The point of the XBox (from Microsoft's perspective) is to make it easy to port console games to the PC. As such, the XBox *helps* IBM/HP/Dell, since it makes PCs more valuable.
Remember that the XBox exists to help Microsoft preserve its OS monopolies. Other game consoles threaten this, as if you play all your games on console, you don't need to run Microsoft Windows rather than Linux/MacOS/whatever to play them. The XBox development environment is designed to be compatible with Microsoft's PC development environments. This makes it easy to port those games back to PC.
"Via C3 running at 800MHz, but I thought that should be pretty good, since alot of people talked about running these things on Celeron 700s"
IIRC, a Via C3 at 800MHz will be slower than a Celeron 700. For some reason, C3-800 ~~ Celeron 533 comes to mind, but that could very well be wrong.
This was one of the criticisms of the LindowsMobilePC when it came out. They were comparing the 900 MHz C3 to an 800 MHz Celeron and a 600 MHz G4. The G4 especially would have run rings around it, despite the lower clock speed. Same issue with the P4. A 1.6 GHz P4 is about the same speed as a 1.2 GHz P3.
Clock speed is useful when comparing two versions of the same chip (a 3 GHz P4 is faster than a 2 GHz P4), but is almost useless when comparing different chips.
"The software you need for checking in a whitelist isn't much different than what you need for checking in a blacklist"
If you define the whitelist provider properly, it isn't different at all. That's what I was saying. If you create a whitelist where it returns a bad for all email addresses that are *not* on the list (as opposed to a blacklist, which returns a bad for email addresses that *are* on the list), then you can just plug it into the same software that handles the blacklist. This is just a configuration change that I can do with my *current* server software.
With a TLD, you do a DNS check on the TLD. This isn't a huge thing, but it is something that is not done now. Therefore, *all* servers would have to be rewritten to do this. Seeing as how some people still use the execrable Mercury servers, this would not see universal use any time soon. Even for those who are willing to update their servers, why should they? There is a perfectly good method for whitelisting now...why not use it instead? Why wait until people have time to set up their software to support this? Why not go with something that can start working immediately?
Another point is that such a whitelist could use current systems to operate (just add the parameters to the current blacklist system). This.mail TLD would require new software to check for the existence of a.mail TLD. Thus, a.mail TLD is *worse* than the whitelist that you propose.
About the same amount of time that it would take them to get an SPF domain. That's what blacklists are for. It is a lot easier to blacklist spam.mail or spam.com (in the SPF case) than it is to blacklist every IP that sends spam (especially with DHCP).
The thing that I like least about a new TLD is that it brings back relaying. Since it is going to be impractical to get a.mail for everyone who maintains a personal email server, most people who do this now are going to hire a relay server.
There is a current (not foolproof but good) method of checking validity in DNS: checking for a PTR record (and A record). I don't use it on the mail server that I administer now because it would block some of the email that I want to receive. PTR records are free, but not everyone uses them. Why is this more reliable?
I used to administer a mail server that had 40,000 users give or take (IMAP only, not web). The hardware cost about $200,000. I wouldn't be surprised to find out that the support contract was $2000 a year.
Yahoo/Hotmail both have far more users than that. $2000 is not going to be a big deal for them (for example, with 2 million users, it would be a tenth of a penny per person). I'm sure that they are already spending far more than that on hardware, software, and administration.
"M$ can increase products prices - and thus tax customers - to cover the fine _only_ if they do not have competition."
This is not strictly true. A better statement would be that Microsoft can only increase prices if it was underpricing its product (i.e. charging less than the market will bear) or the judgement changes its market. If anything, the judgement would tend to *decrease* prices it can charge for its products. The OS because it no longer has a bundled media player. The server because it is no longer associated with a client that is bundled in the OS. The media player will stay free, as that is the market in which it competes (with Real and QuickTime).
Microsoft's prices are not cost bound. If they were, the XBox would be $300 (the cost to manufacture it). Both the server and the OS are priced at levels where the profit margin is over 50%. This decision will not change that. It is simply a transfer from the cash reserves that Microsoft maintains to pay such lawsuits to the EU.
