From the floor of a warehouse, I agree that it doesn't look like it would help.
When the PHB at Walmart promise "on the shelf on 10/1/07" and you don't see any sales for a week, you can find out _where_ your stuff is. Which is quite difficult in the current system. Then what happens is there's a regular review of your category within the retailer and you will have the best reason of all as to why your product didn't sell better. (It's never good enough) It never got on the shelf!
RFID has many hurdles to cross including the devaluation of the dollar, and their talk was way, way bigger than the possible outcome. But it's a viable solution for some supply chain issues.
The actual HIPAA regs appear quite stringent, but you'll find that they don't make the data more secure.
For example, Use is well-defined in many cases, but actual security mechanisms are not. This kind of programming is right up Microsoft's alley. Not only is the security model pretty weak, there's limited interoperability requirements.
Please, read the standard. It's not fun reading, but the average/.'er will probably discover it addresses some basic stuff, but leaves the door wide open for familiar and massive compromises.
Linux on the desktop has been in great shape for a long time. No, not perfect and certainly more difficult in some ways because of the proprietary stuff out there.
Way, way before Canonical threw money at Linux and Dell, things were moving along quite well and we would have gotten where we are right now, except with less fanfare. There are companies selling preconfigured Linux desktops and some are doing great. It's been this way for a while now. This kind of PR simply doesn't grow healthy Free Software.
Canonical and Novell have very short term interests and are simply standing on the shoulders of a giant. Keep the giant growing and ignore the tiny people on either shoulder.
My water and sewer system, and the system in all the places I've lived, work pretty darned well. I'd be happy with management like that.
Then you don't follow water and sewer politics very closely. It may work, but nowhere near any kind of efficiency and there's always someone gaming the system. You and I generally accept/ignore the inefficiency.
Research William Mulholland and the cronies that kept him in power. It's probably the most well documented case of water politics.
In my limited experience in the U.S., there are two kinds of shops, ones that are good about not stealing software and the other that steals as they see fit. In the case of the shop that steals, they generally swing into compliance if the business takes off. In my limited dealings with my counterparts in Taiwan and China, they operate similarly.
As much as I really, really don't like Microsoft's business practices, this kind of program is just fine by me. It is the brain child of some manager at Microsoft who figured out a novel way to further monetize their customers. Will this manager get a gold star on her review? Probably. Will it fail? (e.g. cost Microsoft a bunch of money) No. Will there be limited/no market penetration? Probably.
Your proposal starts out innocently enough, but doesn't stay that way. You see, as long as humans are involved they will find a way to abuse the system to their exclusive benefit and your detriment..
If this is happening on a wide scale, then is it a crime? Seriously.
Whomever is parading in front of whatever subcommittee can plausibly deny it, so a slap on the wrist is the maximum penalty. Copper is still cut. The worst thing that could ever happen is an over-eager schmuck will "fall on the sword" and lose his job.
Based on my friend who performs fiber installs to the home for the local telco, It's more or less outside the scope of the job order. Is he the kind of guy that would just leave the copper alone and call the install done despite what the work order may say? Yes. Is it happening? Maybe.
Oh, but you and the summary are missing the many, subtler issues that suggest real, bottom-line trouble for ebay with the skype acquisition.
- About a half-billion dollars of the charge is for a payment to Zennström, Friis, and other early Skype investors. Cha-CHING! I've been on the wrong end of a couple of similar (smaller) acquisitions and what typically happens in a well-negotiated deal is ebay (in this case) doesn't pay them whatever they agreed to beyond a token up-front signing payment. Right or wrong, typically the founders don't have enough capital to drag it into court so they take their small pay-out with the original deal and that's the end of it. In this case, ebay negotiated so poorly they couldn't get out of their deal.
- Sure they value deals at Billions(!) but when it comes down to it, normally acquisitions are just not that cash-rich. Except in this case. If they had met their earnings targets, then the payout would have been double the charges they are taking.
