Not that I'd use any of these services, but if I was, I'd rather be using Microsoft's service.
Think about it. You'd be giving your personal information and credut card information to one of these databases. With Microsoft, its just them. With this Liberty thing, look how many hands are in the cookie jar.
And I'm sure that this is going to get me labeled a troll, but open source might be worse than closed source. With the source open, anyone can look at it and find security holes. If the source is closed, its harder to find holes (not impossible, of course).
But do we really need these services? And how secure would it be anyway? You're probablly going to be using a password to get into the system. For the average user, they're going to be using a simple password that is easy for them to remember. Simple = easily broken.
It would be a lot more secure and useful to build a hardware system that would scan a card (MSR, probablly) and had a huge-ass "password", something like 128k, and ENCRYPTED the whole way. You've got the problem with losing the car, but then again you have the same problem with a credit card. Could this be the "killer app" of the "smart" credit card?
AT&T was probablly the only possible savior for @Home. It looks like @Home was probablly expecing AT&T to offer more money for them and called AT&T's bluff. However AT&T was not bluffing.
AT&T and the smaller cable compaies that have left @Home represented about half of @Home's subscribers. @Home is gone. AT&T no longer wants it (they pulled their offer to buy).
The @Home bondholders shot themselves in the foot by stopping the AT&T bid. NO WAY will they get the $300 million that AT&T was offering now. As soon as the other cable companies build their own networks, @Home becomes worthless. In fact, it is worthless right now. All that @Home has going for it is its assets (buildings and equipment) and those will go for pennies on the dollar.
Does anyone want some cheap network equipment?
Re:Developed with Gyros?
on
This is IT?
·
· Score: 2
Note that I didn't say white hats or hackers were the assholes. The black hats, script kiddies, and other criminals who misuse and abuse technologies are the assholes.
You didn't really say much at all, just that you wondered why "assholes" must ruin new technology. You did not differentiate between those that find flaws or the ones that explot flaws for badness.
How this ever became a Microsoft bashing thread is beyond me. Will it gain you karma?
I mentioned Microsoft as an example. Microsoft wants security flaws kept under cover (see this story), presumably to prevent a bad light from being put on their products, especially with the "just trust us" idea of their.Net/Passport stuff. Nokea seems to being taking the same route here. The linked article suggests that Nokea knew about the problem but didn't do anything about it. Sounds like Microsoft's plan, doesn't it?
I have the feeling that no matter how much they check, something will (almost) always slip by. When the technology is complicated enough, the product will always be released with bugs, sometimes exploitable. I don't think it would be appropiate to label the developers as bigger assholes than the exploiters.
If you read the article, you would have known that Nokea has been aware of this problem for a while and aparently has done nothing to correct it. And this is not a matter of a bug that causes the phone to drop a connection; the phone becomes permantly useless.
Besides, an explot like this is something that should have been looked for. Why? There are several examples of "malformed data" causing problems with software (most notably web browsers).
Is it at all possible to have any sort of technology without assholes coming along and ruining it for everyone
Who's the bigger asshole? The one who exploits flaws in products or the one that releases products without checking for flaws that could be exploited?
One could say that the "black hats" are really "white hats" in demonstrating flaws so that they do get fixed (in reality there are shades of gray in between, depending on what the discoverer does with that information).
Of course, if Microsoft had their way, we wouldn't even know about flaws such as this and have to put our faith in the vendors fixing these "secret" flaws (read: Ralph Nadar's Unsafe at any Speed). Of course, where's the motivation to fix flaws that the public doesn't know about?
Your Pi lib isn't a copy-prevention scheme, therefore it isn't covered by the DMCA, reverse engineering is still legal.
One could argue that compiling code is an access control mechanism. That is, preventing the user from accessing the "Pi generating algorythm". It could be covered by the DMCA.
And there's a very good example of why reverse engineering is a good thing based on this.
Let's say that I announce that I've discovered a formula to calculate all the digits of Pi, a number believed to be irrational (no repetition, no way to express as a fraction, etc), and release a library that will output the number, to x decimal places (I claim that the limit is purely arbitrary, to save computer time). If you need something really precise, my library could be very useful to you.
