Is it just me or does this speak so clearly to the culture we have developed in the US?
How does this relate to the culture of the US? Sure, there are some companies that are trying to make money as patent trolls, just as there are always people trying to get a quick buck. But the vast majority of Americans are never a party to a patent lawsuit.
The idea that you can only get ahead by suing the pants off of some corporation.
There are a lot of companies out there that innovate and compete in order to get ahead. Just because there are a few examples of cases like the above does not mean that it's the standard operating procedure for a business.
In typical slashdot style, somebody has taken a situation, and extrapolated it out to now cover the entire population of the United States. The above case sure does seem frivalous, and it in no way represents the culture in the US.
Volume discounts are a very good answer. First of all, if your partner (in this case, Dell), can guarentee you a certain number of sales, and your marginal cost for each OEM unit is nearly $0, it's definately in your favor to give them a discount.
Second, supply and demand. $52 may be all Dell is willing to pay to put Windows on their systems. Whereas for somebody going out and buying a boxed copy, they are apparently willing to pay more.
Third, support costs. If Dell is selling the software, and willing to be the first line of support, that means that they are willing to take on support costs and therefore lower Microsofts.
Fourth, distribution costs. Shipping thousands of OEM copies to one customer (Dell) is much cheaper than shipping thousands of retail boxed copies to multiple customers (retailers). Also, since you don't have to print up a box and packaging, creating those OEM copies is much cheaper.
Preferential pricing occurs in virtually any market and for the same reasons it occurs in the OS market. Just because it's Windows doesn't mean it's any different than selling other items.
OS's don't need to prevent software from running, just have mechanisms to determine trust levels (signing) and provide granular controls based upon those trust levels, while keeping the user informed about what is happening.
Keeping the user informed, when the user isn't a computer expert can be extremely difficult. How is an OS to know that the file being modified is phone numbers rather than configuration settings?
The problem with trojans isn't that people double click on things, it's that when they do so the OS doesn't tell them if they ran a program or opened a file, and if a program how trustworthy is it and what is it doing, and giving them the option to stop it from doing things they don't want it to do.
If I double click on a picture, and it displays the picture, I've both run a program and opened a file (the program was run in order to view the file). So if every time a user double clicks a file, you would like the OS to inform them that they have run a program? Haven't you just created the example that you blame Microsoft for (users being too comfortable clicking through menus)?
No, it isn't irrelevant. A lot of people are on Win2K and MS decided not support them. Would they have made the same decision if they did not have monopoly control of the market?
That's debatable, but that doesn't mean you are right. Companies remove free support for products in all industries, all of the time. At some point in time users are moved to newer products for multiple reasons including profits and new features.
MS has no need to respond to customers and give them what they want because they have no competition and, as such, to motivation to do so. I firmly believe that if MS was broken into at least two companies with complete rights to Windows code to date, one of them would put out a better product to win market share from the other, and we'd see faster and better security improvements.
This type of comment is often posted on Slashdot, but I don't buy it. First of all, there is competition, though limited. MacOS and Linux exist and are in use. Fact of the matter is, if Windows were half as bad as posts on Slashdot make it out to be, MacOS marketshare would be much greater than it is now, and a larger market would exist for Linux OEM systems. But Windows meets the needs of most consumers (just like the iPod), and hence they have no reason to change. This logic also makes the assumption that an OS that is created for the masses (which OSX is one), and that allows users to have a wide selection of hardware options (which OSX does not), could be built faster and more secure. MacOS heavily restricts hardware options. Linux just isn't there for most consumers yet. So it's easy to say that the world would be all rosy when there is no other example of an OS supporting hardware and software like Windows being used by so many (non technical) people.
The attack described relies upon a worm that can compromise desktop systems. Worms are a lot easier to implement if their are a huge number of identical targets with identical holes. Currently that target is Windows.
Or, it would only require a user to run certain software, which is the reason a lot of people get malware/spyware on their computers in the first place. This would not stop if there were no holes. It would only stop if there was a way to ensure that people didn't run software they download AND that any software provided to them was legitimate.