- ebay's being very uncharacteristically up-front about the charges. Which suggests to me the damage is far worse that what's being reported. Look at all of the mortgage-backed securities that are still going from billions in valuation to zero overnight.
This suggests there's far more wrong at ebay than right.
If they don't want people messing with their precious phone, then don't buy one. I know that won't play well in the Reality Distortion Field, but their stubborness should not be rewarded.
Now, if it were actually the case that the service providers in the States actually wanted developers to do nifty stuff, then I think the pace of innovation on mobile phones would be quite different. Most of the wireless network providers don't want you to do neat things because that's money out of their pocket.
If there's a benevolent provider, please speak up.
This kind of summary is a pet peeve of mine. "Top Secret Whatever is Leaked!" like this is advertising disguised as news.
Given the end-of-year release of the product, it's in sales, marketing and mass production hands now so there's nothing secret about it.
As a general rule, if something is "leaked" 3 months out, then it's advertising disguised as news because the product is ready for market, sales reps are out placing & promoting the product.
They are moving onto another, probably more sophisticated consumer terror campaign.
What infuriates me is the YEARS have they been able to get away with abusing the judicial system. Could NewYorkCountryLawyer abuse the judicial system, much less a man off the street so much with no consequences whatsoever?
With the sodomized condition of the Federal Attorney Generals Office (200+ political officials have the capacity to meddle in their affairs) and the campaign contributions flowing, there's no consequences awaiting any of the media conglomerates.
This is a perfect example of the powerful working with wanton disregard of the rule of law. Sadly, too few participate in our political system, so the abuse continues.
Inflation does not tax the poor: They have no cash savings.
Using the term "taxes" confuses things a bit. The price of goods is going up faster than anyone's wages during an inflationary period. In the case of the poor, it definitely makes them poorer. The rich? They'll complain as if their situation was different, but the harm is negligible to them.
Inflation does not tax the middle class: They keep their assets in real-estate and mutual funds. -If there is a large property-owning middle class in the system, you may be right. But the general trend in wealth distribution over the last 30 years the U.S. does not support this notion. -A mutual fund does not act as an automatic hedge against inflation. For those of you surprised by this, consider reallocating your mutual funds NOW and learn how to benefit from the dollar devaluation. -The value of a home does not keep up with inflation. It might look like it in some areas, but this is a grossly oversimplified statement.
Inflation forces everyone else to invest in something No. It harms everyone but the wealthy. That's about it.
Not really. The dollar gets its value from what other currency holders are willing to pay for it using another currency.
Books like this disguise the fundamentally boring/abstract issues that few American citizens, want to deal with, much less so the politicians that represent them in any way shape or form. The outcome of these issues is all but the richest Americans will be poorer. Sadly everyone will be standing around yelling "something must be done!" sooner or later. When the time long ago passed when something could be done.
So how does this ruling affect projects like Asterisk? (www.asterisk.org)
Asterisk isn't technically a threat to the telcos. Yes, it can accept voip calls, but it's mostly a software version of a private branch exchange. Meaning, Pay the telco to terminate a couple lines into your office, then connect those lines to Asterisk, then connect a bunch of phones to asterisk.
I've brought the issue up before with my two favorite VOIP-related projects and on both of them no one cares. Where it kills innovation is how **no** business should touch it. Lots do, but they will be forced to pay the vig to the telco's. Vonage is simply the largest one.
My rhetorical question is, if the crackberry people can get a super-duper emergency patent review, (and revocation) why can't the telco's patents be similarly revoked?
I would add to your argument the magic number is probably some small amount of cash and lots of software licensing. Companies love to do this kind of deal and make the numbers look really big.
This kind of financing is the ultimate pyramid scheme. Totally legal too.
Step 1: Sell the first tiny bit of a company to someone for $100. Step 2: Sell the next tiny bit of a company to someone else for $1000. You can casually drop impressive phrases like, "My investors..."
