This is simply not true.
I've bought somewhere in the neighborhood of 150 CDs, and though most of them cost me more like $12 than $16, I feel like at least 80% of them were worth what I paid or more. Apparently millions of people agree with me, since music stores are still selling CDs. Personally, I buy almost all my CDs from Amazon, not brick-and-mortar, because I find that to be most convenient.
If you have a place you're happy buying from (in this case, BMG), and you get a better deal there, that's great. Feel free to tell all your friends, and if they agree that it works for them, then it will increase in market-share and the price of CDs will approach that $7 instead of the $16 you name.
It's $16 because people are still happy to pay $16 if they get the CD they want. In my book, and in the book of practically every economist, that means they're worth $16.
There is something to that, though.
I'm in IT, I'm paid hourly. Where I work, we get paid normal-rate overtime, which is to say if we work 50 hours a week, we get paid for 50, not 40 and not 60.
I get pissed at people who characterize physical labor as somehow more "real" work, but there are physical limitations that are run up against in manual labor way before they are in "knowledge labor". Your body actually wears out. Sure, your mind does too, and everyone needs sleep, but I bet it's easier to do my job for 12 hours straight than to shovel coal for 12 hours straight.
Now, this isn't to say IT workers shouldn't still ask for OT. It encourages employers to hire enough workers for reasonable hours, rather than a couple workers for ridiculous hours, and it realistically reflects the fact that overtime usually represents work of more than average value.
But I don't really think the government should require it. I can just barely get on board with them requiring it for manual labor.
Wow. Some really appaling economics failures in this post.
Let's start with: "Employers have ALWAYS sought to hire the least amount of people possible. The idea that allowing them to treat their employees like shit will change has no basis in reality."
They SHOULD always seek to hire the least amount possible. If it costs me $10 to make my product (car, ladder, gallon of milk, whatever) then I can sell it to you for $20 and make $10 of profit. If I have to hire three times as many people, it costs me more than $20 to make it now, so no way am I selling it to you for that. The only people who benefit from that are the extra workers, who are effectively being paid to do nothing, since they add no value above the original staff. Forcing someone to pay you when you aren't giving them value in return is theft.
Your problem is you have this mental image of these magical corporate vaults that just fill themselves with money, and the corporations horde it all. With that as your standard, it's no wonder theft seems appealing. But that vision just isn't true. They're filling that vault by charging YOU for their products. If you rob their vault, they're just going to charge you more. The way to make things better isn't to steal harder or faster, it's to work in good faith with the corporation to make the system as efficient as possible. In free trade, both parties profit. Parasites only profit until their host dies or fights back.
Another, more glaring flaw: "Since there has never been 100% employment, in other words, there has always been an oversupply of labor, one can conclude that the market value of labor is heading towards $0 an hour."
First of all, if it was true that there was an oversupply of labor, and that it was causing the price to head towards zero, then it must be heading there really slowly, or else it would be there already. As you state, employment has never been 100%, so the market adjustment you predict seems to be taking longer than all recorded human history.
The reality is that "labor" isn't a single commodity like pork or lumber. Not all labor is the same. You can't fire the Chief of Neurosurgery and replace him with the $5.15/hour guy.
Lastly: "If employers actually hired people when the price of labor was low to non-existant, then why haven't they hired all of the Americans willing to work for less than $5.15 an hour?"
1) Because there aren't actually that many Americans willing to work for less than $5.15 an hour, especially over the age of 17. 2) Because the unions and the minimum wage laws will try to prevent you from hiring people for $3/hour. 3) Because you have to create the jobs for them to be hired into. This isn't something that should be done by politicians (though they usually claim to do it). This has to be done by corporations, be they large or individual startups, and it requires that they have access to surplus money. Right now they're spending that surplus on the three guys doing one guy's job, two of whom are on break.
But the point is that taking one software engineering class doesn't make you an engineer.
The college I went to had both a Computer Science degree, offered by the Science Department, and a Computer Engineering degree (technically it was Computer and Systems Engineering), offered by the Engineering Department. This was actually one of my criteria when looking for colleges; I wanted an actual Computer Engineering degree, not Comp Sci.
We took the Engineering Core curriculum, which is something like six or seven classes, including "Intro to Engineering Design". These are the same classes being taken by Chemical Engineering (not Chemistry) and Mechanical Engineering students. Like he says above, it's a MINDSET, not just a skillset. It's a philosophy, a way of approaching problems. You don't learn it by taking one class.
I agree, but good luck figuring out the answers to all those questions from an interview. He didn't say "salary is the most important part of a job", he said it's the "most important part of an employment package".
HR isn't going to tell you "It's a pretty miserable place, you'll drag into work reluctantly" or "Most of your co-workers will be incompetent, so we'll depend on you to do a lot of work and learn anything you need on your own."
This guy is trying to pick which job to take. The considerations you name are better used in deciding whether or not to stay at a job you already have.
