Since we haven't had a post on how unfair sales tax is in the first place, lets throw a post out there on how this issue would just go away if everything was based on income tax instead of sales tax. There, that solves that problem.
How about the fact that the republican administration and congress were starving the states for money, thinking that they will "cut down on pork", and the states, still wanting to keep most of their programs, are desperately scrambling to get every bit of cash. Even the red states are suffering. How about we end the Iraq war and balance the budget and give the states back some money?
Have you watched any of the early Doctor Who? It was created as an entertaining vehicle for delivering educational material.
The grandparent obviously didn't watch Torchwood either. There's tons of humor in that, very snarky, but he says there is none.
I'm an american and typically only chat across the pond on the internet, but so far the brits I've met are like red and blue states on this side... they either are highly pro or highly anti new-Who/Torchwood. Then again, most of them hang out on slashdot so I shouldn't be surprised.
What seems like a "big win for consumers" usually chills business
Yes, please, pardon me for not allowing any business to use my private information to make as much money off my name despite what happen to my personal privacy, property, or well being. Broadcast my personal info all over the net because we can't stop companies from making money, now can we?
Businesses need to be regulated, popular opinion isn't always enough. Companies care about security because there are stiff fines and consequences if they don't. Identify theft itself costs a company nothing since it's the consumer getting shafted in the end. I'm sorry Gmail might be banned in the EU and you are concerned about your company spending more money on standards of protection. However, I'm worried about my identity being stolen. You could lose some business, and would then have to upgrade your servers to get that money back. I could have my life ruined and have it take years to recover from that. Logic dictates I come first, because I'm the little guy with more to lose.
This is like whining about laws against telemarketing when the only people who are pro-telemarketing are the telemarketers themselves and those who hire them. Laws against murder hurt the firearms market should we repeal that law?
as you stated, your statements were to the effect that the single reason apple is doing well is their marketing. There are obviously multiple reasons why they are doing well. Your statements, imply their products are not good enough to do well without marketing. Marketing most definitely helps. You may not have meant that but that's what your comments say. You may not have seen that since your comments were completely over the top.
But all commercials suck, all commercials lie, all marketing is desired to make you buy more. If you boycott apple you should boycott everyone who advertises at all.
I've been wanting to get off Comcast for years. I can't. My neighborhood was supposed to be one of the 5-6 suburbs where FiOS was rolled out initially in the Philadelphia area, but it won't go to my condo. I have no idea why. I can't even friggin' buy DSL if I want to. Satellite service is right out because of trees (which I should not have to cut down to get internet service, so damn the clear view of the southern sky).
So I want to exercise my consumer rights, but I'm locked into Comcast and they know it. Until there is better choice, they don't give a shit. That's why they are flexing their muscles with the FCC, they don't give a shit and they know they have power over a captive audience.
Of course, to this day, the apple bashers continue to come out and deny a few facts in their attempt to bash apple. I like apply products and I'd say I'm an apple fan, but to me there's no denying Apple isn't perfect, their products aren't perfect, and as a person, Steve Jobs is mostly an asshole. But lets get our facts straight first.
Apple has succeeded primarily because they have some brilliant marketing folks working for them. While I personally cannot STAND Apple ads (and any ad targeted towards my age group in general, the 18-34s) they obviously have done something right.
There is no denying apple has good marketing. However, no amount of good marketing can turn out this good of a result in their sales. Apple has to follow up with a good product too, and they do. Their products get consistently high marks from any number of magazines and they have fewer problems, relative to most of their competitors. What/.ers consistently do is "If the product isn't for everyone, or it isn't for me, it sucks." The marketroids cause this negative reaction in some geeks that makes them think they are saying "this phone is obviously for everyone." It's not. Would apple love it if everyone on earth eventually bought an iPhone? Yes, but lets be realistic, even Steve doesn't think that. The iPhone, iMac and iPod aren't for everyone. It's okay to not like it, but it's not logical to say the only reason people buy it is because they are sucked into the marketing and forced to use a crappy product.
In just a few short years, Apple has built a tremendous following of rabid fanboys/girls. While I don't subscribe to the fanboy-ish attitude, and while Apple fanboys seem to be the worst of the kind, there is no denying what the company has achieved. They have created a product line seen as being "on the cutting edge of trends", and doing so means big sales and big money.
They ARE on the cutting edge of trends. That's what good business and marketing does. It's not bad to be out there either. They saw the emergence of digital music, and saw how the music companies were pooh poohing it, saw the small showing of the things like the Rio, and then said "well damn lets do one ourselves and lets do it the way we think it should be done." And they did. Before that, the market was nothing, they defined the market and then owned it. They aren't first to market, but they are first to make something that will appeal to lots of people and catch their attention, and at the same make something that did it's job well.
