...A lot of us want to get use OS X, but no one wants to pay that much for their hardware...
So then Apple should charge as much for a copy of OSX as Microsoft charges for a copy of VISTA Ultimate, because in most respects OSX Leopard is a lot better. Since Apple subsidizes OSX with what people here on/. usually term outrageous prices for their hardware, they would be perfectly justified in charging that much or more to those who do not wish or cannot afford to pay those "outrageous prices" for Apple's computers. They could also then give sharp discounts to their loyal hardware customers for any upgrades to their software.
It is really very simple, if you cannot afford steak you eat hamburger.
...If psystar wins this showdown, it will be a whole new playing field...
Nothing will change in reality. Apple will sell anyone a copy of OSX for$2000 or more and give discount certificates to all new and current owners of genuine Apple hardware. Each discount certificate is good for the purchase of one copy of OSX for the price of $129. There is no law that a court can use that would allow it to force Apple or any other company to sell their products at a specific price. There is also no law that would allow any court to rule that Apple or any other company is not allowed to give discounts to their loyal customers.
...It would be awesome to legally be able to run OS X on the hardware of MY choice, rather than Apple's...
I think that Apple should sell a copy of OSX to you and those of your ilk for the same price that Microsoft charges for a retail copy if VISTA Ultimate. New and present Mac owners get a discount certificate that entitles them to buy a copy for $129.
...Apple is making it impossible for anyone else to sell a computer that is compatible with OS X....
Apple should make OSX available to anyone for the same retail price that MS charges for VISTA ultimate. All new and registered current Mac owners get a discount certificate that entitles them to buy a copy for $129. I suspect that that would end this whole thing. A LARGE clear statement should also be included on each box, making it clear that Apple will not support OSX on any hardware they did not make.
....Care to give ANY moral justification for my plan to be 'wrong?'...
Anyone who did that would not get a nasty letter from Apple's lawyers. That, however, is not the case here. Pystar is not paying Apple for a mini. I am quite certain that Apple would be willing to sell them a copy of OSX for the wholesale price of a mini.
...The court remedy might require unbundling the hardware and software sales....
Under what law could a court force Apple or anyone else for that matter to sell a particular product to any customer? Under what law could a court force Honda to sell their engines to Ford owners?
Anyone who builds a computer is also free to write whatever software they wish for it and sell it as a unit. Anyone who builds a car is free to design and include an engine. Where is there a requirement that a computer manufacturer must supply software or a car manufacturer must supply engines to anyone who wants one, rather than only their own customers?
....If this lawsuit goes in favor of PsyStar, I may be able to legally get what I want....
You are a dreamer! No court can force any company to sell a product. If Apple wants to sell their OSX only to Mac owners, they have the perfect right to do so. They could even include discount upgrade vouchers with every new Mac, each pre-printed with the serial number of that computer. Anyone who wanted to buy OSX without such a voucher could get to buy valid copy of OSX for the same price that Microsoft sells their VISTA ultimate for. The only one who will gain anything from this lawsuit, is of course as always, the lawyers.
...if Psystar wins, it could spell the end of Apple...
That is totally and completely ridiculous. All it means is that Apple stop selling their OSX to any Tom Dick and Harry that walks into a store. Anyone who wants a copy has to prove they own a Mac. The only one who will win in this lawsuit is, as usual the lawyers.
... Because eliminating your retail sales of OS X upgrades is a hit in revenues....
Why do they have to eliminate retail sales? They can just require anyone buying a copy of OSX to supply evidence of the owner of a genuine Mac. Anyone who cannot supply such evidence simply does not get to buy a copy.
How does a clean license plate add to safety? The biggest reason for having a license plate on every car is to make it easier to collect tax money. Many so-called safety and licensing requirements, not only in cars, but in general, are nothing more than another tax. Governments have an insatiable appetite for money.
....that requires your car to be identifiable by a valid licence plate....
The main reason the state requires license plates is to be able to collect taxes on cars more easily. Any other uses are secondary and are mostly used as excuses. As they say, it's the money!
....Of course, if you believe it collapsed through controlled demolition...
