Do I really have to point out, all the other phones, made by everyone.. the parts in those phones are from China too? I mean, if the Chinese wanna slip in an AMT-like backdoor into some chips, we're screwed. This is just silly protectionism in the name of national security when it makes no fricken difference whatsoever in regards to national security.
People simply don't understand one of the most basic properties of websites. They are not government controlled entities and have absolutely no rules regarding your free speech. They are free to censor, modify and repackage anything put on their site. Most of the legalese you blindly agree to signs away most of your rights to even content you create.
The most important property of a website to remember is: You are a guest in someone else's domain.
As a guest, you have no say, no rights, no recourse but to leave the site. You're free to create you own site to write all about your horrific experience with another site, but think again if you think you have any rights as a guest. The only right you have is to leave.
And these days, ugh, even that's a little questionable, some of these sites out there retain everything they know about you even if you tell them you're done and want to remove your account entirely.
The place where I work prohibits this via IT Policy and disables the fingerprint scanner on all laptops
If you're not going to use the scanner, why the heck are you buying laptops with them? They're optional in most models of laptop I've come across, and most models that CAN feature the finger print reader often don't. Why buy something if you're just going to disable it?
Social engineering isn't talent. It's just being smooth and convincing when talking to people. This feat while not insignificant, isn't really all that news worthy. From the perspective of a network attack, he simply went for the weakest link: The Humans.
Also, just because he was clever and broke into places he shouldn't be doesn't make him some kind of hero or genius. It's not like he used this talent to acquire something useful to ALL of us, like say, for example, Edward Snowden did. A con man (starting young) is caught, prosecuted and jailed. Nothing to see here.
Tell everyone you know to use an adblocker. Show them how if necessary, train your fellows how to not click on ads and be aware of the status bar when hovering over links.
Tell people to pay attention to address bar, be aware of where you are, and navigate away from questionable sites. Pay attention to security warnings if they happen, teach people to not be afraid to ask someone smarter to help if a security warning comes up.
The majority of people browsing the net just aren't properly trained on how to avoid the pitfalls and evil lurking at every other link. Just help out, pass on your knowledge to as many as possible.
You know, some 20 years ago, I used to be a huge supporter of FreeBSD. I swore by the OS, and wouldn't touch anything else. A diehard fanboi. Then I asked for help with some legacy hardware and discovered the hostile elitism of BSD community.
They basically told me to make my own drivers and to fuck off. Yeah, not very helpful. I switched to Linux cuz it worked with my legacy hardware and never looked back.
Today I have zero respect for *BSD people and software. They can jump off a cliff and I'd just smile. I would sooner touch a Mac than a *BSD system. Treat people like shit, they might just be totally alienated from your offerings.
This is completely silly. How many times do we need to stand at this point of history? Haven't we been here before? Several times?
Stop trying to address the symptoms of our broken system, and fix the system itself so this stops being a problem we face again and again.
If you want monopolies to not be a thing, then you need to change a lot more than just busting up monopolies as they inevitably pop up again and again.
This is reaching into the insanity regions of stupid. Doing the same thing over and over and expecting a different result? Doesn't happen. Learn from the past, stop repeating it.
Hey, anything that establishes a foothold in a young mind that programming is fun and interesting is all good in my book.
BASIC, Logo, Swift, whatever you want man, getting that foothold in the young mind is extremely important.
One should not be concerned with proper programming, or railing certain languages for encouraging poor programming techniques, that's all ok. As a person matures, so will the languages they use, grasp of them and proper techniques.
...but not as I do. AT&T trying to play to public sympathy and sentiment for... whatever reason. Go fuck yourself AT&T. This is so disingenuous and practically an insult to real NN supporters.
They are stuck in me-too mode and have been for years. They simply don't have innovation in their DNA any more. And it's because their eyes are fixed on their competitors, not their customers.
Their eyes on fixed on their shareholders, not their competitors or customers. As I pointed out in another topic related to broken business models, this is EXACTLY what happens to every company. They start out nice, innovate, do good, then IPO, then this, focused on profit, on protecting their market share, etc etc. Another good idea turned to an evil entity.