However, since I don't release the source (and the DMCA says you can't reverse engineer), you can't disassemble the library to tell if I've really come up with a new way to calculate Pi or just hard-coded x decimal places (my product is a fraud).
This also applies to research. One of my compsci professors said "Computer science is unlike physics or chemistry, where you have set rules. Here, you just make stuff up." For computer science to advance, we can't just hide behind IP protection laws and agreements. How can you tell if something is a new advancement or just snake oil?
is sufficiently cloudy on access to information about airports, nuclear reactors and power stations. I see "freedom of speech" in there, but I don't see "freedom of access to information" present. I don't see how "Speech = access to info". Perhaps you could enlighten me.
But we do have something called the Freedom of Information Act. This requires the government to make non-classified information public. There are only a few exceptions to this, including the internal operations of agencies, personal memos, law enforcement, and this little piece:
(1)(A) specifically authorized under criteria established by an Executive order to be kept secret in the interest of national defense or foreign policy and (B) are in fact properly classified pursuant to such Executive order;
Now, IANAL, but it would seem like the government is breaking the law. As far as I know, there has been no Executive Order (re)classifying this information.
There is another question: can previously unclassified information be classified? Is this similar to trade secrets where, once its made public, its no longer subject to trade secret protections.
This is a good idea. Courts have upheld the "unauthorized" use of trademarks for parody and criticizm. However, each former domain holder would need to sue ICANN, unless a court granted class-action status to such a case. Either way, you're looking at mucho denerio required for such a case.
This doesn't affect the ability of States to tax internet sales does it? I know Michigan keeps telling me I am required to pay taxes no matter where I buy from. Is this correct?
You're supposed to pay sales tax. In my state, the grand old New Jersey, the back of my state income tax return has a form for "Use Tax". I'm supposed to declare purchases I've made out of the state or though the mail where New Jersey sales tax was not collected* and pay the 6% on those purchases. I am not telling you to break the law, but... its very simple to avoid that tax... just don't pay it.
Sales tax is not a tax on the sale (or seller), its a tax on the purcahse (or purchaser). So, your state wants to collect tax on all purchases you've made, even if they were from out of the state.
It should be noted that this "tax ban" prevents the Federal government from taxing Internet purchases, not the state governments. It is highly unlikely that the Federal government would tax internet purchases since they do not tax cross-state mail order purchases anyway. This is more to make Internet purchasers "feel good" than anything else.
* If I purchased online or mail order from a merchant in N.J. they are required to collect the tax.
I think that the point that the author was trying to make is this:
If the CD says "Compact Disc Digital Audio" (in that little logo thing), there is a certain expectation of the product (called "fitness") that it will play *correctly* in a device that also has that little logo.
If I was karma whoring, I'd put "Long Live Linus" at the end...
This is a _court case_. Your judges aren't elected. They don't run campaigns. They get life tenure. There is absolutely, positively nothing at all writing your representitives will do in this case. Your representitives can't do much of anything when the judge says that the Television execs are right. About your only hope in this case is to donate money to ReplayTV. Your congress person has nothing to do with this at this point.
Yes, this is a court case, being brought under a law passed by Congress and signed into lay be the President. I (and many others here) feel that this law is being abused by the media publishers. This is just one more example. Maybe I can not prevent ReplayTV from being sued, but I (and everyone else who takes the time to contact their representatives in the government) can prevent suits like this in the future. I might even prevent myself or even you from being sued.
The law is on the books. They can't go back an retroactively change the law just so the television networks lose. That'd be unconstitutional as an ex post facto law.
True. But they can reverse the law and prevent it from being abused by the media publishers again in the future. And, while I don't know if there is any precident for this as IANAL, but if the law was reversed ReplayTV could say "Hey, Congress reversed this law because its unjust. Dismiss the case..."
People, the time for writing your congressmen is long before the lawsuits start. You should not mod up people who say to write congressmen when its in the court room. You shouldn't even post "write your congressmen" messages in places like this. It doesn't do anything at all.
It is always time to write your congressmen. You need to let them know, on a regular basis, what you stand for, what you want them to do, and how they can help make the United States better. If you don't, they're more likely to either blindly follow their party or big money lobbiests. And that's where the DMCA came from.