The vulnerability isn't considered to be in TCP itself, simply in several vendor implementations of TCP, which use a larger than necessary window when checking the sequence number.
The fact that it would enable a single host with a NIC and a cable modem to bring down major links on the internet backbone qualifies it as a "vulnerability". It needs to be dealt with in a way that still preserves the desired functionality of the design, the reset capability you mentioned. Such solutions exist, but implementing them across the entire infrastructure isn't a trivial task.
Maybe I missed something in the advisory, but this sounds like a good old TCP reset attack...
You did.
The news here is that you no longer require the sniffer, because you don't have to know the exact sequence number. Now you just have to be kind of close. How close apparently varies in size amongst vendor implementations.
Hence this is an implementation issue that can be patched in TCP stacks.
Ohhhhhh, all we have to do is upgrade the code in all BGP routers and major webservers on the entire internet! Do they have "Windows Update" for Cisco IOS yet?
Seriously though, it would help to have a list of specific implementations which use the large window.
Interesting parallel. It's hard to tell whether you're doing a parody of my original comment, or agreeing with it.
Some flaws: When you plug into the privately owned telephone network, you're subject to their terms of use, which you probably never even read. They probably included something about "we can monitor your telephone conversations as much as we want" and "you aren't allowed to do say anything illegal on our network"
The local telephone companies are utilities, not ordinary "privately owned" companies. That means that the government gets a little bit more authority in terms of telling them how to run their business. That doesn't necessarily mean they're less prone to abuse, it just means that now it's your mayor who skipped the terms of use, not you. I doubt that the telco itself actually has a provision that allows it, the company, to listen to your conversations, but they do certainly have legal provisions for law enforcement agencies to do so. This is hardly news, and not necessarily a bad thing. Also, I supect the policy of the phone companies more closely resembles "we're not responsible if you do anything illegal on our network" rather than "don't do it in the first place". Sadly, courts are telling more and more ISPs that they're responsible for the actions of their customers, so they've taken a firmer stance than the telcos.
No, you don't have a "right" to unrestricted telephone conversations. Sorry. Tell your congressman that you want that Amendment added to the Constitution, but in the meantime, they're granting you network access on their terms, as part of living in their country. If you didn't like the terms, you weren't supposed to be born there.
That's correct, you don't. Law enforcement is allowed to tap your phone, if they get a warrant. The criteria for such warrants is getting weaker. There isn't an actual right to privacy in the Constitution. I wish there was. Yes, you should tell your congressman that you'd like to see one. Right now we have the Supreme Court doing its damndest to cobble something together from search and seizure or due process provisions, but if we had a clearly stated Privacy Amendment, then that would clear up a lot of disputes and discrepancies. Lastly, if you're an adult unwilling to live by the laws of the United States of America, you can live somewhere else. Don't act like being born into the US instead of choosing it somehow constitutes coercion or slavery.
I know that there's certainly not anything existing that could make full use of a pipe that big... so I think everyone should keep their porn fantasies in check.
No, I'm sure there are plenty of porn fantasies that can come up with a use for a really big pipe.
In addition to the sheep you refer to, there's also the frequent slashdot readers who can't even mentally distinguish between MPAA and RIAA anymore. They've sort of mushed the two together in their minds as "those big evil faceless entities who are trying to stop me from downloading stuff"
I suspect the case is not that your rights are "going down the toilet" so much as you're discovering that you didn't have all the rights you thought you did. When you plug into the privately owned college network, you're subject to their terms of use, which you probably never even read. They probably included something about "we can monitor your computer as much as we want" and "you aren't allowed to do anything illegal on our network"
Above, someone makes the argument that when you're forced to live in a dorm, and their network is the only internet connection in that dorm, that they owe it you to grant you unrestricted and unmonitored access.
While I sympathize with such people, that argument has no actual basis in reality. No, you don't have a "right" to unrestricted internet access. Sorry. Tell your congressman that you want that Amendment added to the Constitution, but in the meantime, they're granting you network access on their terms, as part of attending their school. If you didn't like the terms, you weren't supposed to go there.
I realize that this never happens: "So, why did you choose this college?" "Well, my first choice was UCLA, but I didn't like their terms of service for the computer network."
But we have the same problem with EULAs. The fact that nobody takes the inconvenient laws seriously doesn't make them any less the law.
All of the blogs I read begin with links. They report their little blurb about each story, with a link to whatever source they got it from. If you find it the least bit suspicious, (I usually do, since I'm a bit of a skeptic) just follow the link to the source.
Now, admittedly the source is usually another blog, and that one sometimes links to another blog, but eventually somewhere down the line they link to big-mainstream-media. Failing that, there's Google. The purpose of the blogs should be to quickly summarize lots of information, not to provide trusted data. If anything catches your eye, find the data yourself.
Most readers will naturally flock to a source that reflects their philisophical/political views sure, but do they actually realize they are trading accuracy?