Further, there is no reason why a given OS should grant a new binary access to read or write to your phonebook without explicit approval from the user with some pretty strongly worded warnings is plain English. In a free market, I'm guessing every desktop OS would include this functionality as soon as it became an issue, but Windows has not done so, despite worms grabbing data from the e-mail address book. The reason for this is, quite simply, it doesn't cost MS a significant amount of money when people are compromised because the vast majority of users don't have realistic options of other OS's (it's not at walmart, kmart or meijer).
The problem is that many people get annoyed at those prompts to the point that they turn them off (if that's an option) or they ignore them. If joe blow consumer starts running Ubuntu, and downloads what he thinks is a great program to run, he's going to enter in his administrator password when instructed. The average consumer just doesn't know when to allow permissions and when not to.
And why would your VoIP phonebook be any different than any other configuration file on your computer? Are you saying that programs shouldn't be allowed to add an entry into a note taking program? One of the things that makes the PC so great is that software can interact with other software to make things easier for the user.
Do most users have IE7?
Consider that XP is the dominant OS, and that IE7 was rolled out through windows update, yes.
Is it even available on Win2K?
Irrelevant. The average consumer is running XP, and therefore has IE7.
Did IE7 recognize it as a phishing site before a significant number of people had already been there?
I don't know. But it recognized it, and Firefox didn't. So I fail to see how Microsoft could be blamed in this instance.
Sure some malware and scams are the result of human error, but a lot of them are also the result of poorly designed software for the environment in which it is operating.
I disagree. If the OS prompted the user for the administrator rights, the clueless user would just enter in their password and continue installing the program.
The previous poster was specifically talking about the scenario in the article. That scenario required that the system was compromised by a worm. Diversity of OS's does reduce the ability of worms to spread and diversity of OS's motivates companies to innovate solutions to out compete others. Those innovations may include ways to stop worms, don't you think? Maybe instead of complaining about people's opinions by trying apply them to a situation they weren't talking about you should consider them in terms of what we're discussing.
There is nothing inherent in the situation to a worm. The exact same thing could be performed using downloadable malware. And if the worm couldn't exist, that's exactly what would happen.
Who says that would be the case? If other OS's were common the practice of writing portable code that worked on multiple OS's and offering them would be more profitable and thus more common. Further, VM software, like portable Java apps would be more profitable. Your cause and effect is reversed. People offer software only on one platform because there is one dominant OS. When there were multiple competing platforms, even long ago, there was more software
Now, I understand in the Slashdot world, anything that pokes at Microsoft and Windows is instantly thought of as insightful and true, but what the hell does this problem have to do with Microsoft? This problem exists because of social habits of human beings. Most phishing scams work only when there is action taken by a victim that is either uncaring, or doesn't know better.
I recently received a phishing scam email from somebody purporting to be Wells Fargo Bank. First clue is obvious, I don't have an account with them, but I was curious. So I clicked the link in Firefox. The site comes up, looks similar to the real Wells Fargo site, but has a completely non-legitimate URL. So then I clicked the link in IE7. Guess what, IE7 knew it was a phishing site.
So in my above example, Microsoft was not at fault, in fact, they were proactive enough to protect the user. Stop blaming third parties for what amounts to human error. And if you think OS diversity would help the problem, you are wrong. People react the same way to phishing scams regardless of OS.
And your suggestions are absolutely insane. One thing that computing monoculture brings is a standard implementation. How would the average consumer react if they were told "this software won't work on this OS" or worse "this software only works on certain flavors of linux, but not yours". The reason the PC grew so quickly was the ability to choose between different software and hardware easily, and be sure of compatibility. Sure, niche markets existed, such as the Mac, but the PC was much more extensible and much more desirable.
Unemployment is not actually a problem now, under-employment is. If somebody is working part-time, they aren't unemployed. If somebody is doing menial labor because that's the only employment they can find to put food on the table, they aren't unemployed. Even unemployed people aren't considered unemployed unless they are actively looking for employment.
There's a lot of gray between unemployed, and where people ought to be employed. Unfortunately, when you want a quick statistic, it's going to show you very little of the overall picture.
That requires a "server" to be on at all times though, whereas if I could directly access the scanner from any computer, only that computer and the scanner would have to be powered up.
