What benefit would Macradobe get by undercutting prices on their products?
Um... to cement the effective monopoly they already have? If you think MS has a monopoly (despite the presence of *nix/Apple for operating systems, Apache etc for web servers, other suites for productivity tools, and so on), then why on earth wouldn't you consider Adobe/Macromedia to have a monopoly in the areas that they totally own? For font-included, licensed publishing formats, do you see anything other than PDFs, in any significant number? I'll bet you see more Mac and Linux desktops, as a percentage, than you see ANY other doc format used in the way PDFs are.
And what about Photoshop? Essentially the industry standard. Just like MS is something of a standard in its own areas. If you want to call that a monopoly, then you have to call Adobe/Macromedia the same. Just like with Flash. Found a lot of other, widely used vector graphics tools for the web? Nope. Adobe will want to keep it that way, and they're going to be bundling things together (they already are, into productivity suites for web designers) to keep people from straying to other new products. When MS does the same thing, they get called monopolists, but when other people do it, they're called "smart."
I'd love to hear anyone at Adobe say they won't be trying to keep (and grow) their marketshare and depth. Not a chance - they know that even one moment of weakness is all it takes to lose ground to someone else. And just like everyone else does, they're going to use incentives to earn mindshare among new users. Sometimes that's acheived through special deals on tools (like, buy Flex editing package, get PDF writer, etc). That would be to keep people from running over to MS for a copy of FrontPage and Acrylic with Metro thrown in. It's called competition.
Maybe we're just a bit too jaded with a vengeful mentality these days to accept the idea that even the worst human is worthy of redemption.
But the problem is that sometimes "the worst human" is using something technologically hefty enough (like, say, a multi-ton airplane full of people and fuel) to do something rather drastic, and irreversibly final. Platitudes about being jaded, and not giving that one-way pilot a chance to redeem himself, do not stop him from killing himself and you at the same time. Especially when he really means it.
The same thing applies to gleefully brutal people like rapists and other types that do dreadful things. You can't sit down and have a nice redemptive chat with people like that as they are about to ruin or take someone's life. Tales of redemption generally don't involve the sorts of events that real-life Darth Vaders instigate (like gassing thousands of villagers who don't share your tribal/sect aspirations or want to put up with tyranny). The closest thing to redemption, in stories like that, is physically stopping the acts from occurring. And while it may take a certain amount of "faith" in one's objective to stick to it in the face of shrill or violent opposition, it's action or the credible threat of it, not lyrical references to poetic justice and redemption in traditional mythology that will and always has reigned in the real Vaders.
The #1 problem is that microsoft bundles these applications with the OS, or sells them at a loss to undercut competitors in a particular market segment, so that noone can afford to complete in that space anymore
And you don't think this will happen with Acrobat, Flash, and other technologies that all used to be separate little programs, but which are now going to show up in complete suites from Macromedia/Adobe (ah, mergers!)?
Damnit, Microsoft! You're like that kid on the playground who always wanted someone else's toy, just because someone else had them.
If you don't quit bullying the other kids, Microsoft, no one is going to want to play with you.
Right! Because, before PhotoShop came along, no one had ever produced a paint program before...
The early bird gets the worm, but the second mouse gets the cheese.
You're right, of course. But there's just something about the general atmosphere of almost any Japanese technology demo that seems to bypass any normal industrial sensibilities, and goes right into Anime-land. I'm not from that culture, so I Don't Get It sometimes, I think.
Flamebait? Heh! Responding to brilliant snippets like:
Meanwhile, the idiots on these remote asteroids have volcanos and seas full of the stuff and are doing absolutely nothing to exploit it.
Rummy really needs to get out there with some ex-military contractors and get started on the pipeline. Looks like there's not too much risk of anyone firing RPGs at the construction force, either
which even picked up a nice little Troll mod, and I'm the one writing flamebait? Well, at least I'm seeing a 100% flawless pattern of Flamebait Mods For Me = I'm Hitting Too Close To Home for the audience involved. How predictable. Oh well, despite the somewhat cowardly approach to expressing through anonymous mods, at least it's obvious where the ideology here leans, and one just has to put up with the shrill socialists and their (ironically) poor social skills. That, or their complete inability to detect sarcasm - I think there's a medical term for that.
