Yes but if Microsoft sells their OS with all but say 80 and 25 (the web and mail) disabled then a lot of people will complain and not be able to figure out why aim, , etc doesn't work and suddenly Microsoft isn't userfriendly anymore
I would say the solution to this might be when a program is installed or first used that needs a specific port opened, it runs a check to see if its already open, and if not, notifies the user and asks if s/he wants the port opened. The major problem I can see with this approach is that so many users are socialized to click on any alert that pops up without even bothering to check what it's asking (hence why so many Windows/IE users end up inadvertently installing spyware and other crap from websites). I think it would still be more secure though than just leaving everything open by default.
And I would also add at least 110 (POP), 143 (IMAP), and 20-21 (FTP) to the open by default list, as they are also pretty commonly used. People might be a little irked when they can send but not receive email.
Re:Maybe it is because we are skeptical...
on
A New Ice Age?
·
· Score: 1
nor is it to kill off 2/3 of mankind, starting with the hippies
My mistake. I thought the plan was to start with ACs.
Re:Maybe it is because we are skeptical...
on
A New Ice Age?
·
· Score: 4, Insightful
BTW I do not agree with your quote as planet Earth has withstood worse things than humans and continued. What might not survive are the humans!
Unfortunately, we seem to have the attitude that if we're going down, we're taking every other living thing with us.
Back in the real world, the purpose of any (publicly-traded) corporation is to maximize shareholder profits.
While corporations have a legal obligation to maximize shareholder profits, that's not their purpose. Their purpose is to provide goods and services to the general public.
but a good corporation, for the most part, does not, and should not care about those peoples/groups that are not buying the corporations products/services.
They ought to, since they exist only so long as the general public tolerates/does not actively oppose them. Corporations are chartered by states, and though rarely exercised can be shut down.
The point being, the corporation is better off by outsourcing, and thus, that corporation's customers are also better off.
Until their customers can't get a good enough paying job to be able to buy their products and therefore become ex-customers.
You're right, the means of a corporation is to make money for investors.
That's a very narrow definition of the corporation's purpose, and I would assert that if this was the sole purpose of why corporations exist, they would not exist for very long. Profit for investment is the reward investors get for risking their money, not the purpose of corporations' existence. The purpose is to provide some (perceived) benefit to society. It is only fairly recently that people have begun to confuse the two as the regulation of corporate charters has diminished (early laws strictly limited what a corporation could do (going so far as the State of Texas initially banning corporations), and corporations existed in the shadow of the very real possibility that their charter would be revoked.
As to your three identified stakeholder classes, I would add a fourth, "Community" or "Other".
. ..how offshoring is helping (or hurting) the 1) corporation, 2) worker, 3) consumer.
How about instead we just ask how it's helping or hurting people. The well-being of the corporation is irrelevant, since a corporation is a means not an end, or at least that's the way it should be. The purpose of the corporation should be to improve the lives of people, and should corporations fail to achieve that, they should be reformed or abolished. If corporations are hurting but the overall lot of humanity is improving, then so be it. I can certainly live with that.
I believe his reference to water pollution has more to do with the pollution of fresh water, contributing to the need for a desalinization plant in the first place. And power consumption is not the only environmental issue - you also need to figure out what to do with the huge pile of salt you've created (IIRC there was an issue in the Gulf of California region with Mexico wanting to just dump it back into the sea, which would have ended up pretty much killing off all the sea life in the region).
While desalinization plants may very well be a necessity, I think they're unnecessarily over-teching the whole issue. Take the steps to be a good steward of what you have (conservation, reducing pollution, etc), then if there's still a need for more, build the desal plants. Of course, being good stewards isn't exactly the American Way (TM).
Yeah, but how many people use the preview functionality, either in the info window or in column view? It's only "simply spotted' if you are looking for it, which most people are not.
No one claimed OS X was immune to them, just that they hadn't occurred yet.
Sadly, there have been many who have claimed exactly that, which is why when somebody eventually writes and releases "the big one" into the wild, far too many Mac users will be totally unprepared.
This is insightful? Somebody needs to learn to read a bit more carefully.
"Right now, speeds are fast enough..."
Note the use of the qualifying term. He's not indicating that nobody will ever need a faster processor, but that for most everyday uses computers are fast enough, and he has a point. Sure, there are some folks out there for whom instantaneous won't be fast enough, but as it is until the next must-have push the envelope app is unleashed on the masses, current computer speeds are good enough for most everybody.
Apple doesn't charge royalties for AAC use Dolby does. Sadly, just because it's an "open standard" does not mean it's free from patent restrictions, so long as the licensing terms are "reasonable and non-discriminatory".