Rinse and repeat minimizing losing control of the company.
Given the amount of wealth held by the top 2% in the U.S., this kind of private placement financing will be quite the norm going forward. Another reason why income and wealth distribution is so important in any given society. With wealth being concentrated in so few individuals, there is no consequence for bad investment decisions. Microsoft can make a whole string of bad investments with no repercussions whatsoever. It simply won't affect their stock price.
We [should] get paid because we're doing something valuable
That's very short-term thinking that is harmful.
If I'm the mightiest tech employer in the U.S. and I say I'm paying too much for you and you are earning $30k/yr, now what? Corporations typically exploit your thinking by doing just that.
A bit of a chip on the shoulder, but the bottom half is right on. They simply can't teach all of the sacrifices made by the labor movement. It's too great a lesson in organization and fighting for change from the bottom up.
To show you how the badly the american worker has screwed themselves, Ken Burns couldn't get the financing for an hours worth of his blockbuster documentaries on the Labor movement, much less find anyone but a few Communists to watch it.
Parent is right. Summary is wrong and deserves a re-write.
The core problem with all of the negative comments about the guy is he has already affect the laws and access to video games in Florida.
I know it's going to fall on deaf ears, but you have to watch out for these guys. They start crazy and somehow gather followers that make them crazier. In this case there is a plenty of morally superior, let's regulate your personal life politically active people that don't have to agree with everything he's saying/doing, but will get behind him because of some strongly held principal they agree with.
Take him seriously otherwise he'll be regulating more than just Floridian's personal lives.
AFAIK it is disabled by default in Windows Server 2003 You would be wrong.
Maybe my comments were too brief regarding servers in a domain controller environment. My point is there are still plenty of open ports and advertised services on a default win2k3 install either joined to a domain or not.
"unnatural" monopolies There is no such thing. There are monopolies, oligopolies, duopolies and a few other well-researched market conditions.
IBM, GM, US Steel, AT&T None of those were/are monopolies. There are monopolies in international cargo shipping (the big-boat kind), international communications, and an operating system developer called Microsoft.
You've never noticed the Microsoft public relations jugernaut then.
I admin a combination of 2000/2003/2003r2 boxes and there are still things that make a security-minded sysadmin's head spin.
-The boxes *still* advertise and have a great number of open ports. -Root is *still* is allowed remote access by default. System root, under a domain controller still advertises itself as ready and waiting for you to login. -Did I mention root remote control is still enabled by default? -I doubt most win32 sysadmins have any idea the number of undocumented systems logging in and doing who-knows-what to the system. If they configured and read their logs the way I do, at least a few of them would wonder what the heck is going on. -Don't get me started with their Rube Goldberg security objects system. Complex and extremely difficult to use, yet exceptions abound when trying to simultaneously harden a system and keep the undocumented features from throwing errors.
Their security reputation has been purchased and PHB's everywhere are lulled into another false sense of security. The good news is I'll never run out of work because they require so much baby sitting compared to a Linux server.
The one thing about capitalism is that it is actually not very kind to monopolies
Funniest and least factual thing I've read all morning. Thanks for that. Actually, capitalism is kindest of all to monopolies. History has repeatedly and universally shown that unregulated markets quickly evolve to monopolies. End of story.
Investors value growth, above all else Wrong again. In general, investors (the kind with 100's of millions) want ROI. ROI is achieved a number of different ways, one of them is the appreciation in value of the stock, another is a dividend, another is interest on debt.
I don't care for Microsoft's business practices one bit, but you'll notice none of the investors are running for the exits. The stock still returns well above average for the category, much less the market in general. As much as./'ers love to hate Microsoft, they aren't going anywhere anytime soon.
I'm sure you've noticed the number of posts with grammar corrections sprinkled throughout the summaries. I try to correct lazy/wrong economic thinking on/.
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From the floor of a warehouse, I agree that it doesn't look like it would help.
