What difference do you perceive between the government of Iran now and that following the Islamic revolution in 1979? The same people are in power, with a few public-facing figureheads being changed out. It is the mullash, Imams and clerics that are running things there and have been since 1979.
A good part of the people of Iran put these folks into power back in 1979. We had a pretty good idea of what was going to happen back then and, gosh, it has happened. The people that didn't agree with the direction then didn't do much to stop it. The people still aren't doing anything. Our ability from the outside to distinguish between the majority wanting this type of Islamic government and the majority being intimidated into accepting it is approximately zero.
So we have a choice. You apparently would like to believe the majority are intimidated into accepting things. I'd say the majority is pretty happy about their government. Maybe they would like some different mullah in charge but would still like some mullah. About the same difference as wanting Obama vs. McCain when people outside would prefer someone more like Buddha or Hitler. Sorry, I do not agree that the Iranian people would even be interested in anything other than a fundamentalist Islamic theocracy. And our ability to understand their desires in this area are extremely limited.
What does it take to understand that not all people yearn for freedom?
As for nuclear war, I wouldn't worry too much about that. The US isn't going to strike first, and Iran lacks the technology to deliver nuclear payloads to the US. Also, as a practical matter while Iranian leadership seems to be oppressive and such, they aren't insane. I'm sure they full and well understand what the US response to a nuclear attack would be, and nobody wants to be the ruler of a glass parking lot.
All it will take to deliver a nuclear weapon to the US is a ship. Maybe even just a container on a ship, routed through some other port. They certainly have that delivery capability.
As for being the ruler of a glass parking lot, maybe not. But the rulers there care nothing for their civilian population, so whatever happens to them is a big "so?"
What I would say is a more likely scenario is for them to set off a nuclear weapon on Israeli soil. Israel loses a city. The big question is, would the US step in to help, or would the US be more likely to say that this issue must be resolved by negotiation? Today, my guess is that either we would stand off and do nothing or try to talk Israel out of wiping Iran off the face of the Earth. Which Israel would likely want to do.
And I am not clear what the US response would be to an attack here. If we lost something big and symbolic, say Washington DC when Mr. Obama wasn't home he might not have too many options. But I think he could write off Miami rather than being accused of starting a nuclear war, which some would do. Regardless of the fact of a first strike by another.
I don't see Israel starting a nuclear war, but certainly they would finish one to the best of their ability.
As someone else noted, badly-run code reviews aren't worth much, if anything.
There was a lot written about code reviewing in the late 80's and early 90's that makes sense. If a review is conducted as a lesson in coding to others, nobody is going to get much out of it. If it is done as a last-ditch design review, that probably isn't going to work out well either.
If the staff is all people with lots of experience, it may not be that valuable. Alternatively, I see it as an extremely powerful tool for a staff that works mostly independently to come back together periodically and make sure everyone is on the same page. Especially when some team members have less experience.
Trying to bog it down with formality is pointless. But the early guidelines about "egoless" are right on target.
Why can't you return purchased software? You were when software sales to consumers started out, in line 1978 for CP/M. But it is really, really easy to install a product and then return the packaging to the store saying you don't like it. You win, you got the software. The store loses, they have a "return" or an "open box" item to either return to the publisher or sell at a discount.
The publisher loses, loses, loses because it is now obvious that you don't have to pay to use their software.
Returns were dropped from just about everywhere except the geekier tech-favoring computer stores. Then when people figured out they could return software there, that got abused also.
If people didn't believe piracy was their right, or at least it was their right to have stuff for free you could return software like you can return any other item. But everyone wants stuff for free, so you might as well just download it. You do know trying to buy software makes you somewhat of an oddball, right?
Unfortunately, IP TV doesn't care how it is charged for. Everyone streaming their own private streams takes a huge amount of bandwidth. Far, far more than broadcasting does.
I think the IP TV idea is pretty much doomed because of the bandwidth requirements. It works fine when a couple of homes on a 1000 home network node are doing it. It stops working so nicely when 100 of them are. It brings the node down when 500 try it.
If BT doesn't have the infrastructure to provide the kind of service others want to make use of, it might be kinda tough. One of the huge problems with this sort of thing is that for the first few people it works fine. Then, if a huge bandwidth consumer is popular, it becomes unusable quickly because the end-to-end pathway doesn't exist at a high enough bandwidth level.