I would like to be able to scan from our multi-function printer to any of the computers in my house. Keyspan makes a little USB-to-Ethernet device, but it requires proprietary software to run (No linux support that I know of). If this didn't require special software then I would be interested in it.
As a former Apple employee, I know that we sure had Spotlight figured out to a large extent by the time that GDS came out.
So if Apple can develop similar ideas concurrently with competitors, why is it that whenever Micrsoft comes out with something, it's considered to be a copy, rather than concurrent development?
Yes, they do realize that. The merchant has decided that the convenience of swipe and go will bring in more money than they will lose from reversed charges. For instance, I don't go to gas stations that don't accept credit cards at the pump. I don't want to wait in line to pay behind the idiot buying cigs and the idiot buying lottery tickets when I can go across the street, pay the same amount, and be out in much less time.
You have to pay the franchise, pay to lay the infrastructure (or lease it from the current cable company at prices they set), set up all of your business operations, and try to attract customers. In the meantime comcast (or your local provider) can provide promotional adjustments to keep people from switching.
I'm not saying it's impossible, I'm saying that the current market makes it so hard that for the most part nobody does it. If I understand your post correctly, you are echoing what I am saying.
We came damned close to a second cable carrier not too many years ago.
To me, at least, this implies that you still only have one choice in your area for cable TV. Which is what I have been saying. In practice, there isn't much in the way of competition. Not knowing the specifics, I can't say why, but I would be curious to find out the reason why when the second franchise was so close, the endeavor was cancelled.
Really? Whom do I have to choose from? Let's look at my options:
Cable TV from Comcast
Over the Air antenna, except that there are trees and other natural obstacles in the way
Satellite TV, except that the trees still present a problem
So in short, for me, and others, there isn't really much in the way of options. Cable TV companies were granted monopolies when they were originally set up. And until recently, that monopoly was legally enforced. They have since, in principle, been required to open up to competition, but because it requires somebody the size of Verizon to compete with them at this stage of the game, for most consumers, there aren't other options.
I'm so happy that Verizon has to ask for a franchise in every area in which they wants to supply video.
Now I can understand not liking Verizon, heck, I don't like them either, but why are you so happy that it's so difficult for somebody to compete with an entrenched monopoly (the cable companies)?
What's to stop them from dumping when Google employees (presumably acting on some sort of inside info) start exercising en masse?
Insider information trading laws and the SEC.
My mom managed mutual funds for a living. Because of this she, and the rest of the family, was restricted in what we could do when buying and selling stock since she had access to information that the normal public didn't have. There is really no mechanism to prevent the trade (just like there is no way to truly prevent most crimes), but there is a mechanism to punish the wrong doing and (hopefully) make people less willing to partake in the crime.
Nope. It could mean that. But a lot of the time the victims are too young or too scared to report the abuse. And it isn't until much later in life that the abuse is revealed. Just look at the clergy abuse scandels in the catholic church.
I don't know about the rest of you, but 5.3% recidivism doesn't sound awfully high to me. Am I reading that wrong?
The arrest rate is just that, the arrest rate. It is not the recidivism rate. Sex offenses tend to go unreported. Which isn't to say that there is or isn't a high rate of recidivism, just that arrest rates are not going to equal offense rates.
And if the rate of recidivism is low, it could be that because of the restrictions placed upon the released offenders are actually working and keeping the rate low. Lifting them just may increase that rate.
Maybe it's because most Americans are waiting for another country to implement a system that actually works. Government is notoriously inefficient compared to private enterprise in most endeavors, and their influence should be limited to systems that serve the common good better than free enterprise.
Are you implying that our Health Insurance companies in the US are efficient?
The "there is no real competiton" excuse is whining amongst those who weren't clever enough to make the big investments earlier or can't make them now because of market forces.
You forgot one group: Those that weren't allowed to make the big investments earlier because of monopoly rights granted to the utility companies and other legislative barriers put up by the utility companies who were subsidized in order to make those big investments.
damn it, I didn't hit preview, what it should have said:
Household supply is measured in Amps, not in Watts. Get it through your head. I agree, a 500watt supply won't burn down your house. 100A supply at 120V will provide 12kVA of power. Given a decent power factor, you could power 20 500W supplies from the standard household service.