Took a lot of balls for this guy to step out and speak up about. My hat is off to you sir. Awesome.
Can I nitpick? ATI doesn't exist anymore. You're thinking of AMD... and even if NVIDIA doubled or tripled their GPU price, people would still buy them. NVIDIA is just that much better. AMD is a joke. Always playing catch up, always playing second tier. AMD is for people who can't afford Intel/NVIDIA.
Come on!!! You're talking about the company whom sold 'triple core' CPU's!!!!!! In case you didn't know, triple core CPU's are quad cores with a busted core. AMD was selling those, with a grin and a wink. I wonder if they're still up to those shenanigans.
Mmmm, subscriptions to software. They're definitely the future. Look for this to become more of a thing as time goes on. I personally don't like it, but I do see the benefits of this model. We have to admit there are some boons to the subscription model we might not readily see.
The biggest one is going to be support. If a company is making you pay every month to use their stuff, they better be supporting it. The entire model sustains a decent support team assuming the company is willing to shovel some of their profits into it. Also, the support part includes continuous updates. See Microsoft Windows 10 for an example of how this looks.
Also updates, yep, you never have to pay a large one-time licensing fee, and your subscription includes updates, for as long as you keep paying. Never have to worry about buying the next version at a large one-time licensing fee.
But then the cons: You're married to this company, dependent on them to make a living. Not sure I'm comfortable with that. Offline usage. I imagine a lot of subscription models are going to have to provide for more security conscious customers, like DoD or three-letter-agencies whom can't have stuff always connected. So there will definitely be stipulations for that, but it's still annoying. Hopefully they'll give a fairly decent amount of 'offline usage' before the license gets angry with you. Access to your files after subscription ends.. yeah, that's not good, companies definitely need to provide a read-only mode of their software so you can still get at your stuff, just can't modify it anymore until you resubscribe.
Final thoughts: It definitely has a place. It's not all evil. It's not ideal for all situations and I do wish companies would offer both options. If I want to buy a perpetual today's latest and greatest version of doffusofficecadauto, I should be able to do that, and never get updates ever, until I buy a new version or subscribe. For some situations it's really ideal and actually a boon. It does sort of force companies to stand behind their product for as long as you're subscribed to it.
Long term I worry, computer companies of all shapes, sizes and flavors come and go at a breakneck speed. I do worry about people losing work trapped in defunct subscription software. At the end of the day, you have to decide which works for you. For those of us who are bitching we can't get perpetual licenses anymore.. well, there's a market opening for someone ambitious. Fill that niche?
I don't see what a content provider restricting access to their own content has to do with Net Neutrality.
OK, so technically they're not stomping on NN, but this definitely violates the spirit of the thing. And it's a pretty dick move to alter a website's appearance to a certain class of users just because you have some kind of beef with those user's devices.
While it does sort of sneak outside of the actual Net Neutrality (since that mainly applies to ISPs, those providing the tubes between point A and B), it's definitely one of those things new Net Neutrality rules need to be addressing.
And this is the tip of the iceberg regarding preferential treatment based on arbitrary conditions. Telling someone they can't use your car wash because you drive a Chevy would definitely create some major outrage. Same thing.
...The cops are super aggressive about DUI. They will actually come to your house if you're suspected of drunk driving and arrest you if they have any proof you were driving with in the past X hours and fail a breathalizer. That proof could definitely include your vehicle still being warm.
Hell, I've heard cops tell me, if you're drunk and you just go sleep in your car, in a parking lot, you can be arrested for DUI.
Security issues can be patched later on. If you are beaten to market, in many cases you might as well send everyone home and close up shop. Launching ahead of the competition and establishing a beachhead is the single most important thing with any product and everything else is #2. I understand that many engineers don't understand this, but they are not paid or trained to think this way. That doesn't make it any less true.
It's this line of thinking that is getting us in trouble time and time again. Glad you popped in to show us exactly what's wrong.