Except in cases of really blatant contradictions of fact, (Canada launches nukes against Mexico, jealous for US affections) then by virtue of holding a particular view, one tends to see thing which reinforce it as true and things which dispute it as false. I doubt there are many people who see it as a tradeoff between their view and accuracy. If they did, they wouldn't hold that view in the first place.
In order to shift that view with truth and real data, you have to somehow present people with a source they will trust, and there are very few of those remaining. In general, I think the trend of increased skepticism is good, and that people should question all sources of news, but if someone holds an extreme view, and counter evidence is published in the New York Times, all they have to do is distrust the New York Times. This isn't a decision to value agreement over accuracy, but rather a perception that the NYT is inaccurate.
And it's also the feature that most drives me to distraction -- the software thinks it's smarter than I am.
Yeah, this bugs the hell out of me too. Back when Word 2000 or so came out, I noticed it kept trying to guess at the formatting I wanted, and it was usually wrong, so I quickly developed the feeling I was wrestling with it.
Here's the thing though:
For the average user, the software is smarter than they are, at least in respect to the computer functions it performs.
Serious car enthusiasts will tell you how much they prefer a manual transmission, because it gives them more control, and allows them to effectively get more power out of the same car. But 90% of the people out there are driving automatic transmissions, and aren't interested in thinking about when to change gears. It's not that they're incapable of understanding it, it's just that the extra 20% of performance they could squeeze out isn't worth the extra 50% of effort it would cost them.
Operating systems will be the same way. Linux is an incredible operating system, but it's designed for people who know, or want to know, how their computer works. To make it a desktop OS for the average user, you have to change the design philosophy behind Linux, 'cause there's no way you're going to change the average user.
iTunes is not about maintaining a hardware monopoly, else they wouldn't have released it for Windows.
Linux may have a comparable desktop market share to Apple, but I would imagine the average Linux user is less willing to spend $400 on an iPod and $1/song on mainstream 128k DRMed AACs than the average Mac user is.
Pushing the iTunes platform onto Linux would cost money. If they thought it would return more money than it costs, they would probably do it. They don't, and neither do I.
I'm sick of hearing the "everything on TV is crap" argument.
You're watching the wrong shows.
Sturgeon's law applies here, but it's made worse by advertising. Just because Survivor and Everybody Loves Raymond are super-hyped doesn't indicate that they're the best that TV can do. Plus, I can find you plenty of books that make these TV shows look intelligent and dignified.
I read science-fiction, classic fiction, and non-fiction. I go to plays and movies, both independent and mainstream. Also, I watch TV, and I don't feel that it is inferior to the other forms of expression.
West Wing. Sports Night. Firefly. The Sopranos. These are good shows. Not "good compared to the rest of the crap on TV", not "good, but they're no Shakespeare", I mean actually good.
I've had my IQ tested, I have my SAT scores. I know where I went to high school and college, and where I grew up. You're welcome to claim that the reason I like TV shows is because I'm dumber, or less educated, or less cultured, but I don't believe you. Come to me with something better than stereotype. If you want to talk to me about "richer, more rewarding", show me a novel or play that has the level of character development and story depth that you find in a five season series of one-hour episodes.
People are welcome to read instead of watching a TV. Save yourself the cost of the TV and the cable subscription, by all means. But don't try to tell me that it's because you're so enlightened and open to "richer" forms of entertainment. It's just a personal preference.
This is video on demand, and I think it's coming. Right now my cable company (Comcast) has OnDemand, which lets you select a show and start watching it whenever you want, pausing or rewinding as desired. Many of the shows are free (which is to say they're bundled into the cost of your digital cable subscribtion) while others cost something like a buck or two to watch. Having paid that cost, you can watch it again for free for a certain span of time. Time Warner Cable has a similar service. It's effectively like having a TiVo, with the storage on the other end of the cable. (and with far inferior UI)
Right now, the selection is fairly small (compared to the entirety of all television and movies ever) and the service requires you're already subscribing to a digital cable package, but this idea is no longer a vast paradigm shift, just an incremental improvement in an existing system.
I personally think that the potential audience for the "high-brow" channels (discovery, history, et al) is much larger than anybody gives it credit for being.
I don't mean to sound combative, but you're simply incorrect. Google "current Nielsen ratings". I'm looking at the top 20, and the closest thing to "high-brow" is Peter Jennings, which is still pretty mainstream and on a broadcast network.
Of course, that could be my excellent taste in friends...
It is. A lot of people succumb to the common fallacy of "Of everybody I know..."
If you want a realistic picture of the world, anecdotal evidence and extremely selective data pools are not the way to get it. Opinion polls and market research statistics are far from perfect, but they're way better than "All my friends say..."
Actually, this is a pretty valid point. If this regulation was applied to cable, not satellite, it would probably just encourage a lot of users to switch to satellite. Which would just repeat the problem, because then people would bitch that they can't economically get a satellite connection for only one channel.
I don't see why they can't just charge you the line cost, plus the per-channel costs.