Reread your post. You said: Wow, if you've got a 400A supply to your house you should get it upgraded. That's like 1950's standards.
Household supply is measured in Watts, not in Amps. Get it through your head. I agree, a 500watt supply won't burn down your house. 100A supply at 120V will provide 12kVA of power. Given a decent power factor, you could power 20 500W supplies from the standard household service.
While I think this is bad, the issue is less you lying and more that the proper safeguards aren't in place to actual identify the who the person is. I don't think lying should be illegal in most cases. What they should legislate is that there be proper safeguards to ensure you information only gets given out to the proper people.
The problem is that people need access to their information regarding accounts, etc. and as hard as they (including me) try, they can't always remember the passphrase to every account and need an easier way around it. So we use non-secure methods of ID. It's not a great solution, but it's not the problem. The problem is that people want to illegally access the information. That's why pretexting should be illegal.
It should not be illegal to not have a lock on a house door. But it should be illegal to enter a premises when you don't have permission to do so. You want to punish the house owner for poor locks, when the actual crime is the breaking and entering or trespassing.
While I agree that there should be safeguards on personal information, I don't believe they need to be legislated. Though they should be publicized. Let people know that you sell their information or are reckless with it, and give them the chance to choose not to use your services.
You're confusing power (watts) and current (amps).
Wow, if you've got a 400A supply to your house you should get it upgraded. That's like 1950's standards.
400A service into a residential house is enormous. Most single family homes have between 100A and 200A service.
In terms of thickness of the wire, for 15A of current, you want a 14 guage copper wire. It's not all that thick. Your 1500W hair dryer is going to pull damn near 15A, and will definately have 14 guage wire. Most other household devices don't draw near that much current.
A 500W power supply is going to draw approximately 5A of current (depending on it's power factor). That would be a good one. Crappy supplies may draw much more. But it's only going to draw that amount if it needs it. If you are only using half the available power (250W), then you are only going to draw somewhere in the neighborhood of 2-3A and a much smaller wire could be used.
Slashdot Mirror
Is it just me or does this speak so clearly to the culture we have developed in the US?
How does this relate to the culture of the US? Sure, there are some companies that are trying to make money as patent trolls, just as there are always people trying to get a quick buck. But the vast majority of Americans are never a party to a patent lawsuit.
The idea that you can only get ahead by suing the pants off of some corporation.
There are a lot of companies out there that innovate and compete in order to get ahead. Just because there are a few examples of cases like the above does not mean that it's the standard operating procedure for a business.
In typical slashdot style, somebody has taken a situation, and extrapolated it out to now cover the entire population of the United States. The above case sure does seem frivalous, and it in no way represents the culture in the US.
-dave
Is this an honest question?
Volume discounts are a very good answer. First of all, if your partner (in this case, Dell), can guarentee you a certain number of sales, and your marginal cost for each OEM unit is nearly $0, it's definately in your favor to give them a discount.
Second, supply and demand. $52 may be all Dell is willing to pay to put Windows on their systems. Whereas for somebody going out and buying a boxed copy, they are apparently willing to pay more.
Third, support costs. If Dell is selling the software, and willing to be the first line of support, that means that they are willing to take on support costs and therefore lower Microsofts.
Fourth, distribution costs. Shipping thousands of OEM copies to one customer (Dell) is much cheaper than shipping thousands of retail boxed copies to multiple customers (retailers). Also, since you don't have to print up a box and packaging, creating those OEM copies is much cheaper.
Preferential pricing occurs in virtually any market and for the same reasons it occurs in the OS market. Just because it's Windows doesn't mean it's any different than selling other items.
-dave
OS's don't need to prevent software from running, just have mechanisms to determine trust levels (signing) and provide granular controls based upon those trust levels, while keeping the user informed about what is happening.
Keeping the user informed, when the user isn't a computer expert can be extremely difficult. How is an OS to know that the file being modified is phone numbers rather than configuration settings?
The problem with trojans isn't that people double click on things, it's that when they do so the OS doesn't tell them if they ran a program or opened a file, and if a program how trustworthy is it and what is it doing, and giving them the option to stop it from doing things they don't want it to do.