What a hoot! It's so funny that every time there's an article that mentions hydrocarbons of any kind, we can use it to show how the administration is personally stealing oil and putting in big secret tanks that they'll only share with their rich children!
Honestly, I thought that the abbreviation "M$" was the funniest thing I'd ever seen, but this is much, much better.
Wow! I didn't even know he was Jewish. You seem to be obsessed with it, though. Of course, you're so lacking in any subtlety (or awareness of the same) that you've completely missed the point of my referring to that anecdote (as it relates to "using math" to fix a practical problem). Well, at least you got modded in something like the right direction. Amazing.
I feel your (joint) paint. Those of us in our 40's or older are the only ones with any perspective on this, and it really helps. The hard part is not coming across like an old crank ("Why, in my day, we used punch cards... and we liked it! Taught efficient programming, it did."). Plus that whole "using complete sentences on slashdot" and whatnot makes us real throwbacks. I've been 1334 for so long you can't even see it any more.
I've never liked these silly "if race car drivers designed shower curtains" type comparisons and conjectures. They don't take reality into account. There's no analogy to hitting "control-shift" in the way you walk down a hall, and 3-D tactile interfaces (like doors, lightswitches) don't have a meaningful representation on the desktop or cell phone.
Navigating back a couple of pages with your browser (alt-left-arrow) just is not the same as walking backwards out your front door so that you can come into the garage from the side. It's a couple of finger twitches!
I've come across plenty of crappy interfaces (um, some of which I built myself), and plenty of crappy house designs, too. It comes down to cost. Genius-hatched code, countless hours of user focus groups, and endless release cycles don't jive with reality most of the time. Just like we can't all have dream houses built on the same size lot. A lot of what I've loathed about some software, though, has evolved away nicely over the years through upgrades. Retooling a house to the same degree isn't even something most people can contemplate, and that's reflected in the design and/or the price.
And: houses have been built for thousands of years. Desktop software for 20-ish. That may seem like an eternity to some Nerd Younglings (meh!) but it's an immature practice/culture in the middle of constant upheaval. The two don't lend themselves to anything other than flame-oriented comparisons, and I'm not talking about sprinkler systems.
Ah! The Flamebait Of Truth Mod! That's my favorite kind - it means I'm strking a chort. The GP thinks that DHS's systems might be better off trashed, but offers no notion of how he'd approach dealing with exactly the sort of issues that I just raised. The mod down means that there are at least two people that clueless.
However a lot of this data is stuff that I want to be on a server that crashes hard, without backups. Preferably in such a way that even disaster recovery places can't get the data back.
Um... because you'd rather that security is handled by systems that can mine for threats in real time, all the time, so they don't have to worry about it? Or, because you're really not worried about the foreign national who's overstayed his visa, but who took pilot lessons, just spent a couple of months touring the scenic mountains of northern Pakistan, doesn't file taxes but spends a lot on wholesale chemicals and used dental xray equipment, and wires a lot of money to Hamas? Definately we don't want that info available, even in profile/status form, when he's booking a seat on a flight back into Dulles, or trying to get a license to drive 18-wheelers tankers for his new job at the fuel delivery company or signing up at the railyard where they load chlorine by the megaliter.
They are providing a free service for individuals. Haveing another person/group/company use that freedom to build a new service and possibly profit off of it at the expense of the individuals it was created for is rough.
It's only indirectly that your comment makes sense. The people using Google's stuff (including the infrastructure and all of that overhead) aren't doing so at the "expense of the individuals it was created for" in the sense of end users. What Google creates, it creates for its investors. They are not running a charity, they're taking a certain gamble that each of their projects, and the audience for them, will add up - in one way or another - to having done right by the people that ponied up the money to do it, and to keep paying the (huge!) bills for running it every day. It's their toy, they built it, they had an idea of how they expect it fit into their budget and forecasting, and supplying other businesses with that sort of data (or use of the data) for free isn't part of that picture.
They're certainly going to allow other licensing for this, just like they do for other things... and like many of those other things, they're going to attach a value to it. And, it's no pay, no play. Considering what they already provide at no cost to end users/searchers, it's not surprising that they've got a commercial interest in something like/maps that are such a resource hog and source material cost center.
Come on, now. Do you really think that MS doesn't have a LOT to do with the productivity of Canadian business, schools, and households, one way or another? MS has a huge business presence there in the form of their many VARs and partners who consult on everything from networking to accounting systems... believe me, none of them want Canada to be inhospitable to MS (or to SAP, or to Oracle, or anyone else that provides critical IT tools and services).