You can thank the outrageous interest in cryptocurrency for all of this. Since graphics cards mine cryptocurrency much faster than CPUs, an eager community of get-rich-quick enthusiasts are scooping up graphics cards as fast as they can get them.
Man what a waste of resources, time and money. Wow. Idiots and their dollars are parted. Does this mean when these people go bankrupt trying to chase cryptocurrency, there will be a glut of used GPU's hitting eBay?
I will say however, it's surprising NVIDIA is saying "Hey limit sales!" instead of saying, "JACK UP PRICES!" I'd probably gone with the latter if it was my decision. People sucking up GPU's for a worthless endeavor? Double the price. Hell, triple it. Make those GPU's really hurt.
And before you "All games happen on GPU" there have been huge advancements in AI, open world games and the like that have to keep track of massive amounts of game state to give you the impression that you're in an immersive world.
Sorry to burst this bubble, but yeah, games happen mostly on the GPU. Even modern open world simulations, it's trivial for a modern CPU to deal with. I don't have a single game I play that edges the overall CPU usage (4 cores+TT) above 20%. Gaming is so trivial on CPU usage, you can run your virus scan, watch YouTube and be tranferring files over your netowrk and your game still runs flawlessly while all that's happening.
Flaws increase sales? Intel's sales have been lower because people are happy with the computers they have, and also often use cell phones as their personal computers. If Intel begins selling new processors and chipsets with no vulnerabilities and no back doors, will that increase Intel's sales?
This is a super interesting view on the situation. Point out a terrible flaw in all their previous CPUs to promote upgrading. We all know PC sales have been slouching for years, because new CPU's are not all that better than the previous ones. Upgrading has just not been very rewarding in terms of performance.
This is surely a pretty underhanded tactic to encourage all those previous CPU's to get replaced. Yeah, awesome catch. Now this entire flaw smells like a rotten egg.
The number of image formats documented for computer systems is pretty big playing field. Do we really need another one? Surely one of the already existing formats will suit the needs of every possible use case, already?
If compression is the goal, I have to question that goal.. is that really necessary? Our storage is getting bigger exponentially, our bandwidth between devices is growing just as fast, is better compression really needed?
Where focus on profits often does lead to evil decisions is when companies' products are not doing well in the marketplace, so execs become desperate to squeeze a little more wherever they can. Companies that are awash in money and growing rapidly rarely have any need to do this.
Good reply overall. However, I disagree pretty wholeheartedly. I'll explain a little. Sure everything you said is pretty accurate, but in truth, it's just skirting around the actual problem. Companies are definitely required to make money for their shareholders. Why the hell else would shareholders buy shares? For fun? No. They buy them to get a return on their investment. If the company fails to meet this requirement, share holders get upset, make a lot of noise, potentially sell off if their demands for acceptable return is not met.
Now let's take a look at what company's have done in the past. They start out with these great ideals (Google: Do No Evil), but as time goes on, they get bigger, swallow up smaller companies, expand. At some point in this expansion, they find their growth stagnants. They have to make more money, so they start cutting corners, anything to cut their costs to deliver the product at a profit, and preferably an ever increasing profit. Company success is judged by profit, not by their social responsibility. Sorry that's how it is, but that's how it is. The motivator is money, the reason for existing is money, and the moment they steer away from making money, people get fired, replaced with people who will prioritize profit over all else. That's how it is.
Some company's grow to the point where they crush all their competitors (or buy them,) then they achieve monopoly in their chosen market. This is the ultimate goal for a company, because once monopoly is achieved, then they can start price fixing, crush (or buy) any upstarts to keep their prices artificially high. This has happened more than once in our glorious history of corporations. And it's taken government intervention to put a stop to past occurrences of this goal being achieved. The problem is our entire capitalist system is geared to make monopoly the ultimate goal. It's what every company strives for.. beat all the competition out of the market. Companies don't want competition, they want free reign in their market to do whatever the hell they want to do.
Now government entities have made achieving monopoly more difficult for sure, and making it to that point tends to attract regulators eager to wag a finger and say 'no no no, you cant be doing this.' So in the modern age, we just get collusion between artificial competitors in markets. Like.. ISPs. All the goodness of monopoly without the regulators.