Home Internet connections today exist with relatively high bandwidths because all of this bandwidth is shared among hundreds of homes. You want 20MB/sec connections? Fine - you get it as long as the aggregate bandwidth being used on your node doesn't swamp the link to the head end. Once that link is swamped, your service drops. Today, we have the capability for hundreds of homes to each consume 10MB/sec or more. The result of this would seem to be that the link to the head end from the neighborhood node needs to accomodate the number of homes served times 10MB/sec. Ha, as if that sort of bandwidth exists today.
Will Internet service providers move away from a neighborhood node to individual fiber optic links to each and every home? Doubtful. Very doubtful because of the cost of doing so - it might take them 10 or 20 years to recoup that expenditure, maybe more. Most neighborhood nodes were wired with privately run fiber links, so they already spent plenty on setting up the infrastructure this way.
I suspect the idea of dedicated bandwidth to each home is going to go by the wayside pretty soon. When your neighbors start consuming more and more of the node bandwidth, the end result will not be that the cable and DSL links will be built up - there are finite limits to how far the node concept can go. Without independent links to every home the bandwidth just isn't going to be available for everyone on a 1000 home neighborhood node to be watching their own privately streamed HD TV show.
Wireless? Not an answer. More shared bandwidth, with even less to go around.
How about optical links? You put up a tower somewhere and point a laser at each house you want to serve. Something in the 100W range should be good enough to punch through fog and rain. So for a 1000 homes you would only need 100KW of laser power radiating out. Solar power would be good for this, I guess. Might suck to be a bird in that area but it wouldn't require digging everything up.
Only people over 30 (and mostly over 50) are spending money on music. The people that can't figure out how to use BitTorrent or othre P2P tools to fill up their iPod. iTunes has maybe 2% of the download market today, but they are getting millions of dollars from it - fortunately for these folks it is just about enough to continue operating. Can't sell an iPod without a way to fill it up for these folks.
The rest of the people, oh maybe 10 times as many, know how to get music for free. When was the last time you bought a CD at WalMart? Ever wonder why they even sell CDs there? Because some people - older people, mostly, are still buying them there. Will you ever buy a CD at WalMart? No? Well, when the older folks that are still buying CDs die off, then CDs will die off as well.
Until then, you can expect to see music sales continue.
Movies? When they are as easy to download as music is today, you can assume the DVD rentals will pretty much end. Theater tickets? I don't see movie theaters lasting much beyond the point where they release the DVD the same day tickets go on sale. That will probably be the nail in the coffin for them. This will mean the free download (pirated) will be available a couple of days after that.
The "movie industry" and the "music industry" are pretty much over. Nobody is going to pay when they do not have to and just about everyone under 30 knows they don't have to. When the older folks give up on it or are locked away in their nursing homes you won't see any more sales and the "industry" will be over and done with.
Further P2P will be trading everything that has been done 1970-2015 since little of value will be around after that. Oh there will be plenty of amature movies and music will be around and some of it will stand out. Most of it will be utter crap and bury anything that is good.
Consumer software can easily fall prey to this. Small software companies really can't afford it when their sales pretty much drop to zero unless they have other products.
Piracy? Well, lets just call it agressive marketing via warez web sites offering the same or substantially similar products (from the same original publiser) at zero cost.
The end result of a fairly massive warez-posting campaign where the distributors were using stolen credit cards to purchase products and then posting them for all to freely download was a virtual abandonment of the consumer space. There is no point in trying to market a product when it is being given away.
Can you compete on support? Well, if it needs that much support nobody is going to use it anyway.
Competing on doodads in the package? Well, if the whole idea is a downloaded product in the first place it is difficult to differentiate in this way.
Making the product difficult to redistribute just makes it harder for those that are still paying, however few that might be.
End result is the pirates win - they have a product they can give away, thus destroying any revenue that might be associated with it. No further development occurs on the product because nobody is going to pay the programmers to work on it. And if the "consumer product" programmers can't fit in to the other products they are out of a job. Sure, people lose their jobs because of piracy. But the pirates are winning the battle for zero-revenue (not necessarily free) software.
but imagine the RIAA buying themselves some laws requiring techs to report file sharing software and MP3's...