In a corporate Linux environment you still have to pay for the staff, sysadmins, distributions [most likely Amazon bought a few copies of what ever linux.dist they have], etc..
Have you ever noticed the prices of Windows NT Server and their various other BackOffice applications? You're talking many hundreds of dollars per server for software alone. Plus you need client licences... This might just be a drop in the bucket for some businesses but when you have lots of computers, the costs add up.
I'm all for Linux too, but lets not use any excuse to promote it. The OS is still very premature and doesn't really compete with Windows in terms of END USER usability. Sure Linux may be a faster/stabler[?? VM problems?] OS, but it is not an easier to use OS, and in the end, for 99% of the users that is what counts.
What end users? The only ones that would probablly be able to tell that the computer was running Linux are the system administrators. And for ease of use... administering Windows NT isn't an easy task.
1) SMS is a big success; tens of millions of people all over the world are using their phone's limited keypads to type in messages, so obviously you are wrong.
Are they using it because its easy to use or just because it seems like a "cool" thing to do. It is still much more time efficient to use those keys to type in a phone number and call the person you are messaging.
2) Phones have not sounded like you are talking into a tin can since the digital networks were available. I suggest pull yourself out of the 1980's, and upgrade to a digital or PCS provider
I have a digital phone. I use a digital provider. I get digital connections. It still sounds like I'm talking into a tin can. I can very easily tell the difference between a landline and a digital/PCS phone.
So both articles are right adn wrong? THW used the basic setup most of us would use, while AMD used extra hardware? hmmm ok then............
Well, yes. They are both correct. The problem really lies in the motherboards themselves, and THW's stated that in the first article: the motherboards don't have the thermal shutdown system implemented.
So, in order to show that there wasn't a flaw in their processor, AMD implimented that system and demonstrated that it does indeed work. So, both articles are correct. The processor has the thermal protection. AMD handed the ball off to the motherboard manufacturers and they fumbled it.
Folk, its a telephone, for christ's sake. I wish that these marketing drones would eat a piece of the clue pie and realize that just becasue they can add a stupid feature does not mean that they must add that stupid feature. Have you ever tried "typing" using the numeric keypad of a phone? Its not worth the trouble.
Forget about wireless internet, email, MP3 playing, etc, etc. Improve the phone so that it doesn't sound like I'm talking into a tin can. Please.
Maybe, MAYBE if you could get a voice command system that would allow me to say, in plain English, commands for information to retreive (such as "How are my stocks doing today?"), that might be worth it. But you don't need a super high tech gadget to do that anyway.
These people (the RIAA) really think that they are above the law. We need to put pressure on THEM by being in contact with our government representatives and through grassroots movements. The only way to beat them is to turn the public against them.
The Taliban offered to try Bin Laden in Afghanistan.
Oh, sure. That would work. (sarcasm off) The Taliban believe in the same extreme Islamic teachings that bin Laden uses to promote attacks against the United States. If tried by the Taliban, he would probablly be found not guilty. And he would still have refuge under the Taliban's regeime.
By the way, British Prime Minister Tony Blair released a 21 page report tying bin Laden to the September 11 attacks. Plus there are the attacks on the USS Cole and the American embasies in East Africa. The Taliban has said that they will declare a Jihad* against the West if attacked. That mean that they've declared a war on YOU. Do you still think we should sit back on our hands on hope this all "blows over"?
* Most followers of Islam believe that "Jihad" means a holy war against one's self to find truth of existance. Using "Jihad" to demand violence is cosidered by most to be a basterization of the religion.
The contract between publishers and society is that publishers have the right to distribute their works as they see fit and then the consumer can do whatever they want with the physical copy of the work they have purchased.
WRONG. The contract is that we, as a society, give the publishers a limited time monopoly over distribution of their works that, upon the expiration of the copyright, becomes part of the public domain. Digital rights systems prevent those works from becoming part of the public domain. They give publishers an excuse to prohibit breaking the DRM system for works in the public domain because there are other works still under copyright. Therefore, even works not protected by copyright anymore will never be part of the public domain.