Well, then you'd have to say the same thing about every meeting of every head of state or significant politician. Anything substantial is already being talked about by their subordinates, so there's no point in the new PM of France meeting with the president of Spain, or the newly elected Iraqi president meeting with the newly elected Afghani president.
At least if the PM was meeting with a political ideologist there stands a chance of having the politician educated a bit of the newer trends in society.
But why wouldn't you include people who own or run large businesses in that group? Many of them are directly responsible for a lot of what's changing, or have their finger on the pulse of it (otherwise they lose customers). Bill Gate's personal experience with "society" would be just as interesting to me as would Gary Trudeau's, or that of the guy that owns the gas station down the street. Except, guy that owns the gas station doesn't pay billions in taxes, or, in a single day, make business decisions that can impact thousands of jobs in countless industries around the world.
Well, there is a pretty long standing tradition of hosting state dinners and other events and making influential or high-profile people some of guests. I didn't pick up on your Canadian-ness, but I'm assuming you'd say the same thing about, say, Gary Trudeau, or someone in an idealogical camp opposed to, say, Bill's?
Nothing says objective government like a weekend on the "Gates the third" yacht...
Or "weekend in the Hamptons or Martha's Vineyard with a parade of celebrities and entertainment industry big wigs." Oh wait, that was the previous administration. You'd prefer a government that didn't know or ever spend any non-talk-show time with people from the country's huger industries, employers, exporters, and investment vehicles? Better if congress or the executive branch just live in the basement like a bunch of slashdotters? No, I'd rather that elected officials spend time with farmers and agro-CEOs, musicians and music moguls, chemists and biotech venture fund managers, day laborers and bank presidents, actors and studio execs, soccer moms and football stars. But politicians that don't have any sort of relationship (personally) with the people that run the countries largest businesses are going to be clueless about some key issues.
In short, comparing one race or culture against an "average" of all other cultures is dangerous and inaccurate.
Inaccurate? Why? It's comparing something to the average. My truck gets worse mileage than the average passenger vehicle. It's not a normal passenger vehicle, but I sometimes use it as one, so the comparison is useful and accurate within that context.
Dangerous? To whom? If you mean that it might endanger someone's sense of self esteem because their particular tribe (or mine) is on the short end of the genetic IQ stick, then that's just propping up the Self Esteem Establishment(tm) which assigns moral weight to amoral things (like your DNA). It's like saying that people flying at 40,000 feet in airplanes weigh less, but that we don't want to talk about it because it affects genetically large people more than genetically small people, and we wouldn't want Nature to hurt anyone's feelings. Come on. Dangerous? You have to mean that you're worried about some reincarnation of the Reich wanting to do away with people smarter (or dumber) than they are. Don't worry: idiots will find plenty of reasons to hate groups of people without having to resort to jealous observations of actual facts.
there any excuse anymore other than incompetence and companies that are operating on a small budget?
But small businesses are the fastest growing section of the economy, and the only way they can remain productive and competitive is to leverage cheap IT. Translate that to: not paying consultants. That means that the person who is supposed to be worrying about what the small company actually produces is instead worrying about being a home-grown IT person. I can't tell you the number of small businesses I've seen in this mode, and the lack of just-add-water total security systems leaves them pretty vulnerable. But even if there were such magic bullet products out there, any small network open enough to be actually useful to a small business is going to be vulnerable to attacks that have been crafted by a large team of highly skilled, motivated Russian techno-mobsters. That's a tough enemy to fight when you're just, say, a 5-man gardenening retailer, or a mom and pop sign making company.
I think the real solution is thin clients and hosted apps. That way the ASP can use some economy of scale to deal with the threats. I know, thin clients don't work for everyone, but even if you use a fat machine as a thin client, at least your core business apps and data would be safe at Acme Hosting, and the worst thing you'd have to do is burn down your local network and start over.
BTW:
And to the FBI agent who may come across this message: Go find some real criminals. The last I heard, there are still plenty of real crimes still being committed on a daily basis. Murder, rape, child exploitation, etc. Why not devote some time on the big stuff?