The question I wonder about is, how long can Apple keep this up? What will they do to keep adding to their empire? They have been hugely successful with the "trendy" types, but what about people like me, the so called "social outcasts"? What about the folks that choose to be anti-trend not because they want to be different, but because they don't like the stigma that goes along with it? What about those for who advertising like what Apple does makes them want to use the products even LESS?
It's interesting how you label yourself a social outcast as if it some how lends weight to your argument. If you are chosing to join a trend because you are trendy, you're dumb. If you are chosing to buck a trend because you are a social outcast, you're dumb. There's a third option, called sensible people. They pick the right device for the job at hand. Many times this will be apple, and many times this will be someone else. These people are smart.
If Apple wants to truly expand their size and market penetration, they need to figure out how to convince folks like myself to move over to them. I hate the image that goes along with pulling a MacBook Air out of a manila folder...and I hate that being a part of the Apple community means sharing space with people who go apeshit when you make a single observation about the negative aspects that Apple's products sometimes have.
Obviously you haven't seen Apple's financials lately.. If you don
There's a reason why certain b-grade sci-fi slasher movies portray a top secret high security building protected by some kind of hand or fingerprint scanner. They need some security lock that is insanely easy for the hero or the villian to get through. Every time you see this, you know some loser extra is going to be dead and missing a hand by the end of the flick.
The point is that people who gamble rarely understand the odds. Those that do understand the odds and the house percentage don't unusually gamble. Or if they gamble then they count cards as well.
Perhaps I'm reading it wrong, but I don't find this statement to be true.
There are plenty of people who understand the odds, but still love to gamble. To them it's about the thrill of possibly hitting it big. Those who do understand the odds tend to either play games like blackjack which is the only game in the casino which has positive odds, and those who simply walk in with $500 and intends to make it last as long as they can, but know that the chances of them walking out with more than they went in are not in their favor.
I'm not one of them, but then again I get it why others are like this.
The ones that count cards are simply trying to shift the odds in their favor for bigger payouts, and of course really only applies to blackjack (again, the only game with odds not in favor of the casino, but you have to know how to play to get your money).
Steve jobs says VOIP will be allowed... if you are using the Wifi connection, and not AT+T's data service.
Apple made the phone, but because of their contract, are making this specific limitation based on AT+T's request. That potentially has common carrier implications, because if you are going to offer data service, you should not be regulating what can or can't go across it.
No carrier would want VOIP on any phone, since almost all carriers offer an unlimited data plan at some level, and it cuts into their per minute revenues for the phone service.
It's a long shot, since no one is pursuing anti-trust these days, but you could get that clause of a business contract voided if you can convince someone in the US government to shoot down AT+Ts data restriction.
I think arguments of how much money is made a honeypot for the MPAA/RIAA to suck us into an argument on their terms. The MPAA/RIAA are going to win if you make it about money for some very good reasons:
1) It's not about how much money you made, but how much more money you could have made. Great I made $2000 last year on my stocks, but damn those pirates I could have made $3000! 2) Companies are all about shareholder equity. The more money you make, the more you increase your stock price and the more dividends you can pay out. 3) The average politician is sympathetic to this, both in terms of legally allowing business to flourish, and corruptly accepting money from donors involved with the MPAA/RIAA. 4) not enough average people make a stink about losing their rights thanks to copy protection, so politicians don't listen.
And #4 is what we need to continue to pound on and educate the masses over. Large companies want to slowly take away, nibble by nibble, your rights to copy things that you should be able to copy. You make the message simple enough, pound on it, and don't let up, and eventually rights will trump money. Consumers as a group are the most powerful group in the US, we are just completely disorganized and disinterested. Unless we get organized, the well organized MAFIAA will continue to dominate this discussion in the places where it counts.
Your house is private property, and it's 100% your responsibility. The phone lines are a service which you don't own, but purchase services on those phone lines. The phone company offers grandiose promises of great service and the like, but they suffer nothing at all when someone pulls a very easy prank on them like this. And there's very little in the way of land line phone competition (and not much more in cell phone competition). Therefore, you have little choice as to which service you use and the market cannot help you very much influence carriers to improve security on their lines. You don't have control over the security of the phone line by yourself. They "outsource" enforcement of hacking to the feds in order to save their own money. These systems should be regulated and asked to confirm to a specific standard.
