You can literally find HUNDREDS of stories of upset people who tried to list auctions on eBay for Microsoft operating system or application software they *never opened*, but MS had their lawyers demand a takedown from eBay based on the "VeRO" program.
(They argue that end-users are illegally trying to resell OEM software products that weren't intended for resale, etc. etc. But no matter how they'd like to spin it, it seems to me if you received a copy of an OS or Microsoft Office product with your new PC purchase, and then decided not to ever use it, you should be perfectly ok attempting to recoup some money by selling it to another person. I love how MS tried to "enforce" their B.S. by affixing the OS CD key stickers to the sides of the hardware itself. As if that suddenly makes you say "Oh yeah, this software really IS just part of the physical hardware and isn't possible to separate. My bad.")
Your assertion is certainly the most obvious reason people are assigned passwords on a company's computer network. But there's no reason why that has to be an exclusive reason. I maintain that giving employees their own passwords amounts to giving them a certain level of privacy, AS WELL AS protecting company information (and aiding in having accountability for a user's actions).
Ask the typical employee why he/she is in the habit of locking their Windows workstation before going to lunch. I'll bet, if they're honest with you, they'll say something like "I don't want other people walking by and reading my email!", rather than "I'm afraid a co-worker will do something against company policy on my PC while I'm gone, and get ME in trouble for it!"
It was just last year, I did an on-site service call for a small business owner. He said his printer quit working and he wanted it repaired. It turned out, he had an old Epson dot-matrix printer, and the reason he wanted it repaired, rather than just replaced, was because it was paired up with a 386 class desktop PC running MS-DOS. (I think he was actually "current" with version 6.22 though, not 5. Heh.)
The only thing he did with this PC, since it was new, was business-related work, including Lotus 1-2-3 spreadsheets and printing address labels from some address label software. (MyMailList Pro I believe)
It was amazing how functional and productive this arrangement really was for him. As he pointed out, the old dot-matrix printer ribbons were FAR cheaper than inkjet cartridges, and he didn't need better print quality for address labels or for reports generated from spreadsheets.
He could pull up his software and start working in less time than it takes Windows to boot, even on a really fast, modern PC. With no Internet connectivity, he had almost zero worry about a virus or spyware messing things up -- and running DOS, he didn't even have to mess with regular software updates, requiring reboots and all.
(We actually did managed to fix his printer, by buying another broken one off eBay that had a different issue. His just had a dead power supply board in it.)
Privacy is a rather "slippery" thing. The U.S. Constitution never specifically guarantees anyone a "right" to privacy. Neither to any of the Constitutional amendments. It's more of an "implied" individual right, subject to interpretation. (Just being defined as a "figure in the public eye" can drastically change your ability to sue someone for publishing photos taken of you without your permission, for example.)
Ultimately, I think people only retain the amount of privacy they're willing to fight to maintain.
So yes, in the workplace it's understood that legally, when push comes to shove, the employer will prevail in the courts if they decide to snoop around on the computer assigned to you. That doesn't mean the I.T. staff should go around disrespecting people's privacy on a regular basis, just because "the law lets me do it".
The law says it's ok for me to sit on our mail server and start opening up people's mailboxes, reading the contents of all their email too. As an employee, would you really be ok with that, knowing I was doing that all the time at your business?
I know, as an I.T. admin myself, I'm constantly trying to do my job, while still respecting people's privacy (whether it's legally protected or not). To me, it absolutely comes down to "ethics". I understand that despite what the *law* says, people still feel like the company property assigned to them for their use during the workday is *generally* not subject to snooping. That's why we have logins with passwords on them, and email isn't just collectively sent out under a heading of the company's name. (The Internet connection and mail servers might be owned by your employer, but they don't really own your thoughts, put into writing, in individual emails, right?)
The fact that the phone has the "airplane mode" option is NOT a fair answer to this issue!
Just last week, I had to explain what the "airplane mode" was all about to a co-worker, who came to me with questions about that option on their cellphone. Other people overheard our conversation and chimed in, with more than a couple "Oh! So THAT'S what that thing is on MY phone!" type comments.
None of these people were iPhone owners either. We're talking basic Motorola/Nextel phones here.
It's not that this guy was some "wanna-be hipster who thought he was too good to read the instructions, since his new iPhone was so easy to use". This could happen to practically anyone. MOST people don't read the instruction books for their cellphones. They assume that being telephones, basically, they're devices they can manage to figure out by playing around with them a little bit.
I don't think it's even remotely reasonable to expect that everyone understands that airline mode would disable *data* transmission on their phone, in any case!
Yeah... I was thinking the same thing, really. Moller's "sky-car" has been the subject of quite a few news articles, including a big write-up in Popular Science magazine, years ago. Back then, I remember them saying he had a working prototype and everything, but was tangled up in government "red tape" because the FAA wanted to regulate it just like any other commercial aircraft. That would completely kill his sales, since he wanted to market this as simply a "flying car", not an airplane. (One of his big "features" was supposed to be a bunch of computerization that allowed people to fly with a basic joystick. Sort of a "point and fly" approach, not requiring any special training or flight experience to use it.)
I can't help but wonder if the hovering "flying saucer" is just an attempt to keep his business viable, while he keeps on fighting the bureaucracy preventing him from marketing what he REALLY wants to sell......
I've got to say, I'm pretty lost as to why some people keep making these comments?
