And we don't have to wear it - yet, BUT we have to *always* carry our passports or other state ID with us at all time.
"Papers please" is not that far off, and some religious minority WAS forced to wear yellow pieces of flair once upon a time in German history...
I think the EU is becoming worse than the USSR in maybe a decade. Thank God "rogue" states like Poland are bombarding and vetoing every decision the EU makes, so even the lowest common man is starting to realize what's happening at the EU helm. But that superstate is not going down fast and it's not going down silently. Expect riots...
I'm pretty sure, SSL was created *especially* to combat man-in-the-middle attacks. Inserting data in http streams at ISP level is no different than intercepting packets at TCP level and crafting some forgery in them.
I don't think you can use bogus SSL certs, IF you already use your own.
So my first and only advice to this "crisis" is
--> Use SSL-only web hosting for even the most basic set of pages. ---
With SSL-encrypted traffic no other node or ISP can ever know what's inside your packets and can therefore not eavesdrop on your connection or place ads inside.
I'm very glad some ISPs are dumb enough to start this crap, because now everyone will learn the semi-hard way how the internet is working, what makes it vulnerable and why encryption can be beneficial for everyone. When ISPs are dumb enough to drive the masses to SSL-encrypted everything, the/a/our snoopy government is severely hampered.
All we need is one for-free certification authority and everyone can use a public SSL cert to lock out any and all intruders with less than 10-percent-NSA computing power devoted to them.
Maybe we even get the second part of SSL, the client certificates off the ground.
One thing I forgot:
Spray on some PTFE/Teflon dry-lube from the underside before putting all together again, so the keys slide in as smooth as possible. Silicone spray-on MAY be an alternative, but it attracts and binds dust.
Larger keys (i.e ENTER and SPACE) usually have some guiding rods and special springs that should get a drop of thick silicone grease at the pivots and the guides.
I successfully cleaned several mice and keyboards with our regular household dishwasher.
Take them apart (be careful not to break to plastic hooks and latches while doing that) and then take out the electronics. My keyboards had a small PCB glued to plastic-wire-sheets under the keyboard rubber membrane. That was mounted with several screws and some cables going to the USB ports and could be separated very very easily from the casing which contained all the keycaps. Put the plastic top and bottom casing in the dishwasher, used the normal program (alone without any additional dishes) and then let it dry for several hours in the summer sun. Put it together, worked.
The keysprings in my rather cheap Cherry keyboards (http://www.cherrycorp.com/) were made of non-rusting spring steel, so there were no problems on that side.
The first time I did this, I took out all individual keycaps and put them between two metal kitchen sieves for the dishwashing part. But that wasn't necessary and it took half an hour to get all the keys back in afterwards. But it makes for the geek litmus-test to see if you know by heart which key goes where. (I didn't, but had another keyboard for reference:) )
This also worked for mice and TV remotes, which usually get gunked up after some months or years of use. And no, the laser-engraved keymarkings didn't come off during the process, although I wouldn't bet on it for all dirt-cheap equipment. (TVs where the remote lost some markings after half a year of normal use)
Moving to a larger city for broadband internet seems silly?
People and companies that need a certain infrastructure usually move where this infrastructure is already in place OR build it when feasible OR substitute it.
Nobody would consider moving near a railway center, airport or seaport ridiculous if they needed that. (Like moving where theaters, libraries and other entertainment are) Why should broadband network be that much different? "If the mountain will not go to Mahomet, let Mahomet go to the mountain" or so they say, depending on how important fast internet access is to you.
I would be satisfied when my modem gets 21*k*bps:) just kidding...
When there's only one ISP and a satellite one at that, I think your outlook for getting decent broadband is dim. Network latency actually matters for perceived browsing. Not the make-or-break thing it is for Counter-strike et al., but a bit annoying I think.
The only options left are maybe hoping for a 3G cellphone data flatrates (UMTS, GPRS etc.) or moving to a larger city. Other than that, you're pretty much bound to whatever Hughes satellite dictates and demands, if you need broadband. I'm sure your house there is all nice and there's forests and fields all around in a cozy rolling hillside - but I don't know if I would trade homes with you...
The postal service is not the same as the telephone service: it's much easier to drive a delivery van around than bury cable lines to thousands of homes. And then there's parcel services like UPS et al., which have been around for some decades, letting you keep tabs on the postal service.
If we talk about governmental control, I'm biased for it, although I know of the dangers to free enterprise and stuff - but all is well with me as long it's not exclusive (no competitors) and state-owned. It could work, like the US Postal service (minus its Vietnam vets), but if it doesn't, you're screwed.
Monopolies should be under control of the law and the public, but not on a tight leash and not state-owned. Political goals and corporate profitability are often mutually exclusive, and while I don't like greedy corporations I absolutely despise governmental waste of money. That's because greedy corporations just try to get my money where wasteful governments simply send the IRS and the police to take it.