1) As dasmegabyte is pointing out, that wouldn't save you very much. It would be something like $30/month for "line cost" then something like 25 cents per channel, on average. Note, I just totally made up those numbers, to illustrate the proportion. I don't actually have CATV cost statistics on my desk. Somebody speak up if they do.
2) I had to say "on average", because it costs them way more to license HBO than CSPAN. If you charge the average channel cost, then everyone will just pick the most popular and expensive channels, and you'll lose money. If you charge a different price for every channel, you complicate the billing process a great deal, although you do have the benefit of a more free-market style system. It would provide feedback as to whether or not channels like HBO are really a good value even at their high costs.
3) However, that flexibility comes at a cost. As anyone who has ever worked on a helpdesk or call-center or as a project manager knows, increasing the complexity of a system tends to increase its cost, especially in maintenance and support. Not to mention the initial cost of overhauling the vast existing infrastructures. As has been mentioned above, these costs would have to include anti-theft mechanisms, else it would be nearly trivial for people to order the cheapest channel and steal the rest.
So basically the minor benefit coupled with the major cost makes this an extremely inefficient solution. The attitude that the cable companies are sitting on a vast mound of treasure, which can be raided and handed out to the needy peasants, its customers, is fallacy. If you jack up the costs to the cable company, it's going to jack up the costs to its subscribers. If it didn't work that way, there wouldn't be cable companies. So if you're going to manipulate the companies into doing something, you want it to be efficient, so that the subscribers get maximum benefit with minimum cost. I can't imagine that being the case with this proposal. I expect that if your "minimum cable user" pays $40/month now and your "premium" users pay something like $80/month (I think that's what I pay for digital cable with the movie channels), then after this implementation those numbers might change to $35/month and $100/month, if it went really well.
Yeah, but my mother gets confused by TV remotes that have more than ten buttons. TV/Video? Sleep? Aspect ratios?
The point with the appliance analogy, or the car analogy, is not that you shouldn't have to learn how to use a new device. The point is: If you present someone with three new choices, they may very well find out what each one does, so they can select the right one. If you present them with 20 choices, and tell them there are virtually unlimited "hidden" choices, they'll just assume the system is too complicated for them to understand, fiddle with it a bit, and give up when it doesn't do what they want.
This is not just a Linux problem, there are hordes of people screwing up their Windows computers too, but Microsoft takes the approach of "these are people we want to give us money, is there any way we can make our product appeal to them more?" whereas the average Linux advocate (I say average, because there are some exceptions) takes the position that it is the obligation of all computer users to learn how to use their computers, and if they aren't willing to do that, then the hell with them.
You can argue over whether or not it is "fair" or "the right thing" to expect people to learn about their computers, but the bottom line is that they don't have to, and if you try to force them, they'll just turn to those who cater to them instead of preaching to them.
Does anybody really WANT Amazon to be storing our searches on their server forever and a day?
Yes.
It's fine to have privacy concerns about companies storing information about you, but when you get to the point where you actually find it hard to believe that there are people out there who want these features, you are seriously out of touch.
Personally, I use Amazon quite often, and I like that they build a profile on me and use it to tune which products they show me. I wish they were even better at it.
But my personal preference, as well as the personal preferences voiced in most of the comments above (never record any of my information ever!) aren't going to determine the success or failure of this search engine. That will be determined by volume of users, and especially the volume of users who click-through and end up buying products via the ads and links there.
Spending a lot of time on slashdot, one can easily lose perspective, and begin to get the impression that "practically everyone" will be opposed to a search engine that stores a history of their results. This is, however, drastically false. I would estimate that at least 25% of internet users won't even understand conceptually that their information is being stored at Amazon, but will see this as something the "the internet program" does for them.
I have a generally positive attitude towards Google, and I think this sounds like a good service, but these are two important points.
1. Google can probably alter the deal at any time without your consent.
Almost certainly. Consider also that because email addressed aren't portable, like cell-phone numbers now are, that there is a strong disincentive for most people to change their email provider. If you've been using their service happily for a year or two, and they add some feature to it that frustrates you (where "you" is the average Gmail user, not the average person reading this comment), you'll probably just endure it rather than changing email providers.
2. Once a company goes public, they are no longer trustworthy in my opinion.
This is another important and often overlooked point. Many choose to see this as "big corporations are EVIL! ", but the fact of the matter is that a public company has a legal obligation to their stockholders to do their absolute best to make more money. If someone at Google comes up with a way to double their profits by implementing a policy that will frustrate their users, (I'm assuming the profit calculation takes into account that some users may leave) then they are obligated to do it. Policies that are just there to be nice to the subscribers have to include justification that happier subsribers somehow lead to more profits. I'm not sure I'd really call that unethical, but it is certainly annoying from a subscriber viewpoint.
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No CD is worth that much money.
This is simply not true.