If I double click on a picture, and it displays the picture, I've both run a program and opened a file (the program was run in order to view the file). So if every time a user double clicks a file, you would like the OS to inform them that they have run a program? Haven't you just created the example that you blame Microsoft for (users being too comfortable clicking through menus)?
No, it isn't irrelevant. A lot of people are on Win2K and MS decided not support them. Would they have made the same decision if they did not have monopoly control of the market?
That's debatable, but that doesn't mean you are right. Companies remove free support for products in all industries, all of the time. At some point in time users are moved to newer products for multiple reasons including profits and new features.
MS has no need to respond to customers and give them what they want because they have no competition and, as such, to motivation to do so. I firmly believe that if MS was broken into at least two companies with complete rights to Windows code to date, one of them would put out a better product to win market share from the other, and we'd see faster and better security improvements.
This type of comment is often posted on Slashdot, but I don't buy it. First of all, there is competition, though limited. MacOS and Linux exist and are in use. Fact of the matter is, if Windows were half as bad as posts on Slashdot make it out to be, MacOS marketshare would be much greater than it is now, and a larger market would exist for Linux OEM systems. But Windows meets the needs of most consumers (just like the iPod), and hence they have no reason to change. This logic also makes the assumption that an OS that is created for the masses (which OSX is one), and that allows users to have a wide selection of hardware options (which OSX does not), could be built faster and more secure. MacOS heavily restricts hardware options. Linux just isn't there for most consumers yet. So it's easy to say that the world would be all rosy when there is no other example of an OS supporting hardware and software like Windows being used by so many (non technical) people.
-dave
The attack described relies upon a worm that can compromise desktop systems. Worms are a lot easier to implement if their are a huge number of identical targets with identical holes. Currently that target is Windows.
Or, it would only require a user to run certain software, which is the reason a lot of people get malware/spyware on their computers in the first place. This would not stop if there were no holes. It would only stop if there was a way to ensure that people didn't run software they download AND that any software provided to them was legitimate.
Further, there is no reason why a given OS should grant a new binary access to read or write to your phonebook without explicit approval from the user with some pretty strongly worded warnings is plain English. In a free market, I'm guessing every desktop OS would include this functionality as soon as it became an issue, but Windows has not done so, despite worms grabbing data from the e-mail address book. The reason for this is, quite simply, it doesn't cost MS a significant amount of money when people are compromised because the vast majority of users don't have realistic options of other OS's (it's not at walmart, kmart or meijer).
The problem is that many people get annoyed at those prompts to the point that they turn them off (if that's an option) or they ignore them. If joe blow consumer starts running Ubuntu, and downloads what he thinks is a great program to run, he's going to enter in his administrator password when instructed. The average consumer just doesn't know when to allow permissions and when not to.
And why would your VoIP phonebook be any different than any other configuration file on your computer? Are you saying that programs shouldn't be allowed to add an entry into a note taking program? One of the things that makes the PC so great is that software can interact with other software to make things easier for the user.
Do most users have IE7?
Consider that XP is the dominant OS, and that IE7 was rolled out through windows update, yes.
Is it even available on Win2K?
Irrelevant. The average consumer is running XP, and therefore has IE7.
Did IE7 recognize it as a phishing site before a significant number of people had already been there?
I don't know. But it recognized it, and Firefox didn't. So I fail to see how Microsoft could be blamed in this instance.
Sure some malware and scams are the result of human error, but a lot of them are also the result of poorly designed software for the environment in which it is operating.
I disagree. If the OS prompted the user for the administrator rights, the clueless user would just enter in their password and continue installing the program.
The previous poster was specifically talking about the scenario in the article. That scenario required that the system was compromised by a worm. Diversity of OS's does reduce the ability of worms to spread and diversity of OS's motivates companies to innovate solutions to out compete others. Those innovations may include ways to stop worms, don't you think? Maybe instead of complaining about people's opinions by trying apply them to a situation they weren't talking about you should consider them in terms of what we're discussing.
There is nothing inherent in the situation to a worm. The exact same thing could be performed using downloadable malware. And if the worm couldn't exist, that's exactly what would happen.