Do I have a solution or proposal to correcting this problem? Nope. This is capitalism. This is how it works, if you try to change it, then it won't be capitalism anymore, it'll be a managed market instead of a free market.
The presumption that big businesses must necessarily be wicked is plain wrong.
This presumption is accurate. Corporations are required by law to make money. Share holders can exact retribution if they don't. People lose their job if they fail to steer their company in a growing profitable manner, regardless of whatever else.
Once these companies 'go public', they are beholden to the share holders to give a return on their investment. The ever increasing demand for more profits, more growth, well, it's what turns good ideas into evil entities we despise.
If company's goals were things like do X better for society, discover Y, provide Z service to the best of your ability, things might be better, but that's not how it is. Every company has the same goal: Make more money for their share holders. Period. Every other consideration is secondary.
Every corporation I've ever seen has done one of two things: Get bigger, or disappear.
Social Networks are tools. It's not that they exist that is the issue; it's how they are used, just like any tool. Kids/teenagers are social creatures, even more so (it seems to me) than a lot of adults, and kids can fall out of the loop, lose friends and suffer social consequences if they are simply *banned* from using social networks. That's like telling a kid in the 70s/80s that they can never use the telephone to call their friends because bad things happen over the phone.
Not a good analogy. I think it's more along the lines of telling your kid not to smoke crack cocaine. Social networks are addictive, by design. They just SUCK you in and ewww.. then they get all over you and smell funny. Ewww. I agree with Mr. Cook, I wouldn't want to expose a kid to social networking. If I had to expose them to something like Facebook, I'd definitely make it a supervised excursion into that dark pit of human extreme views and emotions.
I'd sooner let a child onto IRC before Facebook. And IRC can have some pretty creepy people too. But it's not toxic like Facebook, nor designed to be addictive.
Slashdot Mirror
Do I really have to point out, all the other phones, made by everyone.. the parts in those phones are from China too? I mean, if the Chinese wanna slip in an AMT-like backdoor into some chips, we're screwed. This is just silly protectionism in the name of national security when it makes no fricken difference whatsoever in regards to national security.
People simply don't understand one of the most basic properties of websites. They are not government controlled entities and have absolutely no rules regarding your free speech. They are free to censor, modify and repackage anything put on their site. Most of the legalese you blindly agree to signs away most of your rights to even content you create.
The most important property of a website to remember is: You are a guest in someone else's domain.
As a guest, you have no say, no rights, no recourse but to leave the site. You're free to create you own site to write all about your horrific experience with another site, but think again if you think you have any rights as a guest. The only right you have is to leave.
And these days, ugh, even that's a little questionable, some of these sites out there retain everything they know about you even if you tell them you're done and want to remove your account entirely.
The place where I work prohibits this via IT Policy and disables the fingerprint scanner on all laptops
If you're not going to use the scanner, why the heck are you buying laptops with them? They're optional in most models of laptop I've come across, and most models that CAN feature the finger print reader often don't. Why buy something if you're just going to disable it?
Man if they're only asking for $2800, they're definitely targeting the wrong 1%.
Waste of talent in prison
Social engineering isn't talent. It's just being smooth and convincing when talking to people. This feat while not insignificant, isn't really all that news worthy. From the perspective of a network attack, he simply went for the weakest link: The Humans.
Also, just because he was clever and broke into places he shouldn't be doesn't make him some kind of hero or genius. It's not like he used this talent to acquire something useful to ALL of us, like say, for example, Edward Snowden did. A con man (starting young) is caught, prosecuted and jailed. Nothing to see here.
Tell everyone you know to use an adblocker. Show them how if necessary, train your fellows how to not click on ads and be aware of the status bar when hovering over links.
Tell people to pay attention to address bar, be aware of where you are, and navigate away from questionable sites. Pay attention to security warnings if they happen, teach people to not be afraid to ask someone smarter to help if a security warning comes up.
The majority of people browsing the net just aren't properly trained on how to avoid the pitfalls and evil lurking at every other link. Just help out, pass on your knowledge to as many as possible.