I know iTunes and Windows Vista had some issues - but that's not really shocking, considering how many other things aren't quite Vista compatible.
Overall though, geez... Quicktime player has been used in Windows since version 3.1, as a de-facto standard for playing multimedia files off CD. It's not exactly something Apple just "slapped together to say they had a Windows version".
Safari for Windows? Nothing special there, but it's also a very first attempt at doing it for the platform, and it's FREE software too. As others pointed out, it's probably relased right now mainly to allow easier development for the iPhone from a Windows box, plus giving people the option to use the same browser they have on their Mac, if they so desire. Apple's not auto-deleting your copies of Firefox and IE 7 just because you installed it or anything, so why the big fuss?
Ok, being a Libertarian-leaning individual myself, I'm obviously a little biased. But really, why did anyone think getting local government involved would produce better/more efficient results than we'd see without them?
Personally, I think there were more than a few people enamored with a utopian ideal of "free Internet for all!", without considering the reasons it hasn't really happened spontaneously first.
My thinking is, if the *demand* was truly there for wi-fi practically everywhere in a city, you'd already essentially be there, due to all the businesses throwing a $50 Linksys router up at their location and putting out a sign advertising it to their customers. That plus the sheer number of people with fast broadband connections in their home/apartment/condo who just feel like sharing with others, would provide pretty good coverage without ANY government intervention at all.
In reality, this is actually starting to happen, little by little, but it's not anywhere near "city-wide seamless coverage" because you don't yet see every Joe on the street carrying a wi-fi capable device around, hoping for a connection. The people running around with laptops tend to fit into little niches; your salespeople, your mobile I.T. workers, and your college students. The rest of the public doesn't really care if they've got wi-fi. Having a computer in their place of business they can use during the workday is more than enough for them.
Hell, where I live, all the McDonalds restaurants have wi-fi, and I've only seen someone use a computer in there a grand total of twice, ever! (Both times were at a McDonalds in a more affluent part of town, too.) It's almost a joke they have wi-fi at the ones near my workplace. People would be afraid of having their computer stolen at gun or knifepoint or something!
Ultimately, that's the real question.... Is the employee really "wasting time" or is he/she learning something potentially useful?
It's a little ironic that most employers have programs where they'll pay a chunk of your tuition to go back to college and take additional courses, and others gladly spend an annual budget on "training", sending you all over the country to seminars and training courses. Yet the self-motivated employee who surfs the net each day to learn more about trends in his/her field, to keep up with the news or current events, or to communicate with others about relevant topics gets labeled a "time waster".
Especially in a field like I.T. - you're paid to basically be the company's "knowledge repository". People come to you with their computer-related questions and expect answers. It's your job to solve their problems and to find more efficient ways to use the tools at the group's disposal.
That's what I was thinking too. I live in St. Louis, Missouri - and I don't recall *ever* having some number to dial, sponsored by AT&T, that would read off the time? Maybe I was just ignorant of it? But even as a small kid, the numbers I recall were (314)321-2522 (for time and temperature), and (314)321-2222 (for a detailed weather report). The first used to be sponsored by the now defunct "Boatmen's Bank", and the latter was run by KMOX AM 1120 radio.
Our "time and temperature" number continued on for years, sponsored by different banks - and finally was disconnected for a while. But it was revived recently, due to popular demand.
I ran up against this problem last year, when one of our long-time business partners needed to get his home-based shop updated to something faster than dial-up access, so he could exchange drawings with our firm.
I discovered he lived too far outside the city to get either high-speed cable Internet or DSL service, so I immediately suggested satellite.
He found out AT&T offered "Wild Blue" satellite Internet service, with a local business working as a contractor to do the installations. (He wanted to work with someone local for the install, so he had people nearby he could go back to if anything went wrong.)
It turned out AT&T took nearly 6 months to get him online though. He was told that their satellite capacity was almost filled up, and he had to wait until a new satellite was launched and put online -- and apparently, that was never done on schedule either. And yes, this POOR service was coupled with a big up-front equipment expense, and the fact that it still has bad latency issues you never deal with using DSL or cable broadband. (You click to start a new transfer, and literally wait 1-2 seconds before anything starts. Acceptable for a large file upload/download or clicking to check one's email, but unusable for most Internet gaming and annoying for lots of random web surfing.)
I find it interesting that despite the prevailing mentality that Apple is a "niche market player" - they've got such a strong market cap, with no signs of it declining.
Nay-sayers will scream that "It's only because they sold tons of iPods!", but don't forget that they're not all THAT far from matching HP's market cap, and Apple doesn't even manufacture their own printers OR scanners anymore! (On the other hand, HP did license the iPod from Apple for a while!)
My first thought about these services is, it has real potential for people who need to ensure they don't lose important photos or other documents.
Sure, you can set up regular backups to an external hard drive, set up a fault-tolerant RAID system perhaps, or burn your important stuff to DVD or CD. But none of that helps if your house catches on fire while you're out and all those things go up in flames. Backups also have the nasty tendency to be "out of reach" when you need them. (EG. You go on an important business trip and your laptop's hard drive crashes. You can probably borrow a loaner to get your business presentations done, but what about the data itself?)
