Yes, for people that don't read the article that publishes the problem. Granted, news of the problem will be spread all over the net very rapidly, but Microsoft admitting that it is a flaw and not a feature carries a little more weight than joe hacker posting on some blog.
In the computer security community, a "Gray hat" is a skilled hacker who sometimes acts legally and in good will and sometimes not. They are a hybrid between white and black hat hackers. They hack for no personal gain, and do not have malicious intentions, but commit crimes. For example, attacking corporate businesses with unethical practices could be regarded as highly ethical and yet would normally be tagged with the title of Blackhat activity. However, to a Gray hat, it may not appear bad even though it is against that local law. So instead of tagging it Black hat, it is a Gray hat hack.
Google's public perception is one of integrity,...
What does a company/person have to do until what could be considered a "perception" turns into what that company or person really is?
They have a clean page, they don't sell rankings, everything that Google has done in the past left me with no doubt that this is how they would react. I knew they would take the right course of action.
Granted, maybe the inner workings of Google are slave drivers who dock you a week's pay for taking five extra minutes for lunch, so maybe it is only the public perception that is one of integrity, but I doubt that.
becuase it's roughly equivalent to download 15 songs for $0.99 per song, or pay $15 for the CD...however, if i could download 15 songs for only $0.75, so why should i ever buy a CD again?
Sort of, but you're missing something. The math works out, but when you download 15 songs for $.99 each, those are 15 songs that you like are worth listening to. When you buy a cd with 15 songs, there are probably only going to be about 3 or 4 songs that are that good that you'll listen to them repeatedly.
So to buy 15 songs that you'll listen to from the store, you'll have to buy a couple of cds, so it'll be at least $45 to get your 15 songs.
So Apple is really giving you a better deal and most likely is causing a decrease in demand for cds.
Possible outcomes:
1) The server doesn't get broken intobr
or
2) The server does get hacked
outcomes of the outcomes:
1) more proof that linux is secure,...
or
2) The weakness is found and patched / code changed /... and future releases are even better
Either way, it gives more publicity to the security of linux and the linux community comes out ahead.
"but the success of Apple's music store had prompted concern that they may now be too low.'"
Price != fixed cost + fixed profit.
Price = what the customer is willing to pay.
If the product costs 50 cents to make and distribute, but there are people willing to pay $10 for that, then stores aren't going to lower their prices to $1 for a small profit.
Simpsons reference - from the episode where Burns gets his Bobo back:
they bring in a bag of ice to the quicky mart and the sailor guy says to apu that he has to find a cheaper way to find the ice; they lost some men on that trip.
Apu responds, "well, if you know of any easier way to get ice, let me know"
In reality of course, people aren't going to pay $1000 for a bag of ice because they can make it cheaper in the freezer. So just because Apu had a cost of 1000 dollars, that isn't what the price should be.
My point: If people are only willing to pay $1 for something that costs $1000 to make and distribute, find a cheaper way!
Apple did find a way to cheaply make and distribute the product (songs that are basically free to distribute online) but they were not charging enough.
So for a statement that they may have set the price too low, all they are saying is they could have charged more and people still would have paid for it. (They were only only charging one dollar when they could have been charging more)
If Google were to host the Start Page in different languages, would the Foundation not be able to set a different language version of the page in their localized builds?
If people in other languages can't understand what the default page says, won't they be more likely to go to a page they can understand? So wouldn't it make better business sense for Google to provide different start pages for different localized builds?
flamebait, but oh well. On your line of thinking, having a government at all makes us non-free. If we were totally free, then I should be able to say, "I don't like these ideas called "taxes" and "laws" so I'm not going to pay my taxes and I'm going to drive my car as fast as I want and park where I want. No more police then, no more fire department, no more road construction / repair, no order on the roads so you couldn't get anywhere.
But we would be "free". Free to stay in our homes all day because the outside world would be too unsafe to venture out into without carrying a couple of guns, and then your neighbor would get a bigger gun to protect himself, and nothing could get accomplished.
But say the government does start trying to tell us everything. Are they? In the news, you always have the same story being reported on, but when you have different people reporting, it gets retold completely different. They may not try to spin a story, but might end up doing so anyways.
I can see how you (and I) think that the net should be safe, but in real life, do you eat food that is left in a box on a street corner? Do you blindly walk across a busy street? No. You use common sense and don't do stupid things like that.
So that takes care of some of the problems, but things like auto installers in web pages or worms/viruses that can get into your system just from having it turned on and unpatched are a little different.
So what is the right answer? Who's to say. I use Firefox and keep Win2k fully patched, but somehow I got a program group of links to porn sites and one to the program files folder added to my start menu without me doing anything. Nothing new in the add remove programs, spy sweeper didn't find anything, giant didn't find anything, and microsoft's beta spyware program didn't find anything. I was able to manually delete the unasked for files, but still I don't like that trying to be as cautious as I could be I still got some junk on my computer.