Come on, don't fall for the "we can't do two things at once" concept. That's BS. I would imagine that a small company being extorted by Russian DDoS attackers would be "big stuff" to everyone who depends on that small business for their families' income. Dealing with that stuff, and dealing with murderers and rapists (usually local law enforcement, anyway) aren't mutually exclusive. I think what you're really lobbying for is a larger budget for the FBI so that they can deal with sophisticated info-criminals and deal with the more traditional crimes in a large and growing population. Stealing a company's trade secrets, or knocking their business offline, or running off with banking info and using it - the guys who do that for a living sure as hell are "real criminals." Just because they happen to be geeks doesn't make them any less criminal. Don't give them any sympathy just because they have an interest in code or know what NAT stands for.
Seriously, how long before this is absorbed by some oil giant or some "mysterious accident" occurs to the researchers?
See, there's an issue here. The issue is that you are not watching a bad movie, and mysterious accidents impacting cold fusion researchers are about as real as the characters played by Val Kilmer or Keanu Reeves.
I mean, if you're going to worry about big energy companies running off with technology that will save energy, you should concentrate on how they've stopped us from getting hybrid cars... oh, wait.
The issue, driver-license-wise, isn't whether you're required to carry one. If you choose to carry one, you're already carrying something that is considered a legal permit and ID in every state in the union. What the feds want to do is standardize the terms under which that license is considered authentic. Specifically, the whole point is to actually have some proof that you are who you say you are. The idea is that fewer false credentials help with all sorts of things, including identity theft, fraud, immigration violation, and so on. You already carry, if you have driver's license, a nation-wide ID. It's just that the people in one state can't trust that the "nationally valid" id issued by one state has the same credibility as one issue 5 miles away in the neighboring state. If you don't like the idea of some standards, then essentially you're saying that you're OK with whatever state's standards are the weakest in terms of actual identity proof. The states that insist on actual proof of identity are the ones with the tougher standards, and don't like having to trust official IDs from states where everyone knows that the driver's license is basically meaningless (when it comes to banking, credit, insurance, etc).
Slashdot Mirror
What benefit would Macradobe get by undercutting prices on their products?
Um... to cement the effective monopoly they already have? If you think MS has a monopoly (despite the presence of *nix/Apple for operating systems, Apache etc for web servers, other suites for productivity tools, and so on), then why on earth wouldn't you consider Adobe/Macromedia to have a monopoly in the areas that they totally own? For font-included, licensed publishing formats, do you see anything other than PDFs, in any significant number? I'll bet you see more Mac and Linux desktops, as a percentage, than you see ANY other doc format used in the way PDFs are.
And what about Photoshop? Essentially the industry standard. Just like MS is something of a standard in its own areas. If you want to call that a monopoly, then you have to call Adobe/Macromedia the same. Just like with Flash. Found a lot of other, widely used vector graphics tools for the web? Nope. Adobe will want to keep it that way, and they're going to be bundling things together (they already are, into productivity suites for web designers) to keep people from straying to other new products. When MS does the same thing, they get called monopolists, but when other people do it, they're called "smart."
I'd love to hear anyone at Adobe say they won't be trying to keep (and grow) their marketshare and depth. Not a chance - they know that even one moment of weakness is all it takes to lose ground to someone else. And just like everyone else does, they're going to use incentives to earn mindshare among new users. Sometimes that's acheived through special deals on tools (like, buy Flex editing package, get PDF writer, etc). That would be to keep people from running over to MS for a copy of FrontPage and Acrylic with Metro thrown in. It's called competition.
Maybe we're just a bit too jaded with a vengeful mentality these days to accept the idea that even the worst human is worthy of redemption.
But the problem is that sometimes "the worst human" is using something technologically hefty enough (like, say, a multi-ton airplane full of people and fuel) to do something rather drastic, and irreversibly final. Platitudes about being jaded, and not giving that one-way pilot a chance to redeem himself, do not stop him from killing himself and you at the same time. Especially when he really means it.
The same thing applies to gleefully brutal people like rapists and other types that do dreadful things. You can't sit down and have a nice redemptive chat with people like that as they are about to ruin or take someone's life. Tales of redemption generally don't involve the sorts of events that real-life Darth Vaders instigate (like gassing thousands of villagers who don't share your tribal/sect aspirations or want to put up with tyranny). The closest thing to redemption, in stories like that, is physically stopping the acts from occurring. And while it may take a certain amount of "faith" in one's objective to stick to it in the face of shrill or violent opposition, it's action or the credible threat of it, not lyrical references to poetic justice and redemption in traditional mythology that will and always has reigned in the real Vaders.