Why would they need to do that? Every computer has unlicensed MP3s on it, almost by definition. If the computer's owner is under 30 or the computer can be accessed by someone under 30, there is certainly illegally downloaded music on it.
Problem is, RIAA doesn't care about downloading. All they care about is distribution, proven over and over again. So get your music from offshore distributors and you are fine. Oh, and don't distribute. Nothing the RIAA can do about that.
What I want to see is legal (or at least allowed bank transfers) for casino games like slots, blackjack and maybe roulette. These are all extremely easy to rig, will draw millions of US citizens in with the hopes of a quick buck and make the operators very, very rich.
This can all be operated overseas without any possibility of government interference or regulation, just as soon as the credit cards companies will allow transfers to such businesses. Poker is a drop in the bucket, and certain is meaningless in terms of getting huge returns on gaming. The real thing happens when they legalize transfers for gaming, period.
I believe this first started to be recognized as a significant hazard after WW II on Pacific island air bases. Gooney birds would nest near runways and impact aircraft. An impact with a B-29 wasn't that big a deal and did not affect the engines. Impact with a much faster jet aircraft was a problem and with fighter planes could easily bring down the aircraft.
I recall reading about this a long, long time ago. They tried everything they could to discourage the birds from nesting by the runways. Loudspeakers playing music or other noises didn't work. Shotguns or "bird scarers" didn't work. Egg relocation - physially moving the nest and eggs didn't work. Killing the birds worked, but only so far as they carried out extermination. The problem was there are a lot of birds out there and unless you are actually prepared to kill all of them, it doesn't solve the problem - or, as was found out, even lessen the hazard all that much.
Modern folks need to have studied up on what was done previously so they can skip over all that stuff that didn't work very well. Concentrate on new stuff. And no, I seriously doubt any "electromagnetics" are going to have that much of an effect considering what else has been tried before.
Sitting the kids down at the controls was stupid. But the reason the plane was lost seems to be the pilot's unfamiliarity with the type and how much the plane did by itself. The pilots did not understand what was happening to them until it was too late.
Training in type (or lack thereof) played a huge role in the crash, as did overall complexity of the aircraft. It might have made more sense to have the autopilot simply be either on or off instead of controlling some parts and not others. With a big light that says it is on.
Obviously you have no idea how many such textbooks are available today. Sure, they can today choose from literally thousands of math textbooks. Most of these are written by people focused on new and "improved" ways to illustrate math concepts, both at an elementary and higher education levels. While the basic concepts of mathematics haven't changed in a while, every year someone comes up with what they think will be the new and improved way to teach people math.
So how exactly does a school district decide on a textbook? It is very difficult in many cases, so difficult that a lot of districts let someone else do it. They simply take the selection of some other district or state level body. The states will oten simply adopt what some other state has already done or (worse, in my opinion) take the advice of some local university that spent a few months studying a new and trendy textbook.
The end result is there are plenty to choose from out there. But selecting one from the volume of what is available is extremely difficult. Getting some unknown graduate student to write a new textbook would be extremely risky, in an environment that is rather adverse to risk. After all, if you select a textbook for third grade math that is incomprehensible to the students, they lose a year of education. Parents aren't all that happy about it and in some locations can sue the Board of Education, the principal and the teacher for damaging their child.
My sister was the victim of such an experiment. She got a new "phonetic" book for first grade reading. The result was that she did not learn to read, and neither did much of the rest of the first grade class using the new book. She repeated first grade at a different school. This was in a far less litigious time when suing the school simply wouldn't have occured to most people. Alas, she lost a year of her life to a failed textbook.
So let's think about what might actually be involved in creating and selecting a textbook.
They would likely have more people downloading if they charged. iTunes is proof you can charge for something that is free to most people. People value things they pay for more than stuff given away.
The audience such a store would attract would be those that need lots and lots of help. They would need to (expensively) repackage things with all of their required co-requisites and dependencies. This would make Linux a lot more friendly for people that cannot spend the time to locate the 37 different packages at different version levels required to install the application they really want.
In short, not charging is a mistake. $1 or even $5 would go a long way towards making their store much more usable by the average Joe.
You miss the point. Near-Earth orbit is a stepping stone to further goals. A base on the Moon might is equally but a stepping stone.