Who says that would be the case? If other OS's were common the practice of writing portable code that worked on multiple OS's and offering them would be more profitable and thus more common. Further, VM software, like portable Java apps would be more profitable. Your cause and effect is reversed. People offer software only on one platform because there is one dominant OS. When there were multiple competing platforms, even long ago, there was more software
WTF?
Now, I understand in the Slashdot world, anything that pokes at Microsoft and Windows is instantly thought of as insightful and true, but what the hell does this problem have to do with Microsoft? This problem exists because of social habits of human beings. Most phishing scams work only when there is action taken by a victim that is either uncaring, or doesn't know better.
I recently received a phishing scam email from somebody purporting to be Wells Fargo Bank. First clue is obvious, I don't have an account with them, but I was curious. So I clicked the link in Firefox. The site comes up, looks similar to the real Wells Fargo site, but has a completely non-legitimate URL. So then I clicked the link in IE7. Guess what, IE7 knew it was a phishing site.
So in my above example, Microsoft was not at fault, in fact, they were proactive enough to protect the user. Stop blaming third parties for what amounts to human error. And if you think OS diversity would help the problem, you are wrong. People react the same way to phishing scams regardless of OS.
And your suggestions are absolutely insane. One thing that computing monoculture brings is a standard implementation. How would the average consumer react if they were told "this software won't work on this OS" or worse "this software only works on certain flavors of linux, but not yours". The reason the PC grew so quickly was the ability to choose between different software and hardware easily, and be sure of compatibility. Sure, niche markets existed, such as the Mac, but the PC was much more extensible and much more desirable.
-dave
Unemployment is not actually a problem now, under-employment is. If somebody is working part-time, they aren't unemployed. If somebody is doing menial labor because that's the only employment they can find to put food on the table, they aren't unemployed. Even unemployed people aren't considered unemployed unless they are actively looking for employment.
There's a lot of gray between unemployed, and where people ought to be employed. Unfortunately, when you want a quick statistic, it's going to show you very little of the overall picture.
-dave
That requires a "server" to be on at all times though, whereas if I could directly access the scanner from any computer, only that computer and the scanner would have to be powered up.
-dave
Scanners.
I would like to be able to scan from our multi-function printer to any of the computers in my house. Keyspan makes a little USB-to-Ethernet device, but it requires proprietary software to run (No linux support that I know of). If this didn't require special software then I would be interested in it.
-dave
My point, like the AC above me said, is that there is still a use for the DC sockets in cars.
-dave
Most car DC power ports supply 10A of current to devices. This is much, much more than a USB connector is capable of.
There are devices other than phone chargers that people use that power port for (fridge/cooler, inverter for laptop, etc.).
-dave
As a former Apple employee, I know that we sure had Spotlight figured out to a large extent by the time that GDS came out.
So if Apple can develop similar ideas concurrently with competitors, why is it that whenever Micrsoft comes out with something, it's considered to be a copy, rather than concurrent development?
-dave
Yes, they do realize that. The merchant has decided that the convenience of swipe and go will bring in more money than they will lose from reversed charges. For instance, I don't go to gas stations that don't accept credit cards at the pump. I don't want to wait in line to pay behind the idiot buying cigs and the idiot buying lottery tickets when I can go across the street, pay the same amount, and be out in much less time.
-dave
You have to pay the franchise, pay to lay the infrastructure (or lease it from the current cable company at prices they set), set up all of your business operations, and try to attract customers. In the meantime comcast (or your local provider) can provide promotional adjustments to keep people from switching.
I'm not saying it's impossible, I'm saying that the current market makes it so hard that for the most part nobody does it. If I understand your post correctly, you are echoing what I am saying.
We came damned close to a second cable carrier not too many years ago.
To me, at least, this implies that you still only have one choice in your area for cable TV. Which is what I have been saying. In practice, there isn't much in the way of competition. Not knowing the specifics, I can't say why, but I would be curious to find out the reason why when the second franchise was so close, the endeavor was cancelled.
