:-) Close but no... this will not be for processing cards at all, but rather for issuing access codes for Wi-Fi. I didn't want to go into too much detail in the summary so as not to bore people; I can see why it sounds like it would be for card processing.
Its worth keeping in mind that the EU has recently passed a similar directive (covering "data retention") that obliges all EU countries to pass laws within 18 months (or 3 years, depending on the country) on data retention by ISPs.
ISPs will have to keep data for 6 to 24 months. This will exclude URLs visited, but include the name, address, IP adress etc of every user, and also the addreses they send emails to or receive emials from.
ISPs are currently negotiating with national governments on the exact wording of these laws.
Weeeeellllll... sort of. They also like publicity.
About 9 months ago, Sky did an almost identical segement on how Dixons were dropping VCRs because everyone wants DVDs. Guess what? They're still selling VCRs today.
No matter how careful you are, someone can always make off with your laptop if they really want to. Check out this service if you have a Mac... it's a good way to track it down if it gets stolen!
Same here in Ireland. In fact, here you must pay the Irish Music Rights Organisation (IMRO) for *any* music in a public venue, including radio. And they enforce it too! The charges are based on the capacity of the venue, I believe, but once you pay the fee you can play anything you want.
Just another global data point. In Ireland during the bubble, the software industry liked to beat up the government about the impending "skills crisis" (i.e. a lack of coders for US companies in Ireland). So universities were incentivised to start lots of porgramming courses (mostly complete crap).
We recently advertised a (non-software) engineer. We got innundated with applications from new software graduates who were willing to work for very, very little. This was also partly due to them having no recognisable skills for the most part, except for what was essentially a 4-year Java course. No theory, no progression through C and C++, no decent understaning of low-level architecture.
If we had been looking for an entry-level programmer, we could easily have picked one up for EUR 20,000. That's about US$ 8 per hour.
Also bear in mind that Ireland is NOT a cheap place to live. Most things like rent, food, and gas are at least as expensive as in most US cities.
They're trying this in Ireland at the moment... the government is paying for huge amounts of fiber to be put into the ground. There are a number of problems with this that make it a hugely stupid idea for Ireland (might be fine for wherever you live, before I get flamed!)
To start with, Ireland already has a huge amount of unlit fiber in the ground. At the hight of the boom, when Ireland was trying to sell itself as the "eCommerce hub of Europe," about half a dozen telcos laid down glass. The problem? The vast majority of it remains unlit, due to lack of demand.
Secondly, the fiber is mainly being laid to remote rural areas, to satisfy the political necessities of funding this sort of thing (rural communities have huge power here). Unfortunatley, the reality is that 70% of the population lives in three urban areas, and they probably own 90% of the computers. So the fiber is pretty much wasted.
Thirdly, the funding is almost all for stringing long-line fiber, and *not* for popping buildings. So it's likely that the fiber will end up running just too far from anywhere useful to be accessed.
The only people who are benefitting from it so far are the telcos themselves, who are using it for extra capacity in some regions where they had to previously use higher-cost leased lines. Small businesses (the stated intended beneficiaries) have seen little or no imrovements in price or service.
Basically, the Irish government has a longstanding policy of trying to stimulate the internet economy by stimulating supply, rather demand, of IP. Perhaps this is due to lobbying from telcos, perhaps not. Either way, it hasn't done much to help the development of broadband here.
Apparently not.. I sayed in a hostel in Sydney called Wake Up! (complete with extraneous exclamation mark) where everything was shiny, modern and keyless. You needed a swipe to get in everywhere (bedrooms, bathrooms, evelvator etc).
That was fine until the power failed on one floor... lots of fun and games trying to get people out of their keless rooms:-)
Re:Oh man
on
Cyberchondria
·
· Score: 3, Interesting
Well hang on... I would be really, really surprised if SCO actually believes they'll get a fat check from IBM. Put yourself in this situation: if you're a company with a faltering business model, do you
a) Change direction and try and do something more profitable, or b) Sue one of the largest corporations on earth, which happens to have one of the best and most tenacious legal teams in corporate America. Oh, and they're used to fighting multi-decade lawsuits.
Hmmm. IMHO, either SCO have a death wish, or they want to be acquired.
It's an interesting issue. Why have terror gorups (local, national or international) rarely targetted telecommunications infrastructure? After all, telecoms seems to be the perfect target: huge amounts of chaos, economic and political impact, but no loss of life (so much less ill-will from the public and retribution). Has anyone researched such attacks?
