After over ten years of destroying businesses and hurting people while hiding behind a blank gray wall of "policy", Paypal are kidding themselves if they think that they can ever recover the goodwill that they've burned.
Well said! But PayPal also has some stiff competition from better services with vastly superior reputations such as Dwolla, Stripe, Amazon payments, Google Checkout, Square, etc.
If taxpayer money is going to fund broadband, then the taxpayers should *own* the broadband infrastructure it created and lease that back to the broadband providers. I'd be willing to pay a tax on broadband if it chipped at the anti-consumer/anti-innovation broadband monopolies that exist now and put ownership in the hands of those who use it. As it is, I already pay a high price for sub-par broadband access from a company that has openly abused its monopoly because I don't have any other options. It kills me that U.S. providers brag about "lightning fast" speeds (which is about 93,000 miles per second) that are actually "up to" XX mbps (they don't guarantee high speeds, just bill for them), while providers in Japan and South Korea offer substantially faster speeds at substantially lower prices.
I was down there on Day 2 photographing demonstrators and police. This was Sunday, so the NYPD was able to block off Wall Street, the bull, areas near banks, etc. so disruptions by the demonstrators were minimal. An Anon told me they had been forced away from Battery Park and into Zuccotti Park the night before, but there didn't seem to be much tension between demonstrators and police at the time and some of the police seemed friendly with demonstrators. Demonstrators have made it clear time and time again that they are also fighting on behalf of NYPD officers.
From reports I've read through Twitter and elsewhere, some NYPD officers have shown at least some support for demonstrators but the "white shirt" commanding officers are the ones who usually instigate trouble. I can't verify this directly, but in many of the photos and videos I've seen of arrests and attacks on demonstrators, "white shirts" appear to have been directly involved. The now-infamous pepper spraying of penned in female demonstrators was done by a white shirt officer who also appears to have sprayed some of his officers as well.
I'm planning to head back to Zuccotti Park this week to get more photos, so I'll have a better idea of how much things have changed in the past week or so.
I know bribery is accepted practice in the US but here in the EU it is still frowned upon.
Resorting to bribery would signal that Google competitors have given up on competing by creating a better product and instead have to resort to simply paying users to make the switch. It's like being asked to drop your supermodel girlfriend for a bag lady in exchange for a suitcase full of cash.
In the past, I would have agreed but now I'm not so sure. Microsoft may still hold the largest chunk of the OS pie, but I think it has lost considerable credibility with consumers. Failing to play by the rules has worked for Microsoft in the past, but I don't think that is going to work much longer. I think consumers are growing tired of spending money on inferior software and this discontentment will probably extend to Internet Explorer if it can't play by the rules. HTML 5 is supposed to eliminate competing standards so that everything can work off the same set of rules. For a developer, this is a godsend. No more developing standards compliant code and then having to write bad code in order to appease Internet Explorer. I expect we'll see a developer backlash against browsers that aren't compatible with the standards and this will translate to either Microsoft playing by the rules or watching its browser market share plummet.
That's fair. I would hope that all news organizations are viewed with some level of skepticism because there is always the risk of bias -- whether from non-profit donors, advertisers, or editors with an agenda.
I apologize my comment came off as an attack against you. Wasn't my intention. The bias comment wasn't directed at you at all and I wasn't trying to generalize. I was just pointing out that the organization I worked for had been criticized for bias based on nothing more than the political leanings of the donors and that the accusations were baseless -- in my experience with that particular organization. My point was that it is possible for a non-profit journalism organization to be unbiased, regardless of its source of funding.
Lets all take a cue from Woodward and Bernstein, who all these J school grads aspire to emulate - follow the money. These groups are being funded by people with agendas, just like the media they purport to study/critique.