That may or may not be, but what I don't believe is the official explanation of a floor by floor collapse. The laws of physics simply don't allow that sort of domino sequence to take place in the short amount of time evidenced by the video and seismic data.
Many questions can be and have been asked and some of them have plausible answers. Did the owners have anything to gain if these buildings were destroyed? Some have said yes to this because these buildings were not particularly profitable. Was a newer, higher insurance negotiated for this property before this event happened? Some have said yes to this.
It has been historically well established that those in power in any government or other organized structure tend to want more power than they already have. It is nothing new for those in power to create or allow a crisis of some kind, in order to gain yet more power. It is undeniable that those in power, especially in the federal government as well as other governments, have gained considerably more power and control over their populations, than was available before this event.
... Given the number of people who have had their lives turned upside down through identity theft...
The thing is though, that if you have your identity stolen, there has to be someone else who ultimately gives something of value to the thief, for that stolen identity. In the case of stolen credit card numbers for example, it would be a bank or merchant that gives the thief of your identity something of value. It is at this point of use, of any identity, stolen or not, that additional security could and should be applied. This should be particularly the case, if the value to be exchanged is very high.
Your identity cannot really be stolen, only fraudulently misappropriated. Your identity is who you are and is one of the few things that cannot be stolen. It is at the point of such misappropriation, the transactional exchange of value, where added security and care would do the most good. You cannot keep your identity, who you really are, a secret, unless you never transact any business with any other person or institution.
.....First of all, the biggest problem as far as privacy is concerned is the database being sold to other companies....
The truth of the matter is, that in the digital age you have no privacy. Every time you do business with someone, of necessity you have to give them your personal information. In most cases that will be your true name and address, phone number and perhaps e-mail. If money is involved, most likely a credit card or bank account number will also be needed.
As you go through life, this information will be located in so many places and accessible to so many people, that trying to keep this information private is an exercise in futility.
The institutions that exchange information, possibly stolen information, for money, goods and services should be the ones that check whether the information given and the person giving the information are legitimate. If the value of the transaction is very high, a fingerprint or other biometric information could be used to verify the identity of the person requesting the thing of value.
....If it can be used in a social engineering attack on a bank, credit card company or Government department....
That is a burden that should be on these institutions to diligently ensure for any given transaction, that the information given is truly connected to the person the information is about. As you go through life doing business with others you are required to give them information about you. Eventually there will be so much information about you all over the place, you might as well post it on the Internet.
If some impostor is using stolen information of yours, the burden of determining whether the person requesting a given transaction is really you or that impostor, should be on that agency or institution. Biometric data might be used to accomplish this.
....I think in this case, it's more important what they do with the information once they receive it....
I think it is more important for the financial institution or merchant to ensure that if someone gives them this information, which may be stolen, this really is a person that belongs to. Information theft is really a misnomer. Your identity cannot really be stolen, only misappropriated by someone who is not you or is not entitled to use it for their own purposes. Any time you want to do business with anyone else, you have to give them identifying information about yourself. Eventually that information is given out to so many people, you might as well publish it on the Internet.
It is the receiver of this information who is asked to provide money, goods, or services, who should be forced to make certain, that the person who presents the information is really the person entitled to make this particular transaction. Trying to keep everyone's information private is an exercise in futility in the digital age. What we need is transaction verification, not identity verification.
...I feel more comfortable saying that businesses should safeguard data...
I would feel more comfortable in saying that financial institutions such as banks and merchants should be more diligent in checking whether the identifying information supplied really belongs to the person desiring money or goods. In a transaction over a certain value, biometric information could be used. In a credit card transaction for example, if that credit card number has in the past only been associated with small transactions, say up to a few hundred dollars, a merchant or bank might verify the person with biometric information, if there is a request for an unusual high value transaction. This verifying biometric data should be kept well away and separate from the normal everyday user data.
Whatever added security is implemented in the system, should be done at the transaction level, not the information level. The question really is whether the person requesting a particular transaction is truly entitled to do so.
In a sense, identity theft is a misnomer. Your name, your address, your phone number and other information about you is public in the sense that you have to give it to anybody who you do business with. It cannot really be stolen. What can be done however, is that if someone impersonates you and uses your information, is to make the receiver of that information much more diligent in determining whether the person giving that information and the information itself truly go together.
