It's quite simple, and clever, and it works like this:
You bought those shoes in Nordstrom using your Citi debit card. Citi now know that information. What's more, they mine their database for all sorts of data that they then use to build up a profile of your shopping behaviour.
However, they do not share that information. What they do is quite coyly tell all merchants, "I have some customer info here... are you interested?"
Then Macy's contact Citi and say, "I want to attract new customers. I'll gladly pay you if you give this 25% off offer to people who bought shoes somewhere else during the past 3 months. The coupon has a unique identifier to, hum, avoid duplicates and fraud."
Likewise, JC Penny's call Citi and ask, "How much for you to give around my 10% coupons to all females that bought three pairs of shoes during the past 6 months, and also like eating at fancy restaurants? Oh, that code on the coupon? That's just for us to track the offers and ensure consistency, no worries."
Citi then gladly accepts the money and the offers. It delves into its database and mines all customers and finds that you are a female that has bought three pairs of shoes in the last 6 months, and looky here, you've eaten at some upscale restaurants quite a bit, often paying more than $200.00 for a meal. All that is on record, since you use your handy and convenient Citi card. You're the perfect customer for those offers!
One day, you check your e-mail and find some nice offers. Very nice ones, indeed (20% off on shoes at Macy's? More for your collection, yay!). So you buy some shoes at Macy's, proudly extend your coupon to the cashier, along with your credit card, and relish on your good fortune.
The cashier scans the coupon, along with its special identifying code, and the computer recognizes it as the one issued for that special offer deal with Citi. Your credit card record is now easily correlated to the specifics of that offer.
Notice that at no time did Citi had to give away any of your details directly to its partners, yet they were able to get them (or at something very close to them) indirectly.
That night, you check your e-mail and find a coupon for JC Penny's: 10% off shoes. My, you can't believe your luck!
And this opinion has nothing to do with the fact that this is the guy who write PostgreSQL and he has been bitching about how MySQL has a to big market share, for years??
Not at all. But it does have something to do with the fact that he is plugging his new product, which implements something he calls "NewSQL."
I guess that's the reason why everybody in the mobile industry is doing it. Oh wait...
Nobody is saying that Apple invented this new way of doing business. Jeez, what's with the strawmen. The point is that they are actually spending their money strategically, not just letting it go to waste like some investors have claimed.
If you discount the governments of the world, you are right: Google never shares your data with anybody. They prefer to sell it, since it's their primary business model.
My guess is that he meant that it does not suggest some secret technology that the rest of the planet does not know about. That they are just buying the entire production run of a product that only a few manufacturers can make, and therefore, there aren't any left for anybody.
The article talks about innovation in components and manufacturing processes, not commodity devices. When Foxconn builds factory A and Apple has negotiated an exclusive contract for a component which is so expensive to manufacture that the competition cannot or will not produce it equally or cost-effectively, then that makes Apple the single buyer of that component.
Apple has taken the initiative may times to buy out the full output capacity of these factories, and at times, actually paying for the construction of such facilities in exchange for more exclusive access to their output.
If they do this with a brand new manufacturing process, while it is still being developed, then it is quite literally inaccessible to the rest of the world.
Notice that the article doesn't claim that Apple invented every single component in the iPhone, nor that all their devices are made completely, head to toes, from magical pixie dust or Spacely Sprockets from the future. It claims that Apple invests huge amounts of capital in acquiring exclusive deals to produce new technology components, or new manufacturing processes to produce existing ones. This does not preclude licensing inventions from others.
Like others have said, nobody stops any competitors from doing the same, but they haven't so far, for it is an immense gamble. Apple also could fail and buy out the full capacity of some widget that ends up in a landfill somewhere, but that hasn't happen so far either.
Or perhaps realized that ruling China was as much as any one country could handle.
I don't see the British, the French, or the Spanish maintaining their rule of the world as they once did. How long did those last, and what was the cost?
China, on the other hand, is still Chinese, and is still very huge. I'm Just saying...
>> and the capacity to enter into relations with other sovereign states -- check, the capacity was certainly there although I don't know when it was exercised.
Like when we talked the French into helping us, and we agreed to take their money and soldiers in order to piss off the British even more.
Why, are the Decepticons British? Wow, I did not know that. Or are you referring to the Death Eaters? Those are indeed British, but so is the boy wizard and his entire lot.
No, silly. A man is claiming that half of Facebook has suffered setbacks.
The other half may be down as well, but someone else must lay claim to that. Slashdot needs to fill it's daily quota of headlines. News for nerds, stuff that matters, and all that.
Are you replying to my comment? If so, forgive me but I do not understand your point. My comment as a snarky remark alluding to the fact that the web, as a platform, has traditionally been slow, specifically because standards that are agreeable to most and stable enough to be useful for more than just playing around with technology, take time to mature and require long-term commitments.
>> Until a plugin developer has tried the plugin and found it fails on a new version of the browser, the future should be wide-open.