"If there was any hint of the MS leaked code in SAMBA"
The API is not code. The API is the interface. Microsoft does not need to claim that there is Microsoft *code* in SAMBA to collect the fee. They just need to claim that someone in SAMBA *looked* at the API specification and used it to develop the code without paying. Further, this does not need to be true. If there is some supporting evidence (for example, a Microsoft employee emailed SAMBA the API), then it might be enough to stop distribution of SAMBA and would certainly be enough to tie it up in court. If the developers are spending all their time in court rather than coding, they've effectively killed the project.
This is a problem with licensing an API. By its very nature, it's a virtual product. There is nothing to stop someone from illegally copying it and distributing it to one or more SAMBA developers. Further, there is no way to tell if someone came up with a particular protocol via observation or by reading a copy of the API.
IANAL, but it's also possible that they could claim that the decision gives them the right to collect fees based on the information that SAMBA derives from *observation* of the functionality (no looking at the API/code necessary) or by making up their own method that happens to be the same. That's how patents work. If I patent a method and you develop the same method entirely separately, you still have to pay me royalties. It doesn't matter that you did not rely on my work in any way. The patent protects me from independent development as well as from copying.
"we certainly don't need to see MIcrosoft need to lay off anybody"
Yes, India would be devastated. Seeing as how that's where Microsoft is moving its (always outsourced) development now.
If a competitive market developed, this would increase jobs. With Microsoft, they only work on one system. What if there were two competitive systems? Twice as many jobs. Maybe more, as Microsoft would have to try to innovate rather than obstruct.
Jobs don't necessarily disappear when companies do. Some friends and I were kicking around the idea of starting a windmill farm, so I did some product research. One of the main products was from GE Wind, which used to be... Enron Wind. Same people; same jobs; new name.
If the market really exists, they will continue to build products, which requires employees. If it does not exist, better to know now than later. Get those people moved out of the tech sector and into a more appropriate employment.
Remember when people asked Microsoft why they had $50 billion of cash reserves? One of the reasons that they gave was to pay off lawsuits. They aren't afraid of paying off lawsuits. They have already budgeted for it. They are afraid of being forced to change their business practices as a result and of losing their effective monopoly on desktop computing.
Microsoft doesn't care about the money that much. Even if they paid both fines (EU and Minnesota) in the same quarter, it would only take them from ridiculously profitable to break even point *for that quarter* (even if the Minnesota fine is the full $1.5 billion). Their big worry is that they might lose the ability to make $2 billion profits in a quarter. In that respect, the EU case is far more dangerous than the Minnesota case. The EU case involves actual changes in business practices (Media Player bundling and secret APIs). The Minnesota case is just money. They'll probably just have to pay in software vouchers again anyway.
Macs have traditionally had a bunch of different word processors/desktop publishing utilities. This would just be one of many options for them.
This is one of a very few (WP/DP) programs specifically for Solaris (for those who don't think of Tex as easy to install/use). Thus, even though there are more installed Macs than Solaris workstations, they may well have a bigger Solaris market.
The thing that confuses me is that now that Macs are BSD based, shouldn't it be relatively simple to port the Solaris version to MacOSX?
They claim that they only track by category. I.e. they track that you bought baby stuff and that the little old lady bought senior specific stuff, but they claim that they do not track that you bought such and such brand of baby food for such and such price.
I know this because I once called them to try to get access to their info. I wanted to try to make a better inflation index system that took account of substitutions, etc. (One problem with current inflation index methods is that they don't measure well if someone switches from apples to oranges because of price changes; they sort of assume that you buy the same stuff all the time.)
You can choose to believe them or not. I just wanted to mention what they told me. The argument in favor of believing them is that it would be a lot of data and not terribly useful to them.
It's also worth noting that if you pay by credit card, they would have access to most of that data anyway. Of course, paying with a mix of different credit cards and cash will mess up the results of that.
The RIAA doesn't care who is downloading. They only prosecute people who are uploading. *Any* of the three involved (supplier or the two proxies) could be prosecuted for uploading. Heck, this would make their job easier. They just sign up as a proxy and watch the network traffic that flows through them.
You act as if their goal were to identify all the players. That's not it. They want people to stop sharing their songs. This gives them an extra set of people to prosecute: those acting as proxies for sharing songs. They don't have to get back to the original uploaders. Eliminating the proxies breaks the system (plus, presumably the proxies will be sharing in other transactions; once they get the proxy evidence, they can get a warrant to look for additional evidence).