It has nothing to do with selfishness or greed, it's simply the customer's side of the contract.
"I pay for it, therefore I am entitled to use it." Selfishness is abusing or misusing others and their resources, like parking on the left lane on the freeway.
Selfishness is breaking social contracts - but in the home DSL example, you don't have that kind of (informal) social contract with everyone but your ISP. And the "net health" overall, meaning you shouldn't send spam, malware and ddos packets around and/or disable your heavy downloading in cases of national or local emergencies.
Protecting and realizing your interests and investments is not "selfishness", it's normal and reasonable (outside of North Korea) behavior. And nobody can be able to judge the importance of your interests, except for YOU and cases of real emergencies. Be it the newest Ubuntu, gigabytes of Windows-patches or the sickest, filthies horse porn exports from rogue states. You pay for it, you can use it. I don't advocate the "customer is always right"-mantra that's driving our shopping clerks insane - but I think it's ridiculous to demand that other 30-80$/month customers refrain from using their bandwidth. That's what I would call selfish, but that's just me.
Imagine the situation where A is selling its services to its customers C1 through C10. All customers pay a monthly fee of 10$ for the privilege of having A's services. Circumstances make it possible to "overbook" A by a factor of 2x, because most customers seriously underutilize A's services, making it possible to split the service price among more customers and/or making more money for A.
When C3 sometimes utilizes the full potential of their service contract, A is suddenly calling foul and restricting their access, citing the protection of all other customers' interests.
Which possibility do you think is right:
[ ] A just overbooked its service capabilities wayyy too much and now depending on (instead of profiteering from) expected customer behavior [ ] A *tries* to earn more money through more overbooking [ ] A is not overloaded but lazy and simply *claims* C3 is overusing "shared" resources. [ ] A's services is not a shared resource like a public road, but a paid-for service by a private company [ ] A is selfish [ ] C3 is selfish [ ] all other customers are selfish [ ] C3 should have different contract than the others
And please keep in mind that everyone of us is a member of a minority im some way. Don't even try to judge other's use of resources as useless, unethical or filthy. That's what freedom and privacy are there to protect against. ("Gay porn, ewwwwwwwwwwww, you're clogging my Ubuntu download!" - "Ubuntu what?! Why on earth do you *need* the newest Ubuntu ISO every month? I work on Windows 2000 and I'm fine with that!")
I don't think any content is more important or legitimate as any other content. Emergencies, infrastructure and security updates aside, but everything else is not my business to judge. And it shouldn't be anyone's business at all.
(Just imagine "the people's council", "the people's army" or whatever stopping, questioning and inspecting vehicle traffic for valid "reasons" for travel...)
Removal of anti-trust enforcement = bad Splitting Ma Bell (a monopolist service provider) = bad
Does not compute. Please re-phrase your statement and bring some coherent standpoint before proceeding.
One question out of curiosity: can you say "functioning government controlled monopolies" with a straight face? I always have to giggle a bit when reading that. But it wasn't until I read "customer hostile corporate policy" that I broke out in tears of joy.
"Functioning government controlled monopolies" that are not "customer hostile". Yeah. I still have that bridge for sale and the Eiffel tower on special offers, you know?:)
Please re-read my post: I'm not talking about guaranteed bandwidth, I'm talking about guaranteed *best efforts*.
Nobody expects home DSL connections to have more than 90% uptime or the transfer bandwidth set in stone. That's what T1, SDSL and enterprise-grade SLA's are for. But I expect my ISP to maintain his contractual obligations in at least *trying* to give the best connection that is feasible from an economical and whatnot point of view.
Traffic shaping and intentionally throttling traffic in applications where sheer bandwidth (not latency) is important is NOT honoring the contract.
To be short: I don't expect my ISP to have 24/7 onsite rapid-response teams, multiple backup lines and.99+ uptime. - But I sure as hell don't want my ISP to actively hamper my connection. Not helping is a whole lot better than intentionally blocking the way...
Of course they can't promise a certain bandwidth, because they'd otherwise be swamped with lawsuits. Every dimwit customer would be complaining about the occasional download from Zambia or India creeping along at modem speeds.
But there's clearly a difference between "line speed 6mbit/sec and from there as fast as the target server allows", "line speed UP TO 6mbit/sec depending on what your neighborhood does and how much we overbooked our DSLAM"
and
"line speed 6mbit/sec but we're turning it down to modem speed if we don't like your face" or "line speed 6mbit/sec, but we turn it down for every activity that could actually need that bandwidth"
Home contracts used to promise at least the company's best efforts to maintain a certain service level - and now they're effectively promising nothing at all.