That assumes that any failures will be obvious and noticeable. This is not necessarily the case. What should a user do when his AdBlock program all of a sudden starts corrupting or removing elements, in a subtle way, from the output stream of, say, a banking application?
Mozilla (and all browser makers, for that matter) cannot expect to turn the Web into a reliable platform for all types of disciplines and commercial interests, while at the same time treat it as the ever-changing playground of their newest and coolest ideas.
It reminds me of companies that test new features in their production environment. There is never a problem, of course, until something breaks.
-dZ.
>> And your argument is a straw man. USBank, the bank I use, has a web banking service that works in any browser I've ever used it in. Yes, even Opera Mini and the browser on my Android phone. So it can be done.
You are precluding the possibility of one of those fast-release-cycle releases of Firefox breaking the USBank web site for no apparent reason. Of course, this could never happen, but if it did, it must be the bank's mission-critical web app "not adequately tested to be standards-complaint." Never mind that it passed all tests on the previous version released just 6 weeks prior.
>> my impression is that there has been a backlog of "new web technologies" waiting to be implemented in browsers (legally-free media formats for and tags, css3 animations, websockets, webGL, etc.) but I suspect with a more rapid development pace for Firefox and Chrom(e|ium), the backlog will get cleared out fairly quickly and the pace of development will settle back down.
Fine, so where are those new web technologies? Not in Firefox 5, that's sure. What we get is tabs on bottom, then on top, then on the title bar; missing status bar; the moronic single input field for all commands; point-and-click to get anything done--oh, now we type keywords to get anywhere; ever-moving menus; ever-changing preferences pane; extensions and downloads in tabs, no wait--on a new window, now back on a tab again (did we catch up with the Chrome look and feel?); and of course, the all-important major-version release number increment.
Yes, it does look like the Mozilla development team is right on top of that backlog of new web technologies that developers have been clamoring for.
The web is a "fast-moving platform," really? I guess that explains why the protocols and technologies that implement and support it are constantly changing. Where are we now, HTTP/10, Javascript-17?
Slashdot Mirror
Whoosh!
If they ironing is delicious, would they cooking be scrumptious? Or do you just have an appetite for launderers?
-dZ.
It's quite simple, and clever, and it works like this:
You bought those shoes in Nordstrom using your Citi debit card. Citi now know that information. What's more, they mine their database for all sorts of data that they then use to build up a profile of your shopping behaviour.
However, they do not share that information. What they do is quite coyly tell all merchants, "I have some customer info here... are you interested?"
Then Macy's contact Citi and say, "I want to attract new customers. I'll gladly pay you if you give this 25% off offer to people who bought shoes somewhere else during the past 3 months. The coupon has a unique identifier to, hum, avoid duplicates and fraud."
Likewise, JC Penny's call Citi and ask, "How much for you to give around my 10% coupons to all females that bought three pairs of shoes during the past 6 months, and also like eating at fancy restaurants? Oh, that code on the coupon? That's just for us to track the offers and ensure consistency, no worries."
Citi then gladly accepts the money and the offers. It delves into its database and mines all customers and finds that you are a female that has bought three pairs of shoes in the last 6 months, and looky here, you've eaten at some upscale restaurants quite a bit, often paying more than $200.00 for a meal. All that is on record, since you use your handy and convenient Citi card. You're the perfect customer for those offers!
One day, you check your e-mail and find some nice offers. Very nice ones, indeed (20% off on shoes at Macy's? More for your collection, yay!). So you buy some shoes at Macy's, proudly extend your coupon to the cashier, along with your credit card, and relish on your good fortune.
The cashier scans the coupon, along with its special identifying code, and the computer recognizes it as the one issued for that special offer deal with Citi. Your credit card record is now easily correlated to the specifics of that offer.
Notice that at no time did Citi had to give away any of your details directly to its partners, yet they were able to get them (or at something very close to them) indirectly.
That night, you check your e-mail and find a coupon for JC Penny's: 10% off shoes. My, you can't believe your luck!
-dZ.
Actually, that's ECMAScript. JavaScript is specifically the sub-set implemented for browsers and the DOM and all that stuff.
And a car analogy!
Wow, really? The single vulnerability known at the moment, hum... we should run for the hills or install an antivirus!
-dZ.
Woosh!
Not at all. But it does have something to do with the fact that he is plugging his new product, which implements something he calls "NewSQL."
dZ.
I guess that's the reason why everybody in the mobile industry is doing it. Oh wait...
Nobody is saying that Apple invented this new way of doing business. Jeez, what's with the strawmen. The point is that they are actually spending their money strategically, not just letting it go to waste like some investors have claimed.
-dZ.
If you discount the governments of the world, you are right: Google never shares your data with anybody. They prefer to sell it, since it's their primary business model.
My guess is that he meant that it does not suggest some secret technology that the rest of the planet does not know about. That they are just buying the entire production run of a product that only a few manufacturers can make, and therefore, there aren't any left for anybody.