It's a legitimate concern, but one that can't be used with a broad stroke like you just did. Take ProPublica, for instance. It's funded by left-leaning Herbert and Marion Sandler yet headed by former Wall Street Journal managing editor Paul Steiger -- and it's staffed with award-winning journalists from major news organizations across the country who have already proven their objectivity and professionalism. The suggestion that the journalists that make up ProPublica could somehow be swayed by the donors is silly. There's nothing really the donors could hold over any of their heads; they could just as easily return to the for-profit news organizations most of them came from and I can't imagine any of them would compromise their journalistic integrity for a job they don't need. I was one of the first batch of reporter interns for Publica, so I speak from my own experience. No one outside of the newsroom was allowed to know what we were investigating (something that drove my friends and roommates nuts with curiosity), and my understanding is that the donors didn't even know what investigations were underway until they read them in the newspaper or saw them on TV with everyone else. But, people who are convinced an organization is biased will also find "evidence" of that bias when the facts don't match their preconceived notions of truth.
Even if that's the case, Netflix is punishing the people who are willingly paying for legal content. This is the kind of abuse that makes it understandable for people to throw their hands up in exasperation and say "hey, I tried to hand my money over for legal content but they took advantage of me. Piracy is so much easier to deal with."
...and WSJ's position is backed by evidence. Typical Japanese Internet users were blazing at 50Mbps at about $30 a month in 2007 while U.S. users were paying about $50 for 6Mbps. Why? Government infusion of cash and competition.
See http://www.infoworld.com/article/07/04/04/HNjapbroadband_1.html
Think about it: Linux users aren't dropping hundreds of dollars on OS upgrades, software suites, firewalls and anti-virus software. We have all that for zero cost. We're not wasting money on over-priced crap software that has free open-source alternatives which means that we have all of this extra money to spend on high-quality software that does provide something we want and can't get through open source. Good games fit into that category but certainly are not alone in that regard. Look at the number of Linux users that have been begging and pleading for a Linux version of Photoshop.
True about GoDaddy. After about 10 years of being a GoDaddy customer I've finally made the decision to move my domains to another registrar...eNom. Now where do I go?
What made Facebook different from other social networking sites is that, in the beginning, it was a social network available only to college students. Within that exclusive bubble, members existed within communities limited to members of their college or university. By default, profiles were only available to be seen by academic peers -- the people you have class with or pass by on campus. Before Facebook opened its doors to everyone, most Facebook social connections were those that already existed in the real-world, so privacy wasn't as big as an issue because it remained private within a limited community of peers.
Facebook built its success on this exclusive-access strategy and Facebook users have become accustomed to a certain level of privacy not found on other social networks such as MySpace, where social connections are less about adding actual friends as they are about racking up a huge number of virtual friends they've never actually met. In this sense, Facebook has broken the trust with the very users that have made it successful by taking away people's decision to decide what to share with their friends and what not to -- and going a step further by making that information available to third parties. Facebook users view this as a betrayal of an unspoken social contract and they have every right to feel this way because it is a sudden and drastic change of direction from what they've been led to expect over the past few years.
It seems very hypocritical for the French government to demand that ISPs cut Internet access to customers who download copyrighted data given the fact that France is widely known to be an aggressive practitioner of economic espionage against its allies. Apparently stealing billions of dollars worth of technological research from the companies of other countries is okay but downloading a $0.99 song is unforgivable.
In most cases, I would agree. But considering that Walmart seems to have a very large customer base among the elderly, I think it's fairly certain that some grandparents on Social Security, who don't know a monitor from a mouse, are going to proudly buy one of these as a gift for a grandchild thinking it is that cool game system they saw on TV and learn too late, when they see the look of disappointment on little Johnny's face, that it isn't the real deal.
I think a more important issue is the possibility that Comcast is breaking some federal and state criminal laws by using hacker tactics to thwart filesharing. Comcast is pulling a Man-in-the-Middle attack which amounts to fraud and impersonation, not to mention Denial-of-Service. My state law, for instance, makes the following a criminal offense: "Causing computer output to purposely be false for, but not
limited to, the purpose of obtaining money, property, or services for oneself or another by
means of false or fraudulent pretenses, representations, or promises."
I think Comcast is certainly falling into this general area of computer crime.