When the PHB at Walmart promise "on the shelf on 10/1/07" and you don't see any sales for a week, you can find out _where_ your stuff is. Which is quite difficult in the current system. Then what happens is there's a regular review of your category within the retailer and you will have the best reason of all as to why your product didn't sell better. (It's never good enough) It never got on the shelf!
RFID has many hurdles to cross including the devaluation of the dollar, and their talk was way, way bigger than the possible outcome. But it's a viable solution for some supply chain issues.
I was taking a more circumspect route instead of your more direct opinion. (correct IMHO)
The actual HIPAA regs appear quite stringent, but you'll find that they don't make the data more secure.
/.'er will probably discover it addresses some basic stuff, but leaves the door wide open for familiar and massive compromises.
For example, Use is well-defined in many cases, but actual security mechanisms are not. This kind of programming is right up Microsoft's alley. Not only is the security model pretty weak, there's limited interoperability requirements.
Please, read the standard. It's not fun reading, but the average
http://www.hhs.gov/ocr/hipaa/
Linux on the desktop has been in great shape for a long time. No, not perfect and certainly more difficult in some ways because of the proprietary stuff out there.
Way, way before Canonical threw money at Linux and Dell, things were moving along quite well and we would have gotten where we are right now, except with less fanfare. There are companies selling preconfigured Linux desktops and some are doing great. It's been this way for a while now. This kind of PR simply doesn't grow healthy Free Software.
Canonical and Novell have very short term interests and are simply standing on the shoulders of a giant. Keep the giant growing and ignore the tiny people on either shoulder.
My water and sewer system, and the system in all the places I've lived, work pretty darned well. I'd be happy with management like that.
Then you don't follow water and sewer politics very closely. It may work, but nowhere near any kind of efficiency and there's always someone gaming the system. You and I generally accept/ignore the inefficiency.
Research William Mulholland and the cronies that kept him in power. It's probably the most well documented case of water politics.
In my limited experience in the U.S., there are two kinds of shops, ones that are good about not stealing software and the other that steals as they see fit. In the case of the shop that steals, they generally swing into compliance if the business takes off. In my limited dealings with my counterparts in Taiwan and China, they operate similarly.
As much as I really, really don't like Microsoft's business practices, this kind of program is just fine by me. It is the brain child of some manager at Microsoft who figured out a novel way to further monetize their customers. Will this manager get a gold star on her review? Probably. Will it fail? (e.g. cost Microsoft a bunch of money) No. Will there be limited/no market penetration? Probably.
Your proposal starts out innocently enough, but doesn't stay that way. You see, as long as humans are involved they will find a way to abuse the system to their exclusive benefit and your detriment..
If this is happening on a wide scale, then is it a crime? Seriously.
Whomever is parading in front of whatever subcommittee can plausibly deny it, so a slap on the wrist is the maximum penalty. Copper is still cut. The worst thing that could ever happen is an over-eager schmuck will "fall on the sword" and lose his job.
Based on my friend who performs fiber installs to the home for the local telco, It's more or less outside the scope of the job order. Is he the kind of guy that would just leave the copper alone and call the install done despite what the work order may say? Yes. Is it happening? Maybe.
Oh, but you and the summary are missing the many, subtler issues that suggest real, bottom-line trouble for ebay with the skype acquisition.
- About a half-billion dollars of the charge is for a payment to Zennström, Friis, and other early Skype investors. Cha-CHING! I've been on the wrong end of a couple of similar (smaller) acquisitions and what typically happens in a well-negotiated deal is ebay (in this case) doesn't pay them whatever they agreed to beyond a token up-front signing payment. Right or wrong, typically the founders don't have enough capital to drag it into court so they take their small pay-out with the original deal and that's the end of it. In this case, ebay negotiated so poorly they couldn't get out of their deal.
- Sure they value deals at Billions(!) but when it comes down to it, normally acquisitions are just not that cash-rich. Except in this case. If they had met their earnings targets, then the payout would have been double the charges they are taking.