Why anyone would enter a contract that states "You pay me every month full and in advance and I promise you nothing" is beyond me. Even mafia hitmen have more customer friendly terms, I think. But if you think that's fair trade practice, you may like to view that bridge I have on sale here...
if you are (even temporarily) successful, file (some) eerily similar patents and found a NEW tiny company for everyone of them. Then shift your manufacturing/moneymaking business along to using the "new" patents. Every "new" patent is a layer of armor around your initial invention and a large "I am an industrious and successful inventor"-sign above your head, attracting and safeguarding investors and partners.
(Which of course must only invest in company B, not in your patent "holding cells" and never in company A!)
If you make new or really improved inventions, use the same template: one company for one patent and let the competition wear themselves out when they try to strike them down one by one. Make a nice and thick network of companies belonging to each other without anyone other than you knowing who owns what, keeping your legal enemies in the dark about where and whom to attack, forcing them to file hundreds of requests to patent offices and company registrars.
(This model is simplified and idealized, but it's a lot better than nothing. And orders of magnitude better than just starting your company with full liability with patents and manufacturing processes together.)
... until Tom, Dick and Harry start patenting YOUR invention afterwards. And then battling it out in the courts with the deepest pocket winning and then preventing anyone from using that technology.
No, the only possible course is this:
Found company "Example A limited" on the cheap, stock capital 1$. You are of course owner and CEO of that company, filing your patent with the USPTO. The sole purpose of this company is licensing this single patent, the only employee is you and its only asset is your invention.
Then found company "Example B limited". Same procedure, you are owner and CEO. The purpose of this company is producing useful merchandise from your invention, which is of course only licensed (for 1$/year) from company A.
If you have 300$ to burn, you could even create a small holding structure, with "Example holding limited" as the "root" node becoming the owner of company A and B, further protecting you against liability and lawsuit risks, which always arise when dealing with start-ups in fierce competition and a 2 ton gorilla in the market.
Whatever happens to company B doesn't affect A in any way under most circumstances (except for malice and severe negligence, I think). And as company A doesn't do anything other than holding a patent and licensing it to anyone who wants, it won't go down easily.
If the worst case happens and B goes bust, you could still license your patent through A on your terms, for 1$/year for everyone except BigOil Inc., who would have to pony up, say, half a billion per month. Your patent, your terms.
Sticking it to The Man for fun and profit. Behave responsibly:)
But given the status of Microsoft in the OS sector, it's not credible to think they are somehow forced to implement DRM technology at the kernel level.
What would MS had to gain or lose from NOT implementing DRM? Apple gaining more foothold in the music download market because of all the major labels switching to iTMS? So what? Apple already dominates that market and Microsoft shot themselves in their feet a hundred times, not to mention selling maybe half a dozen Zunes worldwide that aren't even compatible with themselves.
With all this DRM and proprietary crap they try to build the same vendor lock-in framework as usual, save the fact that there's no one to lock in except the mentioned half dozen unluckly Zune buyers. Vendor lock-in is all nice and cozy, but wouldn't you do that AFTER you gained a significant userbase?
And don't pretend the Apple marketshare would somehow explode if HD content would only be available through Mac-based systems. Their marketshare is growing because of heavy-handed Microsoft behavior and the constant face-slapping of their customers. Looking around in the libray, I see at least 20% MacBooks and their share is growing pretty fast. Even if I still keep using Windows, a lot of users don't. And with all this kerfuffle around everything even loosely media-related on Windows Vista, I cannot sanely recommend Windows for my non-geeky clients and friends. I always avoided Linux and Mac because of the effort of relearning, switching and all the problems associated with that. After all, most people just want it to work, so the system that was fastest to install and get email/video/music/word processing running was what I recommended everyone. I'm lazy, I admit.
But now I've no clear choice. Recommending Vista is out of the question and it MAY be that using MacOS is the quickest just-get-going solution of todays' market. Microsoft deliberately killed off backward-compatibility and ease-of-use, which leaves an expensive syste, only moderately secured and unable to do things it's competitors can straight out of the box. You can kill your cash-cow, even as a monopolist. And maybe we're witnessing this process right now...
I don't think anyone can force an 800lbs gorilla to dance to your tune. Microsoft does this little DRM tap dance out of their own will and in shameless pursuit of sheeple-money.
a) two griefers on both teams, making it impossible to play normally. b) been auto-kickbanned for too many teamkills while you were out of your mind trying to get rid of that idiot. c) been totally pwned because your griefer is blocking the only access to the hostages.