I think it's interesting that bin Laden is disclaiming responsibility. In the past terrorist groups have always been aggressive about taking 'credit' for their efforts.
No one is taking responsibility. This is very intresting. I suspect that the person(s) responsible are now scared shitless of the US. Note that the second plane hitting the WTC was seen by a lot of people live and even more on tape (over and over again) on television. Maybe this was a coincidence, most likely it was on purpose to showcase the terrorists' "power" agaist us. The purpose of terrorism is to strike terror and fear of further attacks in the minds of those targeted. That goal has backfired. Government leaders are calling for retribution, the public is clamoring for blood... Don't get me wrong, the deaths of thousands of Americans is nothing to be taken lightly, but, after getting over the initial shock and grief of what happened, Americans haven't been scared out of their minds.
If Iraq was responsible in any way, they have secured their own distruction. As in our entire military simultaneously attacking Iraq.
This is why I doubt that it was the work of a government. The Cold War never escillated into a real war becasue the US/Nato and USSR/Eastern Bloc all had nuclear weapons. A nuclear attack by one group would assure a full retaliation and therefore their own destruction. It was a standoff, but that was a Good Thing. There is no way to win a nuclear war.
I believe that this had to be the work of a private group. Now, you have to take a look at who could finance this. All signs point to Osama bin Laden. He's got the hatred of the US and the money to finance an attack of this kind. The attackers knew right where to hit the buildings and had to know how to fly the planes. There is no way that the real pilots would have flown them into those buidlings. If the had to, they would have ditched in the river.
Word is now coming out (ABC, AP, and CNN) that the hijackers were Egyptian and Saudi Arabian with tied to bin Laden.
I guess that this requires a new disclaimer... IANAIPE: I Am Not An Intelligence or Political Expert.
Conglomerate corporations aren't inheritantly bad, in-fact I would like to hear one example of a corporate merger that hurt the consumer.
Well, in a way, they can be, especially to the competition. In some fields (such as local utilities: electricity, telephone, cable, gas, water), a well-regulated monopoly is the most cost-efficient business method. It doesn't make ecconomic sence to have multiple gas mains under the street (or phone lines, or whatever) and the manpower to maintain the system. The redundantcy costs would drive up the price of the utility service.
But for other goods and services (hardware, software, entertainment, etc), competition is a good thing. Take PC hardware. When IBM was the only company building PCs, a buyer had little choice over what they bought. Then a startup named Compaq came along and built a compatable PC and started the "IBM compatable clones". Compaq even beat IBM to the market with 386-based computers. Competition in PC hardware has brought lower prices, better selection, and faster innovation as competing companies rush to top the competition for your dollar. When it was just IBM, they had no incentive to release newer technology or lower prices.
What were seeing are some of the top companies in the same and different sectors merging. This, along with laws such as the DMCA are nothing more than tools to preserve the status quo. They strive to prevent any competition from having a chance to emerge.
Take DVD players. The hardware is standard. You could go out and build your own DVD player out of parts you can mainly get at Radio Shack. But to play a DVD movie, you need to license the CSS decryption system for an exorbinant sum. Sure, Sony can afford to pay the fee, but a startup probablly can not. The control of DVD player production is retained by Hollywood and the major electronics companies. There are a lot fewer "no-name" or generic DVD players than other electronics (like cassette players or TVs).
So what does this mean for the average Joe? Higher prices and fewer choices. It also means that your average Joe has very little chance at starting a small business to compete with the "big boys" (or as it is becoming "big boy").
Former President Calvin Coolidge once said "The chief business of the American people is business." This might be true, but as far as economic growth and new jobs, the small businesses are far more important then the massive ones. By allowing small business to be locked out of the marketplace, we are preventing economic growth (which is something we desperately need right now).
Slashdot Mirror
...spoil the broth.
Not that I'd use any of these services, but if I was, I'd rather be using Microsoft's service.
Think about it. You'd be giving your personal information and credut card information to one of these databases. With Microsoft, its just them. With this Liberty thing, look how many hands are in the cookie jar.
And I'm sure that this is going to get me labeled a troll, but open source might be worse than closed source. With the source open, anyone can look at it and find security holes. If the source is closed, its harder to find holes (not impossible, of course).