The big question is always, how easy is it to get your data uploaded to them? Most home users are using cable or DSL where they may get good download speeds, but their upload speeds are relatively poor. If they decide to upload several gigabytes of photos, they may get frustrated or confused with how long it takes to finish that. I think software is needed to handle this gracefully... uploading in the background and giving the user a small status icon they can check (by rolling the mouse over it or something). You can't expect people to sit for an hour in some browser window with a progress bar drawn that hasn't moved in the last 10 minutes, with some kind of "Please wait....." message up there.
They're going to counterfeit it! It's China's first step. Take a bunch of pictures and measure every detail of the prototype.... Next thing you know, the "ghost shift" working night hours at the "legitimate by day" factory will begin production of cloned moons!
In America, marriage doesn't signify "ownership" of your partner, but it DOES pretty much ensure ownership of the partner's assets, if you want to be vindictive about it.....
One of the biggest reasons many people are against marriage in the U.S. today is the frightening lack of protection given to one's personal assets during a divorce.
Basically, a partner can get angry, run off with every last item of value in the home, sell it off, and there's little or nothing you can do about it. (Sure, when one finally gets up in front of a divorce court judge, about a year after the event, he/she can order a financial judgment against the partner.... but those are only valid for 10 years. In so many cases, someone who is the type who would do this to another person they used to love/live with is also the type to dodge payment on such a judgment until it expires, too.)
The police won't even get involved in any of it, in the meantime, because they say "Sorry... divorce is a civil matter!" You might be surprised how many laws a marriage partner can break and still get away with it, during a divorce which isn't finalized yet!
EG. One person could leave the other, and decide to burn their house down a week later. Since technically, it's still "shared property" and there's "no law against burning down your own place" - the police will shrug it off (assuming nobody was injured in the event, and the house was already paid off - meaning a bank isn't a 3rd. party involved).
As another example, a partner could take your car, illegally forge a signature on its title, and sell it to someone else. Again, you'd be very hard pressed to get anyone to do anything about it. (I've spoken to police about this exact scenario, and they say they've run across it a number of times. Used to be, they'd proceed with investigating the criminal action of title fraud -- but they gave up, because divorce court judges can often rule that the vehicle be turned over to the partner who took it anyway. (The divorce court judge has the authority to force you to sign over a title to the other partner, in his/her presence in the courtroom.) If they investigate the title fraud and then this ruling happens, they just wasted their time and have to scrap the investigation.
IMHO, they need to make it a criminal offense to dispose of any assets during a divorce, until a final divorce ruling is made, determining who gets what. Until that "loophole" is sealed, marriage is far more financially risky than any other type of legally binding contract between 2 parties.
I haven't actually heard of anything like this going to court here in the U.S.A.
eBay constantly warns users that bids are legally binding contracts and so forth. But when it comes to a seller deciding not to sell an item, I think MOST shunned buyers would just be a little disappointed and get on with their lives. When you know you've bid really low for an item, and it looks like you're going to win it anyway - you KNOW the seller wasn't planning on giving it away so inexpensively. You consider it a "steal of a deal" if it really goes through, and if not - you know it seemed "too good to be true" anyway.
I have yet to bid on an eBay auction where I got a deal SO good, it was worth going to court over it to make sure the seller really sold it to me afterwards!
Is it even the theater's responsibility to have customers arrested for taping, in the first place? As others pointed out, the theater is NOT the content owner. The only valid reason I can see them enforcing rules against videotaping would be an argument that it disturbs others trying to watch the movie. (Who wants to sit behind someone who keeps holding a camcorder up, blocking part of your view, for example?) Kicking them out of the movie should suffice, in any case.
That being said, yes - I think it's *quite* reasonable for ushers to determine if someone is sitting there trying to videotape a large piece of the movie or not! Basically, you give the benefit of the doubt until you see some idiot sitting there, more interested in taping the movie than in watching it, and they don't put the camcorder away after you've come back down the aisle several times. Having someone arrested after the first 20 SECONDS they're seen with the camcorder out?? That's harassment!
Well, if they would have just let her FINISH, I wouldn't have to go to the theater to see Transformers, at least! Sheesh....:P
But seriously, I pretty much agree. On a *rare* occasion, a movie is released that I want to see badly enough, I'll pay their premium to see it right away, vs. waiting for a DVD release. But I have a nice little setup at home now with a DLP projector and 110" pull-down screen. I can pause the movie any time I like, adjust the volume to my liking, and get whatever I want to snack on without paying insane prices for it. And yeah, avoids all the stupid commercials (half the time just B.S. trying to scare me into not pirating movies).
Theaters need to upgrade the whole experience. IMax is a good start. Why didn't they film "300" in IMax? That would be cool.... being immersed in the middle of those battle scenes and all!
I follow your logic, up to the point where you completely blow off the idea that the law could actually include provisions on how long a person could film in a theater legally.
Why is this "ridiculous" to you, when it probably already exists (as you freely admit) in the "fair use" portion of copyright law!?
While it is the job of a judge and jury to make final decisions on legality, it's ALSO the job of police not to just arrest every Tom, Dick and Jane they're asked by someone to arrest.
I'm not a lawyer, and I haven't looked over the details of the "fair use" provisions to see what they say about this sort of thing. But as I recall, they don't allow very much filming to take place. We're probably talking about filming measured in seconds as opposed to multiple minutes at a time. Given this, it shouldn't really be hard at all for theater management to differentiate between someone trying to illegally tape a movie to redistribute illegally, and someone casually recording a small segment for personal fair use.