Another analogy. If you buy a defective door or lock, you don't think the person who made that is responsible for selling you bad merchandise?
Yet another analogy... there's only one window installer in the city, and they offer these great windows they can install in your house that look great, but make it easy to break into your house, and you have no choice but to buy from this person if your house needs a new window.
When I type in a domain, I recognize if I made a typo and went to the wrong page or not. I recognize if it's one of those ad domains and then go back and type it right, or do a google search if in case I didn't know the proper spelling or simply didn't know the right address.
But what does the average user do? Do they properly question the website they are on? Do stop and go back and try another site? Not all of them. Many will start clicking on these links, waste time, and be led in circles. They might end up on the website that they want to go, but more likely they might end up on a website that will display too many ads, sell them something at an overpriced rate, or give them spyware or a virus. All of course in milking us in the name of making more money. These are not services that give consumers any kind of benefit. People who serve ads all know it's about bombarding the average user, giving them headaches, and hoping a few n00bs click on the links and buy something they shouldn't buy. It's complete bullshit and it has to stop.
Business used to mean giving the customer what they wanted. I don't want a headache!
Yet another guaranteed entertaining flamewar! Hey all you science, art, IT and politics geeks, let's all go watch the programmers burst a blood vessel over how much they hate PHP! It's guaranteed to be a great fireworks display! I got beer and pretzels, you all bring chips or cheezy poofs.
So in other words, I could commit some of my own code to a CVS repository, find some errors that I missed, fix them, commit it again, decide to add more comments, commit it again, find one more thing I probably could have done differently and then rewrite it, commit it again...
Your willingness to fix errors, add comments, and do code rewrites puts you in the pantheon of programming gods! The next thing you are going to tell me you actually write your own legible "how to" user guides in PDF!
And when the people are fat and happy and distracted they forget about their civil liberties and all the bad things the government has done and focus on all the goodies and money they keep shoving into their wallet.
You make a good point, but doing business with a dictatorship alone does not guarantee the toppling of said dictator. The businesses should do business, but that business should come with strings attached by the home government. The US needs to reign in these companies from going over there and blindly following China's rules, and put pressure on China to reform. Giving them the carrot without tying it to the stick simply means you are out one carrot and doesn't guarantee you end up going anywhere on your mule.
Big pharma's average annual profit, after ALL expenses, is 30%. That's huge. The US big 3 automaker's profit is typically under 5%. Big Pharma spreads constant red herrings in the media to justify the expense when quite simply they market drugs heavily, have a huge demand, and have very little competition. All these lead to high prices.
Politicians in the USA are not stupid, just uneducated and inexperienced.
The US politicians are incredibly smart. They work in an incredibly complex ever changing system in a melting pot of a country to get elected in a crazy election system, and make and pass incredibly complex and sophisticated laws.
The problem with the american system is not their intelligence, it's morals and their motivation. They write laws for the corporation, not for the people. They haven't written a real law for the people in a long time. All that matters to the politicians is who's lining their pockets.
Bush is probably one of the dumbest people all around I've ever seen in a political position, but he's great at shmoozing with people to get fundraising and then staying on message despite overwhelming evidence to the contrary. He has skills to get elected, he just doesn't have much of any other skills I desire in a politician. Then again, to be a smart politician in the US, that's all you really need, isn't it? That's not that dumb to realize what you have to do to make it as a major leader in the US huh?
I mean... I can't say any more than that. A news source, dedicated to the more unusual aspects of Japanese culture... called Pink Tentacle.
I'm a total perv myself but I'm just having a hard time dealing with a news source with that name that has nothing to do with Hentai... maybe that's my problem... I must be too much of a perv.
But then again, I am on slashdot, there must be tons of us unable to process this;)
Batteries? This is a huge complaint by a large portion of the user base. The problem is that you didn't have to go to Macworld Expo to find this out... cheezy reporting.
Windows Vista? Ummmm this is entirely misrepresented here. Yes, some people might be upset that they have to plunk down $200 for vista, but think about it. That's not a problem with apple and no one focuses that gripe at apple. That's all the fault of Windows being way too expensive. It's that or they start bundling windows and making the mac $200 more, which I don't want. Apple has lots of great programs that are comparable to most windows programs.
Stock price? Everyone's stock price is hurting right now! We are a month from a recession, the stock market is tanking, and a stock going down after an expo is not unusual, in fact it happens a lot. It's called profit taking. Investors ride the short term wave of hype, and when the hype is done, they get off the wave as fast as they can. After the expo there's no more momentum keeping the stock moving upward quickly.