You know, some 20 years ago, I used to be a huge supporter of FreeBSD. I swore by the OS, and wouldn't touch anything else. A diehard fanboi. Then I asked for help with some legacy hardware and discovered the hostile elitism of BSD community.
They basically told me to make my own drivers and to fuck off. Yeah, not very helpful. I switched to Linux cuz it worked with my legacy hardware and never looked back.
Today I have zero respect for *BSD people and software. They can jump off a cliff and I'd just smile. I would sooner touch a Mac than a *BSD system. Treat people like shit, they might just be totally alienated from your offerings.
This is completely silly. How many times do we need to stand at this point of history? Haven't we been here before? Several times?
Stop trying to address the symptoms of our broken system, and fix the system itself so this stops being a problem we face again and again.
If you want monopolies to not be a thing, then you need to change a lot more than just busting up monopolies as they inevitably pop up again and again.
This is reaching into the insanity regions of stupid. Doing the same thing over and over and expecting a different result? Doesn't happen. Learn from the past, stop repeating it.
Hey, anything that establishes a foothold in a young mind that programming is fun and interesting is all good in my book.
BASIC, Logo, Swift, whatever you want man, getting that foothold in the young mind is extremely important.
One should not be concerned with proper programming, or railing certain languages for encouraging poor programming techniques, that's all ok. As a person matures, so will the languages they use, grasp of them and proper techniques.
...but not as I do. AT&T trying to play to public sympathy and sentiment for... whatever reason. Go fuck yourself AT&T. This is so disingenuous and practically an insult to real NN supporters.
They are stuck in me-too mode and have been for years. They simply don't have innovation in their DNA any more. And it's because their eyes are fixed on their competitors, not their customers.
Their eyes on fixed on their shareholders, not their competitors or customers. As I pointed out in another topic related to broken business models, this is EXACTLY what happens to every company. They start out nice, innovate, do good, then IPO, then this, focused on profit, on protecting their market share, etc etc. Another good idea turned to an evil entity.
Took a lot of balls for this guy to step out and speak up about. My hat is off to you sir. Awesome.
...someday you'll invent a human brain.. ohwait.
I spend 1 day on the internet every day. :D If you're only getting one day a week, you're doing something wrong, or you have a real life.
if ATI becomes standard instead of nVidia
Can I nitpick? ATI doesn't exist anymore. You're thinking of AMD... and even if NVIDIA doubled or tripled their GPU price, people would still buy them. NVIDIA is just that much better. AMD is a joke. Always playing catch up, always playing second tier. AMD is for people who can't afford Intel/NVIDIA.
Come on!!! You're talking about the company whom sold 'triple core' CPU's!!!!!! In case you didn't know, triple core CPU's are quad cores with a busted core. AMD was selling those, with a grin and a wink. I wonder if they're still up to those shenanigans.
Mmmm, subscriptions to software. They're definitely the future. Look for this to become more of a thing as time goes on. I personally don't like it, but I do see the benefits of this model. We have to admit there are some boons to the subscription model we might not readily see.
The biggest one is going to be support. If a company is making you pay every month to use their stuff, they better be supporting it. The entire model sustains a decent support team assuming the company is willing to shovel some of their profits into it. Also, the support part includes continuous updates. See Microsoft Windows 10 for an example of how this looks.
Also updates, yep, you never have to pay a large one-time licensing fee, and your subscription includes updates, for as long as you keep paying. Never have to worry about buying the next version at a large one-time licensing fee.
But then the cons: You're married to this company, dependent on them to make a living. Not sure I'm comfortable with that. Offline usage. I imagine a lot of subscription models are going to have to provide for more security conscious customers, like DoD or three-letter-agencies whom can't have stuff always connected. So there will definitely be stipulations for that, but it's still annoying. Hopefully they'll give a fairly decent amount of 'offline usage' before the license gets angry with you. Access to your files after subscription ends.. yeah, that's not good, companies definitely need to provide a read-only mode of their software so you can still get at your stuff, just can't modify it anymore until you resubscribe.