How many people have really tried? Considering that there hasn't been a need to even bother with trying to crack it (anything that you would want to get is probably available somewhere in MP3/OGG/non-DRMed format of choice for free), there really isn't a whole lot of incentive other than for glory and fame. And if that's what you're looking for writing a virus that will take down half the Windows installations in the world is a whole lot easier.
That being said, the motivation to crack WMP9 will probably come if the suits from the RIAA mafia somehow find their miracle solution that will allow them to shut down/significantly curtail P2P networks.
And it's a good thing that things are so cheap here, since the average wage is pretty abysmal.
If you're looking for a low paying job in an overgrown cowtown with a piss-poor educational system and complete lack of public transit or any other public services, Phoenix is definitely the place to be. Otherwise, I highly recommend that you stay far far away.
Face it, using the internet as our primary means of communicating is inevitable.
Please tell me where I can get off whatever train you're riding on, because I don't think your world is or will be a very nice place to live in.
75% of the communications I have with people are still good old fashioned face-to-face conversations, and I would venture a guess that for most people the number is not much different. For most people the internet is replacing the ways we would communicate over long distances (phone call, snail mail), but it's not, nor do I think it ever will be, a suitable replacement for real physical interactions. And if I am somehow proven wrong, please shoot me before it happens.
I agree with everything else you said. Developers have already decimated our town squares, traditional shopping districts, and other public spaces and replaced them with malls and other quasi-public areas, where the only speech and the only activities allowed are the ones they deem to be "appropriate". Why should we let them fully enclose our virtual commons as well?
I highly doubt that is there goal. I doubt there are that many consumer applications for it.
However, I can see it as being very useful for educational institutions (both higher ed. and K-12 in the U.S., as well as their international equivalents) as well as small media and software developers, the sorts who could make some usage of distributed apps but not have the funding for a full-time sysadmin to run the thing. And of course, that's a selling point for large businesses as well, since lower admin costs = firing IT staff = salary increase for the CEO and higher stock prices for the do-nothing class.
Of course walking around wearing a pricey pair of headphones isn't a giveaway that you're probably listening to a pricey music player. At least it doesn't ID it as an iPod, I guess.
On a more serious note, I have never understood the iPod as status symbol/fashion accessory anyways. In fact, I find it quite annoying (if I see one more damn mini on somebody's arm who isn't jogging or working out I'm going to f***ing scream). I prefer to keep it safely tucked away in the bottom of my backpack with only the remote protruding, and of course the telltale while earphones, though that because I'm too lazy and cheap to get a different pair of headphones. I've even toyed with sewing the remote into the strap of my backpack, something similar to this or this, both of which are unfortunately lacking compared to my current backpack, IMHO.
The only thing I dislike about this setup is that the remote doesn't give you full control, but who knows, maybe Apple will fix that with the next iPod rev.
Also, I think your split of the proceeds is fantasy land.
Guilty as charged. I don't apologize for being a bit idealistic at times. I apologize when I'm not.
Why should Apple help the artists? Well, to continue in my little fantasy world, because it would be the right thing to do. Because they've built their brand image on "thinking different", being creative and innovative, changing the world, etc. It would be nice to see them actually follow through for once, instead of just being another corporation fixated like a heroin addict on their stock price and profits.
As far as what muscle Apple has, they were first convince all of the major labels to make a deal. They managed to get them to buy into a relatively benign (as there is no such thing as a completely benign) DRM system. And while the market is still immature, they are the leaders, at least for now. Maybe it's not enough to strike the sort of deal I proposed, but it could be enough to get the label oligarchy to take a slightly smaller cut so that iTMS can at least be self-sufficient as a service, if not a modestly profitable enterprise.
Where did I get the numbers? Where else: I pulled them out of my butt. I offered them as a starting point for a rational discussion, something you would appear to be completely incapable of (although I invite you to prove me wrong on this). They're debatable in their entirety. The reasoning though is that Apple would get a large enough cut to cover costs of running the service (server space, bandwidth, continuing software development, and marketing) and be able to reap a modest profit. The labels get a large enough cut to continue scouting and developing new acts, and for once the performer/writer actually gets a fair cut (as opposed to the handful of mega-acts that make lots of money and the larger number of good but not superstar artists who make little off of their work). The point I was trying to make is that there needs to be a more equitable division of the spoils, and even if my numbers are way off, it's a better way to slice up the pie then what's happening now.
Why would the labels go along with something like this? Well, I suppose maybe, perhaps even probably, they wouldn't. But they're going to have to do something, because the industry is changing, and they're and the real risk they're taking is in believing that they don't have to change with it. Rampant litigation is the business strategy of a dying business. Just ask SCO.