"in order to search my house you have to get a court order"
Not if you invite them in (at least in the US).
Assume you murder someone and set the bloody murder weapon on the coffee table. The police come by and you invite them into the living room to talk. They see the bloody murder weapon in plain sight. They can then take posession of the weapon and later use it as evidence.
If you publish the contents of your hard drive over the internet (e.g. by sharing your files in a P2P network), then they can certainly come by and check them out. They can use that as evidence later. No invasion of privacy at this point, they are just using information that you chose to make publicly available.
No, I think you missed the reference. In the US, Microsoft is *currently* paying a judgement in the form of coupons and "donations" of software to schools.
What you are talking about is just them handing out goodies to try to get future customers. The complaint is that in the US, Microsoft is paying a fine by doing something it would do anyway! (As your example demonstrates.)
Hopefully this won't happen in this case. One reason for that is that Microsoft can't afford to settle the rest of the suit (unbundling Media Player), so that they are unlikely to offer deals in the money part.
I'm not sure how the Microsoft version works, but if I were implementing something like this, I would never allow logins to come from the site. Instead, I would require the site and user to log in to my system separately. Then I would give them a unique identifier or something to check if the user is logged on to the central system.
For example, I might create two unique encryption/decryption key pairs and give one decrypt to the site and the corresponding encrypt to the user and give the other decrypt to the user and the corresponding encrypt to the site. Now they can communicate safely with private key encryption.
Note that neither the site nor the user ever has login info for the other. Remember to discard the keys when done.
A side effect of this is that instead of getting a login page when you try to connect to a site using the system when you are not logged in, you would get an error page (you are not logged in; please go to the appropriate place and log in). This would be mildly inconvenient but much more secure.
He could, but as he is involved with secret NSA/FBI secret projects he would have to kill you afterwards.:)
Re:Problem that doesn't exist big time...
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Passport to Nowhere
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· Score: 2, Interesting
That assumes that you are going to go to an overall weaker system. Previously, you had $2000 total protected by $2500 worth of security. Afterwards, you have $2000 protected by $500 of security. Why did you cut out $2000 of security? Maybe that's the only option, but that is a big starting assumption.
Another issue is that while the first 10 piles may each be protected by $200 worth of security, what if they are easier to compromise in bulk? They share a user right? Chances are, you simplify the system either by sharing passwords across multiple piles or by using some consistent algorithm to generate passwords.
For example, if you share the same password across all ten, that's really $200 total of security. Once you compromise one, you've compromised all. If the user has a consistent algorithm, perhaps compromising three reveals the algorithm: that would be $600 worth of security.
Now, compare that to one system where it costs $2500 to break the single password. On that system, $200 or $600 gets you nothing. If either of the above situations occur, you would get everything even in the decentralized system. If neither applies, you still get back half the money for looking.
Another issue is password difficulty. The easiest passwords to remember are things like names and birthdays. However, these are also the easiest to crack. If I have just one password, I use it enough that I can afford to make it complicated (capitalization, numbers, characters, long, etc.). If I have many, I need them to be relatively simple. Heck, if I just string my 20 passwords together, that doesn't increase the difficulty in an additive fashion but in an exponential or at least factorial (there are 20! ways to arrange 20 passwords) fashion. Maybe instead of $2500 security I now have $12,500 of security.
Another example. I am willing to carry one random number generator as a key chain. I am not willing to carry twenty. See what I mean? There are things that a single system can do that multiple systems can't.
Given the assumptions, the statement is quite correct. I'm just not convinced that the assumptions will always hold.
No, it is like SPF lite. It has *fewer* features than SPF and is less flexible. And you have to pay.
All the.mail TLD provides is a reverse MX record that maps a.mail domain to an IP. SPF allows you to specify what kinds of machines can send email for your domain. You can specify an IP address as a valid sender (the equivalent of a.mail TLD). You can also say that anyone with an MX record in your domain is a valid sender (a reasonable default), etc.
"Let's say also that the cost of a web name renewal will be $10 per year for the next 100 years (it's more likely to be more as the inflation cathces in, but heck let's keep it simple)."
NetSol charges $35 per year for normal registration. That would give an NPV of $1071 (using your numbers) or a $71 loss compared to what they would get.