Final thoughts: It definitely has a place. It's not all evil. It's not ideal for all situations and I do wish companies would offer both options. If I want to buy a perpetual today's latest and greatest version of doffusofficecadauto, I should be able to do that, and never get updates ever, until I buy a new version or subscribe. For some situations it's really ideal and actually a boon. It does sort of force companies to stand behind their product for as long as you're subscribed to it.
Long term I worry, computer companies of all shapes, sizes and flavors come and go at a breakneck speed. I do worry about people losing work trapped in defunct subscription software. At the end of the day, you have to decide which works for you. For those of us who are bitching we can't get perpetual licenses anymore.. well, there's a market opening for someone ambitious. Fill that niche?
I don't see what a content provider restricting access to their own content has to do with Net Neutrality.
OK, so technically they're not stomping on NN, but this definitely violates the spirit of the thing. And it's a pretty dick move to alter a website's appearance to a certain class of users just because you have some kind of beef with those user's devices.
While it does sort of sneak outside of the actual Net Neutrality (since that mainly applies to ISPs, those providing the tubes between point A and B), it's definitely one of those things new Net Neutrality rules need to be addressing.
And this is the tip of the iceberg regarding preferential treatment based on arbitrary conditions. Telling someone they can't use your car wash because you drive a Chevy would definitely create some major outrage. Same thing.
...The cops are super aggressive about DUI. They will actually come to your house if you're suspected of drunk driving and arrest you if they have any proof you were driving with in the past X hours and fail a breathalizer. That proof could definitely include your vehicle still being warm.
Hell, I've heard cops tell me, if you're drunk and you just go sleep in your car, in a parking lot, you can be arrested for DUI.
Security issues can be patched later on. If you are beaten to market, in many cases you might as well send everyone home and close up shop. Launching ahead of the competition and establishing a beachhead is the single most important thing with any product and everything else is #2. I understand that many engineers don't understand this, but they are not paid or trained to think this way. That doesn't make it any less true.
It's this line of thinking that is getting us in trouble time and time again. Glad you popped in to show us exactly what's wrong.
You can thank the outrageous interest in cryptocurrency for all of this. Since graphics cards mine cryptocurrency much faster than CPUs, an eager community of get-rich-quick enthusiasts are scooping up graphics cards as fast as they can get them.
Man what a waste of resources, time and money. Wow. Idiots and their dollars are parted. Does this mean when these people go bankrupt trying to chase cryptocurrency, there will be a glut of used GPU's hitting eBay?
I will say however, it's surprising NVIDIA is saying "Hey limit sales!" instead of saying, "JACK UP PRICES!" I'd probably gone with the latter if it was my decision. People sucking up GPU's for a worthless endeavor? Double the price. Hell, triple it. Make those GPU's really hurt.
And before you "All games happen on GPU" there have been huge advancements in AI, open world games and the like that have to keep track of massive amounts of game state to give you the impression that you're in an immersive world.
Sorry to burst this bubble, but yeah, games happen mostly on the GPU. Even modern open world simulations, it's trivial for a modern CPU to deal with. I don't have a single game I play that edges the overall CPU usage (4 cores+TT) above 20%. Gaming is so trivial on CPU usage, you can run your virus scan, watch YouTube and be tranferring files over your netowrk and your game still runs flawlessly while all that's happening.
Flaws increase sales? Intel's sales have been lower because people are happy with the computers they have, and also often use cell phones as their personal computers. If Intel begins selling new processors and chipsets with no vulnerabilities and no back doors, will that increase Intel's sales?
This is a super interesting view on the situation. Point out a terrible flaw in all their previous CPUs to promote upgrading. We all know PC sales have been slouching for years, because new CPU's are not all that better than the previous ones. Upgrading has just not been very rewarding in terms of performance.
This is surely a pretty underhanded tactic to encourage all those previous CPU's to get replaced. Yeah, awesome catch. Now this entire flaw smells like a rotten egg.
The number of image formats documented for computer systems is pretty big playing field. Do we really need another one? Surely one of the already existing formats will suit the needs of every possible use case, already?