But do we really need these services? And how secure would it be anyway? You're probablly going to be using a password to get into the system. For the average user, they're going to be using a simple password that is easy for them to remember. Simple = easily broken.
It would be a lot more secure and useful to build a hardware system that would scan a card (MSR, probablly) and had a huge-ass "password", something like 128k, and ENCRYPTED the whole way. You've got the problem with losing the car, but then again you have the same problem with a credit card. Could this be the "killer app" of the "smart" credit card?
AT&T was probablly the only possible savior for @Home. It looks like @Home was probablly expecing AT&T to offer more money for them and called AT&T's bluff. However AT&T was not bluffing.
AT&T and the smaller cable compaies that have left @Home represented about half of @Home's subscribers. @Home is gone. AT&T no longer wants it (they pulled their offer to buy).
The @Home bondholders shot themselves in the foot by stopping the AT&T bid. NO WAY will they get the $300 million that AT&T was offering now. As soon as the other cable companies build their own networks, @Home becomes worthless. In fact, it is worthless right now. All that @Home has going for it is its assets (buildings and equipment) and those will go for pennies on the dollar.
Does anyone want some cheap network equipment?
That brings one thing to mind.
"You like-a the juice?"
Note that I didn't say white hats or hackers were the assholes. The black hats, script kiddies, and other criminals who misuse and abuse technologies are the assholes.
.Net/Passport stuff. Nokea seems to being taking the same route here. The linked article suggests that Nokea knew about the problem but didn't do anything about it. Sounds like Microsoft's plan, doesn't it?
You didn't really say much at all, just that you wondered why "assholes" must ruin new technology. You did not differentiate between those that find flaws or the ones that explot flaws for badness.
How this ever became a Microsoft bashing thread is beyond me. Will it gain you karma?
I mentioned Microsoft as an example. Microsoft wants security flaws kept under cover (see this story), presumably to prevent a bad light from being put on their products, especially with the "just trust us" idea of their
I have the feeling that no matter how much they check, something will (almost) always slip by. When the technology is complicated enough, the product will always be released with bugs, sometimes exploitable. I don't think it would be appropiate to label the developers as bigger assholes than the exploiters.
If you read the article, you would have known that Nokea has been aware of this problem for a while and aparently has done nothing to correct it. And this is not a matter of a bug that causes the phone to drop a connection; the phone becomes permantly useless.
Besides, an explot like this is something that should have been looked for. Why? There are several examples of "malformed data" causing problems with software (most notably web browsers).
- Is it at all possible to have any sort of technology without assholes coming along and ruining it for everyone
Who's the bigger asshole? The one who exploits flaws in products or the one that releases products without checking for flaws that could be exploited?One could say that the "black hats" are really "white hats" in demonstrating flaws so that they do get fixed (in reality there are shades of gray in between, depending on what the discoverer does with that information).
Of course, if Microsoft had their way, we wouldn't even know about flaws such as this and have to put our faith in the vendors fixing these "secret" flaws (read: Ralph Nadar's Unsafe at any Speed). Of course, where's the motivation to fix flaws that the public doesn't know about?
Your Pi lib isn't a copy-prevention scheme, therefore it isn't covered by the DMCA, reverse engineering is still legal.
One could argue that compiling code is an access control mechanism. That is, preventing the user from accessing the "Pi generating algorythm". It could be covered by the DMCA.
And there's a very good example of why reverse engineering is a good thing based on this.
Let's say that I announce that I've discovered a formula to calculate all the digits of Pi, a number believed to be irrational (no repetition, no way to express as a fraction, etc), and release a library that will output the number, to x decimal places (I claim that the limit is purely arbitrary, to save computer time). If you need something really precise, my library could be very useful to you.
However, since I don't release the source (and the DMCA says you can't reverse engineer), you can't disassemble the library to tell if I've really come up with a new way to calculate Pi or just hard-coded x decimal places (my product is a fraud).