The #1 problem is that microsoft bundles these applications with the OS, or sells them at a loss to undercut competitors in a particular market segment, so that noone can afford to complete in that space anymore
And you don't think this will happen with Acrobat, Flash, and other technologies that all used to be separate little programs, but which are now going to show up in complete suites from Macromedia/Adobe (ah, mergers!)?
Damnit, Microsoft! You're like that kid on the playground who always wanted someone else's toy, just because someone else had them. If you don't quit bullying the other kids, Microsoft, no one is going to want to play with you.
Right! Because, before PhotoShop came along, no one had ever produced a paint program before...
The early bird gets the worm, but the second mouse gets the cheese.
You're right, of course. But there's just something about the general atmosphere of almost any Japanese technology demo that seems to bypass any normal industrial sensibilities, and goes right into Anime-land. I'm not from that culture, so I Don't Get It sometimes, I think.
Flamebait? Heh! Responding to brilliant snippets like:
Meanwhile, the idiots on these remote asteroids have volcanos and seas full of the stuff and are doing absolutely nothing to exploit it.
Rummy really needs to get out there with some ex-military contractors and get started on the pipeline. Looks like there's not too much risk of anyone firing RPGs at the construction force, either
which even picked up a nice little Troll mod, and I'm the one writing flamebait? Well, at least I'm seeing a 100% flawless pattern of Flamebait Mods For Me = I'm Hitting Too Close To Home for the audience involved. How predictable. Oh well, despite the somewhat cowardly approach to expressing through anonymous mods, at least it's obvious where the ideology here leans, and one just has to put up with the shrill socialists and their (ironically) poor social skills. That, or their complete inability to detect sarcasm - I think there's a medical term for that.
What a hoot! It's so funny that every time there's an article that mentions hydrocarbons of any kind, we can use it to show how the administration is personally stealing oil and putting in big secret tanks that they'll only share with their rich children!
Honestly, I thought that the abbreviation "M$" was the funniest thing I'd ever seen, but this is much, much better.
Wow! I didn't even know he was Jewish. You seem to be obsessed with it, though. Of course, you're so lacking in any subtlety (or awareness of the same) that you've completely missed the point of my referring to that anecdote (as it relates to "using math" to fix a practical problem). Well, at least you got modded in something like the right direction. Amazing.
You know, the physicist who as a kid in the neighborhood could "fix radios by thinking."
Nor MacIntel. Nor InPod. But I suppose I should start registering domain names anyway.
I feel your (joint) paint. Those of us in our 40's or older are the only ones with any perspective on this, and it really helps. The hard part is not coming across like an old crank ("Why, in my day, we used punch cards... and we liked it! Taught efficient programming, it did."). Plus that whole "using complete sentences on slashdot" and whatnot makes us real throwbacks. I've been 1334 for so long you can't even see it any more.
I've never liked these silly "if race car drivers designed shower curtains" type comparisons and conjectures. They don't take reality into account. There's no analogy to hitting "control-shift" in the way you walk down a hall, and 3-D tactile interfaces (like doors, lightswitches) don't have a meaningful representation on the desktop or cell phone.
Navigating back a couple of pages with your browser (alt-left-arrow) just is not the same as walking backwards out your front door so that you can come into the garage from the side. It's a couple of finger twitches!
I've come across plenty of crappy interfaces (um, some of which I built myself), and plenty of crappy house designs, too. It comes down to cost. Genius-hatched code, countless hours of user focus groups, and endless release cycles don't jive with reality most of the time. Just like we can't all have dream houses built on the same size lot. A lot of what I've loathed about some software, though, has evolved away nicely over the years through upgrades. Retooling a house to the same degree isn't even something most people can contemplate, and that's reflected in the design and/or the price.
And: houses have been built for thousands of years. Desktop software for 20-ish. That may seem like an eternity to some Nerd Younglings (meh!) but it's an immature practice/culture in the middle of constant upheaval. The two don't lend themselves to anything other than flame-oriented comparisons, and I'm not talking about sprinkler systems.