- ebay's being very uncharacteristically up-front about the charges. Which suggests to me the damage is far worse that what's being reported. Look at all of the mortgage-backed securities that are still going from billions in valuation to zero overnight.
This suggests there's far more wrong at ebay than right.
If they don't want people messing with their precious phone, then don't buy one. I know that won't play well in the Reality Distortion Field, but their stubborness should not be rewarded.
Now, if it were actually the case that the service providers in the States actually wanted developers to do nifty stuff, then I think the pace of innovation on mobile phones would be quite different. Most of the wireless network providers don't want you to do neat things because that's money out of their pocket.
If there's a benevolent provider, please speak up.
This kind of summary is a pet peeve of mine. "Top Secret Whatever is Leaked!" like this is advertising disguised as news.
Given the end-of-year release of the product, it's in sales, marketing and mass production hands now so there's nothing secret about it.
As a general rule, if something is "leaked" 3 months out, then it's advertising disguised as news because the product is ready for market, sales reps are out placing & promoting the product.
Parent is right on.
They are moving onto another, probably more sophisticated consumer terror campaign.
What infuriates me is the YEARS have they been able to get away with abusing the judicial system. Could NewYorkCountryLawyer abuse the judicial system, much less a man off the street so much with no consequences whatsoever?
With the sodomized condition of the Federal Attorney Generals Office (200+ political officials have the capacity to meddle in their affairs) and the campaign contributions flowing, there's no consequences awaiting any of the media conglomerates.
This is a perfect example of the powerful working with wanton disregard of the rule of law. Sadly, too few participate in our political system, so the abuse continues.
Inflation does not tax the poor: They have no cash savings.
Using the term "taxes" confuses things a bit. The price of goods is going up faster than anyone's wages during an inflationary period. In the case of the poor, it definitely makes them poorer. The rich? They'll complain as if their situation was different, but the harm is negligible to them.
Inflation does not tax the middle class: They keep their assets in real-estate and mutual funds.
-If there is a large property-owning middle class in the system, you may be right. But the general trend in wealth distribution over the last 30 years the U.S. does not support this notion.
-A mutual fund does not act as an automatic hedge against inflation. For those of you surprised by this, consider reallocating your mutual funds NOW and learn how to benefit from the dollar devaluation.
-The value of a home does not keep up with inflation. It might look like it in some areas, but this is a grossly oversimplified statement.
Inflation forces everyone else to invest in something
No. It harms everyone but the wealthy. That's about it.
Not really. The dollar gets its value from what other currency holders are willing to pay for it using another currency.
Books like this disguise the fundamentally boring/abstract issues that few American citizens, want to deal with, much less so the politicians that represent them in any way shape or form. The outcome of these issues is all but the richest Americans will be poorer. Sadly everyone will be standing around yelling "something must be done!" sooner or later. When the time long ago passed when something could be done.
So how does this ruling affect projects like Asterisk? (www.asterisk.org)
Asterisk isn't technically a threat to the telcos. Yes, it can accept voip calls, but it's mostly a software version of a private branch exchange. Meaning, Pay the telco to terminate a couple lines into your office, then connect those lines to Asterisk, then connect a bunch of phones to asterisk.
I've brought the issue up before with my two favorite VOIP-related projects and on both of them no one cares. Where it kills innovation is how **no** business should touch it. Lots do, but they will be forced to pay the vig to the telco's. Vonage is simply the largest one.
My rhetorical question is, if the crackberry people can get a super-duper emergency patent review, (and revocation) why can't the telco's patents be similarly revoked?
I would add to your argument the magic number is probably some small amount of cash and lots of software licensing. Companies love to do this kind of deal and make the numbers look really big.
This kind of financing is the ultimate pyramid scheme. Totally legal too.
Step 1: Sell the first tiny bit of a company to someone for $100.
Step 2: Sell the next tiny bit of a company to someone else for $1000. You can casually drop impressive phrases like, "My investors..."
