Do you think we'll ever see virtual software houses taking off, e.g. a bunch of developers all over the world who never meet in person, developing applications *and* actually making any money??
It would be interesting to hear if open source developers think that this might work - I imagine it's a similar style of working albeit with different motivations....
The biggest issue in the UK is the availability of broadband in rural areas. With a bit of luck, as more people want to take up teleworking, this might help smaller towns and villages reach the critical mass for telco installation of broadband to be cost effective....
"... plans to resurrect Napster as a legal service"
Aren't they coming a bit late to the party? People are doing much more exciting things with file sharing nowadays. It was the idea behind Napster and the time it hit the scene which led to it's success, as opposed to the (very simple) technology. The addition of the type of features which I'd want to see in an online music service (searches, previews etc) would lead to a product completetly different to Napster.
The success of ITunes shows that a decent product will do well in the popularity stakes regardless of brand. Though the Napster brand will bring a bit of recongnition, I can't see it making customers any more likeley to buy overpriced, bad or crippled (in terms of usage) music.
Firstly, the term "market maker" is a very generic term applied to anyone who makes a market. BUT, as a rule the market maker won't be able to take positions. They are provided by the exchange to provide bid/ask prices, improving liqudity. They make their money through the bid/ask spread. If they were allowed ot hold a position, then they would be able to manipulate the price, for instance upping the ask price in an illiquid market.
Re:Analysts aren't paid to help you...
on
Wall Street Meat
·
· Score: 1
Of course, traditionally analysts attatched to banks are also independent. The conflicts of interest were always apparent, and up until the dotcom boom procedures were in place to keep their research indpendent. These firm's have never been in equity research to make money - they took a hit on it to provide the service for their clients.
Then came the boom. Maybe these standards fell, but it was heady times where most of the long-held laws of the markets were seemingly going out of the window. Many analysts were cautious, but nobody wanted to hear it; instead choosing to hype up a few celeb analysts. Doom and gloom doesn't sell newspapers. Regardless, the true level of 'corruption' was certainly over-hyped. Everyone from pension fund managers through to your grandparents wanted a piece of it. When it all went wrong, they were all out for somebody to blame.
Nowadays, standards are likely to reach new highs, with more procedures in place than ever. Keeping tracks of +/- ratings by analysts, closing down communication channels between these departments and a new imposition of the chinese wall are three things which will help this situation. The problem now, is that in these less heady times, banks need to make their equity research pay in it's own right, for the first time.
But for such a small percentage of people who this would affect, I wouldn't have thought the cost of the chips could be justified..... Hopefully these companies will not be able to make it pay. I love it when people try to squeeze more money out of consumers, and it backfires mwahahahahahah.
I am not a customer of the music industry. Even if I'd never heard of an mp3 I would not buy music. Period. [....] Now, assuming point one is true -- that I'd never buy music -- then my downloading mp3s is taking nothing from anyone
That's BS. By *listening* to these records, no matter how you obtain them, you are a customer of the record industry. Regardless of whether or not you would have bought them, you have had the use out of the item *without* paying. If you want use of something, even if it's in your opinion sub standard, you have to pay by law. Simple as that. (Though I'd say that this is a valid argument against the we lose $n billion/year in piracy.)
It's not as if I download an mp3 and it's MINE MINE MINE and only mine.
Just because something is intangible it doesn't make the law any less applicable. In fact, in this situation these laws should be more rigourously enforced. The Legal process is the only way these companies have to protect their intellectual property. Likewise, people seem to throw it around that these companies are evil monoliths. Again, it's just that the smaller IP companies (software houses, publishers & independant record labels) don't have the financial clout to protect their intellectual property, rather than some philanthropic need to give away their only assets.
Karma whore! The annoying thing is that these posts always go to 5 - informative. The NY Times is unlikely to get slashdotted, and you're just depriving them of ad revenues etc.
Apparently we have more CCTV cameras here in the UK than anywhere else in the world....
From the CCTV Surveilance regulation campaign:
The United Kingdom leads the world in the deployment of Closed Circuit Tele Vision camera technology. However, we seem to have no coherent, legally enforceable rules or regulations which ensure that Public CCTV schemes are run properly.
This website aims to open up a debate about the extent to which powerful technologies such as linked CCTV camera systems, neural network facial recognition , car number plate recognition, multimedia image databases etc. are being applied in the UK.
Why, in the UK, is television reception controlled by licences, backed up by criminal penalties, but no licencing is required to install linked CCTV camera systems?
Are CCTV surveillance systems vital to keep order on our streets, or are there substantial civil liberties problems to be addressed ? Has the cost effectiveness of Public CCTV surveillance systems been oversold ? Is crime reduced or just displaced next door ?