According to http://www.savetheinternet.com/, it has already happened with Canada's version of AT&T blocking access to the Telecommunications Workers Union.
I think the spammers are bluffing anyway. I don't think the list has been cracked. Here's why:
The spammer(s) in this case have been targeted by the Blue Security community, which means that a number of people on their spam lists are using Blue Security. So, all they need to do is simply spam those lists again with the claim that Blue Security's user list has been cracked. It is guaranteed that every Blue Security user on the list will receive the email and think they have been targeted specifically. For all those other people receiving the spam, they have no idea what Blue Security is and simply delete the message without a second thought. It's a numbers game.
The other reason I don't think the list has been cracked is because only one of the 6 email addresses I use through Blue Security has received these spams. That email address happens to be the oldest email address I have -- the one that is on the most spam lists and receives the most spam anyway.
True, idiot end-users are ultimately at fault. Nonetheless, spyware developers prey upon the weak-minded and computer-illiterate in the same way other criminals do. Spyware is a threat to commerce and costs money to eradicate. Multiply the negative costs in dollars times millions and the problem really adds up. It is therefore in the public interest for the government to step up and protect the idiots -- as well as the rest of us who still get indirect fallout from problems created by the idiots (e.g. slower networks, more restrictions placed on all broadband users because of the idiots, etc).
Mostly though, I'm still waiting for Congress to authorize the death penalty for spammers.
On the one hand, the companies are paying for "clicks". Unless the contract is explicit about what constitutes a "click", it sounds like they're paying for clicks. And what the heck is a "fraudulent click"? I mean, how do you fake a click?
What happens if, in some freak accident, your biometric identifier finger is severed and misplaced -- do you have to purchase all of your music all over again?
Slashdot Mirror
After over ten years of destroying businesses and hurting people while hiding behind a blank gray wall of "policy", Paypal are kidding themselves if they think that they can ever recover the goodwill that they've burned.
Well said! But PayPal also has some stiff competition from better services with vastly superior reputations such as Dwolla, Stripe, Amazon payments, Google Checkout, Square, etc.
Er, I just realized that, in my ranting, my comments on "lightning speed" make no sense. Apples and oranges...
If taxpayer money is going to fund broadband, then the taxpayers should *own* the broadband infrastructure it created and lease that back to the broadband providers. I'd be willing to pay a tax on broadband if it chipped at the anti-consumer/anti-innovation broadband monopolies that exist now and put ownership in the hands of those who use it. As it is, I already pay a high price for sub-par broadband access from a company that has openly abused its monopoly because I don't have any other options. It kills me that U.S. providers brag about "lightning fast" speeds (which is about 93,000 miles per second) that are actually "up to" XX mbps (they don't guarantee high speeds, just bill for them), while providers in Japan and South Korea offer substantially faster speeds at substantially lower prices.
I was down there on Day 2 photographing demonstrators and police. This was Sunday, so the NYPD was able to block off Wall Street, the bull, areas near banks, etc. so disruptions by the demonstrators were minimal. An Anon told me they had been forced away from Battery Park and into Zuccotti Park the night before, but there didn't seem to be much tension between demonstrators and police at the time and some of the police seemed friendly with demonstrators. Demonstrators have made it clear time and time again that they are also fighting on behalf of NYPD officers. From reports I've read through Twitter and elsewhere, some NYPD officers have shown at least some support for demonstrators but the "white shirt" commanding officers are the ones who usually instigate trouble. I can't verify this directly, but in many of the photos and videos I've seen of arrests and attacks on demonstrators, "white shirts" appear to have been directly involved. The now-infamous pepper spraying of penned in female demonstrators was done by a white shirt officer who also appears to have sprayed some of his officers as well. I'm planning to head back to Zuccotti Park this week to get more photos, so I'll have a better idea of how much things have changed in the past week or so.
I know bribery is accepted practice in the US but here in the EU it is still frowned upon.
Resorting to bribery would signal that Google competitors have given up on competing by creating a better product and instead have to resort to simply paying users to make the switch. It's like being asked to drop your supermodel girlfriend for a bag lady in exchange for a suitcase full of cash.