I've been there, a lot. Oh and
d) if you try to votekick/kill/annoy the annoyer, half the server population will think, you are the actual perp e) votekicks never succeed because there's frag-greedy people on the other team cheering to exploit your team's weakness. (the same people who never allow the cheater on their team get kicked, because of the same reasons)
Love it, change it or leave it. That are your only options in any situation anywhere. Half the people in a MP FPS totally love your team being stuck in the spawn room or getting mauled by wallhacking autoshoot-autoaim-fastrunners. Some quit instantly and you can't change a thing.
Yes. But who actually goes crawling through the web to find that out? Okay, Greenpeace should have done it, before crying out lout.
But isn't Apple renowned for being ahead of the competition AND actually announcing that? (Once their products are ready to ship, of course) Then why didn't they just print their enviro efforts and accomplishments on every box they sell? To tell the customers *another* reason why paying a bit more is rightly justified and to tell their competitors where to stick it...
Not communicating about your future products is okay, as the only possible thing you could hurt your sales.
Not communicating environmental efforts is not okay, as you theoretically could hurt anyone else with your toxic waste.
Any other company on the face of the earth is, if keeping a low profile on its environmental impact, wasting toxic stuff like there's no tomorrow.
And not only did Apple hide their environmental plans, they also hid or at least not trumpeted the status they already reached. I'm sure if there'd been a sticker on the iPod/iBook package saying "oooh we're so green AND stylish, look we have already accomplished A, B and C", Greenpeace wouldn't have a leg to stand on as thousands of green Apple zealots and fanboys would've already bashed the competition senseless.
Oh yes, it is a financial institution. It deals with money, and only with money. I don't care how they describe themselves or what their legal status is, they are a de-facto bank and when challenged before a reasonably well educated court with a reasonably skilled lawyer, they'll get to be held on public standards. "If it quacks like a duck..." and so on. To bring some analogies to the table: if a bakery sells cars, they still must have seatbelts and if the car dealer sells bread, anyone can reasonably expect them not to put glass shards in it.
Oh yes, you hit the nerve right with this one. Spammers are worse than petty thieves, burglars and even carjackers: they steal time from millions and millions of people all at once. In severity_of_crime = impact_of_crime x number_of_pple_affected, they score below Pol Pot and Stalin, but way above Charles Manson, I suppose. Causing serious grievance to a dozen people is effectively on the same scale as causing a minimal nuisance to hundreds of millions, at least in my opinion. One murder brings the death penalty and disrupting the communication of billions of people should bring it, too.
Even the most minuscule mini-crimes *should* add up on your crime record, the same way as three thefts yield three times the punishment.
After all, it's not one tiny mail that gets the spammers electrocuted, but the intent and action to disrupt the private communication of billions of people all around the world, steal countless cpu-hours and several MWh of electricity from everyone, saturate networks links worldwide and force society to invest more than a hundred thousand man-hours in implementing and updating spam filters. Stealing everyone fractions of a cent is still stealing, as every slashdotter will know.
Killing one person will get you life imprisonment or capital punishment, as will robbing 30+ elderly pple OR stealing 300+ laptop computers OR 1'000+ iPods OR scratching 10'000 cars. And so should spamming 2'000'000'000 mail accounts. Bring on the torches and pitchforks, we have some vigilante action to do.
You cannot cover all incoming vectors, there's just too many of 'em. And every program you run opens another, no thanks. With the kernel reasonably trustworthy sealed-off from anything, you may have a chance of recovering from any other disaster without re-installing everything but the kitchen sink. Then you can trust the kernel to report processes, file permissions and dir contents correctly, which can then be correctly terminated.
A compromised kernel allows you neither: dir contents are inaccurate, malware has its processes hidden from the taskmanager, its files from the explorer and whatever deletion requests your antivirus software issues, they're not going to be carried out at all. As long as you can't trust the kernel, everything you try is moot and converse, if you can trust the kernel, you can start repairing the system from secure sources (cdrom, intranet etc.). And since nothing can wedge itself too deep anywhere, repairing and cleaning should be feasible, at least.
Aargh, noo, it can NOT patch explorer.exe, because the kernel will not allow that. File permission, user rights, Windows system file protection, system rollback, whatever you like. But you're not going to hack away at any file in the Windows-Subfolders without the kernel noticing. And that's exactly the reason why nobody should have access to it: so he can't patch explorer.exe without the security infrastructure responding.
The law has some bad consequences, no need to tell me about that. But trespassers have a hard time down in Texas, I tell you. You don't violate others privacy and living grounds without a clear imminent danger. Try entering the Area 51 (or any fenced-off commercial property, for that matter), if you think I'm just a gun-toting extremist:)
Slashdot Mirror
Thanks, of course you are right. I've been a citizen of the former GDR, which had (like any good Warshaw pact soviet puppet state) a Mitführpflicht.
Which means, I've carried my ID with me for nothing the last 17 years. Another day, another lesson learned, thank you.