It's also worth noting that ignoring inflation in domain prices is an optimistic outlook, not a pessimistic one. If the price were to increase, it would increase the NPV of the cash flow. It looks to me like NetSol expects prices to *fall*, not increase. Otherwise, your numbers suggest that this is a bad deal for them (they are sacrificing $1071 NPV of cash flow for $1000 cash now).
Of course, I think that they do give some kind of discount for 5 and 10 year renewals already.
No, you're missing the point. High inflation *strengthens* the argument, as it is better to get $10 now than *after* double digit inflation. After a period with 100% inflation, the same nominal $10 would be the equivalent of $5 real (using now as the baseline). It would have to inflate to $20 nominal to match the current $10 real.
What NetSol is saying is that they think that inflation in domain name prices will be lower than inflation in general (note that domain name prices have been *falling* rather than rising; remember when the same $1000 would have gotten a domain for *1* year, not 100?). As a result, they are better off getting paid now, even at a discount from their typical rates.
Note: remember that we are talking about the advantages to the *seller* here. Buyers would probably be better off with short term renewals, as they can expect domain name prices to fall relative to other products as name serving, etc. becomes more efficient. All they gain are the transactional savings of not renewing as often.
Not to mention the problem of NetSol going out of business in the meantime and leaving these 100 year domain owners stranded.
The real problem is that a monopolist under produces its product. As it does not have to keep prices low in the face of competition, the monopolist prices its products at the level where increasing the product would decrease sales so much that it would actually *lower* profits. Decreasing prices would also lower profits, even though it results in increased sales.
For example, assume that the monopoly good has an ideal price of $10. At $10, it sells a million units for total sales of $10 million. If you increase the price by 10% to $11, sales will fall by 10% to 900,000 units (note: the exact numbers are dependent on the good being sold; sales could just as well fall 15% or 70% on a 10% price increase; 10% is just an example) for total sales of $9.9 million. If you cut prices by 10% to $9, sales increase by 10% to 1.1 million for total sales of $9.9 million (the duplication is accidental and would probably not occur in a real example).
Now apply a $5 million fine. This changes the revenue numbers to $5 million, $4.9 million, and $4.9 million. It still makes the best sense to price the product at $10 a piece, even though the profit is lower (this is why Microsoft will not be able to pass on the fine to its customers: monopoly prices are established based on the demand, not the supply costs).
On the other hand, if you have a competitive market and everyone else is pricing the product at $9 and you price (the identical product) at $10, then no one will buy your product. Instead they will go to your $9 competitors. In that market, you will have to price at $9 to have *any* sales. Now, the total sales (between you and your competitors) will be 1.1 million units, 10% more than the monopolist produced (and a hundred thousand $ cheaper total for the 1.1 million than the 1 million).
If they could charge more for their product, then why don't they do so now?
Monopolies charge what the market will bear. This fine doesn't impact what the market will bear, so it shouldn't affect prices. Monopolies set prices at the level where any increase in price would decrease profits. They have no incentive to set it lower, and it would be stupid to set it higher (as it would decrease profits).
Think of it from the other perspective. If a company received a sudden windfall of money, would you expect them to reduce prices? No, they would take the windfall and maximize profit with current prices. Giving the windfall a negative value doesn't change anything but the level of profit. The company will still set prices and production so as to maximize profit.
No, they can't. Monopoly prices are unrelated to the cost of the product, particularly fixed costs (this would be included under fixed costs). Unless they are mispricing their product, then they are already charging as much as they can (to maximize profits). Charging more would reduce sales too much to compensate for the increased price (i.e. raising the price would hurt their sales so much that they would lose money).
This is the reason why anti-trust laws exist: to keep companies from pricing their products at the demand-based monopolist levels rather than at the lower demand/supply based competitive prices. Also, it is worth noting that with competitive prices, there is more production (i.e. more of the good is made and sold).
I'm pretty sure that at least one of the European Union countries is involved in Microsoft's Shared Source program. If they don't pay the fine, the European Union could seize the copyright (in lieu of payment of the fine), get a copy of the code, and sell the source code to one of their own software companies. That would presumably be worth the 500 million euros, even ignoring any other assets that may exist.