The point is acquisition of resources and raw materials from off-planet sources. Whether it is Helium-3 from the surface of the Moon, hydrocarbons from Jupiter, or metals from asteroids the key is that we need stuff. Stuff to make other things with.
There are alternatives. None of them particularly nice. If we force a much smaller population to consume less we will not need as much and can probably get by with what natural processes will make available. Wood is essentially an eternal resource, as long as you like stuff made from wood. Wood is particularly unsuited to a number of containers, enclosures and cases in common use today. Wooden cars are unlikely to be very popular, as would wooden cell phones.
Similarly, while it is possible to recycle metals, it is neither economically feasible nor practical to recycle all metals - most metal products today end up in a landfill somewhere. In 10,000 years or so we can expect to mine rich ore veins where there were landfills. Until then, we are either going to need other sources of raw materials or just plan on a smaller population making do without.
How much smaller a population? And, more importantly, how do we get to a smaller population today? War? Pestilence? Herding people into gas chambers? I really want to hear someone on the environmental side come out with some plans for how we are going to get to a smaller, Earth-constrained population that will be able to make do with fewer natural resources.
Yes, but take it from someone that has many, many "unuthorized access attempts" made every day and a few that have been successful. Law enforcement begins when you can prove $25,000 (or more) in damages. No proof = no action.
Similarly, unless you know where it is coming from they aren't much interested. Even the FBI is pretty much powerless to stop a Romainian hacker until there are really major damages in the millions of dollars. And most foreign law enforcement just laughs at US companies. Sucks to be you, ha ha ha.
Yes, it Vodafone is wrong and Deutsche Telekom is correct.
You are right to be concerned. The key will be something like an article in WSJ or similar business-oriented publications. No story probably means either a hoax or just some script kiddies with no real agenda.
The problem is that the average secretary or even call center worker might have enough access to pass along just enough to allow a breakin like this.
Sure, the IT people can really hurt a company if they so choose. Which means background checks, credit reports and monitoring are all things that company are going to have to think about. They can decide to do them and piss off employees but be safer, or they can reject this and take their chances. One thing I have learned is that clearly once employees think things aren't perfect for them stuff is going to start walking out the door. Computers. Records. Lamps. Chairs. Just about anything that isn't nailed down.
Problem is, this isn't confined to IT people. Anyone that has access to do their job is a potential threat. How does a company mitigate that threat? Or do they just hope that everyone has the company's best interest at heart?
I think we are entering an age where everyone knows the employee's loyality goes just as far as the permanence of their job, and no job is permanent anymore. So everyone is out for themselves, and if they see a chance to grab some kind of a big payoff they are going to take it. Or toss a wrench into the works just to see what happens.
My mistake. I knew they were offshore and from Germany.
Yup, I am on T-Mobile, until the hackers shut them down, if they do. I'd really like to see a demonstration of "hacker power" It might get people to wake up. But we are far more likely to see nothing come from this at all. Which means that everyone gets to bear the brunt of folks like this. And law enforcement yawns and ignores everything until something really, really bad happens.
Well, I think DVD's cost too much. Shouldn't the government step in there as well? How about cars? They cost too much, don't you think?
While the government is at it, shouldn't all prices have to be approved, regulated and reviewed periodically by the government? I mean if one grocery store in LA is charging $0.15 for an apple and one in Seattle is charging $0.30 isn't there some gouging going on here? Shouldn't we just have the goverment set all prices for all goods and services? Wouldn't that be more fair?
I don't think there can be much in the way of law enforcement action. No damages, yet. No idea where they might be operating from, so jurisdiction is an open question.
I think if T-Mobile isn't going to pay ransom, the hackers should just make this public and make it clear what they can do with the data they have and the access they have. To all the media. So the TV News and newspapers run with stories about how your billing records are now public information and how to look up anyone's phone records. Then add on how data can be changed by these folks with their access. Maybe you get a $10,000 bill next month if you have T-Mobile service just because. Or you get a credit. Make it random, just to confuse people.
Maybe the general public would understand that these folks pose a real risk.
Of course, what is likely to happen is... nothing. Nothing at all.
So what? Are you just complaining because the price is high, or are you prevented from using SMS services because of the pricing?
What possible relationship should the price to the consumer have to what is really costs? Do you believe there is any relationship between consumer products and the price charged? If you do, you are sadly mistaken. The prices to the consumer have nothing to do with "costs", especially material costs. It has to do with what the market will pay. If they charge $1 a message and people will pay it, that is the price.