The word exclusive is not really that nuanced.
-dZ.
The article talks about innovation in components and manufacturing processes, not commodity devices. When Foxconn builds factory A and Apple has negotiated an exclusive contract for a component which is so expensive to manufacture that the competition cannot or will not produce it equally or cost-effectively, then that makes Apple the single buyer of that component.
Apple has taken the initiative may times to buy out the full output capacity of these factories, and at times, actually paying for the construction of such facilities in exchange for more exclusive access to their output.
If they do this with a brand new manufacturing process, while it is still being developed, then it is quite literally inaccessible to the rest of the world.
Notice that the article doesn't claim that Apple invented every single component in the iPhone, nor that all their devices are made completely, head to toes, from magical pixie dust or Spacely Sprockets from the future. It claims that Apple invests huge amounts of capital in acquiring exclusive deals to produce new technology components, or new manufacturing processes to produce existing ones. This does not preclude licensing inventions from others.
Like others have said, nobody stops any competitors from doing the same, but they haven't so far, for it is an immense gamble. Apple also could fail and buy out the full capacity of some widget that ends up in a landfill somewhere, but that hasn't happen so far either.
-dZ.
Or perhaps realized that ruling China was as much as any one country could handle.
I don't see the British, the French, or the Spanish maintaining their rule of the world as they once did. How long did those last, and what was the cost?
China, on the other hand, is still Chinese, and is still very huge. I'm Just saying...
-dZ.
>> and the capacity to enter into relations with other sovereign states -- check, the capacity was certainly there although I don't know when it was exercised.
Like when we talked the French into helping us, and we agreed to take their money and soldiers in order to piss off the British even more.
Why, are the Decepticons British? Wow, I did not know that. Or are you referring to the Death Eaters? Those are indeed British, but so is the boy wizard and his entire lot.
dZ.
*snicker* LOL!!!1one
Yay! for the 12-year-old-friendly headlines.
No, silly. A man is claiming that half of Facebook has suffered setbacks.
The other half may be down as well, but someone else must lay claim to that. Slashdot needs to fill it's daily quota of headlines. News for nerds, stuff that matters, and all that.
dZ.
You misspelled "give" and "gave." Back in 1989, "gift" was still properly recognized as a noun.
-dZ.
That should have been,
My comment was a snarky remark
Are you replying to my comment? If so, forgive me but I do not understand your point. My comment as a snarky remark alluding to the fact that the web, as a platform, has traditionally been slow, specifically because standards that are agreeable to most and stable enough to be useful for more than just playing around with technology, take time to mature and require long-term commitments.
-dZ.
>> Until a plugin developer has tried the plugin and found it fails on a new version of the browser, the future should be wide-open.
That assumes that any failures will be obvious and noticeable. This is not necessarily the case. What should a user do when his AdBlock program all of a sudden starts corrupting or removing elements, in a subtle way, from the output stream of, say, a banking application?
Mozilla (and all browser makers, for that matter) cannot expect to turn the Web into a reliable platform for all types of disciplines and commercial interests, while at the same time treat it as the ever-changing playground of their newest and coolest ideas.
It reminds me of companies that test new features in their production environment. There is never a problem, of course, until something breaks.
-dZ.
>> And your argument is a straw man. USBank, the bank I use, has a web banking service that works in any browser I've ever used it in. Yes, even Opera Mini and the browser on my Android phone. So it can be done.
You are precluding the possibility of one of those fast-release-cycle releases of Firefox breaking the USBank web site for no apparent reason. Of course, this could never happen, but if it did, it must be the bank's mission-critical web app "not adequately tested to be standards-complaint." Never mind that it passed all tests on the previous version released just 6 weeks prior.
The real world is a complex and uncertain place.
-dZ.
>> my impression is that there has been a backlog of "new web technologies" waiting to be implemented in browsers (legally-free media formats for and tags, css3 animations, websockets, webGL, etc.) but I suspect with a more rapid development pace for Firefox and Chrom(e|ium), the backlog will get cleared out fairly quickly and the pace of development will settle back down.
Fine, so where are those new web technologies? Not in Firefox 5, that's sure. What we get is tabs on bottom, then on top, then on the title bar; missing status bar; the moronic single input field for all commands; point-and-click to get anything done--oh, now we type keywords to get anywhere; ever-moving menus; ever-changing preferences pane; extensions and downloads in tabs, no wait--on a new window, now back on a tab again (did we catch up with the Chrome look and feel?); and of course, the all-important major-version release number increment.
Yes, it does look like the Mozilla development team is right on top of that backlog of new web technologies that developers have been clamoring for.
-dZ.
The web is a "fast-moving platform," really? I guess that explains why the protocols and technologies that implement and support it are constantly changing. Where are we now, HTTP/10, Javascript-17?
Oh, wait!
-dZ.
Psst! I'm sure you feel superior and all, but making up words like that actually comes across as ignorant and pretentious.
http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/bonus
-dZ.