You misunderstood me. I'm a fan of Poland, because they are harming the EU and expediting its demise :)
It's "flair" BTW.
And we don't have to wear it - yet, BUT we have to *always* carry our passports or other state ID with us at all time.
"Papers please" is not that far off, and some religious minority WAS forced to wear yellow pieces of flair once upon a time in German history...
I think the EU is becoming worse than the USSR in maybe a decade. Thank God "rogue" states like Poland are bombarding and vetoing every decision the EU makes, so even the lowest common man is starting to realize what's happening at the EU helm. But that superstate is not going down fast and it's not going down silently. Expect riots...
I'm pretty sure, SSL was created *especially* to combat man-in-the-middle attacks. Inserting data in http streams at ISP level is no different than intercepting packets at TCP level and crafting some forgery in them.
I don't think you can use bogus SSL certs, IF you already use your own.
So my first and only advice to this "crisis" is
--> Use SSL-only web hosting for even the most basic set of pages. ---
With SSL-encrypted traffic no other node or ISP can ever know what's inside your packets and can therefore not eavesdrop on your connection or place ads inside.
I'm very glad some ISPs are dumb enough to start this crap, because now everyone will learn the semi-hard way how the internet is working, what makes it vulnerable and why encryption can be beneficial for everyone. When ISPs are dumb enough to drive the masses to SSL-encrypted everything, the/a/our snoopy government is severely hampered.
All we need is one for-free certification authority and everyone can use a public SSL cert to lock out any and all intruders with less than 10-percent-NSA computing power devoted to them.
Maybe we even get the second part of SSL, the client certificates off the ground.
One thing I forgot: Spray on some PTFE/Teflon dry-lube from the underside before putting all together again, so the keys slide in as smooth as possible. Silicone spray-on MAY be an alternative, but it attracts and binds dust. Larger keys (i.e ENTER and SPACE) usually have some guiding rods and special springs that should get a drop of thick silicone grease at the pivots and the guides.
I successfully cleaned several mice and keyboards with our regular household dishwasher.
:) )
Take them apart (be careful not to break to plastic hooks and latches while doing that) and then take out the electronics. My keyboards had a small PCB glued to plastic-wire-sheets under the keyboard rubber membrane. That was mounted with several screws and some cables going to the USB ports and could be separated very very easily from the casing which contained all the keycaps. Put the plastic top and bottom casing in the dishwasher, used the normal program (alone without any additional dishes) and then let it dry for several hours in the summer sun. Put it together, worked.
The keysprings in my rather cheap Cherry keyboards (http://www.cherrycorp.com/) were made of non-rusting spring steel, so there were no problems on that side.
The first time I did this, I took out all individual keycaps and put them between two metal kitchen sieves for the dishwashing part. But that wasn't necessary and it took half an hour to get all the keys back in afterwards. But it makes for the geek litmus-test to see if you know by heart which key goes where. (I didn't, but had another keyboard for reference
This also worked for mice and TV remotes, which usually get gunked up after some months or years of use. And no, the laser-engraved keymarkings didn't come off during the process, although I wouldn't bet on it for all dirt-cheap equipment. (TVs where the remote lost some markings after half a year of normal use)
Moving to a larger city for broadband internet seems silly?
People and companies that need a certain infrastructure usually move where this infrastructure is already in place OR build it when feasible OR substitute it.
Nobody would consider moving near a railway center, airport or seaport ridiculous if they needed that. (Like moving where theaters, libraries and other entertainment are) Why should broadband network be that much different? "If the mountain will not go to Mahomet, let Mahomet go to the mountain" or so they say, depending on how important fast internet access is to you.
I would be satisfied when my modem gets 21*k*bps :) just kidding...
When there's only one ISP and a satellite one at that, I think your outlook for getting decent broadband is dim. Network latency actually matters for perceived browsing. Not the make-or-break thing it is for Counter-strike et al., but a bit annoying I think.
The only options left are maybe hoping for a 3G cellphone data flatrates (UMTS, GPRS etc.) or moving to a larger city. Other than that, you're pretty much bound to whatever Hughes satellite dictates and demands, if you need broadband. I'm sure your house there is all nice and there's forests and fields all around in a cozy rolling hillside - but I don't know if I would trade homes with you...
The postal service is not the same as the telephone service: it's much easier to drive a delivery van around than bury cable lines to thousands of homes. And then there's parcel services like UPS et al., which have been around for some decades, letting you keep tabs on the postal service.
If we talk about governmental control, I'm biased for it, although I know of the dangers to free enterprise and stuff - but all is well with me as long it's not exclusive (no competitors) and state-owned. It could work, like the US Postal service (minus its Vietnam vets), but if it doesn't, you're screwed.