This also applies to research. One of my compsci professors said "Computer science is unlike physics or chemistry, where you have set rules. Here, you just make stuff up." For computer science to advance, we can't just hide behind IP protection laws and agreements. How can you tell if something is a new advancement or just snake oil?
is sufficiently cloudy on access to information about airports, nuclear reactors and power stations. I see "freedom of speech" in there, but I don't see "freedom of access to information" present. I don't see how "Speech = access to info". Perhaps you could enlighten me.
But we do have something called the Freedom of Information Act. This requires the government to make non-classified information public. There are only a few exceptions to this, including the internal operations of agencies, personal memos, law enforcement, and this little piece:
(1)(A) specifically authorized under criteria established by an Executive order to be kept secret in the interest of national defense or foreign policy and (B) are in fact properly classified pursuant to such Executive order;
Now, IANAL, but it would seem like the government is breaking the law. As far as I know, there has been no Executive Order (re)classifying this information.
There is another question: can previously unclassified information be classified? Is this similar to trade secrets where, once its made public, its no longer subject to trade secret protections.
IANAL... blah blah
This is a good idea. Courts have upheld the "unauthorized" use of trademarks for parody and criticizm. However, each former domain holder would need to sue ICANN, unless a court granted class-action status to such a case. Either way, you're looking at mucho denerio required for such a case.
This doesn't affect the ability of States to tax internet sales does it? I know Michigan keeps telling me I am required to pay taxes no matter where I buy from. Is this correct?
You're supposed to pay sales tax. In my state, the grand old New Jersey, the back of my state income tax return has a form for "Use Tax". I'm supposed to declare purchases I've made out of the state or though the mail where New Jersey sales tax was not collected* and pay the 6% on those purchases. I am not telling you to break the law, but... its very simple to avoid that tax... just don't pay it.
Sales tax is not a tax on the sale (or seller), its a tax on the purcahse (or purchaser). So, your state wants to collect tax on all purchases you've made, even if they were from out of the state.
It should be noted that this "tax ban" prevents the Federal government from taxing Internet purchases, not the state governments. It is highly unlikely that the Federal government would tax internet purchases since they do not tax cross-state mail order purchases anyway. This is more to make Internet purchasers "feel good" than anything else.
* If I purchased online or mail order from a merchant in N.J. they are required to collect the tax.
I think that the point that the author was trying to make is this:
If the CD says "Compact Disc Digital Audio" (in that little logo thing), there is a certain expectation of the product (called "fitness") that it will play *correctly* in a device that also has that little logo.
Okay, you're karma whoring.
If I was karma whoring, I'd put "Long Live Linus" at the end...
This is a _court case_. Your judges aren't elected. They don't run campaigns. They get life tenure. There is absolutely, positively nothing at all writing your representitives will do in this case. Your representitives can't do much of anything when the judge says that the Television execs are right. About your only hope in this case is to donate money to ReplayTV. Your congress person has nothing to do with this at this point.
Yes, this is a court case, being brought under a law passed by Congress and signed into lay be the President. I (and many others here) feel that this law is being abused by the media publishers. This is just one more example. Maybe I can not prevent ReplayTV from being sued, but I (and everyone else who takes the time to contact their representatives in the government) can prevent suits like this in the future. I might even prevent myself or even you from being sued.
The law is on the books. They can't go back an retroactively change the law just so the television networks lose. That'd be unconstitutional as an ex post facto law.
True. But they can reverse the law and prevent it from being abused by the media publishers again in the future. And, while I don't know if there is any precident for this as IANAL, but if the law was reversed ReplayTV could say "Hey, Congress reversed this law because its unjust. Dismiss the case..."
People, the time for writing your congressmen is long before the lawsuits start. You should not mod up people who say to write congressmen when its in the court room. You shouldn't even post "write your congressmen" messages in places like this. It doesn't do anything at all.
It is always time to write your congressmen. You need to let them know, on a regular basis, what you stand for, what you want them to do, and how they can help make the United States better. If you don't, they're more likely to either blindly follow their party or big money lobbiests. And that's where the DMCA came from.
If you don't like seeing the media companies taking this sort of action, there's only one thing for you to do:
CONTACT YOUR GOVERNMENT REPRESENTATIVE!
That's right, get off your behind, write a letter, make a phone call, take a drive, fire off an email. DO SOMETHING!!!