We do this in many areas at the physical level already. When someone brings in a valuable item to a reputable pawn shop, they make some effort to ascertain that this item has not been reported stolen, or that the person bringing it in is the true owner.
I agree with you on your expressed sentiments on drugs.
It has been established long ago that the surety of getting caught deters crime, not the severity of punishment. If you make a fine or punishment really really big, and then possible violators will go to great lengths to ensure that they do not get caught.
If the punishment exceeded the value of the data to the corporation, they could just dispose of all data and then face their accusers with "What data, we don't have no stinkin' data?". The accusers now would have the problem of tying the company to the stolen data.
....So you could, in fact, "jail" a corporation.....
I am reasonably sure that you would not advocate this, if the company involved where one of which you are a significant or even not such a significant stockholder. The very purpose for a legal structure such as the corporation is to limit the liability of the owners. Even if you are not a direct stockholder of such a corporation, your pension or retirement fund might be. It is always easy to advocate to gore the neighbor's ox.
..I see no option other than to say criminal.I see no option other than to say criminal...
So now you want to increase the prison population by another quantum jump? The US already has one of the highest prison populations per capita of any nation on earth. Why is this? Is it that Americans are basically more evil than others? Is it that our society has criminalized many actions that others do not? How many people are sitting behind bars today, because they were merely in possession of a substance or an object? People should be held accountable for what bad things they DO, not what they have.
In order to commit identity fraud, it takes two actors. One of them is the fraudster who impersonate someone else. The other actor is a financial institution or merchant who does not diligently check whether the information given is truly connected to the person giving that information. This second actor should be held responsible to bear the entire cost of the fraud. If that were the case, these people would make sure that the person they are giving money to or rendering a service for is really, for sure 100%, legitimate. With such a system, these institutions would have a strong incentive to carefully balance the costs of such security checking with the costs of possible fraud.
As it is now, the person legitimately connected to the information that the fraudster supplied is usually left holding the bag and taking the loss. Careful check of the information at the point where fraud might occur, would be much more effective, then a Herculean effort to protect every bit of information.
Just as in the physical world, we make the receiver of stolen goods a partner in crime, so also we could in the informational world. At the very least, even if not accused of a crime, someone who obtains stolen property may have to give it up to the rightful owner.
In the same way, a financial institution or anyone else who gives away money or services on the basis of stolen information should at least bear the loss.
....phone numbers, email addresses etc. are beyond me....
Give these people a long ago used phone number and make up a special e-mail address just for this purpose. Giving out the phone number, even your real one these days it is not so much of a problem anymore if you have caller ID. If you don't recognize the number of the caller, or the caller is obviously a telemarketer, just let the answering machine picks up call. Most of the time they don't leave a message and if they do the message is easily deleted. E-mails are also easily screen this way.
...Nobody needs to store SSN's except the government that issues them...
Tell that to your friendly DMV who are now mandated to collect this information by the federal government. It so happens that in any computerized database, a unique record identifier is needed. For any database that could contain information of potentially anyone in any state, the SS is more likely to be unique than any other number currently assigned to nearly everyone.
Instead of making the legitimate owner of the identity responsible for fraud committed in their name, the financial institution should bear the fraud loss. This would give them an incentive to carefully check the information given by the fraudster. This is essentially the case with credit card fraud today. The legitimate cardholder is essentially not responsible for fraud committed in their name. In spite of this, credit card companies and banks are doing quite well, thank you.
Indeed correct, but that process is even slower than accelerating the whole lower structure as a unit. This reports of each floor have to break, then that floor and its contents has to be accelerated downward onto the already moving upper part of the building.
According to the videos and seismic data for the time for the collapse of the buildings was just under 10 seconds. That is about the time a bowling ball would take to fall that same distance.
....conspiracy nuts are simply wrong when they calculate the time it took the building to fall....
There is nothing to calculate here, because it has all been measured by the video and seismic records. The "official" explanation for the collapse is doubtful, simply because the collapse took place too fast, according to the laws of gravity and inertia.
Slashdot Mirror
...A lot of us want to get use OS X, but no one wants to pay that much for their hardware ...