Exactly right.... The current state of the dot-com world is one of some people with really good ideas *finally* getting the opportunity to bring them to fruition, after being stuck with practically nobody willing to touch them after the crash in 2000.
Far from seeing useless extravagance, I see what appear to be well-managed, small-scale operations doing potentially big things, like www.meebo.com. (Consider the fact that they were positioned perfectly to offer the first/only multi-platform IM chat environment that worked on Apple's new iPhone, for example!)
If Dvorak and others are focusing squarely on Google and all the streaming video sites going up, I think these are an exception to the rule, really. The whole Internet video broadcasting thing is in its infancy, but it's clear to most long-term thinkers that it's the way of the future. The gamble here seems to be on hopes that one of them breaks through into the "mainstream" before burning through all their funding and going broke. I'm sure many will die before it's all sorted out, but whether it's Joost, or YouTube, or some other player - it seems like the "last man standing" will be in a really good position to offer video content in a whole new way. This isn't some dumb scheme to sell pet food online.....
How many times have you witnessed a company actually fighting back against one of these class-action suits? I'm sure they have, but I can't recall ever reading about it?
It seems like no matter how lame the lawsuit, companies always settle these (usually in such a way that gives relatively little to the plaintiffs, like a 20% off coupon on a future purchase or something).
Given the potential for bad publicity that could be generated by the media reporting "Company A, today, fought back against consumers who filed suit over their defective product", it's a good bet they'll cough up some sort of "freebie" for the product owners.
So yeah, it's an incredibly dumb lawsuit, but there's a GREAT chance it will just mean Apple makes the lawyer involved a lot richer, and throws some small "bone" to everyone who owns the iPhone. Maybe a credit at the Apple store equivalent to the cost of 1 battery replacement or something?
Disclaimer here: I *am* a systems administrator for a small business.
I think some software developers do really have it tough. Much depends on the programming language they use and the environment they're coding in. I've watched some senior developers look like incompetent fools when forced to implement Microsoft technologies in the past (things like SOAP, MSDAC objects, etc.). The obscure bugs and problems encountered when various workstations were on different revisions of the technologies made coding stable, reliable apps a nightmare. On the flip-side, some of the Unix coders can basically sit around throwing paper airplanes at each other, waiting for one of only a few small change requests to come in. Their app(s) often "just work" and don't need much attention.
But on the whole, yeah - the sysadmin of a small to mid-size company has a rough go of things. Usually, the money's not there to purchase as many quality, reliable pieces of hardware and software as you'd like. You end up making a server perform a number of tasks, where a larger company has the physical space and budget to dedicate separate machines to the jobs. Then, uptime suffers when you have to reboot the server to perform maintenance on any of the 6 or 7 "mission critical" apps that might be shoehorned onto the one box.
I don't think anyone here is even remotely aware of a thing like "system administrator's day" - and I'm not going to be arrogant enough to point it out to them either. Really, I'm satisfied as long as they keep signing my paycheck and complaints are at a bare minimum.
My Motorola Razr has no actual "buttons" for dialing a number either. It just has a sheet of flat metal with numbers printed on it, and lines etched into it to divide up the sections into "keys".
Anyone trying to dial numbers on a cell while driving should *really* be doing it using voice recognition and a hands-free car kit. Otherwise, they're *all* taking the chance that they can manage to glance at the phone and get the number entered while driving, without hitting something.
It seems to me like the people who profited from this screw-up would be wise to *let* the casino haul them off to court, unless their "winnings" were so small, it's really no big deal to give them back?
I'm thinking if this *did* go to court, it would be pretty easy to settle out of court by offering to return the money THEN, vs. volunteering to give it away before it's even known if this is a case they're going to pursue.
I wouldn't normally advocate a purposeful attempt to keep money that's not rightfully yours - but as others have said, this is no ATM machine, designed to substitute for a human teller in a bank. This is a case of dumping money into a machine, supposedly for "entertainment purposes". The only reason you're giving the machine your money in the first place is with the hopes of getting more back out than you started with. It's the casino's job to control how often this actually works out for the player, and how often it doesn't.
If they installed a malfunctioning slot machine that was paying back $10 for every $1 inserted, I think the losses should really be THEIRS to eat. Eventually, these machines run out of money anyway, so there should be a maximum amount they could lose. (And if they were really STUPID enough to see the empty machine, have no record of it paying out a huge jackpot that would explain it being empty, and REFILLED it again.... well, that's REALLY looking like their own issue, isn't it?)
IMHO, it might make more sense to just send these players letters informing them that they're no longer welcome to play at their casino, unless they choose to voluntarily return the money. Let them decide if taking advantage of the opportunity is or isn't worth making it the LAST time they get to play there.
That's interesting, because my experience (thankfully) has been quite the opposite. The few times I've had to call in someplace with Internet-related issues, I've found it's MUCH easier and faster to "press 2 for Macintosh", if they have that type of option. For starters, hold times are shorter, because relatively few people own a Mac (or have issues getting it to work, perhaps!?). But more importantly, they skip right over trying to guess that "maybe your computer has a virus or spyware", or other excuses for your connection not working.
They also tend to get right down to the basics more quickly. (EG. Testing a DSL circuit or your modem for a fault, vs. asking you to uninstall and reinstall a bunch of bloated software off an install CD for Windows, checking some 3rd. party firewall product's settings, etc. etc.)