In the past, I would have agreed but now I'm not so sure. Microsoft may still hold the largest chunk of the OS pie, but I think it has lost considerable credibility with consumers. Failing to play by the rules has worked for Microsoft in the past, but I don't think that is going to work much longer. I think consumers are growing tired of spending money on inferior software and this discontentment will probably extend to Internet Explorer if it can't play by the rules. HTML 5 is supposed to eliminate competing standards so that everything can work off the same set of rules. For a developer, this is a godsend. No more developing standards compliant code and then having to write bad code in order to appease Internet Explorer. I expect we'll see a developer backlash against browsers that aren't compatible with the standards and this will translate to either Microsoft playing by the rules or watching its browser market share plummet.
That's fair. I would hope that all news organizations are viewed with some level of skepticism because there is always the risk of bias -- whether from non-profit donors, advertisers, or editors with an agenda. I apologize my comment came off as an attack against you. Wasn't my intention. The bias comment wasn't directed at you at all and I wasn't trying to generalize. I was just pointing out that the organization I worked for had been criticized for bias based on nothing more than the political leanings of the donors and that the accusations were baseless -- in my experience with that particular organization. My point was that it is possible for a non-profit journalism organization to be unbiased, regardless of its source of funding.
Lets all take a cue from Woodward and Bernstein, who all these J school grads aspire to emulate - follow the money. These groups are being funded by people with agendas, just like the media they purport to study/critique.
It's a legitimate concern, but one that can't be used with a broad stroke like you just did. Take ProPublica, for instance. It's funded by left-leaning Herbert and Marion Sandler yet headed by former Wall Street Journal managing editor Paul Steiger -- and it's staffed with award-winning journalists from major news organizations across the country who have already proven their objectivity and professionalism. The suggestion that the journalists that make up ProPublica could somehow be swayed by the donors is silly. There's nothing really the donors could hold over any of their heads; they could just as easily return to the for-profit news organizations most of them came from and I can't imagine any of them would compromise their journalistic integrity for a job they don't need. I was one of the first batch of reporter interns for Publica, so I speak from my own experience. No one outside of the newsroom was allowed to know what we were investigating (something that drove my friends and roommates nuts with curiosity), and my understanding is that the donors didn't even know what investigations were underway until they read them in the newspaper or saw them on TV with everyone else. But, people who are convinced an organization is biased will also find "evidence" of that bias when the facts don't match their preconceived notions of truth.
Hahaha! That is one of the funniest things I've ever read on Slashdot!
Thank you! Fourth-dimension as another dimension of space is college freshman-level mathematics.
Even if that's the case, Netflix is punishing the people who are willingly paying for legal content. This is the kind of abuse that makes it understandable for people to throw their hands up in exasperation and say "hey, I tried to hand my money over for legal content but they took advantage of me. Piracy is so much easier to deal with."
...and WSJ's position is backed by evidence. Typical Japanese Internet users were blazing at 50Mbps at about $30 a month in 2007 while U.S. users were paying about $50 for 6Mbps. Why? Government infusion of cash and competition. See http://www.infoworld.com/article/07/04/04/HNjapbroadband_1.html
Think about it: Linux users aren't dropping hundreds of dollars on OS upgrades, software suites, firewalls and anti-virus software. We have all that for zero cost. We're not wasting money on over-priced crap software that has free open-source alternatives which means that we have all of this extra money to spend on high-quality software that does provide something we want and can't get through open source. Good games fit into that category but certainly are not alone in that regard. Look at the number of Linux users that have been begging and pleading for a Linux version of Photoshop.
True about GoDaddy. After about 10 years of being a GoDaddy customer I've finally made the decision to move my domains to another registrar...eNom. Now where do I go?