Ask a real apple fan what cheeses him. Like for example that A2DP isn't supported on the iphone, or any iPod. That's my #1 beef right now right after the battery issue.
This isn't a new article, this is small time operations going "oh the big bad company pooh poohed our idea they should be ashamed. Let's slam them by posting something negative!"
The "article" here is on a site called "AdRants." Good start huh? Then it links back directly to BMC's web page that tells you little except their side.
Basically, BMC (Black Mustang Club), created a calendar for it's members of, well, black mustangs! They then sent this to cafepress, who then sells it to BMC members.
Ford owns the rights to it's own trademarks, the Ford Logo and the mustang emblem. These are clearly displayed on the calendar, which you have to go a few links in to find. It's your car, and you can do what you want with it, but this is a specific "mustang" calendar and it makes clear references to the Mustang and Ford. Ford at least has some complaint. To untangle this will require a lawyer steeped in trademark law, which I am not.
The statement that Ford owns the images of your car is bogus, and was an obvious tantrum reaction to having Ford put a cease and desist on cafepress' desk. The letter that Ford sent to cafepress is not anywhere to be found in the chain of articles here, and without that, whining is pointless and childish, because Ford might have a point. Trademark law protects the little guy as well as the big guys so you can't complain that Ford is being a bully here without more facts presented.
Now there are plenty of grey areas here, legally. Can cafepress sell the calendar only to BMC? Can they sell it at cost only? What's the difference between selling pictures of your own car for $5, and selling a calendar? What's protected and what's not when you take pictures of property you own? Was a line crossed when you grouped 12 people's mustangs together and sold them to a specific group of people through an unaffiliated company? I'm not a lawyer, but the "article" fails to address any of that.
Sure, Ford is being heavy handed, all the big corporations are. But you should only skip to "pounding the desk" in legal terms after you'd pounded on the law and/or the facts first.
So there is no real news here, and Slashdot yet again lets it a crap article get in.
I hope the next post defines the legal points I could not uncover.
The "gateway crime" theory is way overused. It's true dishonest people do dishonest things. The question is, did gaming the search engine come first, did cooking the books come first, or are the people involved simply dishonest to begin with and it doesn't matter which one they did first, they'll just do anything to make a buck. I'm betting the last one rings true in this and most other situations.
The same holds true for marijuana as a gateway drug. People think that taking marijuana almost always leads to harder drugs. That's simply not true. The fact that someone jumps from mary jane to cocaine does happen, but it has nothing to do with the drug, but the person using it. Just like people continue to think "prostitution" is a gateway crime and therefore want laws strictly enforced. If government would simply make it legal and regulate it, crimes tied to prostitution would be drastically reduced, but that would require going against the moral majority and thinking outside the box.
If you are willing to do one dishonest and illegal thing (and do it with no remorse), you are likely to do others (i.e. correlation). It all has to do with the morals of the person committing the act. The article doesn't say much but it makes sense in all other areas. But stop calling it "Gateway crime," I'm sick of that label because it implies causation and leads to stupid crime prevention policies.
The iTunes music store is a great motivator to get customers to get iPods. While Apple keeps a tight lid on it's operating expenses, most analysts, and plenty of slashdot "pundits" have said that Apple could not possibly be making any significant profits, if any, on the store itself, it's the hardware they make money on.
Okay so the iTunes music store becomes less relevant and is less of a selling point for Apple. Was it that relevant to begin with? Apple's next plan? Integration with Safari to download and immediately import new MP3s into iTunes for syncing with your iPod, and that's not hard at all, or perhaps being able to bring up music sites in iTunes and downloading music there. Maybe Apple will "sell" it's iTunes store software to prospective music sites. That would be awesome! We'll have multiple stores, competition in price, and no DRM. OMG, it's too good to be true, I'm so giddy!
PS: Apple was sued recently. The suit said that Apple had too much power "locking in" the iPod to Fairplay, and not allowing WMA DRMed files. If Sony BMG is dropping DRM, suddenly, this suit has very little meaning. Apple's lawyers are grinning like sharks in a barrel of tuna.
Cool fruity colors? Nope Major hype at business conference before it's release? Nope TV ad featuring two amusing characters bantering back and forth played at all hours of the day? Nope CEO with reality distortion field? Nope
Slashdot Mirror
Since we haven't had a post on how unfair sales tax is in the first place, lets throw a post out there on how this issue would just go away if everything was based on income tax instead of sales tax. There, that solves that problem.