Monopolies should be under control of the law and the public, but not on a tight leash and not state-owned. Political goals and corporate profitability are often mutually exclusive, and while I don't like greedy corporations I absolutely despise governmental waste of money. That's because greedy corporations just try to get my money where wasteful governments simply send the IRS and the police to take it.
It has nothing to do with selfishness or greed, it's simply the customer's side of the contract.
"I pay for it, therefore I am entitled to use it." Selfishness is abusing or misusing others and their resources, like parking on the left lane on the freeway.
Selfishness is breaking social contracts - but in the home DSL example, you don't have that kind of (informal) social contract with everyone but your ISP. And the "net health" overall, meaning you shouldn't send spam, malware and ddos packets around and/or disable your heavy downloading in cases of national or local emergencies.
Protecting and realizing your interests and investments is not "selfishness", it's normal and reasonable (outside of North Korea) behavior. And nobody can be able to judge the importance of your interests, except for YOU and cases of real emergencies. Be it the newest Ubuntu, gigabytes of Windows-patches or the sickest, filthies horse porn exports from rogue states. You pay for it, you can use it. I don't advocate the "customer is always right"-mantra that's driving our shopping clerks insane - but I think it's ridiculous to demand that other 30-80$/month customers refrain from using their bandwidth. That's what I would call selfish, but that's just me.
Imagine the situation where A is selling its services to its customers C1 through C10. All customers pay a monthly fee of 10$ for the privilege of having A's services. Circumstances make it possible to "overbook" A by a factor of 2x, because most customers seriously underutilize A's services, making it possible to split the service price among more customers and/or making more money for A.
When C3 sometimes utilizes the full potential of their service contract, A is suddenly calling foul and restricting their access, citing the protection of all other customers' interests.
Which possibility do you think is right:
[ ] A just overbooked its service capabilities wayyy too much and now depending on (instead of profiteering from) expected customer behavior
[ ] A *tries* to earn more money through more overbooking
[ ] A is not overloaded but lazy and simply *claims* C3 is overusing "shared" resources.
[ ] A's services is not a shared resource like a public road, but a paid-for service by a private company
[ ] A is selfish
[ ] C3 is selfish
[ ] all other customers are selfish
[ ] C3 should have different contract than the others
And please keep in mind that everyone of us is a member of a minority im some way. Don't even try to judge other's use of resources as useless, unethical or filthy. That's what freedom and privacy are there to protect against. ("Gay porn, ewwwwwwwwwwww, you're clogging my Ubuntu download!" - "Ubuntu what?! Why on earth do you *need* the newest Ubuntu ISO every month? I work on Windows 2000 and I'm fine with that!")
I don't think any content is more important or legitimate as any other content. Emergencies, infrastructure and security updates aside, but everything else is not my business to judge. And it shouldn't be anyone's business at all.
(Just imagine "the people's council", "the people's army" or whatever stopping, questioning and inspecting vehicle traffic for valid "reasons" for travel...)
In your view:
:)
Removal of anti-trust enforcement = bad
Splitting Ma Bell (a monopolist service provider) = bad
Does not compute. Please re-phrase your statement and bring some coherent standpoint before proceeding.
One question out of curiosity: can you say "functioning government controlled monopolies" with a straight face? I always have to giggle a bit when reading that. But it wasn't until I read "customer hostile corporate policy" that I broke out in tears of joy.
"Functioning government controlled monopolies" that are not "customer hostile". Yeah. I still have that bridge for sale and the Eiffel tower on special offers, you know?
Please re-read my post: I'm not talking about guaranteed bandwidth, I'm talking about guaranteed *best efforts*.
.99+ uptime. - But I sure as hell don't want my ISP to actively hamper my connection. Not helping is a whole lot better than intentionally blocking the way...
Nobody expects home DSL connections to have more than 90% uptime or the transfer bandwidth set in stone. That's what T1, SDSL and enterprise-grade SLA's are for. But I expect my ISP to maintain his contractual obligations in at least *trying* to give the best connection that is feasible from an economical and whatnot point of view.
Traffic shaping and intentionally throttling traffic in applications where sheer bandwidth (not latency) is important is NOT honoring the contract.
To be short: I don't expect my ISP to have 24/7 onsite rapid-response teams, multiple backup lines and
Of course they can't promise a certain bandwidth, because they'd otherwise be swamped with lawsuits. Every dimwit customer would be complaining about the occasional download from Zambia or India creeping along at modem speeds.
But there's clearly a difference between
"line speed 6mbit/sec and from there as fast as the target server allows",
"line speed UP TO 6mbit/sec depending on what your neighborhood does and how much we overbooked our DSLAM"
and
"line speed 6mbit/sec but we're turning it down to modem speed if we don't like your face" or
"line speed 6mbit/sec, but we turn it down for every activity that could actually need that bandwidth"
Home contracts used to promise at least the company's best efforts to maintain a certain service level - and now they're effectively promising nothing at all.