I would agree that the only solution to the DRM problem is no DRM at all, but just for the sake of completeness, there's nothing to say that FairPlay HAS to be associated with Quicktime. Just as there is other software out there that can play/write AAC files, were FairPlay to be licensed somebody could write a better mousetrap to implement it.
That being said. ..screw DRM, down with software patents, long live ogg, Moglen/Lessig in 2008!
Not true. You're completely mixing up patents and copyrights.
Copyrights cover expressions of ideas. Patents protect inventions.
A patent license allows you to do whatever the license allows you to do. It may or may not allow you to "mess with the stuff". It may just allow you to use it within another application.
WMA is covered by numerous patents as well, and when MS allows you to build support for the file format and the accompanying DRM, it is licensing to you to use those patents.
In this case, the copyright covers the code itself, i.e. the code for WMP is copyrighted, just as the code for Quicktime is copyrighted. Copyright can be licensed just as patents can be (think GPL).
The advantage of AAC over WMA is that as an industry standard, I believe there's essentially a compulsory license, meaning that if somebody wants to write a program to play AAC files, Dolby et al have to sell you a license to do so. MS does so only if the spirit moves them (and of course they're very liberal with their licensing now as they're trying to squeeze everybody else out).
While I *think* this is more or less right, somebody who knows more should feel free to correct me. Intellectual Property isn't until next year. . .
And for the one billionth time, things change. Even Apple. The best point of the article is that the iPod is cool now, but how long will it stay that way? And how long will Apple be able to maintain the premium to buy in?
I'm not generally a fan of Salkever, but I think he makes a pretty good point. The only thing that I would add is that Apple should re-negotiate their contracts with the labels and get themselves a better deal, so that iTMS could actually generate some profits for them. Right now, they're the Walmart (**shudder**) of the music download world, they should flex some muscle as the market leader to get a lower wholesale price. And if they really wanted to change the world and actually support the music creators, their contract would include a better cut for the performers and writers (I would think a 40% Apple, 25% label, 20% performer, 15% writer/composer cut would be about right).
Slashdot Mirror
Yes but if Microsoft sells their OS with all but say 80 and 25 (the web and mail) disabled then a lot of people will complain and not be able to figure out why aim, , etc doesn't work and suddenly Microsoft isn't userfriendly anymore
I would say the solution to this might be when a program is installed or first used that needs a specific port opened, it runs a check to see if its already open, and if not, notifies the user and asks if s/he wants the port opened. The major problem I can see with this approach is that so many users are socialized to click on any alert that pops up without even bothering to check what it's asking (hence why so many Windows/IE users end up inadvertently installing spyware and other crap from websites). I think it would still be more secure though than just leaving everything open by default.
And I would also add at least 110 (POP), 143 (IMAP), and 20-21 (FTP) to the open by default list, as they are also pretty commonly used. People might be a little irked when they can send but not receive email.
nor is it to kill off 2/3 of mankind, starting with the hippies
My mistake. I thought the plan was to start with ACs.
BTW I do not agree with your quote as planet Earth has withstood worse things than humans and continued. What might not survive are the humans!
Unfortunately, we seem to have the attitude that if we're going down, we're taking every other living thing with us.
Back in the real world, the purpose of any (publicly-traded) corporation is to maximize shareholder profits.
While corporations have a legal obligation to maximize shareholder profits, that's not their purpose. Their purpose is to provide goods and services to the general public.
but a good corporation, for the most part, does not, and should not care about those peoples/groups that are not buying the corporations products/services.
They ought to, since they exist only so long as the general public tolerates/does not actively oppose them. Corporations are chartered by states, and though rarely exercised can be shut down.
The point being, the corporation is better off by outsourcing, and thus, that corporation's customers are also better off.
Until their customers can't get a good enough paying job to be able to buy their products and therefore become ex-customers.
You're right, the means of a corporation is to make money for investors.
That's a very narrow definition of the corporation's purpose, and I would assert that if this was the sole purpose of why corporations exist, they would not exist for very long. Profit for investment is the reward investors get for risking their money, not the purpose of corporations' existence. The purpose is to provide some (perceived) benefit to society. It is only fairly recently that people have begun to confuse the two as the regulation of corporate charters has diminished (early laws strictly limited what a corporation could do (going so far as the State of Texas initially banning corporations), and corporations existed in the shadow of the very real possibility that their charter would be revoked.
As to your three identified stakeholder classes, I would add a fourth, "Community" or "Other".
. . .how offshoring is helping (or hurting) the 1) corporation, 2) worker, 3) consumer.