How about the fact that the republican administration and congress were starving the states for money, thinking that they will "cut down on pork", and the states, still wanting to keep most of their programs, are desperately scrambling to get every bit of cash. Even the red states are suffering. How about we end the Iraq war and balance the budget and give the states back some money?
Commence flame war...
Have you watched any of the early Doctor Who? It was created as an entertaining vehicle for delivering educational material.
The grandparent obviously didn't watch Torchwood either. There's tons of humor in that, very snarky, but he says there is none.
I'm an american and typically only chat across the pond on the internet, but so far the brits I've met are like red and blue states on this side... they either are highly pro or highly anti new-Who/Torchwood. Then again, most of them hang out on slashdot so I shouldn't be surprised.
What seems like a "big win for consumers" usually chills business
Yes, please, pardon me for not allowing any business to use my private information to make as much money off my name despite what happen to my personal privacy, property, or well being. Broadcast my personal info all over the net because we can't stop companies from making money, now can we?
Businesses need to be regulated, popular opinion isn't always enough. Companies care about security because there are stiff fines and consequences if they don't. Identify theft itself costs a company nothing since it's the consumer getting shafted in the end. I'm sorry Gmail might be banned in the EU and you are concerned about your company spending more money on standards of protection. However, I'm worried about my identity being stolen. You could lose some business, and would then have to upgrade your servers to get that money back. I could have my life ruined and have it take years to recover from that. Logic dictates I come first, because I'm the little guy with more to lose.
This is like whining about laws against telemarketing when the only people who are pro-telemarketing are the telemarketers themselves and those who hire them. Laws against murder hurt the firearms market should we repeal that law?
Gator blood to boost immunity
Alcohol to kill micro-organisms
Hot pepper sauce to "cleanse" the digestive tract
Sounds like we are onto something here. Don't let big pharma know.
And that's what all advertising is supposed to do. Why you single out apple in his regard makes no sense.
as you stated, your statements were to the effect that the single reason apple is doing well is their marketing. There are obviously multiple reasons why they are doing well. Your statements, imply their products are not good enough to do well without marketing. Marketing most definitely helps. You may not have meant that but that's what your comments say. You may not have seen that since your comments were completely over the top.
But all commercials suck, all commercials lie, all marketing is desired to make you buy more. If you boycott apple you should boycott everyone who advertises at all.
I've been wanting to get off Comcast for years. I can't. My neighborhood was supposed to be one of the 5-6 suburbs where FiOS was rolled out initially in the Philadelphia area, but it won't go to my condo. I have no idea why. I can't even friggin' buy DSL if I want to. Satellite service is right out because of trees (which I should not have to cut down to get internet service, so damn the clear view of the southern sky).
So I want to exercise my consumer rights, but I'm locked into Comcast and they know it. Until there is better choice, they don't give a shit. That's why they are flexing their muscles with the FCC, they don't give a shit and they know they have power over a captive audience.
Of course, to this day, the apple bashers continue to come out and deny a few facts in their attempt to bash apple. I like apply products and I'd say I'm an apple fan, but to me there's no denying Apple isn't perfect, their products aren't perfect, and as a person, Steve Jobs is mostly an asshole. But lets get our facts straight first.
/.ers consistently do is "If the product isn't for everyone, or it isn't for me, it sucks." The marketroids cause this negative reaction in some geeks that makes them think they are saying "this phone is obviously for everyone." It's not. Would apple love it if everyone on earth eventually bought an iPhone? Yes, but lets be realistic, even Steve doesn't think that. The iPhone, iMac and iPod aren't for everyone. It's okay to not like it, but it's not logical to say the only reason people buy it is because they are sucked into the marketing and forced to use a crappy product.
Apple has succeeded primarily because they have some brilliant marketing folks working for them. While I personally cannot STAND Apple ads (and any ad targeted towards my age group in general, the 18-34s) they obviously have done something right.
There is no denying apple has good marketing. However, no amount of good marketing can turn out this good of a result in their sales. Apple has to follow up with a good product too, and they do. Their products get consistently high marks from any number of magazines and they have fewer problems, relative to most of their competitors. What
In just a few short years, Apple has built a tremendous following of rabid fanboys/girls. While I don't subscribe to the fanboy-ish attitude, and while Apple fanboys seem to be the worst of the kind, there is no denying what the company has achieved. They have created a product line seen as being "on the cutting edge of trends", and doing so means big sales and big money.