Rinse and repeat minimizing losing control of the company.
Given the amount of wealth held by the top 2% in the U.S., this kind of private placement financing will be quite the norm going forward. Another reason why income and wealth distribution is so important in any given society. With wealth being concentrated in so few individuals, there is no consequence for bad investment decisions. Microsoft can make a whole string of bad investments with no repercussions whatsoever. It simply won't affect their stock price.
We [should] get paid because we're doing something valuable
That's very short-term thinking that is harmful.
If I'm the mightiest tech employer in the U.S. and I say I'm paying too much for you and you are earning $30k/yr, now what? Corporations typically exploit your thinking by doing just that.
A bit of a chip on the shoulder, but the bottom half is right on. They simply can't teach all of the sacrifices made by the labor movement. It's too great a lesson in organization and fighting for change from the bottom up.
To show you how the badly the american worker has screwed themselves, Ken Burns couldn't get the financing for an hours worth of his blockbuster documentaries on the Labor movement, much less find anyone but a few Communists to watch it.
Parent is right. Summary is wrong and deserves a re-write.
The core problem with all of the negative comments about the guy is he has already affect the laws and access to video games in Florida.
I know it's going to fall on deaf ears, but you have to watch out for these guys. They start crazy and somehow gather followers that make them crazier. In this case there is a plenty of morally superior, let's regulate your personal life politically active people that don't have to agree with everything he's saying/doing, but will get behind him because of some strongly held principal they agree with.
Take him seriously otherwise he'll be regulating more than just Floridian's personal lives.
AFAIK it is disabled by default in Windows Server 2003
You would be wrong.
Maybe my comments were too brief regarding servers in a domain controller environment. My point is there are still plenty of open ports and advertised services on a default win2k3 install either joined to a domain or not.
"unnatural" monopolies
There is no such thing. There are monopolies, oligopolies, duopolies and a few other well-researched market conditions.
IBM, GM, US Steel, AT&T
None of those were/are monopolies. There are monopolies in international cargo shipping (the big-boat kind), international communications, and an operating system developer called Microsoft.
You've never noticed the Microsoft public relations jugernaut then.
I admin a combination of 2000/2003/2003r2 boxes and there are still things that make a security-minded sysadmin's head spin.
-The boxes *still* advertise and have a great number of open ports.
-Root is *still* is allowed remote access by default. System root, under a domain controller still advertises itself as ready and waiting for you to login.
-Did I mention root remote control is still enabled by default?
-I doubt most win32 sysadmins have any idea the number of undocumented systems logging in and doing who-knows-what to the system. If they configured and read their logs the way I do, at least a few of them would wonder what the heck is going on.
-Don't get me started with their Rube Goldberg security objects system. Complex and extremely difficult to use, yet exceptions abound when trying to simultaneously harden a system and keep the undocumented features from throwing errors.
Their security reputation has been purchased and PHB's everywhere are lulled into another false sense of security. The good news is I'll never run out of work because they require so much baby sitting compared to a Linux server.
The one thing about capitalism is that it is actually not very kind to monopolies
./'ers love to hate Microsoft, they aren't going anywhere anytime soon.
/.
Funniest and least factual thing I've read all morning. Thanks for that. Actually, capitalism is kindest of all to monopolies. History has repeatedly and universally shown that unregulated markets quickly evolve to monopolies. End of story.
Investors value growth, above all else
Wrong again. In general, investors (the kind with 100's of millions) want ROI. ROI is achieved a number of different ways, one of them is the appreciation in value of the stock, another is a dividend, another is interest on debt.
I don't care for Microsoft's business practices one bit, but you'll notice none of the investors are running for the exits. The stock still returns well above average for the category, much less the market in general. As much as
I'm sure you've noticed the number of posts with grammar corrections sprinkled throughout the summaries. I try to correct lazy/wrong economic thinking on
Well said. Deserves to be modded informative at least.