I've bought somewhere in the neighborhood of 150 CDs, and though most of them cost me more like $12 than $16, I feel like at least 80% of them were worth what I paid or more. Apparently millions of people agree with me, since music stores are still selling CDs. Personally, I buy almost all my CDs from Amazon, not brick-and-mortar, because I find that to be most convenient.
If you have a place you're happy buying from (in this case, BMG), and you get a better deal there, that's great. Feel free to tell all your friends, and if they agree that it works for them, then it will increase in market-share and the price of CDs will approach that $7 instead of the $16 you name.
It's $16 because people are still happy to pay $16 if they get the CD they want. In my book, and in the book of practically every economist, that means they're worth $16.
Why OT granted only for Manual labor?
There is something to that, though.
I'm in IT, I'm paid hourly. Where I work, we get paid normal-rate overtime, which is to say if we work 50 hours a week, we get paid for 50, not 40 and not 60.
I get pissed at people who characterize physical labor as somehow more "real" work, but there are physical limitations that are run up against in manual labor way before they are in "knowledge labor". Your body actually wears out. Sure, your mind does too, and everyone needs sleep, but I bet it's easier to do my job for 12 hours straight than to shovel coal for 12 hours straight.
Now, this isn't to say IT workers shouldn't still ask for OT. It encourages employers to hire enough workers for reasonable hours, rather than a couple workers for ridiculous hours, and it realistically reflects the fact that overtime usually represents work of more than average value.
But I don't really think the government should require it. I can just barely get on board with them requiring it for manual labor.
Correct spelling isn't necessary for kneejerk voting. Not even on the Diebold systems.
Wow.
Some really appaling economics failures in this post.
Let's start with:
"Employers have ALWAYS sought to hire the least amount of people possible. The idea that allowing them to treat their employees like shit will change has no basis in reality."
They SHOULD always seek to hire the least amount possible. If it costs me $10 to make my product (car, ladder, gallon of milk, whatever) then I can sell it to you for $20 and make $10 of profit. If I have to hire three times as many people, it costs me more than $20 to make it now, so no way am I selling it to you for that. The only people who benefit from that are the extra workers, who are effectively being paid to do nothing, since they add no value above the original staff. Forcing someone to pay you when you aren't giving them value in return is theft.
Your problem is you have this mental image of these magical corporate vaults that just fill themselves with money, and the corporations horde it all. With that as your standard, it's no wonder theft seems appealing. But that vision just isn't true. They're filling that vault by charging YOU for their products. If you rob their vault, they're just going to charge you more. The way to make things better isn't to steal harder or faster, it's to work in good faith with the corporation to make the system as efficient as possible. In free trade, both parties profit. Parasites only profit until their host dies or fights back.
Another, more glaring flaw:
"Since there has never been 100% employment, in other words, there has always been an oversupply of labor, one can conclude that the market value of labor is heading towards $0 an hour."
First of all, if it was true that there was an oversupply of labor, and that it was causing the price to head towards zero, then it must be heading there really slowly, or else it would be there already. As you state, employment has never been 100%, so the market adjustment you predict seems to be taking longer than all recorded human history.
The reality is that "labor" isn't a single commodity like pork or lumber. Not all labor is the same. You can't fire the Chief of Neurosurgery and replace him with the $5.15/hour guy.
Lastly:
"If employers actually hired people when the price of labor was low to non-existant, then why haven't they hired all of the Americans willing to work for less than $5.15 an hour?"
1) Because there aren't actually that many Americans willing to work for less than $5.15 an hour, especially over the age of 17.
2) Because the unions and the minimum wage laws will try to prevent you from hiring people for $3/hour.
3) Because you have to create the jobs for them to be hired into. This isn't something that should be done by politicians (though they usually claim to do it). This has to be done by corporations, be they large or individual startups, and it requires that they have access to surplus money. Right now they're spending that surplus on the three guys doing one guy's job, two of whom are on break.
But the point is that taking one software engineering class doesn't make you an engineer.
The college I went to had both a Computer Science degree, offered by the Science Department, and a Computer Engineering degree (technically it was Computer and Systems Engineering), offered by the Engineering Department. This was actually one of my criteria when looking for colleges; I wanted an actual Computer Engineering degree, not Comp Sci.
We took the Engineering Core curriculum, which is something like six or seven classes, including "Intro to Engineering Design". These are the same classes being taken by Chemical Engineering (not Chemistry) and Mechanical Engineering students. Like he says above, it's a MINDSET, not just a skillset. It's a philosophy, a way of approaching problems. You don't learn it by taking one class.
I agree, but good luck figuring out the answers to all those questions from an interview. He didn't say "salary is the most important part of a job", he said it's the "most important part of an employment package".
HR isn't going to tell you "It's a pretty miserable place, you'll drag into work reluctantly" or "Most of your co-workers will be incompetent, so we'll depend on you to do a lot of work and learn anything you need on your own."
This guy is trying to pick which job to take. The considerations you name are better used in deciding whether or not to stay at a job you already have.
OK, but is this really a 'vulnerability' per se?