If compression is the goal, I have to question that goal.. is that really necessary? Our storage is getting bigger exponentially, our bandwidth between devices is growing just as fast, is better compression really needed?
Where focus on profits often does lead to evil decisions is when companies' products are not doing well in the marketplace, so execs become desperate to squeeze a little more wherever they can. Companies that are awash in money and growing rapidly rarely have any need to do this.
Good reply overall. However, I disagree pretty wholeheartedly. I'll explain a little. Sure everything you said is pretty accurate, but in truth, it's just skirting around the actual problem. Companies are definitely required to make money for their shareholders. Why the hell else would shareholders buy shares? For fun? No. They buy them to get a return on their investment. If the company fails to meet this requirement, share holders get upset, make a lot of noise, potentially sell off if their demands for acceptable return is not met.
Now let's take a look at what company's have done in the past. They start out with these great ideals (Google: Do No Evil), but as time goes on, they get bigger, swallow up smaller companies, expand. At some point in this expansion, they find their growth stagnants. They have to make more money, so they start cutting corners, anything to cut their costs to deliver the product at a profit, and preferably an ever increasing profit. Company success is judged by profit, not by their social responsibility. Sorry that's how it is, but that's how it is. The motivator is money, the reason for existing is money, and the moment they steer away from making money, people get fired, replaced with people who will prioritize profit over all else. That's how it is.
Some company's grow to the point where they crush all their competitors (or buy them,) then they achieve monopoly in their chosen market. This is the ultimate goal for a company, because once monopoly is achieved, then they can start price fixing, crush (or buy) any upstarts to keep their prices artificially high. This has happened more than once in our glorious history of corporations. And it's taken government intervention to put a stop to past occurrences of this goal being achieved. The problem is our entire capitalist system is geared to make monopoly the ultimate goal. It's what every company strives for.. beat all the competition out of the market. Companies don't want competition, they want free reign in their market to do whatever the hell they want to do.
Now government entities have made achieving monopoly more difficult for sure, and making it to that point tends to attract regulators eager to wag a finger and say 'no no no, you cant be doing this.' So in the modern age, we just get collusion between artificial competitors in markets. Like.. ISPs. All the goodness of monopoly without the regulators.
Do I have a solution or proposal to correcting this problem? Nope. This is capitalism. This is how it works, if you try to change it, then it won't be capitalism anymore, it'll be a managed market instead of a free market.
The presumption that big businesses must necessarily be wicked is plain wrong.
This presumption is accurate. Corporations are required by law to make money. Share holders can exact retribution if they don't. People lose their job if they fail to steer their company in a growing profitable manner, regardless of whatever else.
Once these companies 'go public', they are beholden to the share holders to give a return on their investment. The ever increasing demand for more profits, more growth, well, it's what turns good ideas into evil entities we despise.
If company's goals were things like do X better for society, discover Y, provide Z service to the best of your ability, things might be better, but that's not how it is. Every company has the same goal: Make more money for their share holders. Period. Every other consideration is secondary.
Every corporation I've ever seen has done one of two things: Get bigger, or disappear.
Social Networks are tools. It's not that they exist that is the issue; it's how they are used, just like any tool. Kids/teenagers are social creatures, even more so (it seems to me) than a lot of adults, and kids can fall out of the loop, lose friends and suffer social consequences if they are simply *banned* from using social networks. That's like telling a kid in the 70s/80s that they can never use the telephone to call their friends because bad things happen over the phone.
Not a good analogy. I think it's more along the lines of telling your kid not to smoke crack cocaine. Social networks are addictive, by design. They just SUCK you in and ewww.. then they get all over you and smell funny. Ewww. I agree with Mr. Cook, I wouldn't want to expose a kid to social networking. If I had to expose them to something like Facebook, I'd definitely make it a supervised excursion into that dark pit of human extreme views and emotions.
I'd sooner let a child onto IRC before Facebook. And IRC can have some pretty creepy people too. But it's not toxic like Facebook, nor designed to be addictive.