Ah! The Flamebait Of Truth Mod! That's my favorite kind - it means I'm strking a chort. The GP thinks that DHS's systems might be better off trashed, but offers no notion of how he'd approach dealing with exactly the sort of issues that I just raised. The mod down means that there are at least two people that clueless.
However a lot of this data is stuff that I want to be on a server that crashes hard, without backups. Preferably in such a way that even disaster recovery places can't get the data back.
Um... because you'd rather that security is handled by systems that can mine for threats in real time, all the time, so they don't have to worry about it? Or, because you're really not worried about the foreign national who's overstayed his visa, but who took pilot lessons, just spent a couple of months touring the scenic mountains of northern Pakistan, doesn't file taxes but spends a lot on wholesale chemicals and used dental xray equipment, and wires a lot of money to Hamas? Definately we don't want that info available, even in profile/status form, when he's booking a seat on a flight back into Dulles, or trying to get a license to drive 18-wheelers tankers for his new job at the fuel delivery company or signing up at the railyard where they load chlorine by the megaliter.
If that guy can't pick up that small Japanese woman anyway, then that suite better do a lot of other stuff, too.
But since she's not that much of a payload, the pictures might as well be of a guy wearing a Stormtrooper costume doing deep knee bends.
They are providing a free service for individuals. Haveing another person/group/company use that freedom to build a new service and possibly profit off of it at the expense of the individuals it was created for is rough.
/maps that are such a resource hog and source material cost center.
It's only indirectly that your comment makes sense. The people using Google's stuff (including the infrastructure and all of that overhead) aren't doing so at the "expense of the individuals it was created for" in the sense of end users. What Google creates, it creates for its investors. They are not running a charity, they're taking a certain gamble that each of their projects, and the audience for them, will add up - in one way or another - to having done right by the people that ponied up the money to do it, and to keep paying the (huge!) bills for running it every day. It's their toy, they built it, they had an idea of how they expect it fit into their budget and forecasting, and supplying other businesses with that sort of data (or use of the data) for free isn't part of that picture.
They're certainly going to allow other licensing for this, just like they do for other things... and like many of those other things, they're going to attach a value to it. And, it's no pay, no play. Considering what they already provide at no cost to end users/searchers, it's not surprising that they've got a commercial interest in something like
Come on, now. Do you really think that MS doesn't have a LOT to do with the productivity of Canadian business, schools, and households, one way or another? MS has a huge business presence there in the form of their many VARs and partners who consult on everything from networking to accounting systems... believe me, none of them want Canada to be inhospitable to MS (or to SAP, or to Oracle, or anyone else that provides critical IT tools and services).
Well, then you'd have to say the same thing about every meeting of every head of state or significant politician. Anything substantial is already being talked about by their subordinates, so there's no point in the new PM of France meeting with the president of Spain, or the newly elected Iraqi president meeting with the newly elected Afghani president.
At least if the PM was meeting with a political ideologist there stands a chance of having the politician educated a bit of the newer trends in society.
But why wouldn't you include people who own or run large businesses in that group? Many of them are directly responsible for a lot of what's changing, or have their finger on the pulse of it (otherwise they lose customers). Bill Gate's personal experience with "society" would be just as interesting to me as would Gary Trudeau's, or that of the guy that owns the gas station down the street. Except, guy that owns the gas station doesn't pay billions in taxes, or, in a single day, make business decisions that can impact thousands of jobs in countless industries around the world.
Well, there is a pretty long standing tradition of hosting state dinners and other events and making influential or high-profile people some of guests. I didn't pick up on your Canadian-ness, but I'm assuming you'd say the same thing about, say, Gary Trudeau, or someone in an idealogical camp opposed to, say, Bill's?
Nothing says objective government like a weekend on the "Gates the third" yacht...
Or "weekend in the Hamptons or Martha's Vineyard with a parade of celebrities and entertainment industry big wigs." Oh wait, that was the previous administration. You'd prefer a government that didn't know or ever spend any non-talk-show time with people from the country's huger industries, employers, exporters, and investment vehicles? Better if congress or the executive branch just live in the basement like a bunch of slashdotters? No, I'd rather that elected officials spend time with farmers and agro-CEOs, musicians and music moguls, chemists and biotech venture fund managers, day laborers and bank presidents, actors and studio execs, soccer moms and football stars. But politicians that don't have any sort of relationship (personally) with the people that run the countries largest businesses are going to be clueless about some key issues.