What made Facebook different from other social networking sites is that, in the beginning, it was a social network available only to college students. Within that exclusive bubble, members existed within communities limited to members of their college or university. By default, profiles were only available to be seen by academic peers -- the people you have class with or pass by on campus. Before Facebook opened its doors to everyone, most Facebook social connections were those that already existed in the real-world, so privacy wasn't as big as an issue because it remained private within a limited community of peers. Facebook built its success on this exclusive-access strategy and Facebook users have become accustomed to a certain level of privacy not found on other social networks such as MySpace, where social connections are less about adding actual friends as they are about racking up a huge number of virtual friends they've never actually met. In this sense, Facebook has broken the trust with the very users that have made it successful by taking away people's decision to decide what to share with their friends and what not to -- and going a step further by making that information available to third parties. Facebook users view this as a betrayal of an unspoken social contract and they have every right to feel this way because it is a sudden and drastic change of direction from what they've been led to expect over the past few years.
It seems very hypocritical for the French government to demand that ISPs cut Internet access to customers who download copyrighted data given the fact that France is widely known to be an aggressive practitioner of economic espionage against its allies. Apparently stealing billions of dollars worth of technological research from the companies of other countries is okay but downloading a $0.99 song is unforgivable.
In most cases, I would agree. But considering that Walmart seems to have a very large customer base among the elderly, I think it's fairly certain that some grandparents on Social Security, who don't know a monitor from a mouse, are going to proudly buy one of these as a gift for a grandchild thinking it is that cool game system they saw on TV and learn too late, when they see the look of disappointment on little Johnny's face, that it isn't the real deal.
I think a more important issue is the possibility that Comcast is breaking some federal and state criminal laws by using hacker tactics to thwart filesharing. Comcast is pulling a Man-in-the-Middle attack which amounts to fraud and impersonation, not to mention Denial-of-Service. My state law, for instance, makes the following a criminal offense: "Causing computer output to purposely be false for, but not limited to, the purpose of obtaining money, property, or services for oneself or another by means of false or fraudulent pretenses, representations, or promises."
I think Comcast is certainly falling into this general area of computer crime.
Perhaps Microsoft will join forces with AT&T and the NSA and turn its efforts toward data mining.
According to http://www.savetheinternet.com/, it has already happened with Canada's version of AT&T blocking access to the Telecommunications Workers Union.
i ?newsid1122447600,4516,
http://www.freepress.net/news/13604
FreePress.net isn't very optimistic either.
See:
http://www.twu-canada.ca/cgi-bin/news/fullnews.cg
I think the spammers are bluffing anyway. I don't think the list has been cracked. Here's why:
The spammer(s) in this case have been targeted by the Blue Security community, which means that a number of people on their spam lists are using Blue Security. So, all they need to do is simply spam those lists again with the claim that Blue Security's user list has been cracked. It is guaranteed that every Blue Security user on the list will receive the email and think they have been targeted specifically. For all those other people receiving the spam, they have no idea what Blue Security is and simply delete the message without a second thought. It's a numbers game.
The other reason I don't think the list has been cracked is because only one of the 6 email addresses I use through Blue Security has received these spams. That email address happens to be the oldest email address I have -- the one that is on the most spam lists and receives the most spam anyway.
True, idiot end-users are ultimately at fault. Nonetheless, spyware developers prey upon the weak-minded and computer-illiterate in the same way other criminals do. Spyware is a threat to commerce and costs money to eradicate. Multiply the negative costs in dollars times millions and the problem really adds up. It is therefore in the public interest for the government to step up and protect the idiots -- as well as the rest of us who still get indirect fallout from problems created by the idiots (e.g. slower networks, more restrictions placed on all broadband users because of the idiots, etc). Mostly though, I'm still waiting for Congress to authorize the death penalty for spammers.
On the one hand, the companies are paying for "clicks". Unless the contract is explicit about what constitutes a "click", it sounds like they're paying for clicks. And what the heck is a "fraudulent click"? I mean, how do you fake a click?
It's all fun and games until a SimTornado comes and wipes out your city.
What happens if, in some freak accident, your biometric identifier finger is severed and misplaced -- do you have to purchase all of your music all over again?