They ARE on the cutting edge of trends. That's what good business and marketing does. It's not bad to be out there either. They saw the emergence of digital music, and saw how the music companies were pooh poohing it, saw the small showing of the things like the Rio, and then said "well damn lets do one ourselves and lets do it the way we think it should be done." And they did. Before that, the market was nothing, they defined the market and then owned it. They aren't first to market, but they are first to make something that will appeal to lots of people and catch their attention, and at the same make something that did it's job well.
The question I wonder about is, how long can Apple keep this up? What will they do to keep adding to their empire? They have been hugely successful with the "trendy" types, but what about people like me, the so called "social outcasts"? What about the folks that choose to be anti-trend not because they want to be different, but because they don't like the stigma that goes along with it? What about those for who advertising like what Apple does makes them want to use the products even LESS?
It's interesting how you label yourself a social outcast as if it some how lends weight to your argument. If you are chosing to join a trend because you are trendy, you're dumb. If you are chosing to buck a trend because you are a social outcast, you're dumb. There's a third option, called sensible people. They pick the right device for the job at hand. Many times this will be apple, and many times this will be someone else. These people are smart.
If Apple wants to truly expand their size and market penetration, they need to figure out how to convince folks like myself to move over to them. I hate the image that goes along with pulling a MacBook Air out of a manila folder...and I hate that being a part of the Apple community means sharing space with people who go apeshit when you make a single observation about the negative aspects that Apple's products sometimes have.
Obviously you haven't seen Apple's financials lately.. If you don
There's a reason why certain b-grade sci-fi slasher movies portray a top secret high security building protected by some kind of hand or fingerprint scanner. They need some security lock that is insanely easy for the hero or the villian to get through. Every time you see this, you know some loser extra is going to be dead and missing a hand by the end of the flick.
The point is that people who gamble rarely understand the odds. Those that do understand the odds and the house percentage don't unusually gamble. Or if they gamble then they count cards as well.
Perhaps I'm reading it wrong, but I don't find this statement to be true.
There are plenty of people who understand the odds, but still love to gamble. To them it's about the thrill of possibly hitting it big. Those who do understand the odds tend to either play games like blackjack which is the only game in the casino which has positive odds, and those who simply walk in with $500 and intends to make it last as long as they can, but know that the chances of them walking out with more than they went in are not in their favor.
I'm not one of them, but then again I get it why others are like this.
The ones that count cards are simply trying to shift the odds in their favor for bigger payouts, and of course really only applies to blackjack (again, the only game with odds not in favor of the casino, but you have to know how to play to get your money).
If you drill through the articles, you see something important, and it's posted on ArsTechnica:
http://arstechnica.com/journals/apple.ars/2008/03/07/voip-applications-on-iphone-a-possibility
Steve jobs says VOIP will be allowed... if you are using the Wifi connection, and not AT+T's data service.
Apple made the phone, but because of their contract, are making this specific limitation based on AT+T's request. That potentially has common carrier implications, because if you are going to offer data service, you should not be regulating what can or can't go across it.
No carrier would want VOIP on any phone, since almost all carriers offer an unlimited data plan at some level, and it cuts into their per minute revenues for the phone service.
It's a long shot, since no one is pursuing anti-trust these days, but you could get that clause of a business contract voided if you can convince someone in the US government to shoot down AT+Ts data restriction.
I think arguments of how much money is made a honeypot for the MPAA/RIAA to suck us into an argument on their terms. The MPAA/RIAA are going to win if you make it about money for some very good reasons:
1) It's not about how much money you made, but how much more money you could have made. Great I made $2000 last year on my stocks, but damn those pirates I could have made $3000!
2) Companies are all about shareholder equity. The more money you make, the more you increase your stock price and the more dividends you can pay out.
3) The average politician is sympathetic to this, both in terms of legally allowing business to flourish, and corruptly accepting money from donors involved with the MPAA/RIAA.
4) not enough average people make a stink about losing their rights thanks to copy protection, so politicians don't listen.
And #4 is what we need to continue to pound on and educate the masses over. Large companies want to slowly take away, nibble by nibble, your rights to copy things that you should be able to copy. You make the message simple enough, pound on it, and don't let up, and eventually rights will trump money. Consumers as a group are the most powerful group in the US, we are just completely disorganized and disinterested. Unless we get organized, the well organized MAFIAA will continue to dominate this discussion in the places where it counts.
Your house is private property, and it's 100% your responsibility. The phone lines are a service which you don't own, but purchase services on those phone lines. The phone company offers grandiose promises of great service and the like, but they suffer nothing at all when someone pulls a very easy prank on them like this. And there's very little in the way of land line phone competition (and not much more in cell phone competition). Therefore, you have little choice as to which service you use and the market cannot help you very much influence carriers to improve security on their lines. You don't have control over the security of the phone line by yourself. They "outsource" enforcement of hacking to the feds in order to save their own money. These systems should be regulated and asked to confirm to a specific standard.