Microsoft traditionally outsources most of their development, so there is no reason to think that the new company couldn't continue development. Possibly with the same Indian developers as are working on the Microsoft code;)
Maybe they will even open source it to fix the bugs:)
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The point of the XBox (from Microsoft's perspective) is to make it easy to port console games to the PC. As such, the XBox *helps* IBM/HP/Dell, since it makes PCs more valuable.
Remember that the XBox exists to help Microsoft preserve its OS monopolies. Other game consoles threaten this, as if you play all your games on console, you don't need to run Microsoft Windows rather than Linux/MacOS/whatever to play them. The XBox development environment is designed to be compatible with Microsoft's PC development environments. This makes it easy to port those games back to PC.
"Via C3 running at 800MHz, but I thought that should be pretty good, since alot of people talked about running these things on Celeron 700s"
IIRC, a Via C3 at 800MHz will be slower than a Celeron 700. For some reason, C3-800 ~~ Celeron 533 comes to mind, but that could very well be wrong.
This was one of the criticisms of the LindowsMobilePC when it came out. They were comparing the 900 MHz C3 to an 800 MHz Celeron and a 600 MHz G4. The G4 especially would have run rings around it, despite the lower clock speed. Same issue with the P4. A 1.6 GHz P4 is about the same speed as a 1.2 GHz P3.
Clock speed is useful when comparing two versions of the same chip (a 3 GHz P4 is faster than a 2 GHz P4), but is almost useless when comparing different chips.
"The software you need for checking in a whitelist isn't much different than what you need for checking in a blacklist"
If you define the whitelist provider properly, it isn't different at all. That's what I was saying. If you create a whitelist where it returns a bad for all email addresses that are *not* on the list (as opposed to a blacklist, which returns a bad for email addresses that *are* on the list), then you can just plug it into the same software that handles the blacklist. This is just a configuration change that I can do with my *current* server software.
With a TLD, you do a DNS check on the TLD. This isn't a huge thing, but it is something that is not done now. Therefore, *all* servers would have to be rewritten to do this. Seeing as how some people still use the execrable Mercury servers, this would not see universal use any time soon. Even for those who are willing to update their servers, why should they? There is a perfectly good method for whitelisting now...why not use it instead? Why wait until people have time to set up their software to support this? Why not go with something that can start working immediately?
Another point is that such a whitelist could use current systems to operate (just add the parameters to the current blacklist system). This .mail TLD would require new software to check for the existence of a .mail TLD. Thus, a .mail TLD is *worse* than the whitelist that you propose.
About the same amount of time that it would take them to get an SPF domain. That's what blacklists are for. It is a lot easier to blacklist spam.mail or spam.com (in the SPF case) than it is to blacklist every IP that sends spam (especially with DHCP).
.mail for everyone who maintains a personal email server, most people who do this now are going to hire a relay server.
The thing that I like least about a new TLD is that it brings back relaying. Since it is going to be impractical to get a
There is a current (not foolproof but good) method of checking validity in DNS: checking for a PTR record (and A record). I don't use it on the mail server that I administer now because it would block some of the email that I want to receive. PTR records are free, but not everyone uses them. Why is this more reliable?
I used to administer a mail server that had 40,000 users give or take (IMAP only, not web). The hardware cost about $200,000. I wouldn't be surprised to find out that the support contract was $2000 a year.
Yahoo/Hotmail both have far more users than that. $2000 is not going to be a big deal for them (for example, with 2 million users, it would be a tenth of a penny per person). I'm sure that they are already spending far more than that on hardware, software, and administration.
"M$ can increase products prices - and thus tax customers - to cover the fine _only_ if they do not have competition."
This is not strictly true. A better statement would be that Microsoft can only increase prices if it was underpricing its product (i.e. charging less than the market will bear) or the judgement changes its market. If anything, the judgement would tend to *decrease* prices it can charge for its products. The OS because it no longer has a bundled media player. The server because it is no longer associated with a client that is bundled in the OS. The media player will stay free, as that is the market in which it competes (with Real and QuickTime).
Microsoft's prices are not cost bound. If they were, the XBox would be $300 (the cost to manufacture it). Both the server and the OS are priced at levels where the profit margin is over 50%. This decision will not change that. It is simply a transfer from the cash reserves that Microsoft maintains to pay such lawsuits to the EU.