-dave
- Cable TV from Comcast
- Over the Air antenna, except that there are trees and other natural obstacles in the way
- Satellite TV, except that the trees still present a problem
So in short, for me, and others, there isn't really much in the way of options. Cable TV companies were granted monopolies when they were originally set up. And until recently, that monopoly was legally enforced. They have since, in principle, been required to open up to competition, but because it requires somebody the size of Verizon to compete with them at this stage of the game, for most consumers, there aren't other options.-dave
I'm so happy that Verizon has to ask for a franchise in every area in which they wants to supply video.
Now I can understand not liking Verizon, heck, I don't like them either, but why are you so happy that it's so difficult for somebody to compete with an entrenched monopoly (the cable companies)?
-dave
What's to stop them from dumping when Google employees (presumably acting on some sort of inside info) start exercising en masse?
Insider information trading laws and the SEC.
My mom managed mutual funds for a living. Because of this she, and the rest of the family, was restricted in what we could do when buying and selling stock since she had access to information that the normal public didn't have. There is really no mechanism to prevent the trade (just like there is no way to truly prevent most crimes), but there is a mechanism to punish the wrong doing and (hopefully) make people less willing to partake in the crime.
-dave
Nobody. The post I was replying to, was replying to a post about broadband internet monopolies.
-dave
Nope. It could mean that. But a lot of the time the victims are too young or too scared to report the abuse. And it isn't until much later in life that the abuse is revealed. Just look at the clergy abuse scandels in the catholic church.
-dave
The arrest rate is just that, the arrest rate. It is not the recidivism rate. Sex offenses tend to go unreported. Which isn't to say that there is or isn't a high rate of recidivism, just that arrest rates are not going to equal offense rates.
And if the rate of recidivism is low, it could be that because of the restrictions placed upon the released offenders are actually working and keeping the rate low. Lifting them just may increase that rate.
-dave
Are you implying that our Health Insurance companies in the US are efficient?
-dave
You forgot one group: Those that weren't allowed to make the big investments earlier because of monopoly rights granted to the utility companies and other legislative barriers put up by the utility companies who were subsidized in order to make those big investments.
-dave
damn it, I didn't hit preview, what it should have said:
Household supply is measured in Amps, not in Watts. Get it through your head. I agree, a 500watt supply won't burn down your house. 100A supply at 120V will provide 12kVA of power. Given a decent power factor, you could power 20 500W supplies from the standard household service.
-dave
Reread your post. You said:
Wow, if you've got a 400A supply to your house you should get it upgraded. That's like 1950's standards.
Household supply is measured in Watts, not in Amps. Get it through your head. I agree, a 500watt supply won't burn down your house. 100A supply at 120V will provide 12kVA of power. Given a decent power factor, you could power 20 500W supplies from the standard household service.
-dave
While I think this is bad, the issue is less you lying and more that the proper safeguards aren't in place to actual identify the who the person is. I don't think lying should be illegal in most cases. What they should legislate is that there be proper safeguards to ensure you information only gets given out to the proper people.
The problem is that people need access to their information regarding accounts, etc. and as hard as they (including me) try, they can't always remember the passphrase to every account and need an easier way around it. So we use non-secure methods of ID. It's not a great solution, but it's not the problem. The problem is that people want to illegally access the information. That's why pretexting should be illegal.
It should not be illegal to not have a lock on a house door. But it should be illegal to enter a premises when you don't have permission to do so. You want to punish the house owner for poor locks, when the actual crime is the breaking and entering or trespassing.
While I agree that there should be safeguards on personal information, I don't believe they need to be legislated. Though they should be publicized. Let people know that you sell their information or are reckless with it, and give them the chance to choose not to use your services.
-dave
You're confusing power (watts) and current (amps).
Wow, if you've got a 400A supply to your house you should get it upgraded. That's like 1950's standards.
400A service into a residential house is enormous. Most single family homes have between 100A and 200A service.
In terms of thickness of the wire, for 15A of current, you want a 14 guage copper wire. It's not all that thick. Your 1500W hair dryer is going to pull damn near 15A, and will definately have 14 guage wire. Most other household devices don't draw near that much current.
A 500W power supply is going to draw approximately 5A of current (depending on it's power factor). That would be a good one. Crappy supplies may draw much more. But it's only going to draw that amount if it needs it. If you are only using half the available power (250W), then you are only going to draw somewhere in the neighborhood of 2-3A and a much smaller wire could be used.
-dave