People who I know must have orders 250+ between them. There is no way they would honour this - and every person who ordered realised it was a mistake, so they have nothing to whine about.
Re:This is going to be a joyous thing
on
BusinessWeek on Wi-Fi
·
· Score: 5, Insightful
Battery life on laptops needs to improve before wireless access is truly a useful thing. You couldn't anticipate being able to pick up a mail or video conference with such a big possibiliy of running out of juice. This is especially important as it's mainly useful to business users - even the most hardcore geek can do without the web for a few hours whilst traveliing etc.
Even though there are many legitimite uses of file sharing apps, P2P will be forever linked with copyright infringement and misuse. If the holy grail of a fast, anonymous, reliable and completely distributed P2P apps was ever reached, it would inevitably attract the mp3 sharing masses.
The bandwagon rolls on though. The only way to stop P2P IMO is go after the ISP's. I'm no sysadmin, but I'm sure it would be possible for block certain ports, report heavy downloaders etc. At the moment nobody dare do this for fear of a mass exodus of customers, but if the law made sure that all of these ISP's had to comply, I'm sure they alone would be able to stop the spread. How feasible is it for the ISP's to put barriers in place?
Are homeland security responsible for any tech security, or does that fall under the realm of CIA/FBI? (Forgive me, I'm not from the US.)
The reason I ask is because this type of co-operation with public defense organisations and the private sector are likeley to become much more important as we come to rely more on these technologies, OR if we ever see any kind of cyber-terrorism. Ideally there would be a single point through which relevant information flows - as hinted at in the article, any leaks could be a problem.
Do these agencies have a reputation for hiring good security people?
In hindsight, if you could start afresh and redesign the protocols and software on which email is based, and influence any relevant ISP policies & user education, how would you do things differently to deal with the problem of SPAM?? And, of these areas, which is the weakest link in the spam-war?!
Not part of the question: Why don't all webmasters add SpamBot traps to their websites....?
This work has been around for a long time in the data mining literature. For instance, searching the logs of customer service calls to identify common problems etc.
These techniques could easily be expanded to searching weblogs - I imagine the findings could be very interesting for content providers - eg a simple measure of what people want to read about.
OK, so it's clearly not right for a company to patent areas of the genome & potentially hold back progress etc. However, there has to be some financial insentive in order to convince the companies to drive this costly research through.
The pharmaceutical industry has done so for years- it's just that their research results in a tangible product (a drug.) With biotech companies, sometimes they're only asset is there research....
I would agree with number 1 whole-heartedly. It's frustrating how some higher education institutions are now so focused on the language and products which you'll learn that they neglect to teach you the skill of learning in itself.
I would recommend that any beginning programmer learns the basics of as many languages as possible. It wasn't until I broadened my programming language skill set that I considered
myself an intermediate rather than beginner programmer...
And isn't it very popular as a file trading tool? It seems that once a technology has gone down that road, it's very hard to come back to legitimacy credibly. IMO, this will be one of the biggest challenges for any p2p systems of this kind.....
How would something like this work? Presumably slashdot would have to link to a single site, which then farmed out the requests to participants?
If this is the case, there is still a single point of faliure, right? And presumably browsers need to know that they are being redirected so any subsequent requests. Thus, how is this more powerful than an (albeit intelligent) javascipt forwarder...? If it's just a simple load baalncing system then I don't see what's so groundbreaking.
Eventually, people would vote directly from the comfort of their own homes. The political apathy which has spread through western countries in recent decades would be reversed.
Why is it assumed that making it possible to vote online etc, is a cure for voter apathy? Sure, for a while we might see increased turnout by people who are considering venturing out to cast their vote, and the easy option swings it, BUT the reasons for voter apathy still exist & it will continue to increase, whilst people feel so disjoined by it all....
One of democracy's greatest virtues is its flexibility, but the changes about to be wrought by new communication technologies will stretch the adaptive abilities of western democracies to their limit.
But will it? How do these advances change the process of democracy? Will it make our governemnts more acountable, as suggested in the article? Though we like to complain in the west about corruption & spin, I like to think that the media do a good job of holding our politicians to account. Will it renew our ailing interest in politics? Maybe not - the nature of the web is that you have to go looking in the first place.
These conflicts of interest should be a non-event, in that even if a company such as Sony didn't have to think about it's media arm, they shouldn't release devices which blatantly encourage piracy.
This is not least because of some desire for the general good, but also to help the rapidly converging entertainment and consumer technology industries. And this convergance is happening towards the same goal. Us, as consumers will eventually win in our desire of freedom over our digital media. The gadgets will facilitate this freedom at just the right time. Monolithic companies who refuse these freedoms will eventually lose out - don't forget they are now operating in an industry with significantly reduced barriers to entry to what there was only ten years ago.....