The vulnerability isn't considered to be in TCP itself, simply in several vendor implementations of TCP, which use a larger than necessary window when checking the sequence number.
The fact that it would enable a single host with a NIC and a cable modem to bring down major links on the internet backbone qualifies it as a "vulnerability". It needs to be dealt with in a way that still preserves the desired functionality of the design, the reset capability you mentioned. Such solutions exist, but implementing them across the entire infrastructure isn't a trivial task.
Maybe I missed something in the advisory, but this sounds like a good old TCP reset attack...
You did.
The news here is that you no longer require the sniffer, because you don't have to know the exact sequence number. Now you just have to be kind of close. How close apparently varies in size amongst vendor implementations.
Hence this is an implementation issue that can be patched in TCP stacks.
Ohhhhhh, all we have to do is upgrade the code in all BGP routers and major webservers on the entire internet! Do they have "Windows Update" for Cisco IOS yet?
Seriously though, it would help to have a list of specific implementations which use the large window.
Interesting parallel. It's hard to tell whether you're doing a parody of my original comment, or agreeing with it.
Some flaws:
When you plug into the privately owned telephone network, you're subject to their terms of use, which you probably never even read. They probably included something about "we can monitor your telephone conversations as much as we want" and "you aren't allowed to do say anything illegal on our network"
The local telephone companies are utilities, not ordinary "privately owned" companies. That means that the government gets a little bit more authority in terms of telling them how to run their business. That doesn't necessarily mean they're less prone to abuse, it just means that now it's your mayor who skipped the terms of use, not you. I doubt that the telco itself actually has a provision that allows it, the company, to listen to your conversations, but they do certainly have legal provisions for law enforcement agencies to do so. This is hardly news, and not necessarily a bad thing. Also, I supect the policy of the phone companies more closely resembles "we're not responsible if you do anything illegal on our network" rather than "don't do it in the first place". Sadly, courts are telling more and more ISPs that they're responsible for the actions of their customers, so they've taken a firmer stance than the telcos.
No, you don't have a "right" to unrestricted telephone conversations. Sorry. Tell your congressman that you want that Amendment added to the Constitution, but in the meantime, they're granting you network access on their terms, as part of living in their country. If you didn't like the terms, you weren't supposed to be born there.
That's correct, you don't. Law enforcement is allowed to tap your phone, if they get a warrant. The criteria for such warrants is getting weaker. There isn't an actual right to privacy in the Constitution. I wish there was. Yes, you should tell your congressman that you'd like to see one. Right now we have the Supreme Court doing its damndest to cobble something together from search and seizure or due process provisions, but if we had a clearly stated Privacy Amendment, then that would clear up a lot of disputes and discrepancies. Lastly, if you're an adult unwilling to live by the laws of the United States of America, you can live somewhere else. Don't act like being born into the US instead of choosing it somehow constitutes coercion or slavery.
I know that there's certainly not anything existing that could make full use of a pipe that big... so I think everyone should keep their porn fantasies in check.
No, I'm sure there are plenty of porn fantasies that can come up with a use for a really big pipe.
In addition to the sheep you refer to, there's also the frequent slashdot readers who can't even mentally distinguish between MPAA and RIAA anymore. They've sort of mushed the two together in their minds as "those big evil faceless entities who are trying to stop me from downloading stuff"
I suspect the case is not that your rights are "going down the toilet" so much as you're discovering that you didn't have all the rights you thought you did. When you plug into the privately owned college network, you're subject to their terms of use, which you probably never even read. They probably included something about "we can monitor your computer as much as we want" and "you aren't allowed to do anything illegal on our network"
Above, someone makes the argument that when you're forced to live in a dorm, and their network is the only internet connection in that dorm, that they owe it you to grant you unrestricted and unmonitored access.
While I sympathize with such people, that argument has no actual basis in reality. No, you don't have a "right" to unrestricted internet access. Sorry. Tell your congressman that you want that Amendment added to the Constitution, but in the meantime, they're granting you network access on their terms, as part of attending their school. If you didn't like the terms, you weren't supposed to go there.
I realize that this never happens:
"So, why did you choose this college?"
"Well, my first choice was UCLA, but I didn't like their terms of service for the computer network."
But we have the same problem with EULAs. The fact that nobody takes the inconvenient laws seriously doesn't make them any less the law.
All of the blogs I read begin with links. They report their little blurb about each story, with a link to whatever source they got it from. If you find it the least bit suspicious, (I usually do, since I'm a bit of a skeptic) just follow the link to the source.
Now, admittedly the source is usually another blog, and that one sometimes links to another blog, but eventually somewhere down the line they link to big-mainstream-media. Failing that, there's Google. The purpose of the blogs should be to quickly summarize lots of information, not to provide trusted data. If anything catches your eye, find the data yourself.
Most readers will naturally flock to a source that reflects their philisophical/political views sure, but do they actually realize they are trading accuracy?