So then Apple should charge as much for a copy of OSX as Microsoft charges for a copy of VISTA Ultimate, because in most respects OSX Leopard is a lot better. Since Apple subsidizes OSX with what people here on /. usually term outrageous prices for their hardware, they would be perfectly justified in charging that much or more to those who do not wish or cannot afford to pay those "outrageous prices" for Apple's computers. They could also then give sharp discounts to their loyal hardware customers for any upgrades to their software.
It is really very simple, if you cannot afford steak you eat hamburger.
...If psystar wins this showdown, it will be a whole new playing field...
Nothing will change in reality. Apple will sell anyone a copy of OSX for$2000 or more and give discount certificates to all new and current owners of genuine Apple hardware. Each discount certificate is good for the purchase of one copy of OSX for the price of $129. There is no law that a court can use that would allow it to force Apple or any other company to sell their products at a specific price. There is also no law that would allow any court to rule that Apple or any other company is not allowed to give discounts to their loyal customers.
...It would be awesome to legally be able to run OS X on the hardware of MY choice, rather than Apple's...
I think that Apple should sell a copy of OSX to you and those of your ilk for the same price that Microsoft charges for a retail copy if VISTA Ultimate. New and present Mac owners get a discount certificate that entitles them to buy a copy for $129.
...Apple is making it impossible for anyone else to sell a computer that is compatible with OS X....
Apple should make OSX available to anyone for the same retail price that MS charges for VISTA ultimate. All new and registered current Mac owners get a discount certificate that entitles them to buy a copy for $129. I suspect that that would end this whole thing. A LARGE clear statement should also be included on each box, making it clear that Apple will not support OSX on any hardware they did not make.
....Care to give ANY moral justification for my plan to be 'wrong?'...
Anyone who did that would not get a nasty letter from Apple's lawyers. That, however, is not the case here. Pystar is not paying Apple for a mini. I am quite certain that Apple would be willing to sell them a copy of OSX for the wholesale price of a mini.
...The court remedy might require unbundling the hardware and software sales....
Under what law could a court force Apple or anyone else for that matter to sell a particular product to any customer? Under what law could a court force Honda to sell their engines to Ford owners?
Anyone who builds a computer is also free to write whatever software they wish for it and sell it as a unit. Anyone who builds a car is free to design and include an engine. Where is there a requirement that a computer manufacturer must supply software or a car manufacturer must supply engines to anyone who wants one, rather than only their own customers?
....If this lawsuit goes in favor of PsyStar, I may be able to legally get what I want....
You are a dreamer! No court can force any company to sell a product. If Apple wants to sell their OSX only to Mac owners, they have the perfect right to do so. They could even include discount upgrade vouchers with every new Mac, each pre-printed with the serial number of that computer. Anyone who wanted to buy OSX without such a voucher could get to buy valid copy of OSX for the same price that Microsoft sells their VISTA ultimate for. The only one who will gain anything from this lawsuit, is of course as always, the lawyers.
...if Psystar wins, it could spell the end of Apple...
That is totally and completely ridiculous. All it means is that Apple stop selling their OSX to any Tom Dick and Harry that walks into a store. Anyone who wants a copy has to prove they own a Mac. The only one who will win in this lawsuit is, as usual the lawyers.
... Because eliminating your retail sales of OS X upgrades is a hit in revenues....
Why do they have to eliminate retail sales? They can just require anyone buying a copy of OSX to supply evidence of the owner of a genuine Mac. Anyone who cannot supply such evidence simply does not get to buy a copy.
...Taking care of your car is one of them....
How does a clean license plate add to safety? The biggest reason for having a license plate on every car is to make it easier to collect tax money. Many so-called safety and licensing requirements, not only in cars, but in general, are nothing more than another tax. Governments have an insatiable appetite for money.
....that requires your car to be identifiable by a valid licence plate....
The main reason the state requires license plates is to be able to collect taxes on cars more easily. Any other uses are secondary and are mostly used as excuses. As they say, it's the money!
....Of course, if you believe it collapsed through controlled demolition...
That may or may not be, but what I don't believe is the official explanation of a floor by floor collapse. The laws of physics simply don't allow that sort of domino sequence to take place in the short amount of time evidenced by the video and seismic data.