Slashdot Mirror
http://it.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=149222&cid
posted Thursday May 12, @08:59AM
Your comment posted at Thursday May 12, @01:17PM.
Shame you can't read previous posts.
I guess having the Firefox dev team make your wife happy is better than having your neighbor make your wife happy...
Isn't it ironic that they write about robots self replicating in "Nature?"
Yes, for people that don't read the article that publishes the problem. Granted, news of the problem will be spread all over the net very rapidly, but Microsoft admitting that it is a flaw and not a feature carries a little more weight than joe hacker posting on some blog.
In the computer security community, a "Gray hat" is a skilled hacker who sometimes acts legally and in good will and sometimes not. They are a hybrid between white and black hat hackers. They hack for no personal gain, and do not have malicious intentions, but commit crimes. For example, attacking corporate businesses with unethical practices could be regarded as highly ethical and yet would normally be tagged with the title of Blackhat activity. However, to a Gray hat, it may not appear bad even though it is against that local law. So instead of tagging it Black hat, it is a Gray hat hack.
so the sysadmin gets kidnapped... "you can torture me or kill me, but you'll never get the password! oh... wait... damn..."
Yeah, but if slashdot ignored Microsoft for a while, then slashdot would go away.
What does a company/person have to do until what could be considered a "perception" turns into what that company or person really is?
They have a clean page, they don't sell rankings, everything that Google has done in the past left me with no doubt that this is how they would react. I knew they would take the right course of action.
Granted, maybe the inner workings of Google are slave drivers who dock you a week's pay for taking five extra minutes for lunch, so maybe it is only the public perception that is one of integrity, but I doubt that.
Sort of, but you're missing something. The math works out, but when you download 15 songs for $.99 each, those are 15 songs that you like are worth listening to. When you buy a cd with 15 songs, there are probably only going to be about 3 or 4 songs that are that good that you'll listen to them repeatedly.
So to buy 15 songs that you'll listen to from the store, you'll have to buy a couple of cds, so it'll be at least $45 to get your 15 songs.
So Apple is really giving you a better deal and most likely is causing a decrease in demand for cds.
1) The server doesn't get broken intobr
or
2) The server does get hacked
outcomes of the outcomes: ... ... and future releases are even better
1) more proof that linux is secure,
or
2) The weakness is found and patched / code changed /
Either way, it gives more publicity to the security of linux and the linux community comes out ahead.
If 10gb of pr0n is on there, and there is no viewer capable, is it still an issue to hide it from your mom?
What about sco / ibm?
Price != fixed cost + fixed profit. Price = what the customer is willing to pay.
If the product costs 50 cents to make and distribute, but there are people willing to pay $10 for that, then stores aren't going to lower their prices to $1 for a small profit.
Simpsons reference - from the episode where Burns gets his Bobo back:
they bring in a bag of ice to the quicky mart and the sailor guy says to apu that he has to find a cheaper way to find the ice; they lost some men on that trip.
Apu responds, "well, if you know of any easier way to get ice, let me know"
In reality of course, people aren't going to pay $1000 for a bag of ice because they can make it cheaper in the freezer. So just because Apu had a cost of 1000 dollars, that isn't what the price should be.
My point: If people are only willing to pay $1 for something that costs $1000 to make and distribute, find a cheaper way!
Apple did find a way to cheaply make and distribute the product (songs that are basically free to distribute online) but they were not charging enough.
So for a statement that they may have set the price too low, all they are saying is they could have charged more and people still would have paid for it. (They were only only charging one dollar when they could have been charging more)
Does the name "Robin Hood" ring a bell?
If people in other languages can't understand what the default page says, won't they be more likely to go to a page they can understand? So wouldn't it make better business sense for Google to provide different start pages for different localized builds?
But say the government does start trying to tell us everything. Are they? In the news, you always have the same story being reported on, but when you have different people reporting, it gets retold completely different. They may not try to spin a story, but might end up doing so anyways.
So that takes care of some of the problems, but things like auto installers in web pages or worms/viruses that can get into your system just from having it turned on and unpatched are a little different.
So what is the right answer? Who's to say. I use Firefox and keep Win2k fully patched, but somehow I got a program group of links to porn sites and one to the program files folder added to my start menu without me doing anything. Nothing new in the add remove programs, spy sweeper didn't find anything, giant didn't find anything, and microsoft's beta spyware program didn't find anything. I was able to manually delete the unasked for files, but still I don't like that trying to be as cautious as I could be I still got some junk on my computer.
"It's not a bug, it's a feature"