How about instead we just ask how it's helping or hurting people. The well-being of the corporation is irrelevant, since a corporation is a means not an end, or at least that's the way it should be. The purpose of the corporation should be to improve the lives of people, and should corporations fail to achieve that, they should be reformed or abolished. If corporations are hurting but the overall lot of humanity is improving, then so be it. I can certainly live with that.
It annoys me to have to keep getting out of my big SUV and fill it with permium gas. There should be people who do that for us.
Move to Oregon.
I believe his reference to water pollution has more to do with the pollution of fresh water, contributing to the need for a desalinization plant in the first place. And power consumption is not the only environmental issue - you also need to figure out what to do with the huge pile of salt you've created (IIRC there was an issue in the Gulf of California region with Mexico wanting to just dump it back into the sea, which would have ended up pretty much killing off all the sea life in the region).
While desalinization plants may very well be a necessity, I think they're unnecessarily over-teching the whole issue. Take the steps to be a good steward of what you have (conservation, reducing pollution, etc), then if there's still a need for more, build the desal plants. Of course, being good stewards isn't exactly the American Way (TM).
Yeah, but how many people use the preview functionality, either in the info window or in column view? It's only "simply spotted' if you are looking for it, which most people are not.
No one claimed OS X was immune to them, just that they hadn't occurred yet.
Sadly, there have been many who have claimed exactly that, which is why when somebody eventually writes and releases "the big one" into the wild, far too many Mac users will be totally unprepared.
Apologies. I was reacting more to the cracked out moderation of the post then to your post itself. No personal offense intended.
/. needs to implement some sort of mandatory cooling down period before replying. . . :)
My response was a bit over the top too - maybe
This is insightful? Somebody needs to learn to read a bit more carefully.
"Right now, speeds are fast enough..."
Note the use of the qualifying term. He's not indicating that nobody will ever need a faster processor, but that for most everyday uses computers are fast enough, and he has a point. Sure, there are some folks out there for whom instantaneous won't be fast enough, but as it is until the next must-have push the envelope app is unleashed on the masses, current computer speeds are good enough for most everybody.
Apple doesn't charge royalties for AAC use Dolby does. Sadly, just because it's an "open standard" does not mean it's free from patent restrictions, so long as the licensing terms are "reasonable and non-discriminatory".
Regarding your sig: I think what you mean to advocate is Condorcet Voting. Unless you really do like having a two party system.
How many people have really tried? Considering that there hasn't been a need to even bother with trying to crack it (anything that you would want to get is probably available somewhere in MP3/OGG/non-DRMed format of choice for free), there really isn't a whole lot of incentive other than for glory and fame. And if that's what you're looking for writing a virus that will take down half the Windows installations in the world is a whole lot easier.
That being said, the motivation to crack WMP9 will probably come if the suits from the RIAA mafia somehow find their miracle solution that will allow them to shut down/significantly curtail P2P networks.
And it's a good thing that things are so cheap here, since the average wage is pretty abysmal.
If you're looking for a low paying job in an overgrown cowtown with a piss-poor educational system and complete lack of public transit or any other public services, Phoenix is definitely the place to be. Otherwise, I highly recommend that you stay far far away.
Face it, using the internet as our primary means of communicating is inevitable.
Please tell me where I can get off whatever train you're riding on, because I don't think your world is or will be a very nice place to live in.
75% of the communications I have with people are still good old fashioned face-to-face conversations, and I would venture a guess that for most people the number is not much different. For most people the internet is replacing the ways we would communicate over long distances (phone call, snail mail), but it's not, nor do I think it ever will be, a suitable replacement for real physical interactions. And if I am somehow proven wrong, please shoot me before it happens.
I agree with everything else you said. Developers have already decimated our town squares, traditional shopping districts, and other public spaces and replaced them with malls and other quasi-public areas, where the only speech and the only activities allowed are the ones they deem to be "appropriate". Why should we let them fully enclose our virtual commons as well?
I highly doubt that is there goal. I doubt there are that many consumer applications for it.
However, I can see it as being very useful for educational institutions (both higher ed. and K-12 in the U.S., as well as their international equivalents) as well as small media and software developers, the sorts who could make some usage of distributed apps but not have the funding for a full-time sysadmin to run the thing. And of course, that's a selling point for large businesses as well, since lower admin costs = firing IT staff = salary increase for the CEO and higher stock prices for the do-nothing class.
Of course walking around wearing a pricey pair of headphones isn't a giveaway that you're probably listening to a pricey music player. At least it doesn't ID it as an iPod, I guess.