"If there was any hint of the MS leaked code in SAMBA"
The API is not code. The API is the interface. Microsoft does not need to claim that there is Microsoft *code* in SAMBA to collect the fee. They just need to claim that someone in SAMBA *looked* at the API specification and used it to develop the code without paying. Further, this does not need to be true. If there is some supporting evidence (for example, a Microsoft employee emailed SAMBA the API), then it might be enough to stop distribution of SAMBA and would certainly be enough to tie it up in court. If the developers are spending all their time in court rather than coding, they've effectively killed the project.
This is a problem with licensing an API. By its very nature, it's a virtual product. There is nothing to stop someone from illegally copying it and distributing it to one or more SAMBA developers. Further, there is no way to tell if someone came up with a particular protocol via observation or by reading a copy of the API.
IANAL, but it's also possible that they could claim that the decision gives them the right to collect fees based on the information that SAMBA derives from *observation* of the functionality (no looking at the API/code necessary) or by making up their own method that happens to be the same. That's how patents work. If I patent a method and you develop the same method entirely separately, you still have to pay me royalties. It doesn't matter that you did not rely on my work in any way. The patent protects me from independent development as well as from copying.
"we certainly don't need to see MIcrosoft need to lay off anybody"
... Enron Wind. Same people; same jobs; new name.
Yes, India would be devastated. Seeing as how that's where Microsoft is moving its (always outsourced) development now.
If a competitive market developed, this would increase jobs. With Microsoft, they only work on one system. What if there were two competitive systems? Twice as many jobs. Maybe more, as Microsoft would have to try to innovate rather than obstruct.
Jobs don't necessarily disappear when companies do. Some friends and I were kicking around the idea of starting a windmill farm, so I did some product research. One of the main products was from GE Wind, which used to be
If the market really exists, they will continue to build products, which requires employees. If it does not exist, better to know now than later. Get those people moved out of the tech sector and into a more appropriate employment.
Remember when people asked Microsoft why they had $50 billion of cash reserves? One of the reasons that they gave was to pay off lawsuits. They aren't afraid of paying off lawsuits. They have already budgeted for it. They are afraid of being forced to change their business practices as a result and of losing their effective monopoly on desktop computing.
Microsoft doesn't care about the money that much. Even if they paid both fines (EU and Minnesota) in the same quarter, it would only take them from ridiculously profitable to break even point *for that quarter* (even if the Minnesota fine is the full $1.5 billion). Their big worry is that they might lose the ability to make $2 billion profits in a quarter. In that respect, the EU case is far more dangerous than the Minnesota case. The EU case involves actual changes in business practices (Media Player bundling and secret APIs). The Minnesota case is just money. They'll probably just have to pay in software vouchers again anyway.
Macs have traditionally had a bunch of different word processors/desktop publishing utilities. This would just be one of many options for them.
This is one of a very few (WP/DP) programs specifically for Solaris (for those who don't think of Tex as easy to install/use). Thus, even though there are more installed Macs than Solaris workstations, they may well have a bigger Solaris market.
The thing that confuses me is that now that Macs are BSD based, shouldn't it be relatively simple to port the Solaris version to MacOSX?
They claim that they only track by category. I.e. they track that you bought baby stuff and that the little old lady bought senior specific stuff, but they claim that they do not track that you bought such and such brand of baby food for such and such price.
I know this because I once called them to try to get access to their info. I wanted to try to make a better inflation index system that took account of substitutions, etc. (One problem with current inflation index methods is that they don't measure well if someone switches from apples to oranges because of price changes; they sort of assume that you buy the same stuff all the time.)
You can choose to believe them or not. I just wanted to mention what they told me. The argument in favor of believing them is that it would be a lot of data and not terribly useful to them.
It's also worth noting that if you pay by credit card, they would have access to most of that data anyway. Of course, paying with a mix of different credit cards and cash will mess up the results of that.
The RIAA doesn't care who is downloading. They only prosecute people who are uploading. *Any* of the three involved (supplier or the two proxies) could be prosecuted for uploading. Heck, this would make their job easier. They just sign up as a proxy and watch the network traffic that flows through them.
You act as if their goal were to identify all the players. That's not it. They want people to stop sharing their songs. This gives them an extra set of people to prosecute: those acting as proxies for sharing songs. They don't have to get back to the original uploaders. Eliminating the proxies breaks the system (plus, presumably the proxies will be sharing in other transactions; once they get the proxy evidence, they can get a warrant to look for additional evidence).