Except in cases of really blatant contradictions of fact, (Canada launches nukes against Mexico, jealous for US affections) then by virtue of holding a particular view, one tends to see thing which reinforce it as true and things which dispute it as false. I doubt there are many people who see it as a tradeoff between their view and accuracy. If they did, they wouldn't hold that view in the first place.
In order to shift that view with truth and real data, you have to somehow present people with a source they will trust, and there are very few of those remaining. In general, I think the trend of increased skepticism is good, and that people should question all sources of news, but if someone holds an extreme view, and counter evidence is published in the New York Times, all they have to do is distrust the New York Times. This isn't a decision to value agreement over accuracy, but rather a perception that the NYT is inaccurate.
And it's also the feature that most drives me to distraction -- the software thinks it's smarter than I am.
Yeah, this bugs the hell out of me too. Back when Word 2000 or so came out, I noticed it kept trying to guess at the formatting I wanted, and it was usually wrong, so I quickly developed the feeling I was wrestling with it.
Here's the thing though:
For the average user, the software is smarter than they are, at least in respect to the computer functions it performs.
Serious car enthusiasts will tell you how much they prefer a manual transmission, because it gives them more control, and allows them to effectively get more power out of the same car. But 90% of the people out there are driving automatic transmissions, and aren't interested in thinking about when to change gears. It's not that they're incapable of understanding it, it's just that the extra 20% of performance they could squeeze out isn't worth the extra 50% of effort it would cost them.
Operating systems will be the same way. Linux is an incredible operating system, but it's designed for people who know, or want to know, how their computer works. To make it a desktop OS for the average user, you have to change the design philosophy behind Linux, 'cause there's no way you're going to change the average user.
iTunes is not about maintaining a hardware monopoly, else they wouldn't have released it for Windows.
Linux may have a comparable desktop market share to Apple, but I would imagine the average Linux user is less willing to spend $400 on an iPod and $1/song on mainstream 128k DRMed AACs than the average Mac user is.
Pushing the iTunes platform onto Linux would cost money. If they thought it would return more money than it costs, they would probably do it. They don't, and neither do I.
I'm sick of hearing the "everything on TV is crap" argument.
You're watching the wrong shows.
Sturgeon's law applies here, but it's made worse by advertising. Just because Survivor and Everybody Loves Raymond are super-hyped doesn't indicate that they're the best that TV can do. Plus, I can find you plenty of books that make these TV shows look intelligent and dignified.
I read science-fiction, classic fiction, and non-fiction. I go to plays and movies, both independent and mainstream. Also, I watch TV, and I don't feel that it is inferior to the other forms of expression.
West Wing. Sports Night. Firefly. The Sopranos. These are good shows. Not "good compared to the rest of the crap on TV", not "good, but they're no Shakespeare", I mean actually good.
I've had my IQ tested, I have my SAT scores. I know where I went to high school and college, and where I grew up. You're welcome to claim that the reason I like TV shows is because I'm dumber, or less educated, or less cultured, but I don't believe you. Come to me with something better than stereotype. If you want to talk to me about "richer, more rewarding", show me a novel or play that has the level of character development and story depth that you find in a five season series of one-hour episodes.
People are welcome to read instead of watching a TV. Save yourself the cost of the TV and the cable subscription, by all means. But don't try to tell me that it's because you're so enlightened and open to "richer" forms of entertainment. It's just a personal preference.
This is video on demand, and I think it's coming. Right now my cable company (Comcast) has OnDemand, which lets you select a show and start watching it whenever you want, pausing or rewinding as desired. Many of the shows are free (which is to say they're bundled into the cost of your digital cable subscribtion) while others cost something like a buck or two to watch. Having paid that cost, you can watch it again for free for a certain span of time. Time Warner Cable has a similar service. It's effectively like having a TiVo, with the storage on the other end of the cable. (and with far inferior UI)
Right now, the selection is fairly small (compared to the entirety of all television and movies ever) and the service requires you're already subscribing to a digital cable package, but this idea is no longer a vast paradigm shift, just an incremental improvement in an existing system.
I personally think that the potential audience for the "high-brow" channels (discovery, history, et al) is much larger than anybody gives it credit for being.
I don't mean to sound combative, but you're simply incorrect. Google "current Nielsen ratings". I'm looking at the top 20, and the closest thing to "high-brow" is Peter Jennings, which is still pretty mainstream and on a broadcast network.
Of course, that could be my excellent taste in friends...
It is. A lot of people succumb to the common fallacy of "Of everybody I know..."
If you want a realistic picture of the world, anecdotal evidence and extremely selective data pools are not the way to get it. Opinion polls and market research statistics are far from perfect, but they're way better than "All my friends say..."
Actually, this is a pretty valid point. If this regulation was applied to cable, not satellite, it would probably just encourage a lot of users to switch to satellite. Which would just repeat the problem, because then people would bitch that they can't economically get a satellite connection for only one channel.
I don't see why they can't just charge you the line cost, plus the per-channel costs.