And after you've contacted your representatives, tell a friend. Tell several friends. Write to a newspaper. Get the word out.
In a corporate Linux environment you still have to pay for the staff, sysadmins, distributions [most likely Amazon bought a few copies of what ever linux.dist they have], etc..
Have you ever noticed the prices of Windows NT Server and their various other BackOffice applications? You're talking many hundreds of dollars per server for software alone. Plus you need client licences... This might just be a drop in the bucket for some businesses but when you have lots of computers, the costs add up.
I'm all for Linux too, but lets not use any excuse to promote it. The OS is still very premature and doesn't really compete with Windows in terms of END USER usability. Sure Linux may be a faster/stabler[?? VM problems?] OS, but it is not an easier to use OS, and in the end, for 99% of the users that is what counts.
What end users? The only ones that would probablly be able to tell that the computer was running Linux are the system administrators. And for ease of use... administering Windows NT isn't an easy task.
1) SMS is a big success; tens of millions of people all over the world are using their phone's limited keypads to type in messages, so obviously you are wrong.
Are they using it because its easy to use or just because it seems like a "cool" thing to do. It is still much more time efficient to use those keys to type in a phone number and call the person you are messaging.
2) Phones have not sounded like you are talking into a tin can since the digital networks were available. I suggest pull yourself out of the 1980's, and upgrade to a digital or PCS provider
I have a digital phone. I use a digital provider. I get digital connections. It still sounds like I'm talking into a tin can. I can very easily tell the difference between a landline and a digital/PCS phone.
So both articles are right adn wrong? THW used the basic setup most of us would use, while AMD used extra hardware? hmmm ok then............
Well, yes. They are both correct. The problem really lies in the motherboards themselves, and THW's stated that in the first article: the motherboards don't have the thermal shutdown system implemented.
So, in order to show that there wasn't a flaw in their processor, AMD implimented that system and demonstrated that it does indeed work. So, both articles are correct. The processor has the thermal protection. AMD handed the ball off to the motherboard manufacturers and they fumbled it.
Here, here!
Folk, its a telephone, for christ's sake. I wish that these marketing drones would eat a piece of the clue pie and realize that just becasue they can add a stupid feature does not mean that they must add that stupid feature. Have you ever tried "typing" using the numeric keypad of a phone? Its not worth the trouble.
Forget about wireless internet, email, MP3 playing, etc, etc. Improve the phone so that it doesn't sound like I'm talking into a tin can. Please.
Maybe, MAYBE if you could get a voice command system that would allow me to say, in plain English, commands for information to retreive (such as "How are my stocks doing today?"), that might be worth it. But you don't need a super high tech gadget to do that anyway.
I'm remided of the Southpark eppisode...
Music executive: "I am above the law!"
These people (the RIAA) really think that they are above the law. We need to put pressure on THEM by being in contact with our government representatives and through grassroots movements. The only way to beat them is to turn the public against them.
The Taliban offered to try Bin Laden in Afghanistan.
Oh, sure. That would work. (sarcasm off) The Taliban believe in the same extreme Islamic teachings that bin Laden uses to promote attacks against the United States. If tried by the Taliban, he would probablly be found not guilty. And he would still have refuge under the Taliban's regeime.
By the way, British Prime Minister Tony Blair released a 21 page report tying bin Laden to the September 11 attacks. Plus there are the attacks on the USS Cole and the American embasies in East Africa. The Taliban has said that they will declare a Jihad* against the West if attacked. That mean that they've declared a war on YOU. Do you still think we should sit back on our hands on hope this all "blows over"?
* Most followers of Islam believe that "Jihad" means a holy war against one's self to find truth of existance. Using "Jihad" to demand violence is cosidered by most to be a basterization of the religion.
The contract between publishers and society is that publishers have the right to distribute their works as they see fit and then the consumer can do whatever they want with the physical copy of the work they have purchased.
WRONG. The contract is that we, as a society, give the publishers a limited time monopoly over distribution of their works that, upon the expiration of the copyright, becomes part of the public domain. Digital rights systems prevent those works from becoming part of the public domain. They give publishers an excuse to prohibit breaking the DRM system for works in the public domain because there are other works still under copyright. Therefore, even works not protected by copyright anymore will never be part of the public domain.