Apple occupy an interesting position, in a niche for people who like to be creative with their machines - home video, audio, DTP. I think Apple are the only firm with a small chance of justifiying their device....
For all the technological development over the last few years, it's worrying that the technology we rely upon is vulnerable to something like this.
Having said this, I guess this idea would be of limited use in less developed countries such as Afghanistan and to a lesser extent Iraq, where there are likeley to be less electronic devices and communications infrastructure. Though the article hints at using them to disable weapons, I guess even these are going to be more primative than those used by the US?
The low-collateral damage aspect....
For all it's use, it's relatively high collateral if it takes out my toaster, vcr, etc. I'd rather keep my TIVO & give away the weapons the traditional way:)
Slashdot Mirror
You will probably be modded offtopic, but PS2 Linux is legal and supported by Sony.
It would be interesting to hear if open source developers think that this might work - I imagine it's a similar style of working albeit with different motivations....
The biggest issue in the UK is the availability of broadband in rural areas. With a bit of luck, as more people want to take up teleworking, this might help smaller towns and villages reach the critical mass for telco installation of broadband to be cost effective....
Aren't they coming a bit late to the party? People are doing much more exciting things with file sharing nowadays. It was the idea behind Napster and the time it hit the scene which led to it's success, as opposed to the (very simple) technology. The addition of the type of features which I'd want to see in an online music service (searches, previews etc) would lead to a product completetly different to Napster.
The success of ITunes shows that a decent product will do well in the popularity stakes regardless of brand. Though the Napster brand will bring a bit of recongnition, I can't see it making customers any more likeley to buy overpriced, bad or crippled (in terms of usage) music.
Firstly, the term "market maker" is a very generic term applied to anyone who makes a market. BUT, as a rule the market maker won't be able to take positions. They are provided by the exchange to provide bid/ask prices, improving liqudity. They make their money through the bid/ask spread. If they were allowed ot hold a position, then they would be able to manipulate the price, for instance upping the ask price in an illiquid market.
Then came the boom. Maybe these standards fell, but it was heady times where most of the long-held laws of the markets were seemingly going out of the window. Many analysts were cautious, but nobody wanted to hear it; instead choosing to hype up a few celeb analysts. Doom and gloom doesn't sell newspapers. Regardless, the true level of 'corruption' was certainly over-hyped. Everyone from pension fund managers through to your grandparents wanted a piece of it. When it all went wrong, they were all out for somebody to blame.
Nowadays, standards are likely to reach new highs, with more procedures in place than ever. Keeping tracks of +/- ratings by analysts, closing down communication channels between these departments and a new imposition of the chinese wall are three things which will help this situation. The problem now, is that in these less heady times, banks need to make their equity research pay in it's own right, for the first time.
But for such a small percentage of people who this would affect, I wouldn't have thought the cost of the chips could be justified..... Hopefully these companies will not be able to make it pay. I love it when people try to squeeze more money out of consumers, and it backfires mwahahahahahah.
Hope this is relevant. JobStats.co.uk is an interesting compilation of stats about the UK job market, e.g. average earnings by skill, region etc.
That's BS. By *listening* to these records, no matter how you obtain them, you are a customer of the record industry. Regardless of whether or not you would have bought them, you have had the use out of the item *without* paying. If you want use of something, even if it's in your opinion sub standard, you have to pay by law. Simple as that. (Though I'd say that this is a valid argument against the we lose $n billion/year in piracy.)
It's not as if I download an mp3 and it's MINE MINE MINE and only mine.
Just because something is intangible it doesn't make the law any less applicable. In fact, in this situation these laws should be more rigourously enforced. The Legal process is the only way these companies have to protect their intellectual property. Likewise, people seem to throw it around that these companies are evil monoliths. Again, it's just that the smaller IP companies (software houses, publishers & independant record labels) don't have the financial clout to protect their intellectual property, rather than some philanthropic need to give away their only assets.
Karma whore! The annoying thing is that these posts always go to 5 - informative. The NY Times is unlikely to get slashdotted, and you're just depriving them of ad revenues etc.
From the CCTV Surveilance regulation campaign: The United Kingdom leads the world in the deployment of Closed Circuit Tele Vision camera technology. However, we seem to have no coherent, legally enforceable rules or regulations which ensure that Public CCTV schemes are run properly. This website aims to open up a debate about the extent to which powerful technologies such as linked CCTV camera systems, neural network facial recognition , car number plate recognition, multimedia image databases etc. are being applied in the UK.
Why, in the UK, is television reception controlled by licences, backed up by criminal penalties, but no licencing is required to install linked CCTV camera systems?