"in order to search my house you have to get a court order"
Not if you invite them in (at least in the US).
Assume you murder someone and set the bloody murder weapon on the coffee table. The police come by and you invite them into the living room to talk. They see the bloody murder weapon in plain sight. They can then take posession of the weapon and later use it as evidence.
If you publish the contents of your hard drive over the internet (e.g. by sharing your files in a P2P network), then they can certainly come by and check them out. They can use that as evidence later. No invasion of privacy at this point, they are just using information that you chose to make publicly available.
No, I think you missed the reference. In the US, Microsoft is *currently* paying a judgement in the form of coupons and "donations" of software to schools.
What you are talking about is just them handing out goodies to try to get future customers. The complaint is that in the US, Microsoft is paying a fine by doing something it would do anyway! (As your example demonstrates.)
Hopefully this won't happen in this case. One reason for that is that Microsoft can't afford to settle the rest of the suit (unbundling Media Player), so that they are unlikely to offer deals in the money part.
I'm not sure how the Microsoft version works, but if I were implementing something like this, I would never allow logins to come from the site. Instead, I would require the site and user to log in to my system separately. Then I would give them a unique identifier or something to check if the user is logged on to the central system.
For example, I might create two unique encryption/decryption key pairs and give one decrypt to the site and the corresponding encrypt to the user and give the other decrypt to the user and the corresponding encrypt to the site. Now they can communicate safely with private key encryption.
Note that neither the site nor the user ever has login info for the other. Remember to discard the keys when done.
A side effect of this is that instead of getting a login page when you try to connect to a site using the system when you are not logged in, you would get an error page (you are not logged in; please go to the appropriate place and log in). This would be mildly inconvenient but much more secure.
He could, but as he is involved with secret NSA/FBI secret projects he would have to kill you afterwards. :)
That assumes that you are going to go to an overall weaker system. Previously, you had $2000 total protected by $2500 worth of security. Afterwards, you have $2000 protected by $500 of security. Why did you cut out $2000 of security? Maybe that's the only option, but that is a big starting assumption.
Another issue is that while the first 10 piles may each be protected by $200 worth of security, what if they are easier to compromise in bulk? They share a user right? Chances are, you simplify the system either by sharing passwords across multiple piles or by using some consistent algorithm to generate passwords.
For example, if you share the same password across all ten, that's really $200 total of security. Once you compromise one, you've compromised all. If the user has a consistent algorithm, perhaps compromising three reveals the algorithm: that would be $600 worth of security.
Now, compare that to one system where it costs $2500 to break the single password. On that system, $200 or $600 gets you nothing. If either of the above situations occur, you would get everything even in the decentralized system. If neither applies, you still get back half the money for looking.
Another issue is password difficulty. The easiest passwords to remember are things like names and birthdays. However, these are also the easiest to crack. If I have just one password, I use it enough that I can afford to make it complicated (capitalization, numbers, characters, long, etc.). If I have many, I need them to be relatively simple. Heck, if I just string my 20 passwords together, that doesn't increase the difficulty in an additive fashion but in an exponential or at least factorial (there are 20! ways to arrange 20 passwords) fashion. Maybe instead of $2500 security I now have $12,500 of security.
Another example. I am willing to carry one random number generator as a key chain. I am not willing to carry twenty. See what I mean? There are things that a single system can do that multiple systems can't.
Given the assumptions, the statement is quite correct. I'm just not convinced that the assumptions will always hold.
No, it is like SPF lite. It has *fewer* features than SPF and is less flexible. And you have to pay.
.mail TLD provides is a reverse MX record that maps a .mail domain to an IP. SPF allows you to specify what kinds of machines can send email for your domain. You can specify an IP address as a valid sender (the equivalent of a .mail TLD). You can also say that anyone with an MX record in your domain is a valid sender (a reasonable default), etc.
All the
"Let's say also that the cost of a web name renewal will be $10 per year for the next 100 years (it's more likely to be more as the inflation cathces in, but heck let's keep it simple)."
NetSol charges $35 per year for normal registration. That would give an NPV of $1071 (using your numbers) or a $71 loss compared to what they would get.