I think it's interesting that bin Laden is disclaiming responsibility. In the past terrorist groups have always been aggressive about taking 'credit' for their efforts.
No one is taking responsibility. This is very intresting. I suspect that the person(s) responsible are now scared shitless of the US. Note that the second plane hitting the WTC was seen by a lot of people live and even more on tape (over and over again) on television. Maybe this was a coincidence, most likely it was on purpose to showcase the terrorists' "power" agaist us. The purpose of terrorism is to strike terror and fear of further attacks in the minds of those targeted. That goal has backfired. Government leaders are calling for retribution, the public is clamoring for blood... Don't get me wrong, the deaths of thousands of Americans is nothing to be taken lightly, but, after getting over the initial shock and grief of what happened, Americans haven't been scared out of their minds.
If Iraq was responsible in any way, they have secured their own distruction. As in our entire military simultaneously attacking Iraq.
This is why I doubt that it was the work of a government. The Cold War never escillated into a real war becasue the US/Nato and USSR/Eastern Bloc all had nuclear weapons. A nuclear attack by one group would assure a full retaliation and therefore their own destruction. It was a standoff, but that was a Good Thing. There is no way to win a nuclear war.
I believe that this had to be the work of a private group. Now, you have to take a look at who could finance this. All signs point to Osama bin Laden. He's got the hatred of the US and the money to finance an attack of this kind. The attackers knew right where to hit the buildings and had to know how to fly the planes. There is no way that the real pilots would have flown them into those buidlings. If the had to, they would have ditched in the river.
Word is now coming out (ABC, AP, and CNN) that the hijackers were Egyptian and Saudi Arabian with tied to bin Laden.
I guess that this requires a new disclaimer... IANAIPE: I Am Not An Intelligence or Political Expert.
Conglomerate corporations aren't inheritantly bad, in-fact I would like to hear one example of a corporate merger that hurt the consumer.
Well, in a way, they can be, especially to the competition. In some fields (such as local utilities: electricity, telephone, cable, gas, water), a well-regulated monopoly is the most cost-efficient business method. It doesn't make ecconomic sence to have multiple gas mains under the street (or phone lines, or whatever) and the manpower to maintain the system. The redundantcy costs would drive up the price of the utility service.
But for other goods and services (hardware, software, entertainment, etc), competition is a good thing. Take PC hardware. When IBM was the only company building PCs, a buyer had little choice over what they bought. Then a startup named Compaq came along and built a compatable PC and started the "IBM compatable clones". Compaq even beat IBM to the market with 386-based computers. Competition in PC hardware has brought lower prices, better selection, and faster innovation as competing companies rush to top the competition for your dollar. When it was just IBM, they had no incentive to release newer technology or lower prices.
What were seeing are some of the top companies in the same and different sectors merging. This, along with laws such as the DMCA are nothing more than tools to preserve the status quo. They strive to prevent any competition from having a chance to emerge.
Take DVD players. The hardware is standard. You could go out and build your own DVD player out of parts you can mainly get at Radio Shack. But to play a DVD movie, you need to license the CSS decryption system for an exorbinant sum. Sure, Sony can afford to pay the fee, but a startup probablly can not. The control of DVD player production is retained by Hollywood and the major electronics companies. There are a lot fewer "no-name" or generic DVD players than other electronics (like cassette players or TVs).
So what does this mean for the average Joe? Higher prices and fewer choices. It also means that your average Joe has very little chance at starting a small business to compete with the "big boys" (or as it is becoming "big boy").
Former President Calvin Coolidge once said "The chief business of the American people is business." This might be true, but as far as economic growth and new jobs, the small businesses are far more important then the massive ones. By allowing small business to be locked out of the marketplace, we are preventing economic growth (which is something we desperately need right now).
Using that logic, God intends us to watch Full House, blow ourselves up with nuclear weapons, and cut our hair with the Flo-Bee.
Full House is a great show, nuclear energy is the future of power generation, and the Flo-Bee is a quality product.
Well, maybe not the Flo-Bee.