Why anyone would enter a contract that states "You pay me every month full and in advance and I promise you nothing" is beyond me. Even mafia hitmen have more customer friendly terms, I think. But if you think that's fair trade practice, you may like to view that bridge I have on sale here...
Addition:
if you are (even temporarily) successful, file (some) eerily similar patents and found a NEW tiny company for everyone of them. Then shift your manufacturing/moneymaking business along to using the "new" patents. Every "new" patent is a layer of armor around your initial invention and a large "I am an industrious and successful inventor"-sign above your head, attracting and safeguarding investors and partners.
(Which of course must only invest in company B, not in your patent "holding cells" and never in company A!)
If you make new or really improved inventions, use the same template: one company for one patent and let the competition wear themselves out when they try to strike them down one by one. Make a nice and thick network of companies belonging to each other without anyone other than you knowing who owns what, keeping your legal enemies in the dark about where and whom to attack, forcing them to file hundreds of requests to patent offices and company registrars.
(This model is simplified and idealized, but it's a lot better than nothing. And orders of magnitude better than just starting your company with full liability with patents and manufacturing processes together.)
... until Tom, Dick and Harry start patenting YOUR invention afterwards. And then battling it out in the courts with the deepest pocket winning and then preventing anyone from using that technology.
:)
No, the only possible course is this:
Found company "Example A limited" on the cheap, stock capital 1$. You are of course owner and CEO of that company, filing your patent with the USPTO. The sole purpose of this company is licensing this single patent, the only employee is you and its only asset is your invention.
Then found company "Example B limited". Same procedure, you are owner and CEO. The purpose of this company is producing useful merchandise from your invention, which is of course only licensed (for 1$/year) from company A.
If you have 300$ to burn, you could even create a small holding structure, with "Example holding limited" as the "root" node becoming the owner of company A and B, further protecting you against liability and lawsuit risks, which always arise when dealing with start-ups in fierce competition and a 2 ton gorilla in the market.
Whatever happens to company B doesn't affect A in any way under most circumstances (except for malice and severe negligence, I think). And as company A doesn't do anything other than holding a patent and licensing it to anyone who wants, it won't go down easily.
If the worst case happens and B goes bust, you could still license your patent through A on your terms, for 1$/year for everyone except BigOil Inc., who would have to pony up, say, half a billion per month. Your patent, your terms.
Sticking it to The Man for fun and profit. Behave responsibly
But given the status of Microsoft in the OS sector, it's not credible to think they are somehow forced to implement DRM technology at the kernel level.
What would MS had to gain or lose from NOT implementing DRM? Apple gaining more foothold in the music download market because of all the major labels switching to iTMS? So what? Apple already dominates that market and Microsoft shot themselves in their feet a hundred times, not to mention selling maybe half a dozen Zunes worldwide that aren't even compatible with themselves.
With all this DRM and proprietary crap they try to build the same vendor lock-in framework as usual, save the fact that there's no one to lock in except the mentioned half dozen unluckly Zune buyers. Vendor lock-in is all nice and cozy, but wouldn't you do that AFTER you gained a significant userbase?
And don't pretend the Apple marketshare would somehow explode if HD content would only be available through Mac-based systems. Their marketshare is growing because of heavy-handed Microsoft behavior and the constant face-slapping of their customers. Looking around in the libray, I see at least 20% MacBooks and their share is growing pretty fast. Even if I still keep using Windows, a lot of users don't. And with all this kerfuffle around everything even loosely media-related on Windows Vista, I cannot sanely recommend Windows for my non-geeky clients and friends. I always avoided Linux and Mac because of the effort of relearning, switching and all the problems associated with that. After all, most people just want it to work, so the system that was fastest to install and get email/video/music/word processing running was what I recommended everyone. I'm lazy, I admit.
But now I've no clear choice. Recommending Vista is out of the question and it MAY be that using MacOS is the quickest just-get-going solution of todays' market. Microsoft deliberately killed off backward-compatibility and ease-of-use, which leaves an expensive syste, only moderately secured and unable to do things it's competitors can straight out of the box. You can kill your cash-cow, even as a monopolist. And maybe we're witnessing this process right now...
I don't think anyone can force an 800lbs gorilla to dance to your tune. Microsoft does this little DRM tap dance out of their own will and in shameless pursuit of sheeple-money.
Until you have
:)
a) two griefers on both teams, making it impossible to play normally.
b) been auto-kickbanned for too many teamkills while you were out of your mind trying to get rid of that idiot.
c) been totally pwned because your griefer is blocking the only access to the hostages.