Another analogy. If you buy a defective door or lock, you don't think the person who made that is responsible for selling you bad merchandise?
Yet another analogy... there's only one window installer in the city, and they offer these great windows they can install in your house that look great, but make it easy to break into your house, and you have no choice but to buy from this person if your house needs a new window.
I could go on.
When I type in a domain, I recognize if I made a typo and went to the wrong page or not. I recognize if it's one of those ad domains and then go back and type it right, or do a google search if in case I didn't know the proper spelling or simply didn't know the right address.
But what does the average user do? Do they properly question the website they are on? Do stop and go back and try another site? Not all of them. Many will start clicking on these links, waste time, and be led in circles. They might end up on the website that they want to go, but more likely they might end up on a website that will display too many ads, sell them something at an overpriced rate, or give them spyware or a virus. All of course in milking us in the name of making more money. These are not services that give consumers any kind of benefit. People who serve ads all know it's about bombarding the average user, giving them headaches, and hoping a few n00bs click on the links and buy something they shouldn't buy. It's complete bullshit and it has to stop.
Business used to mean giving the customer what they wanted. I don't want a headache!
Yet another guaranteed entertaining flamewar! Hey all you science, art, IT and politics geeks, let's all go watch the programmers burst a blood vessel over how much they hate PHP! It's guaranteed to be a great fireworks display! I got beer and pretzels, you all bring chips or cheezy poofs.
So in other words, I could commit some of my own code to a CVS repository, find some errors that I missed, fix them, commit it again, decide to add more comments, commit it again, find one more thing I probably could have done differently and then rewrite it, commit it again...
Your willingness to fix errors, add comments, and do code rewrites puts you in the pantheon of programming gods! The next thing you are going to tell me you actually write your own legible "how to" user guides in PDF!
And when the people are fat and happy and distracted they forget about their civil liberties and all the bad things the government has done and focus on all the goodies and money they keep shoving into their wallet.
You make a good point, but doing business with a dictatorship alone does not guarantee the toppling of said dictator. The businesses should do business, but that business should come with strings attached by the home government. The US needs to reign in these companies from going over there and blindly following China's rules, and put pressure on China to reform. Giving them the carrot without tying it to the stick simply means you are out one carrot and doesn't guarantee you end up going anywhere on your mule.
Big pharma's average annual profit, after ALL expenses, is 30%. That's huge. The US big 3 automaker's profit is typically under 5%. Big Pharma spreads constant red herrings in the media to justify the expense when quite simply they market drugs heavily, have a huge demand, and have very little competition. All these lead to high prices.
Politicians in the USA are not stupid, just uneducated and inexperienced.
The US politicians are incredibly smart. They work in an incredibly complex ever changing system in a melting pot of a country to get elected in a crazy election system, and make and pass incredibly complex and sophisticated laws.
The problem with the american system is not their intelligence, it's morals and their motivation. They write laws for the corporation, not for the people. They haven't written a real law for the people in a long time. All that matters to the politicians is who's lining their pockets.
Bush is probably one of the dumbest people all around I've ever seen in a political position, but he's great at shmoozing with people to get fundraising and then staying on message despite overwhelming evidence to the contrary. He has skills to get elected, he just doesn't have much of any other skills I desire in a politician. Then again, to be a smart politician in the US, that's all you really need, isn't it? That's not that dumb to realize what you have to do to make it as a major leader in the US huh?
I mean... I can't say any more than that. A news source, dedicated to the more unusual aspects of Japanese culture... called Pink Tentacle.
;)
I'm a total perv myself but I'm just having a hard time dealing with a news source with that name that has nothing to do with Hentai... maybe that's my problem... I must be too much of a perv.
But then again, I am on slashdot, there must be tons of us unable to process this
Batteries? This is a huge complaint by a large portion of the user base. The problem is that you didn't have to go to Macworld Expo to find this out... cheezy reporting.
Windows Vista? Ummmm this is entirely misrepresented here. Yes, some people might be upset that they have to plunk down $200 for vista, but think about it. That's not a problem with apple and no one focuses that gripe at apple. That's all the fault of Windows being way too expensive. It's that or they start bundling windows and making the mac $200 more, which I don't want. Apple has lots of great programs that are comparable to most windows programs.
