to our depressed currency (US) is pointless.
If you have an LG phone with bluetooth and a computer with bluetooth, I highly recommend that you google BitPim.
Reading the article (yes foreign for slashdot) it says that they can use the HDi for other things. My money says they're planning some form of distribution down to the road via X-Box live perhaps? Especially now that vendors like NetFlix do online video rental.
Of course, with HD content you have the not so insignificant issue of transferring many Gigabytes of data for any feature length content, and how many of them could you store on a stock 360?
In any case, this is probably a boneheaded move destined to backfire.
Posted this to the wrong story... need caffeine
who thinks that is a good thing that something like this is deployed. On one hand, having not heard about it, it makes you wonder what other surveillance is going on and how intrusive it may be. At the same time, its difficult to see something like radiation detection equipment infringing on personal rights. I guess its a question of where to draw the line, but I dont have a problem with scanning cars on the highway for high levels of radiation, it doesnt harm the passengers (I assume - IANA Nuclear Engineer or Physicist).
I am sure someone somewhere will think that is infringing on their right to drive up the 5 with a radioactive cat. And, for the record, I think that is a bit ridiculous, and I would be the last person to say we should cede rights for security (I have heard Ben Franklin and others quotes already ad infinitum), I think this is a good thing(tm)
you would see that I did RTFA. If the state had purchased the correct type of thumb drives in the beginning this would not have been an issue. The headline says "State Agency to Destroy Unauthorized USB Drives", someone noted that the misguided headline and summary do not accurately reflect the content of the article. I followed that up by nothing the tagging was questionable. The gist of the summary is that the privacy issue is in the erasing of the thumb drives, whereas the article's point is that personal data isn't being adequately protected - this upgrade should improve on that.
Back to my original statement (with clarification - seems necessary) - Erasing the drives has nothing to do with the privacy of those who used them, the headline and summary are still bad.
I am done with this discussion.
The replacement drives might support encryption, which is a normal 'corporate' feature. Your sarcasm is duly noted and definitely misdirected - my point is that the state has the right to do what they please with their hardware. If they decide to erase the drives because they have purchased better equipment, that is their prerogative. Unfortunately the summary leads one to believe that the state gov't is saying, "you used your personal thumbdrive for work, so bring it in and we'll erase it" when actually, what appears to have happened is that they (stupidly/cheaply) purchased non-enterprise drives for enterprise purposes, then figured it out sometime later and decided to "fix" the problem - not really a big story... but like I said.. this is slashdot, where too many people believe in the process of "ready, fire, aim"
when it comes to commenting or responding... comprehension is not necessary.
The use of the word "personal" was obviously targetted at getting a rise out of the non-RTFA crowd, as the article itself never terms the drives - "personal drives". They called them "nonapproved thumb drives". We recently discussed "secure" thumb drives and I hope they arent wasting their (taxpayers') money on the version of the Cruzer reviewed in the article.
Now some geniuses have tagged it privacy - what does the state erasing a thumb drive it owns have to do with privacy?
But then again what does the content of the article have to do with analysis on Slashdot... yeah I know.. flamebait..
Your are very correct in the Apple doesnt have a monopoloy on Smartphones, or even smartphones on ATT. But, similar situations spawining lawsuits arent just about a monopoly, they are also about Anti-Competitive Behavior. Is this Anti-Competitive? IANAL, and IANA(Marketing Person), I am an engineer/researcher and I personally don't like it. And my opinion is only worth the energy expending in creating it. I think that it could be argued from a common sense (common sense != legal sense) that it is anti-competitive because they have a product that is unique in that it is a monopoly as far as having the ability to access ones media via Itunes on the pc and all the other yaddah yaddah yah. I am sure Apple has the force of patents to back them up and prevent others from providing something similar (not just the phone, but the whole infrastructure that makes the phone more than a pretty shiny toy). Is apple right or wrong? I honestly do not know, but something about it stinks to me. As much as I like some of their incredibly overpriced products - I own a MacBook and an Ipod Touch (my 3rd Ipod) - actions such as these prevent me from ever falling into fanboy land, I will say that.
On one hand, this reeks of the same type of behaviour microsoft have engaged in for the past two decades, and was rightfully sued over and over and over again about. At the same time, how is Apple's behaviour different from retarded mess that Verizon puts on its cellular phones to lock out developers and cripple the functionality. Noone goes after the cellular carriers and their enablers (handset makers). Also, where is the Zune SDK (not that Zune == IPod Touch/IPhone, but still)?
unless the GUI-less scriptable version of Server 2008 is offered as a free download with the source code released. I believe that when I get hit in the face with a snowball thrown by Bill Gates on July 4th in Miami.
All this will do is obfuscate Yahoo! (tm) that much more. I like this deal more than the MS one, just because I shudder to think of the effect of the loss of either hotmail or yahoo mail or yahoo IM or MSN Instant Messenger on millions of users. And to date, I havent seen much positive come from the companies MS has procured, usually their services wither and die, while some parts get "assimilated".
This potential deal does not make Yahoo/News Corp competitive with Google. Yahoo gets millions of hits from users who are looking for YAHOO CONTENT and SERVICES, Google gets millions of hits from users looking for other sites content or using Google's services which dont cleanly map against Yahoo. The only arguably competitive services are search, web email, and maps. I would argue that yahoo is already equal in search quality, close to parity in web email, and much superior in maps (google maps has given me faulty directions and even put addresses in the wrong places enough times that I switched back to Yahoo for that service). The thing is though, there is no incentive for users to switch over to Yahoo from Google. In order for them to actually line up competitively, Yahoo would require major architectural changes in the way they present themselves on the web, which would throw off many years of work for questionable results. I don't see it. I think if Yahoo! is going to be profitable again, they need to come up with "the next Big Thing", simply looking over at Google and saying were gonna compete with them isnt going to do it. Their web-presence is already cluttered to death, adding to it won't attract google's core search audience (people looking for clean simple accurate web search interface).