On a more serious note, I have never understood the iPod as status symbol/fashion accessory anyways. In fact, I find it quite annoying (if I see one more damn mini on somebody's arm who isn't jogging or working out I'm going to f***ing scream). I prefer to keep it safely tucked away in the bottom of my backpack with only the remote protruding, and of course the telltale while earphones, though that because I'm too lazy and cheap to get a different pair of headphones. I've even toyed with sewing the remote into the strap of my backpack, something similar to this or this, both of which are unfortunately lacking compared to my current backpack, IMHO.
The only thing I dislike about this setup is that the remote doesn't give you full control, but who knows, maybe Apple will fix that with the next iPod rev.
You sir are a cut and paste god among men. I salute you.
Too bad you're an AC and can't get proper credit for your work.
Almost shat out my iPod i laughed so hard.
Also, I think your split of the proceeds is fantasy land.
Guilty as charged. I don't apologize for being a bit idealistic at times. I apologize when I'm not.
Why should Apple help the artists? Well, to continue in my little fantasy world, because it would be the right thing to do. Because they've built their brand image on "thinking different", being creative and innovative, changing the world, etc. It would be nice to see them actually follow through for once, instead of just being another corporation fixated like a heroin addict on their stock price and profits.
As far as what muscle Apple has, they were first convince all of the major labels to make a deal. They managed to get them to buy into a relatively benign (as there is no such thing as a completely benign) DRM system. And while the market is still immature, they are the leaders, at least for now. Maybe it's not enough to strike the sort of deal I proposed, but it could be enough to get the label oligarchy to take a slightly smaller cut so that iTMS can at least be self-sufficient as a service, if not a modestly profitable enterprise.
Where did I get the numbers? Where else: I pulled them out of my butt. I offered them as a starting point for a rational discussion, something you would appear to be completely incapable of (although I invite you to prove me wrong on this). They're debatable in their entirety. The reasoning though is that Apple would get a large enough cut to cover costs of running the service (server space, bandwidth, continuing software development, and marketing) and be able to reap a modest profit. The labels get a large enough cut to continue scouting and developing new acts, and for once the performer/writer actually gets a fair cut (as opposed to the handful of mega-acts that make lots of money and the larger number of good but not superstar artists who make little off of their work). The point I was trying to make is that there needs to be a more equitable division of the spoils, and even if my numbers are way off, it's a better way to slice up the pie then what's happening now.
Why would the labels go along with something like this? Well, I suppose maybe, perhaps even probably, they wouldn't. But they're going to have to do something, because the industry is changing, and they're and the real risk they're taking is in believing that they don't have to change with it. Rampant litigation is the business strategy of a dying business. Just ask SCO.
I would agree that the only solution to the DRM problem is no DRM at all, but just for the sake of completeness, there's nothing to say that FairPlay HAS to be associated with Quicktime. Just as there is other software out there that can play/write AAC files, were FairPlay to be licensed somebody could write a better mousetrap to implement it.
.screw DRM, down with software patents, long live ogg, Moglen/Lessig in 2008!
:)
That being said. .
Did I get it all?
Not true. You're completely mixing up patents and copyrights.
Copyrights cover expressions of ideas.
Patents protect inventions.
A patent license allows you to do whatever the license allows you to do. It may or may not allow you to "mess with the stuff". It may just allow you to use it within another application.
WMA is covered by numerous patents as well, and when MS allows you to build support for the file format and the accompanying DRM, it is licensing to you to use those patents.
In this case, the copyright covers the code itself, i.e. the code for WMP is copyrighted, just as the code for Quicktime is copyrighted. Copyright can be licensed just as patents can be (think GPL).
The advantage of AAC over WMA is that as an industry standard, I believe there's essentially a compulsory license, meaning that if somebody wants to write a program to play AAC files, Dolby et al have to sell you a license to do so. MS does so only if the spirit moves them (and of course they're very liberal with their licensing now as they're trying to squeeze everybody else out).
While I *think* this is more or less right, somebody who knows more should feel free to correct me. Intellectual Property isn't until next year. . .
And for the one billionth time, things change. Even Apple. The best point of the article is that the iPod is cool now, but how long will it stay that way? And how long will Apple be able to maintain the premium to buy in?
I'm not generally a fan of Salkever, but I think he makes a pretty good point. The only thing that I would add is that Apple should re-negotiate their contracts with the labels and get themselves a better deal, so that iTMS could actually generate some profits for them. Right now, they're the Walmart (**shudder**) of the music download world, they should flex some muscle as the market leader to get a lower wholesale price. And if they really wanted to change the world and actually support the music creators, their contract would include a better cut for the performers and writers (I would think a 40% Apple, 25% label, 20% performer, 15% writer/composer cut would be about right).