Stock price? Everyone's stock price is hurting right now! We are a month from a recession, the stock market is tanking, and a stock going down after an expo is not unusual, in fact it happens a lot. It's called profit taking. Investors ride the short term wave of hype, and when the hype is done, they get off the wave as fast as they can. After the expo there's no more momentum keeping the stock moving upward quickly.
Ask a real apple fan what cheeses him. Like for example that A2DP isn't supported on the iphone, or any iPod. That's my #1 beef right now right after the battery issue.
This isn't a new article, this is small time operations going "oh the big bad company pooh poohed our idea they should be ashamed. Let's slam them by posting something negative!"
The "article" here is on a site called "AdRants." Good start huh? Then it links back directly to BMC's web page that tells you little except their side.
Basically, BMC (Black Mustang Club), created a calendar for it's members of, well, black mustangs! They then sent this to cafepress, who then sells it to BMC members.
Ford owns the rights to it's own trademarks, the Ford Logo and the mustang emblem. These are clearly displayed on the calendar, which you have to go a few links in to find. It's your car, and you can do what you want with it, but this is a specific "mustang" calendar and it makes clear references to the Mustang and Ford. Ford at least has some complaint. To untangle this will require a lawyer steeped in trademark law, which I am not.
The statement that Ford owns the images of your car is bogus, and was an obvious tantrum reaction to having Ford put a cease and desist on cafepress' desk. The letter that Ford sent to cafepress is not anywhere to be found in the chain of articles here, and without that, whining is pointless and childish, because Ford might have a point. Trademark law protects the little guy as well as the big guys so you can't complain that Ford is being a bully here without more facts presented.
Now there are plenty of grey areas here, legally. Can cafepress sell the calendar only to BMC? Can they sell it at cost only? What's the difference between selling pictures of your own car for $5, and selling a calendar? What's protected and what's not when you take pictures of property you own? Was a line crossed when you grouped 12 people's mustangs together and sold them to a specific group of people through an unaffiliated company? I'm not a lawyer, but the "article" fails to address any of that.
Sure, Ford is being heavy handed, all the big corporations are. But you should only skip to "pounding the desk" in legal terms after you'd pounded on the law and/or the facts first.
So there is no real news here, and Slashdot yet again lets it a crap article get in.
I hope the next post defines the legal points I could not uncover.
The "gateway crime" theory is way overused. It's true dishonest people do dishonest things. The question is, did gaming the search engine come first, did cooking the books come first, or are the people involved simply dishonest to begin with and it doesn't matter which one they did first, they'll just do anything to make a buck. I'm betting the last one rings true in this and most other situations.
The same holds true for marijuana as a gateway drug. People think that taking marijuana almost always leads to harder drugs. That's simply not true. The fact that someone jumps from mary jane to cocaine does happen, but it has nothing to do with the drug, but the person using it. Just like people continue to think "prostitution" is a gateway crime and therefore want laws strictly enforced. If government would simply make it legal and regulate it, crimes tied to prostitution would be drastically reduced, but that would require going against the moral majority and thinking outside the box.
If you are willing to do one dishonest and illegal thing (and do it with no remorse), you are likely to do others (i.e. correlation). It all has to do with the morals of the person committing the act. The article doesn't say much but it makes sense in all other areas. But stop calling it "Gateway crime," I'm sick of that label because it implies causation and leads to stupid crime prevention policies.
The iTunes music store is a great motivator to get customers to get iPods. While Apple keeps a tight lid on it's operating expenses, most analysts, and plenty of slashdot "pundits" have said that Apple could not possibly be making any significant profits, if any, on the store itself, it's the hardware they make money on.
Okay so the iTunes music store becomes less relevant and is less of a selling point for Apple. Was it that relevant to begin with? Apple's next plan? Integration with Safari to download and immediately import new MP3s into iTunes for syncing with your iPod, and that's not hard at all, or perhaps being able to bring up music sites in iTunes and downloading music there. Maybe Apple will "sell" it's iTunes store software to prospective music sites. That would be awesome! We'll have multiple stores, competition in price, and no DRM. OMG, it's too good to be true, I'm so giddy!
PS: Apple was sued recently. The suit said that Apple had too much power "locking in" the iPod to Fairplay, and not allowing WMA DRMed files. If Sony BMG is dropping DRM, suddenly, this suit has very little meaning. Apple's lawyers are grinning like sharks in a barrel of tuna.
Cool fruity colors? Nope
Major hype at business conference before it's release? Nope
TV ad featuring two amusing characters bantering back and forth played at all hours of the day? Nope
CEO with reality distortion field? Nope
I'm bored... moving on.