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You can literally find HUNDREDS of stories of upset people who tried to list auctions on eBay for Microsoft operating system or application software they *never opened*, but MS had their lawyers demand a takedown from eBay based on the "VeRO" program.
(They argue that end-users are illegally trying to resell OEM software products that weren't intended for resale, etc. etc. But no matter how they'd like to spin it, it seems to me if you received a copy of an OS or Microsoft Office product with your new PC purchase, and then decided not to ever use it, you should be perfectly ok attempting to recoup some money by selling it to another person. I love how MS tried to "enforce" their B.S. by affixing the OS CD key stickers to the sides of the hardware itself. As if that suddenly makes you say "Oh yeah, this software really IS just part of the physical hardware and isn't possible to separate. My bad.")
Your assertion is certainly the most obvious reason people are assigned passwords on a company's computer network. But there's no reason why that has to be an exclusive reason.
I maintain that giving employees their own passwords amounts to giving them a certain level of privacy, AS WELL AS protecting company information (and aiding in having accountability for a user's actions).
Ask the typical employee why he/she is in the habit of locking their Windows workstation before going to lunch. I'll bet, if they're honest with you, they'll say something like "I don't want other people walking by and reading my email!", rather than "I'm afraid a co-worker will do something against company policy on my PC while I'm gone, and get ME in trouble for it!"
It was just last year, I did an on-site service call for a small business owner. He said his printer quit working and he wanted it repaired. It turned out, he had an old Epson dot-matrix printer, and the reason he wanted it repaired, rather than just replaced, was because it was paired up with a 386 class desktop PC running MS-DOS. (I think he was actually "current" with version 6.22 though, not 5. Heh.)
The only thing he did with this PC, since it was new, was business-related work, including Lotus 1-2-3 spreadsheets and printing address labels from some address label software. (MyMailList Pro I believe)
It was amazing how functional and productive this arrangement really was for him. As he pointed out, the old dot-matrix printer ribbons were FAR cheaper than inkjet cartridges, and he didn't need better print quality for address labels or for reports generated from spreadsheets.
He could pull up his software and start working in less time than it takes Windows to boot, even on a really fast, modern PC. With no Internet connectivity, he had almost zero worry about a virus or spyware messing things up -- and running DOS, he didn't even have to mess with regular software updates, requiring reboots and all.
(We actually did managed to fix his printer, by buying another broken one off eBay that had a different issue. His just had a dead power supply board in it.)
I follow your logic, but I still disagree.
Privacy is a rather "slippery" thing. The U.S. Constitution never specifically guarantees anyone a "right" to privacy. Neither to any of the Constitutional amendments. It's more of an "implied" individual right, subject to interpretation. (Just being defined as a "figure in the public eye" can drastically change your ability to sue someone for publishing photos taken of you without your permission, for example.)
Ultimately, I think people only retain the amount of privacy they're willing to fight to maintain.
So yes, in the workplace it's understood that legally, when push comes to shove, the employer will prevail in the courts if they decide to snoop around on the computer assigned to you. That doesn't mean the I.T. staff should go around disrespecting people's privacy on a regular basis, just because "the law lets me do it".
The law says it's ok for me to sit on our mail server and start opening up people's mailboxes, reading the contents of all their email too. As an employee, would you really be ok with that, knowing I was doing that all the time at your business?
I know, as an I.T. admin myself, I'm constantly trying to do my job, while still respecting people's privacy (whether it's legally protected or not). To me, it absolutely comes down to "ethics". I understand that despite what the *law* says, people still feel like the company property assigned to them for their use during the workday is *generally* not subject to snooping. That's why we have logins with passwords on them, and email isn't just collectively sent out under a heading of the company's name. (The Internet connection and mail servers might be owned by your employer, but they don't really own your thoughts, put into writing, in individual emails, right?)
The fact that the phone has the "airplane mode" option is NOT a fair answer to this issue!
Just last week, I had to explain what the "airplane mode" was all about to a co-worker, who came to me with questions about that option on their cellphone. Other people overheard our conversation and chimed in, with more than a couple "Oh! So THAT'S what that thing is on MY phone!" type comments.
None of these people were iPhone owners either. We're talking basic Motorola/Nextel phones here.
It's not that this guy was some "wanna-be hipster who thought he was too good to read the instructions, since his new iPhone was so easy to use". This could happen to practically anyone. MOST people don't read the instruction books for their cellphones. They assume that being telephones, basically, they're devices they can manage to figure out by playing around with them a little bit.
I don't think it's even remotely reasonable to expect that everyone understands that airline mode would disable *data* transmission on their phone, in any case!
Yeah... I was thinking the same thing, really. Moller's "sky-car" has been the subject of quite a few news articles, including a big write-up in Popular Science magazine, years ago. Back then, I remember them saying he had a working prototype and everything, but was tangled up in government "red tape" because the FAA wanted to regulate it just like any other commercial aircraft. That would completely kill his sales, since he wanted to market this as simply a "flying car", not an airplane. (One of his big "features" was supposed to be a bunch of computerization that allowed people to fly with a basic joystick. Sort of a "point and fly" approach, not requiring any special training or flight experience to use it.)
I can't help but wonder if the hovering "flying saucer" is just an attempt to keep his business viable, while he keeps on fighting the bureaucracy preventing him from marketing what he REALLY wants to sell......
I've got to say, I'm pretty lost as to why some people keep making these comments?