1) As dasmegabyte is pointing out, that wouldn't save you very much. It would be something like $30/month for "line cost" then something like 25 cents per channel, on average. Note, I just totally made up those numbers, to illustrate the proportion. I don't actually have CATV cost statistics on my desk. Somebody speak up if they do.
2) I had to say "on average", because it costs them way more to license HBO than CSPAN. If you charge the average channel cost, then everyone will just pick the most popular and expensive channels, and you'll lose money. If you charge a different price for every channel, you complicate the billing process a great deal, although you do have the benefit of a more free-market style system. It would provide feedback as to whether or not channels like HBO are really a good value even at their high costs.
3) However, that flexibility comes at a cost. As anyone who has ever worked on a helpdesk or call-center or as a project manager knows, increasing the complexity of a system tends to increase its cost, especially in maintenance and support. Not to mention the initial cost of overhauling the vast existing infrastructures. As has been mentioned above, these costs would have to include anti-theft mechanisms, else it would be nearly trivial for people to order the cheapest channel and steal the rest.
So basically the minor benefit coupled with the major cost makes this an extremely inefficient solution. The attitude that the cable companies are sitting on a vast mound of treasure, which can be raided and handed out to the needy peasants, its customers, is fallacy. If you jack up the costs to the cable company, it's going to jack up the costs to its subscribers. If it didn't work that way, there wouldn't be cable companies. So if you're going to manipulate the companies into doing something, you want it to be efficient, so that the subscribers get maximum benefit with minimum cost. I can't imagine that being the case with this proposal. I expect that if your "minimum cable user" pays $40/month now and your "premium" users pay something like $80/month (I think that's what I pay for digital cable with the movie channels), then after this implementation those numbers might change to $35/month and $100/month, if it went really well.
Yeah, but my mother gets confused by TV remotes that have more than ten buttons. TV/Video? Sleep? Aspect ratios?
The point with the appliance analogy, or the car analogy, is not that you shouldn't have to learn how to use a new device. The point is:
If you present someone with three new choices, they may very well find out what each one does, so they can select the right one. If you present them with 20 choices, and tell them there are virtually unlimited "hidden" choices, they'll just assume the system is too complicated for them to understand, fiddle with it a bit, and give up when it doesn't do what they want.
This is not just a Linux problem, there are hordes of people screwing up their Windows computers too, but Microsoft takes the approach of "these are people we want to give us money, is there any way we can make our product appeal to them more?" whereas the average Linux advocate (I say average, because there are some exceptions) takes the position that it is the obligation of all computer users to learn how to use their computers, and if they aren't willing to do that, then the hell with them.
You can argue over whether or not it is "fair" or "the right thing" to expect people to learn about their computers, but the bottom line is that they don't have to, and if you try to force them, they'll just turn to those who cater to them instead of preaching to them.
Does anybody really WANT Amazon to be storing our searches on their server forever and a day?
Yes.
It's fine to have privacy concerns about companies storing information about you, but when you get to the point where you actually find it hard to believe that there are people out there who want these features, you are seriously out of touch.
Personally, I use Amazon quite often, and I like that they build a profile on me and use it to tune which products they show me. I wish they were even better at it.
But my personal preference, as well as the personal preferences voiced in most of the comments above (never record any of my information ever!) aren't going to determine the success or failure of this search engine. That will be determined by volume of users, and especially the volume of users who click-through and end up buying products via the ads and links there.
Spending a lot of time on slashdot, one can easily lose perspective, and begin to get the impression that "practically everyone" will be opposed to a search engine that stores a history of their results. This is, however, drastically false. I would estimate that at least 25% of internet users won't even understand conceptually that their information is being stored at Amazon, but will see this as something the "the internet program" does for them.
According to one of my Psych professors, under ideal conditions the human eye can detect a single photon.
According to all of my Engineering professors, ideal conditions never actually occur in real life.
I have a generally positive attitude towards Google, and I think this sounds like a good service, but these are two important points.
1. Google can probably alter the deal at any time without your consent.
Almost certainly. Consider also that because email addressed aren't portable, like cell-phone numbers now are, that there is a strong disincentive for most people to change their email provider. If you've been using their service happily for a year or two, and they add some feature to it that frustrates you (where "you" is the average Gmail user, not the average person reading this comment), you'll probably just endure it rather than changing email providers.
2. Once a company goes public, they are no longer trustworthy in my opinion.
This is another important and often overlooked point. Many choose to see this as "big corporations are EVIL! ", but the fact of the matter is that a public company has a legal obligation to their stockholders to do their absolute best to make more money. If someone at Google comes up with a way to double their profits by implementing a policy that will frustrate their users, (I'm assuming the profit calculation takes into account that some users may leave) then they are obligated to do it. Policies that are just there to be nice to the subscribers have to include justification that happier subsribers somehow lead to more profits. I'm not sure I'd really call that unethical, but it is certainly annoying from a subscriber viewpoint.