I've been there, a lot. Oh and
d) if you try to votekick/kill/annoy the annoyer, half the server population will think, you are the actual perp
e) votekicks never succeed because there's frag-greedy people on the other team cheering to exploit your team's weakness. (the same people who never allow the cheater on their team get kicked, because of the same reasons)
Love it, change it or leave it. That are your only options in any situation anywhere. Half the people in a MP FPS totally love your team being stuck in the spawn room or getting mauled by wallhacking autoshoot-autoaim-fastrunners. Some quit instantly and you can't change a thing.
I know where "NetRage" comes from, I tell ya
Yes. But who actually goes crawling through the web to find that out? Okay, Greenpeace should have done it, before crying out lout.
But isn't Apple renowned for being ahead of the competition AND actually announcing that? (Once their products are ready to ship, of course) Then why didn't they just print their enviro efforts and accomplishments on every box they sell? To tell the customers *another* reason why paying a bit more is rightly justified and to tell their competitors where to stick it...
That's right.
Not communicating about your future products is okay, as the only possible thing you could hurt your sales.
Not communicating environmental efforts is not okay, as you theoretically could hurt anyone else with your toxic waste.
Any other company on the face of the earth is, if keeping a low profile on its environmental impact, wasting toxic stuff like there's no tomorrow.
And not only did Apple hide their environmental plans, they also hid or at least not trumpeted the status they already reached. I'm sure if there'd been a sticker on the iPod/iBook package saying "oooh we're so green AND stylish, look we have already accomplished A, B and C", Greenpeace wouldn't have a leg to stand on as thousands of green Apple zealots and fanboys would've already bashed the competition senseless.
Oh yes, it is a financial institution. It deals with money, and only with money. I don't care how they describe themselves or what their legal status is, they are a de-facto bank and when challenged before a reasonably well educated court with a reasonably skilled lawyer, they'll get to be held on public standards. "If it quacks like a duck..." and so on. To bring some analogies to the table: if a bakery sells cars, they still must have seatbelts and if the car dealer sells bread, anyone can reasonably expect them not to put glass shards in it.
Oh yes, you hit the nerve right with this one. Spammers are worse than petty thieves, burglars and even carjackers: they steal time from millions and millions of people all at once. In severity_of_crime = impact_of_crime x number_of_pple_affected, they score below Pol Pot and Stalin, but way above Charles Manson, I suppose. Causing serious grievance to a dozen people is effectively on the same scale as causing a minimal nuisance to hundreds of millions, at least in my opinion. One murder brings the death penalty and disrupting the communication of billions of people should bring it, too.
Even the most minuscule mini-crimes *should* add up on your crime record, the same way as three thefts yield three times the punishment.
After all, it's not one tiny mail that gets the spammers electrocuted, but the intent and action to disrupt the private communication of billions of people all around the world, steal countless cpu-hours and several MWh of electricity from everyone, saturate networks links worldwide and force society to invest more than a hundred thousand man-hours in implementing and updating spam filters. Stealing everyone fractions of a cent is still stealing, as every slashdotter will know.
Killing one person will get you life imprisonment or capital punishment, as will robbing 30+ elderly pple OR stealing 300+ laptop computers OR 1'000+ iPods OR scratching 10'000 cars. And so should spamming 2'000'000'000 mail accounts. Bring on the torches and pitchforks, we have some vigilante action to do.
You cannot cover all incoming vectors, there's just too many of 'em. And every program you run opens another, no thanks. With the kernel reasonably trustworthy sealed-off from anything, you may have a chance of recovering from any other disaster without re-installing everything but the kitchen sink. Then you can trust the kernel to report processes, file permissions and dir contents correctly, which can then be correctly terminated.
A compromised kernel allows you neither: dir contents are inaccurate, malware has its processes hidden from the taskmanager, its files from the explorer and whatever deletion requests your antivirus software issues, they're not going to be carried out at all. As long as you can't trust the kernel, everything you try is moot and converse, if you can trust the kernel, you can start repairing the system from secure sources (cdrom, intranet etc.). And since nothing can wedge itself too deep anywhere, repairing and cleaning should be feasible, at least.
Aargh, noo, it can NOT patch explorer.exe, because the kernel will not allow that. File permission, user rights, Windows system file protection, system rollback, whatever you like. But you're not going to hack away at any file in the Windows-Subfolders without the kernel noticing. And that's exactly the reason why nobody should have access to it: so he can't patch explorer.exe without the security infrastructure responding.
Obviously you don't live in the US: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stand-your-ground_law
:)
The law has some bad consequences, no need to tell me about that. But trespassers have a hard time down in Texas, I tell you. You don't violate others privacy and living grounds without a clear imminent danger. Try entering the Area 51 (or any fenced-off commercial property, for that matter), if you think I'm just a gun-toting extremist