I know iTunes and Windows Vista had some issues - but that's not really shocking, considering how many other things aren't quite Vista compatible.
Overall though, geez... Quicktime player has been used in Windows since version 3.1, as a de-facto standard for playing multimedia files off CD. It's not exactly something Apple just "slapped together to say they had a Windows version".
Safari for Windows? Nothing special there, but it's also a very first attempt at doing it for the platform, and it's FREE software too. As others pointed out, it's probably relased right now mainly to allow easier development for the iPhone from a Windows box, plus giving people the option to use the same browser they have on their Mac, if they so desire. Apple's not auto-deleting your copies of Firefox and IE 7 just because you installed it or anything, so why the big fuss?
Ok, being a Libertarian-leaning individual myself, I'm obviously a little biased. But really, why did anyone think getting local government involved would produce better/more efficient results than we'd see without them?
Personally, I think there were more than a few people enamored with a utopian ideal of "free Internet for all!", without considering the reasons it hasn't really happened spontaneously first.
My thinking is, if the *demand* was truly there for wi-fi practically everywhere in a city, you'd already essentially be there, due to all the businesses throwing a $50 Linksys router up at their location and putting out a sign advertising it to their customers. That plus the sheer number of people with fast broadband connections in their home/apartment/condo who just feel like sharing with others, would provide pretty good coverage without ANY government intervention at all.
In reality, this is actually starting to happen, little by little, but it's not anywhere near "city-wide seamless coverage" because you don't yet see every Joe on the street carrying a wi-fi capable device around, hoping for a connection. The people running around with laptops tend to fit into little niches; your salespeople, your mobile I.T. workers, and your college students. The rest of the public doesn't really care if they've got wi-fi. Having a computer in their place of business they can use during the workday is more than enough for them.
Hell, where I live, all the McDonalds restaurants have wi-fi, and I've only seen someone use a computer in there a grand total of twice, ever! (Both times were at a McDonalds in a more affluent part of town, too.) It's almost a joke they have wi-fi at the ones near my workplace. People would be afraid of having their computer stolen at gun or knifepoint or something!
Ultimately, that's the real question.... Is the employee really "wasting time" or is he/she learning something potentially useful?
It's a little ironic that most employers have programs where they'll pay a chunk of your tuition to go back to college and take additional courses, and others gladly spend an annual budget on "training", sending you all over the country to seminars and training courses. Yet the self-motivated employee who surfs the net each day to learn more about trends in his/her field, to keep up with the news or current events, or to communicate with others about relevant topics gets labeled a "time waster".
Especially in a field like I.T. - you're paid to basically be the company's "knowledge repository". People come to you with their computer-related questions and expect answers. It's your job to solve their problems and to find more efficient ways to use the tools at the group's disposal.
That's what I was thinking too. I live in St. Louis, Missouri - and I don't recall *ever* having some number to dial, sponsored by AT&T, that would read off the time? Maybe I was just ignorant of it? But even as a small kid, the numbers I recall were (314)321-2522 (for time and temperature), and (314)321-2222 (for a detailed weather report). The first used to be sponsored by the now defunct "Boatmen's Bank", and the latter was run by KMOX AM 1120 radio.
Our "time and temperature" number continued on for years, sponsored by different banks - and finally was disconnected for a while. But it was revived recently, due to popular demand.
I ran up against this problem last year, when one of our long-time business partners needed to get his home-based shop updated to something faster than dial-up access, so he could exchange drawings with our firm.
I discovered he lived too far outside the city to get either high-speed cable Internet or DSL service, so I immediately suggested satellite.
He found out AT&T offered "Wild Blue" satellite Internet service, with a local business working as a contractor to do the installations. (He wanted to work with someone local for the install, so he had people nearby he could go back to if anything went wrong.)
It turned out AT&T took nearly 6 months to get him online though. He was told that their satellite capacity was almost filled up, and he had to wait until a new satellite was launched and put online -- and apparently, that was never done on schedule either. And yes, this POOR service was coupled with a big up-front equipment expense, and the fact that it still has bad latency issues you never deal with using DSL or cable broadband. (You click to start a new transfer, and literally wait 1-2 seconds before anything starts. Acceptable for a large file upload/download or clicking to check one's email, but unusable for most Internet gaming and annoying for lots of random web surfing.)
I find it interesting that despite the prevailing mentality that Apple is a "niche market player" - they've got such a strong market cap, with no signs of it declining.
Nay-sayers will scream that "It's only because they sold tons of iPods!", but don't forget that they're not all THAT far from matching HP's market cap, and Apple doesn't even manufacture their own printers OR scanners anymore! (On the other hand, HP did license the iPod from Apple for a while!)
My first thought about these services is, it has real potential for people who need to ensure they don't lose important photos or other documents.
... uploading in the background and giving the user a small status icon they can check (by rolling the mouse over it or something). You can't expect people to sit for an hour in some browser window with a progress bar drawn that hasn't moved in the last 10 minutes, with some kind of "Please wait....." message up there.
Sure, you can set up regular backups to an external hard drive, set up a fault-tolerant RAID system perhaps, or burn your important stuff to DVD or CD. But none of that helps if your house catches on fire while you're out and all those things go up in flames. Backups also have the nasty tendency to be "out of reach" when you need them. (EG. You go on an important business trip and your laptop's hard drive crashes. You can probably borrow a loaner to get your business presentations done, but what about the data itself?)