Are CCTV surveillance systems vital to keep order on our streets, or are there substantial civil liberties problems to be addressed ? Has the cost effectiveness of Public CCTV surveillance systems been oversold ? Is crime reduced or just displaced next door ?
The Register.
ZdNet.
People who I know must have orders 250+ between them. There is no way they would honour this - and every person who ordered realised it was a mistake, so they have nothing to whine about.
Schmuck.
Battery life on laptops needs to improve before wireless access is truly a useful thing. You couldn't anticipate being able to pick up a mail or video conference with such a big possibiliy of running out of juice. This is especially important as it's mainly useful to business users - even the most hardcore geek can do without the web for a few hours whilst traveliing etc.
The bandwagon rolls on though. The only way to stop P2P IMO is go after the ISP's. I'm no sysadmin, but I'm sure it would be possible for block certain ports, report heavy downloaders etc. At the moment nobody dare do this for fear of a mass exodus of customers, but if the law made sure that all of these ISP's had to comply, I'm sure they alone would be able to stop the spread. How feasible is it for the ISP's to put barriers in place?
The reason I ask is because this type of co-operation with public defense organisations and the private sector are likeley to become much more important as we come to rely more on these technologies, OR if we ever see any kind of cyber-terrorism. Ideally there would be a single point through which relevant information flows - as hinted at in the article, any leaks could be a problem.
Do these agencies have a reputation for hiring good security people?
In hindsight, if you could start afresh and redesign the protocols and software on which email is based, and influence any relevant ISP policies & user education, how would you do things differently to deal with the problem of SPAM?? And, of these areas, which is the weakest link in the spam-war?! Not part of the question: Why don't all webmasters add SpamBot traps to their websites....?
These techniques could easily be expanded to searching weblogs - I imagine the findings could be very interesting for content providers - eg a simple measure of what people want to read about.
The pharmaceutical industry has done so for years- it's just that their research results in a tangible product (a drug.) With biotech companies, sometimes they're only asset is there research....
I would recommend that any beginning programmer learns the basics of as many languages as possible. It wasn't until I broadened my programming language skill set that I considered myself an intermediate rather than beginner programmer...
And isn't it very popular as a file trading tool? It seems that once a technology has gone down that road, it's very hard to come back to legitimacy credibly. IMO, this will be one of the biggest challenges for any p2p systems of this kind.....
How would something like this work? Presumably slashdot would have to link to a single site, which then farmed out the requests to participants? If this is the case, there is still a single point of faliure, right? And presumably browsers need to know that they are being redirected so any subsequent requests. Thus, how is this more powerful than an (albeit intelligent) javascipt forwarder...? If it's just a simple load baalncing system then I don't see what's so groundbreaking.
Eventually, people would vote directly from the comfort of their own homes. The political apathy which has spread through western countries in recent decades would be reversed.
Why is it assumed that making it possible to vote online etc, is a cure for voter apathy? Sure, for a while we might see increased turnout by people who are considering venturing out to cast their vote, and the easy option swings it, BUT the reasons for voter apathy still exist & it will continue to increase, whilst people feel so disjoined by it all....
One of democracy's greatest virtues is its flexibility, but the changes about to be wrought by new communication technologies will stretch the adaptive abilities of western democracies to their limit.
But will it? How do these advances change the process of democracy? Will it make our governemnts more acountable, as suggested in the article? Though we like to complain in the west about corruption & spin, I like to think that the media do a good job of holding our politicians to account. Will it renew our ailing interest in politics? Maybe not - the nature of the web is that you have to go looking in the first place.
Interesting articles though...
These conflicts of interest should be a non-event, in that even if a company such as Sony didn't have to think about it's media arm, they shouldn't release devices which blatantly encourage piracy. This is not least because of some desire for the general good, but also to help the rapidly converging entertainment and consumer technology industries. And this convergance is happening towards the same goal. Us, as consumers will eventually win in our desire of freedom over our digital media. The gadgets will facilitate this freedom at just the right time. Monolithic companies who refuse these freedoms will eventually lose out - don't forget they are now operating in an industry with significantly reduced barriers to entry to what there was only ten years ago..... Apple occupy an interesting position, in a niche for people who like to be creative with their machines - home video, audio, DTP. I think Apple are the only firm with a small chance of justifiying their device....
For all the technological development over the last few years, it's worrying that the technology we rely upon is vulnerable to something like this. Having said this, I guess this idea would be of limited use in less developed countries such as Afghanistan and to a lesser extent Iraq, where there are likeley to be less electronic devices and communications infrastructure. Though the article hints at using them to disable weapons, I guess even these are going to be more primative than those used by the US? The low-collateral damage aspect.... For all it's use, it's relatively high collateral if it takes out my toaster, vcr, etc. I'd rather keep my TIVO & give away the weapons the traditional way :)