Many questions can be and have been asked and some of them have plausible answers. Did the owners have anything to gain if these buildings were destroyed? Some have said yes to this because these buildings were not particularly profitable. Was a newer, higher insurance negotiated for this property before this event happened? Some have said yes to this.
It has been historically well established that those in power in any government or other organized structure tend to want more power than they already have. It is nothing new for those in power to create or allow a crisis of some kind, in order to gain yet more power. It is undeniable that those in power, especially in the federal government as well as other governments, have gained considerably more power and control over their populations, than was available before this event.
... Given the number of people who have had their lives turned upside down through identity theft...
The thing is though, that if you have your identity stolen, there has to be someone else who ultimately gives something of value to the thief, for that stolen identity. In the case of stolen credit card numbers for example, it would be a bank or merchant that gives the thief of your identity something of value. It is at this point of use, of any identity, stolen or not, that additional security could and should be applied. This should be particularly the case, if the value to be exchanged is very high.
Your identity cannot really be stolen, only fraudulently misappropriated. Your identity is who you are and is one of the few things that cannot be stolen. It is at the point of such misappropriation, the transactional exchange of value, where added security and care would do the most good. You cannot keep your identity, who you really are, a secret, unless you never transact any business with any other person or institution.
.....First of all, the biggest problem as far as privacy is concerned is the database being sold to other companies....
The truth of the matter is, that in the digital age you have no privacy. Every time you do business with someone, of necessity you have to give them your personal information. In most cases that will be your true name and address, phone number and perhaps e-mail. If money is involved, most likely a credit card or bank account number will also be needed.
As you go through life, this information will be located in so many places and accessible to so many people, that trying to keep this information private is an exercise in futility.
The institutions that exchange information, possibly stolen information, for money, goods and services should be the ones that check whether the information given and the person giving the information are legitimate. If the value of the transaction is very high, a fingerprint or other biometric information could be used to verify the identity of the person requesting the thing of value.
....If it can be used in a social engineering attack on a bank, credit card company or Government department ....
That is a burden that should be on these institutions to diligently ensure for any given transaction, that the information given is truly connected to the person the information is about. As you go through life doing business with others you are required to give them information about you. Eventually there will be so much information about you all over the place, you might as well post it on the Internet.
If some impostor is using stolen information of yours, the burden of determining whether the person requesting a given transaction is really you or that impostor, should be on that agency or institution. Biometric data might be used to accomplish this.
....I think in this case, it's more important what they do with the information once they receive it....
I think it is more important for the financial institution or merchant to ensure that if someone gives them this information, which may be stolen, this really is a person that belongs to. Information theft is really a misnomer. Your identity cannot really be stolen, only misappropriated by someone who is not you or is not entitled to use it for their own purposes. Any time you want to do business with anyone else, you have to give them identifying information about yourself. Eventually that information is given out to so many people, you might as well publish it on the Internet.
It is the receiver of this information who is asked to provide money, goods, or services, who should be forced to make certain, that the person who presents the information is really the person entitled to make this particular transaction. Trying to keep everyone's information private is an exercise in futility in the digital age. What we need is transaction verification, not identity verification.
...I feel more comfortable saying that businesses should safeguard data ...
I would feel more comfortable in saying that financial institutions such as banks and merchants should be more diligent in checking whether the identifying information supplied really belongs to the person desiring money or goods. In a transaction over a certain value, biometric information could be used. In a credit card transaction for example, if that credit card number has in the past only been associated with small transactions, say up to a few hundred dollars, a merchant or bank might verify the person with biometric information, if there is a request for an unusual high value transaction. This verifying biometric data should be kept well away and separate from the normal everyday user data.
Whatever added security is implemented in the system, should be done at the transaction level, not the information level. The question really is whether the person requesting a particular transaction is truly entitled to do so.
In a sense, identity theft is a misnomer. Your name, your address, your phone number and other information about you is public in the sense that you have to give it to anybody who you do business with. It cannot really be stolen. What can be done however, is that if someone impersonates you and uses your information, is to make the receiver of that information much more diligent in determining whether the person giving that information and the information itself truly go together.