In short, comparing one race or culture against an "average" of all other cultures is dangerous and inaccurate.
Inaccurate? Why? It's comparing something to the average. My truck gets worse mileage than the average passenger vehicle. It's not a normal passenger vehicle, but I sometimes use it as one, so the comparison is useful and accurate within that context.
Dangerous? To whom? If you mean that it might endanger someone's sense of self esteem because their particular tribe (or mine) is on the short end of the genetic IQ stick, then that's just propping up the Self Esteem Establishment(tm) which assigns moral weight to amoral things (like your DNA). It's like saying that people flying at 40,000 feet in airplanes weigh less, but that we don't want to talk about it because it affects genetically large people more than genetically small people, and we wouldn't want Nature to hurt anyone's feelings. Come on. Dangerous? You have to mean that you're worried about some reincarnation of the Reich wanting to do away with people smarter (or dumber) than they are. Don't worry: idiots will find plenty of reasons to hate groups of people without having to resort to jealous observations of actual facts.
there any excuse anymore other than incompetence and companies that are operating on a small budget?
But small businesses are the fastest growing section of the economy, and the only way they can remain productive and competitive is to leverage cheap IT. Translate that to: not paying consultants. That means that the person who is supposed to be worrying about what the small company actually produces is instead worrying about being a home-grown IT person. I can't tell you the number of small businesses I've seen in this mode, and the lack of just-add-water total security systems leaves them pretty vulnerable. But even if there were such magic bullet products out there, any small network open enough to be actually useful to a small business is going to be vulnerable to attacks that have been crafted by a large team of highly skilled, motivated Russian techno-mobsters. That's a tough enemy to fight when you're just, say, a 5-man gardenening retailer, or a mom and pop sign making company.
I think the real solution is thin clients and hosted apps. That way the ASP can use some economy of scale to deal with the threats. I know, thin clients don't work for everyone, but even if you use a fat machine as a thin client, at least your core business apps and data would be safe at Acme Hosting, and the worst thing you'd have to do is burn down your local network and start over.
BTW:
And to the FBI agent who may come across this message: Go find some real criminals. The last I heard, there are still plenty of real crimes still being committed on a daily basis. Murder, rape, child exploitation, etc. Why not devote some time on the big stuff?
Come on, don't fall for the "we can't do two things at once" concept. That's BS. I would imagine that a small company being extorted by Russian DDoS attackers would be "big stuff" to everyone who depends on that small business for their families' income. Dealing with that stuff, and dealing with murderers and rapists (usually local law enforcement, anyway) aren't mutually exclusive. I think what you're really lobbying for is a larger budget for the FBI so that they can deal with sophisticated info-criminals and deal with the more traditional crimes in a large and growing population. Stealing a company's trade secrets, or knocking their business offline, or running off with banking info and using it - the guys who do that for a living sure as hell are "real criminals." Just because they happen to be geeks doesn't make them any less criminal. Don't give them any sympathy just because they have an interest in code or know what NAT stands for.
Crazier things have happened
Not any crazier than your comment.
Seriously, how long before this is absorbed by some oil giant or some "mysterious accident" occurs to the researchers?
See, there's an issue here. The issue is that you are not watching a bad movie, and mysterious accidents impacting cold fusion researchers are about as real as the characters played by Val Kilmer or Keanu Reeves.
I mean, if you're going to worry about big energy companies running off with technology that will save energy, you should concentrate on how they've stopped us from getting hybrid cars... oh, wait.
The issue, driver-license-wise, isn't whether you're required to carry one. If you choose to carry one, you're already carrying something that is considered a legal permit and ID in every state in the union. What the feds want to do is standardize the terms under which that license is considered authentic. Specifically, the whole point is to actually have some proof that you are who you say you are. The idea is that fewer false credentials help with all sorts of things, including identity theft, fraud, immigration violation, and so on. You already carry, if you have driver's license, a nation-wide ID. It's just that the people in one state can't trust that the "nationally valid" id issued by one state has the same credibility as one issue 5 miles away in the neighboring state. If you don't like the idea of some standards, then essentially you're saying that you're OK with whatever state's standards are the weakest in terms of actual identity proof. The states that insist on actual proof of identity are the ones with the tougher standards, and don't like having to trust official IDs from states where everyone knows that the driver's license is basically meaningless (when it comes to banking, credit, insurance, etc).