They don't even have to involve large-scale disruption like fiber cuts; co-incidentally I just walked back from lunch and passed a streetcorner telco cabinet which has been left wide open for at least 24 hours. It appears to contain all the copper connections for one of the busiest blocks of Dublin, Ireland's business district. All someone needs is a pair of pliers, and there goes the block. Knowing the PTT here, it would take at least a day to recable and repatch.
That's interesting... I wonder if it's illegal in the US for the hotels to do that, since they're not a public telecoms service? It certainly would open up a whole new (evil) revenue stream for them. I bet pizza delivery restaurants would pay good money for that too.
I know it's illegal in the UK now under the RIP bill, but can anyone say for definite if it is in the US?
Not to pour water on a good conspiracy theory, but are people sure this isn't just a misconfigured nnrpd.conf (or equivalent)? It's pretty easy to do; many nntp sites already add an Organization line if there isn't one present -- all it would take is for some admin to foul up a config line.
Not to downplay the significance of companies doing stuff like this, but this may be unintentional. The article doesn't look like it's double-checked the motive.
It sounds like these guys have a severe short-term cashflow problem, rather than a longterm profitability problem... otherwise they could have asked staff to take the cut over the next six months, or take 2 weeks unpaiod vacation some time over the year, etc.
The real problem is that cashflow problems can be extremely hard to get over... and now they've probably alienated most of their remaining staff. I would hope that this comany tried their hardest to liquidate furniture, benefits, executive cars, office space etc before they did this, otherwise they'll have a mass exodus on their hands (which may of course be what they want).
In Europe, where I work, it's much harder to do something like this, for better or for worse; most countries don't allow unilateral cuts.
Slashdot Mirror
It does seem to, thanks. I am awaiting SDK access to see what you can actually do on it.
:-) Close but no... this will not be for processing cards at all, but rather for issuing access codes for Wi-Fi. I didn't want to go into too much detail in the summary so as not to bore people; I can see why it sounds like it would be for card processing.
Peasant farmers with rocket launchers. Lots of aircraft. What could possibly go wrong?
Coffee machine, foo!
But this strategy works so weel for Microsoft.... how could it be wrong :-)
Alex
There's already something similar on the market (no bluetooth though).
Now if only they would ship to Europe...
Its worth keeping in mind that the EU has recently passed a similar directive (covering "data retention") that obliges all EU countries to pass laws within 18 months (or 3 years, depending on the country) on data retention by ISPs.
ISPs will have to keep data for 6 to 24 months. This will exclude URLs visited, but include the name, address, IP adress etc of every user, and also the addreses they send emails to or receive emials from.
ISPs are currently negotiating with national governments on the exact wording of these laws.
Ouch!
Alex
Weeeeellllll... sort of. They also like publicity.
About 9 months ago, Sky did an almost identical segement on how Dixons were dropping VCRs because everyone wants DVDs. Guess what? They're still selling VCRs today.
I'd been using TrackYourMac for over a year but their site (trackyourmac.net) seems to have disappeared and been snarfed by Seeq.com.
:-)
Pity, it gave me a nice, warm false sense of securtiy
nope, Ireland has no iTunes store, despite having Bono. Can we swap?
No matter how careful you are, someone can always make off with your laptop if they really want to. Check out this service if you have a Mac... it's a good way to track it down if it gets stolen!
Same here in Ireland. In fact, here you must pay the Irish Music Rights Organisation (IMRO) for *any* music in a public venue, including radio. And they enforce it too! The charges are based on the capacity of the venue, I believe, but once you pay the fee you can play anything you want.
Thanks,
Alex
Or dogs, or bees, or the dogs with bees in their
mouths and when they bark they shoot bees at you!
Alex
Just another global data point. In Ireland during the bubble, the software industry liked to beat up the government about the impending "skills crisis" (i.e. a lack of coders for US companies in Ireland). So universities were incentivised to start lots of porgramming courses (mostly complete crap).
We recently advertised a (non-software) engineer. We got innundated with applications from new software graduates who were willing to work for very, very little. This was also partly due to them having no recognisable skills for the most part, except for what was essentially a 4-year Java course. No theory, no progression through C and C++, no decent understaning of low-level architecture.
If we had been looking for an entry-level programmer, we could easily have picked one up for EUR 20,000. That's about US$ 8 per hour.
Also bear in mind that Ireland is NOT a cheap place to live. Most things like rent, food, and gas are at least as expensive as in most US cities.