We do this in many areas at the physical level already. When someone brings in a valuable item to a reputable pawn shop, they make some effort to ascertain that this item has not been reported stolen, or that the person bringing it in is the true owner.
I agree with you on your expressed sentiments on drugs.
...Eventually the risk outweighs the rewards....
It has been established long ago that the surety of getting caught deters crime, not the severity of punishment. If you make a fine or punishment really really big, and then possible violators will go to great lengths to ensure that they do not get caught.
If the punishment exceeded the value of the data to the corporation, they could just dispose of all data and then face their accusers with "What data, we don't have no stinkin' data?". The accusers now would have the problem of tying the company to the stolen data.
.....shareholders would freak....
Most likely so would you if you happen to be a shareholder.
....So you could, in fact, "jail" a corporation.....
I am reasonably sure that you would not advocate this, if the company involved where one of which you are a significant or even not such a significant stockholder. The very purpose for a legal structure such as the corporation is to limit the liability of the owners. Even if you are not a direct stockholder of such a corporation, your pension or retirement fund might be. It is always easy to advocate to gore the neighbor's ox.
..I see no option other than to say criminal.I see no option other than to say criminal...
So now you want to increase the prison population by another quantum jump? The US already has one of the highest prison populations per capita of any nation on earth. Why is this? Is it that Americans are basically more evil than others? Is it that our society has criminalized many actions that others do not? How many people are sitting behind bars today, because they were merely in possession of a substance or an object? People should be held accountable for what bad things they DO, not what they have.
In order to commit identity fraud, it takes two actors. One of them is the fraudster who impersonate someone else. The other actor is a financial institution or merchant who does not diligently check whether the information given is truly connected to the person giving that information. This second actor should be held responsible to bear the entire cost of the fraud. If that were the case, these people would make sure that the person they are giving money to or rendering a service for is really, for sure 100%, legitimate. With such a system, these institutions would have a strong incentive to carefully balance the costs of such security checking with the costs of possible fraud.
As it is now, the person legitimately connected to the information that the fraudster supplied is usually left holding the bag and taking the loss. Careful check of the information at the point where fraud might occur, would be much more effective, then a Herculean effort to protect every bit of information.
Just as in the physical world, we make the receiver of stolen goods a partner in crime, so also we could in the informational world. At the very least, even if not accused of a crime, someone who obtains stolen property may have to give it up to the rightful owner.
In the same way, a financial institution or anyone else who gives away money or services on the basis of stolen information should at least bear the loss.
....phone numbers, email addresses etc. are beyond me....
Give these people a long ago used phone number and make up a special e-mail address just for this purpose. Giving out the phone number, even your real one these days it is not so much of a problem anymore if you have caller ID. If you don't recognize the number of the caller, or the caller is obviously a telemarketer, just let the answering machine picks up call. Most of the time they don't leave a message and if they do the message is easily deleted. E-mails are also easily screen this way.
...Nobody needs to store SSN's except the government that issues them...
Tell that to your friendly DMV who are now mandated to collect this information by the federal government. It so happens that in any computerized database, a unique record identifier is needed. For any database that could contain information of potentially anyone in any state, the SS is more likely to be unique than any other number currently assigned to nearly everyone.
Instead of making the legitimate owner of the identity responsible for fraud committed in their name, the financial institution should bear the fraud loss. This would give them an incentive to carefully check the information given by the fraudster. This is essentially the case with credit card fraud today. The legitimate cardholder is essentially not responsible for fraud committed in their name. In spite of this, credit card companies and banks are doing quite well, thank you.
...Each floor can and does fail progressively...
Indeed correct, but that process is even slower than accelerating the whole lower structure as a unit. This reports of each floor have to break, then that floor and its contents has to be accelerated downward onto the already moving upper part of the building.
According to the videos and seismic data for the time for the collapse of the buildings was just under 10 seconds. That is about the time a bowling ball would take to fall that same distance.
....conspiracy nuts are simply wrong when they calculate the time it took the building to fall....
There is nothing to calculate here, because it has all been measured by the video and seismic records. The "official" explanation for the collapse is doubtful, simply because the collapse took place too fast, according to the laws of gravity and inertia.