It's also worth noting that ignoring inflation in domain prices is an optimistic outlook, not a pessimistic one. If the price were to increase, it would increase the NPV of the cash flow. It looks to me like NetSol expects prices to *fall*, not increase. Otherwise, your numbers suggest that this is a bad deal for them (they are sacrificing $1071 NPV of cash flow for $1000 cash now).
Of course, I think that they do give some kind of discount for 5 and 10 year renewals already.
No, you're missing the point. High inflation *strengthens* the argument, as it is better to get $10 now than *after* double digit inflation. After a period with 100% inflation, the same nominal $10 would be the equivalent of $5 real (using now as the baseline). It would have to inflate to $20 nominal to match the current $10 real.
What NetSol is saying is that they think that inflation in domain name prices will be lower than inflation in general (note that domain name prices have been *falling* rather than rising; remember when the same $1000 would have gotten a domain for *1* year, not 100?). As a result, they are better off getting paid now, even at a discount from their typical rates.
Note: remember that we are talking about the advantages to the *seller* here. Buyers would probably be better off with short term renewals, as they can expect domain name prices to fall relative to other products as name serving, etc. becomes more efficient. All they gain are the transactional savings of not renewing as often.
Not to mention the problem of NetSol going out of business in the meantime and leaving these 100 year domain owners stranded.
The real problem is that a monopolist under produces its product. As it does not have to keep prices low in the face of competition, the monopolist prices its products at the level where increasing the product would decrease sales so much that it would actually *lower* profits. Decreasing prices would also lower profits, even though it results in increased sales.
For example, assume that the monopoly good has an ideal price of $10. At $10, it sells a million units for total sales of $10 million. If you increase the price by 10% to $11, sales will fall by 10% to 900,000 units (note: the exact numbers are dependent on the good being sold; sales could just as well fall 15% or 70% on a 10% price increase; 10% is just an example) for total sales of $9.9 million. If you cut prices by 10% to $9, sales increase by 10% to 1.1 million for total sales of $9.9 million (the duplication is accidental and would probably not occur in a real example).
Now apply a $5 million fine. This changes the revenue numbers to $5 million, $4.9 million, and $4.9 million. It still makes the best sense to price the product at $10 a piece, even though the profit is lower (this is why Microsoft will not be able to pass on the fine to its customers: monopoly prices are established based on the demand, not the supply costs).
On the other hand, if you have a competitive market and everyone else is pricing the product at $9 and you price (the identical product) at $10, then no one will buy your product. Instead they will go to your $9 competitors. In that market, you will have to price at $9 to have *any* sales. Now, the total sales (between you and your competitors) will be 1.1 million units, 10% more than the monopolist produced (and a hundred thousand $ cheaper total for the 1.1 million than the 1 million).
If they could charge more for their product, then why don't they do so now?
Monopolies charge what the market will bear. This fine doesn't impact what the market will bear, so it shouldn't affect prices. Monopolies set prices at the level where any increase in price would decrease profits. They have no incentive to set it lower, and it would be stupid to set it higher (as it would decrease profits).
Think of it from the other perspective. If a company received a sudden windfall of money, would you expect them to reduce prices? No, they would take the windfall and maximize profit with current prices. Giving the windfall a negative value doesn't change anything but the level of profit. The company will still set prices and production so as to maximize profit.
No, they can't. Monopoly prices are unrelated to the cost of the product, particularly fixed costs (this would be included under fixed costs). Unless they are mispricing their product, then they are already charging as much as they can (to maximize profits). Charging more would reduce sales too much to compensate for the increased price (i.e. raising the price would hurt their sales so much that they would lose money).
This is the reason why anti-trust laws exist: to keep companies from pricing their products at the demand-based monopolist levels rather than at the lower demand/supply based competitive prices. Also, it is worth noting that with competitive prices, there is more production (i.e. more of the good is made and sold).
I'm pretty sure that at least one of the European Union countries is involved in Microsoft's Shared Source program. If they don't pay the fine, the European Union could seize the copyright (in lieu of payment of the fine), get a copy of the code, and sell the source code to one of their own software companies. That would presumably be worth the 500 million euros, even ignoring any other assets that may exist.
;)
:)
Microsoft traditionally outsources most of their development, so there is no reason to think that the new company couldn't continue development. Possibly with the same Indian developers as are working on the Microsoft code
Maybe they will even open source it to fix the bugs