The big question is always, how easy is it to get your data uploaded to them? Most home users are using cable or DSL where they may get good download speeds, but their upload speeds are relatively poor. If they decide to upload several gigabytes of photos, they may get frustrated or confused with how long it takes to finish that. I think software is needed to handle this gracefully
They're going to counterfeit it! It's China's first step. Take a bunch of pictures and measure every detail of the prototype.... Next thing you know, the "ghost shift" working night hours at the "legitimate by day" factory will begin production of cloned moons!
In America, marriage doesn't signify "ownership" of your partner, but it DOES pretty much ensure ownership of the partner's assets, if you want to be vindictive about it.....
.... but those are only valid for 10 years. In so many cases, someone who is the type who would do this to another person they used to love/live with is also the type to dodge payment on such a judgment until it expires, too.)
One of the biggest reasons many people are against marriage in the U.S. today is the frightening lack of protection given to one's personal assets during a divorce.
Basically, a partner can get angry, run off with every last item of value in the home, sell it off, and there's little or nothing you can do about it. (Sure, when one finally gets up in front of a divorce court judge, about a year after the event, he/she can order a financial judgment against the partner
The police won't even get involved in any of it, in the meantime, because they say "Sorry... divorce is a civil matter!" You might be surprised how many laws a marriage partner can break and still get away with it, during a divorce which isn't finalized yet!
EG. One person could leave the other, and decide to burn their house down a week later. Since technically, it's still "shared property" and there's "no law against burning down your own place" - the police will shrug it off (assuming nobody was injured in the event, and the house was already paid off - meaning a bank isn't a 3rd. party involved).
As another example, a partner could take your car, illegally forge a signature on its title, and sell it to someone else. Again, you'd be very hard pressed to get anyone to do anything about it. (I've spoken to police about this exact scenario, and they say they've run across it a number of times. Used to be, they'd proceed with investigating the criminal action of title fraud -- but they gave up, because divorce court judges can often rule that the vehicle be turned over to the partner who took it anyway. (The divorce court judge has the authority to force you to sign over a title to the other partner, in his/her presence in the courtroom.) If they investigate the title fraud and then this ruling happens, they just wasted their time and have to scrap the investigation.
IMHO, they need to make it a criminal offense to dispose of any assets during a divorce, until a final divorce ruling is made, determining who gets what. Until that "loophole" is sealed, marriage is far more financially risky than any other type of legally binding contract between 2 parties.
I haven't actually heard of anything like this going to court here in the U.S.A.
eBay constantly warns users that bids are legally binding contracts and so forth. But when it comes to a seller deciding not to sell an item, I think MOST shunned buyers would just be a little disappointed and get on with their lives. When you know you've bid really low for an item, and it looks like you're going to win it anyway - you KNOW the seller wasn't planning on giving it away so inexpensively. You consider it a "steal of a deal" if it really goes through, and if not - you know it seemed "too good to be true" anyway.
I have yet to bid on an eBay auction where I got a deal SO good, it was worth going to court over it to make sure the seller really sold it to me afterwards!
Is it even the theater's responsibility to have customers arrested for taping, in the first place? As others pointed out, the theater is NOT the content owner. The only valid reason I can see them enforcing rules against videotaping would be an argument that it disturbs others trying to watch the movie. (Who wants to sit behind someone who keeps holding a camcorder up, blocking part of your view, for example?) Kicking them out of the movie should suffice, in any case.
That being said, yes - I think it's *quite* reasonable for ushers to determine if someone is sitting there trying to videotape a large piece of the movie or not! Basically, you give the benefit of the doubt until you see some idiot sitting there, more interested in taping the movie than in watching it, and they don't put the camcorder away after you've come back down the aisle several times. Having someone arrested after the first 20 SECONDS they're seen with the camcorder out?? That's harassment!
Well, if they would have just let her FINISH, I wouldn't have to go to the theater to see Transformers, at least! Sheesh.... :P
But seriously, I pretty much agree. On a *rare* occasion, a movie is released that I want to see badly enough, I'll pay their premium to see it right away, vs. waiting for a DVD release. But I have a nice little setup at home now with a DLP projector and 110" pull-down screen. I can pause the movie any time I like, adjust the volume to my liking, and get whatever I want to snack on without paying insane prices for it. And yeah, avoids all the stupid commercials (half the time just B.S. trying to scare me into not pirating movies).
Theaters need to upgrade the whole experience. IMax is a good start. Why didn't they film "300" in IMax? That would be cool.... being immersed in the middle of those battle scenes and all!
I follow your logic, up to the point where you completely blow off the idea that the law could actually include provisions on how long a person could film in a theater legally.
Why is this "ridiculous" to you, when it probably already exists (as you freely admit) in the "fair use" portion of copyright law!?
While it is the job of a judge and jury to make final decisions on legality, it's ALSO the job of police not to just arrest every Tom, Dick and Jane they're asked by someone to arrest.
I'm not a lawyer, and I haven't looked over the details of the "fair use" provisions to see what they say about this sort of thing. But as I recall, they don't allow very much filming to take place. We're probably talking about filming measured in seconds as opposed to multiple minutes at a time. Given this, it shouldn't really be hard at all for theater management to differentiate between someone trying to illegally tape a movie to redistribute illegally, and someone casually recording a small segment for personal fair use.