They're trying this in Ireland at the moment... the government is paying for huge amounts of fiber to be put into the ground. There are a number of problems with this that make it a hugely stupid idea for Ireland (might be fine for wherever you live, before I get flamed!)
To start with, Ireland already has a huge amount of unlit fiber in the ground. At the hight of the boom, when Ireland was trying to sell itself as the "eCommerce hub of Europe," about half a dozen telcos laid down glass. The problem? The vast majority of it remains unlit, due to lack of demand.
Secondly, the fiber is mainly being laid to remote rural areas, to satisfy the political necessities of funding this sort of thing (rural communities have huge power here). Unfortunatley, the reality is that 70% of the population lives in three urban areas, and they probably own 90% of the computers. So the fiber is pretty much wasted.
Thirdly, the funding is almost all for stringing long-line fiber, and *not* for popping buildings. So it's likely that the fiber will end up running just too far from anywhere useful to be accessed.
The only people who are benefitting from it so far are the telcos themselves, who are using it for extra capacity in some regions where they had to previously use higher-cost leased lines. Small businesses (the stated intended beneficiaries) have seen little or no imrovements in price or service.
Basically, the Irish government has a longstanding policy of trying to stimulate the internet economy by stimulating supply, rather demand, of IP. Perhaps this is due to lobbying from telcos, perhaps not. Either way, it hasn't done much to help the development of broadband here.
Alex.
Apparently not.. I sayed in a hostel in Sydney called Wake Up! (complete with extraneous exclamation mark) where everything was shiny, modern and keyless. You needed a swipe to get in everywhere (bedrooms, bathrooms, evelvator etc).
:-)
That was fine until the power failed on one floor... lots of fun and games trying to get people out of their keless rooms
Of course, you know that everything is bad for you
...the Official Skittles Vodka website!
That stuff is baaaaaaad.
A.
I got an email inviting me to visit this link to claim my free sweatshirt. No offer of a cash refund though.
...but do they have +2 attack strength?
Well hang on... I would be really, really surprised if SCO actually believes they'll get a fat check from IBM. Put yourself in this situation: if you're a company with a faltering business model, do you
a) Change direction and try and do something more profitable, or
b) Sue one of the largest corporations on earth, which happens to have one of the best and most tenacious legal teams in corporate America. Oh, and they're used to fighting multi-decade lawsuits.
Hmmm. IMHO, either SCO have a death wish, or they want to be acquired.
It's an interesting issue. Why have terror gorups (local, national or international) rarely targetted telecommunications infrastructure? After all, telecoms seems to be the perfect target: huge amounts of chaos, economic and political impact, but no loss of life (so much less ill-will from the public and retribution). Has anyone researched such attacks?
They don't even have to involve large-scale disruption like fiber cuts; co-incidentally I just walked back from lunch and passed a streetcorner telco cabinet which has been left wide open for at least 24 hours. It appears to contain all the copper connections for one of the busiest blocks of Dublin, Ireland's business district. All someone needs is a pair of pliers, and there goes the block. Knowing the PTT here, it would take at least a day to recable and repatch.
Alex
That's interesting... I wonder if it's illegal in the US for the hotels to do that, since they're not a public telecoms service? It certainly would open up a whole new (evil) revenue stream for them. I bet pizza delivery restaurants would pay good money for that too.
I know it's illegal in the UK now under the RIP bill, but can anyone say for definite if it is in the US?
Not to pour water on a good conspiracy theory, but are people sure this isn't just a misconfigured nnrpd.conf (or equivalent)? It's pretty easy to do; many nntp sites already add an Organization line if there isn't one present -- all it would take is for some admin to foul up a config line.
Not to downplay the significance of companies doing stuff like this, but this may be unintentional. The article doesn't look like it's double-checked the motive.
It sounds like these guys have a severe short-term cashflow problem, rather than a longterm profitability problem... otherwise they could have asked staff to take the cut over the next six months, or take 2 weeks unpaiod vacation some time over the year, etc.
The real problem is that cashflow problems can be extremely hard to get over... and now they've probably alienated most of their remaining staff. I would hope that this comany tried their hardest to liquidate furniture, benefits, executive cars, office space etc before they did this, otherwise they'll have a mass exodus on their hands (which may of course be what they want).
In Europe, where I work, it's much harder to do something like this, for better or for worse; most countries don't allow unilateral cuts.
Alex.