Exactly right.... The current state of the dot-com world is one of some people with really good ideas *finally* getting the opportunity to bring them to fruition, after being stuck with practically nobody willing to touch them after the crash in 2000.
Far from seeing useless extravagance, I see what appear to be well-managed, small-scale operations doing potentially big things, like www.meebo.com. (Consider the fact that they were positioned perfectly to offer the first/only multi-platform IM chat environment that worked on Apple's new iPhone, for example!)
If Dvorak and others are focusing squarely on Google and all the streaming video sites going up, I think these are an exception to the rule, really. The whole Internet video broadcasting thing is in its infancy, but it's clear to most long-term thinkers that it's the way of the future. The gamble here seems to be on hopes that one of them breaks through into the "mainstream" before burning through all their funding and going broke. I'm sure many will die before it's all sorted out, but whether it's Joost, or YouTube, or some other player - it seems like the "last man standing" will be in a really good position to offer video content in a whole new way. This isn't some dumb scheme to sell pet food online.....
How many times have you witnessed a company actually fighting back against one of these class-action suits? I'm sure they have, but I can't recall ever reading about it?
It seems like no matter how lame the lawsuit, companies always settle these (usually in such a way that gives relatively little to the plaintiffs, like a 20% off coupon on a future purchase or something).
Given the potential for bad publicity that could be generated by the media reporting "Company A, today, fought back against consumers who filed suit over their defective product", it's a good bet they'll cough up some sort of "freebie" for the product owners.
So yeah, it's an incredibly dumb lawsuit, but there's a GREAT chance it will just mean Apple makes the lawyer involved a lot richer, and throws some small "bone" to everyone who owns the iPhone. Maybe a credit at the Apple store equivalent to the cost of 1 battery replacement or something?
Disclaimer here: I *am* a systems administrator for a small business.
I think some software developers do really have it tough. Much depends on the programming language they use and the environment they're coding in. I've watched some senior developers look like incompetent fools when forced to implement Microsoft technologies in the past (things like SOAP, MSDAC objects, etc.). The obscure bugs and problems encountered when various workstations were on different revisions of the technologies made coding stable, reliable apps a nightmare. On the flip-side, some of the Unix coders can basically sit around throwing paper airplanes at each other, waiting for one of only a few small change requests to come in. Their app(s) often "just work" and don't need much attention.
But on the whole, yeah - the sysadmin of a small to mid-size company has a rough go of things. Usually, the money's not there to purchase as many quality, reliable pieces of hardware and software as you'd like. You end up making a server perform a number of tasks, where a larger company has the physical space and budget to dedicate separate machines to the jobs. Then, uptime suffers when you have to reboot the server to perform maintenance on any of the 6 or 7 "mission critical" apps that might be shoehorned onto the one box.
I don't think anyone here is even remotely aware of a thing like "system administrator's day" - and I'm not going to be arrogant enough to point it out to them either. Really, I'm satisfied as long as they keep signing my paycheck and complaints are at a bare minimum.
That's a load of crap.
My Motorola Razr has no actual "buttons" for dialing a number either. It just has a sheet of flat metal with numbers printed on it, and lines etched into it to divide up the sections into "keys".
Anyone trying to dial numbers on a cell while driving should *really* be doing it using voice recognition and a hands-free car kit. Otherwise, they're *all* taking the chance that they can manage to glance at the phone and get the number entered while driving, without hitting something.
It seems to me like the people who profited from this screw-up would be wise to *let* the casino haul them off to court, unless their "winnings" were so small, it's really no big deal to give them back?
.... well, that's REALLY looking like their own issue, isn't it?)
I'm thinking if this *did* go to court, it would be pretty easy to settle out of court by offering to return the money THEN, vs. volunteering to give it away before it's even known if this is a case they're going to pursue.
I wouldn't normally advocate a purposeful attempt to keep money that's not rightfully yours - but as others have said, this is no ATM machine, designed to substitute for a human teller in a bank. This is a case of dumping money into a machine, supposedly for "entertainment purposes". The only reason you're giving the machine your money in the first place is with the hopes of getting more back out than you started with. It's the casino's job to control how often this actually works out for the player, and how often it doesn't.
If they installed a malfunctioning slot machine that was paying back $10 for every $1 inserted, I think the losses should really be THEIRS to eat. Eventually, these machines run out of money anyway, so there should be a maximum amount they could lose. (And if they were really STUPID enough to see the empty machine, have no record of it paying out a huge jackpot that would explain it being empty, and REFILLED it again
IMHO, it might make more sense to just send these players letters informing them that they're no longer welcome to play at their casino, unless they choose to voluntarily return the money. Let them decide if taking advantage of the opportunity is or isn't worth making it the LAST time they get to play there.
That's interesting, because my experience (thankfully) has been quite the opposite. The few times I've had to call in someplace with Internet-related issues, I've found it's MUCH easier and faster to "press 2 for Macintosh", if they have that type of option. For starters, hold times are shorter, because relatively few people own a Mac (or have issues getting it to work, perhaps!?). But more importantly, they skip right over trying to guess that "maybe your computer has a virus or spyware", or other excuses for your connection not working.
They also tend to get right down to the basics more quickly. (EG. Testing a DSL circuit or your modem for a fault, vs. asking you to uninstall and reinstall a bunch of bloated software off an install CD for Windows, checking some 3rd. party firewall product's settings, etc. etc.)