And why would you want the government to get involved? Do you think the government should regulate all prices? Did you think the price of a car is closely tied to the cost of the materials? How about books? Do you think a 100 page book absolutely has to cost less than a 200 page book? Aren't you confused when you go to the store and the prices do not reflect this? Should the government fix this problem?
No, the government shouldn't have anything to do with this. A bit of education will teach you that prices have nothing whatsoever to do with costs - lots of stuff is sold for less than it costs to make it. Plenty more stuff is sold for way, way more than it costs to make it.
If you are, you better start thinking about where to go next. Their service is now wide open. Anything transferred through their network is now questionable.
Can you afford to send an email from a smartphone and have a couple of bytes changed, say from "no" to "yes"? Or from $100 to $10,000?
Can you afford to have your phone records available to everyone on the Internet? How far back could T-Mobile's records go? Two years? Five years?
I'd say if this was played right to the media it could shut T-Mobile down in about two weeks. After all, wouldn't that be a great goal? Their inability to keep hackers out equals no reason to be in business.
Of course this was almost certainly an inside-assisted job. But then you better watch who your employees are. If you're employing people that have access to potentially sensitive data, how do you know they aren't in a financial bind and will do anything to make next month's mortgage payment? Or have some gambling debts that they have to pay or their wife will work off?
I won't be happy to see T-Mobile (really Vodaphone from Germany) go under, but if these hackers have half a brain they will take the company down. If they are just your average script kiddies this will not make to the nightly news and will have no effect on the company.
Stores used to have boxes of apples out in front of the store. If some unruly child came by and took one without paying, passersby would stop the child and make them put it back. Other shopkeepers would do the same.
Today, stores have to employ security guards to keep their own employees from stealing as much as they can. They check receipts against bag contents for people leaving the store. If someone sees a shoplifter in action they think "Good job, keep it up!"
Piracy is just part of the general trend.
Do you really think the scarcity of good work isn't real?
Slashdot Mirror
What difference do you perceive between the government of Iran now and that following the Islamic revolution in 1979? The same people are in power, with a few public-facing figureheads being changed out. It is the mullash, Imams and clerics that are running things there and have been since 1979.
A good part of the people of Iran put these folks into power back in 1979. We had a pretty good idea of what was going to happen back then and, gosh, it has happened. The people that didn't agree with the direction then didn't do much to stop it. The people still aren't doing anything. Our ability from the outside to distinguish between the majority wanting this type of Islamic government and the majority being intimidated into accepting it is approximately zero.
So we have a choice. You apparently would like to believe the majority are intimidated into accepting things. I'd say the majority is pretty happy about their government. Maybe they would like some different mullah in charge but would still like some mullah. About the same difference as wanting Obama vs. McCain when people outside would prefer someone more like Buddha or Hitler. Sorry, I do not agree that the Iranian people would even be interested in anything other than a fundamentalist Islamic theocracy. And our ability to understand their desires in this area are extremely limited.
What does it take to understand that not all people yearn for freedom?
As for nuclear war, I wouldn't worry too much about that. The US isn't going to strike first, and Iran lacks the technology to deliver nuclear payloads to the US. Also, as a practical matter while Iranian leadership seems to be oppressive and such, they aren't insane. I'm sure they full and well understand what the US response to a nuclear attack would be, and nobody wants to be the ruler of a glass parking lot.
All it will take to deliver a nuclear weapon to the US is a ship. Maybe even just a container on a ship, routed through some other port. They certainly have that delivery capability.
As for being the ruler of a glass parking lot, maybe not. But the rulers there care nothing for their civilian population, so whatever happens to them is a big "so?"
What I would say is a more likely scenario is for them to set off a nuclear weapon on Israeli soil. Israel loses a city. The big question is, would the US step in to help, or would the US be more likely to say that this issue must be resolved by negotiation? Today, my guess is that either we would stand off and do nothing or try to talk Israel out of wiping Iran off the face of the Earth. Which Israel would likely want to do.
And I am not clear what the US response would be to an attack here. If we lost something big and symbolic, say Washington DC when Mr. Obama wasn't home he might not have too many options. But I think he could write off Miami rather than being accused of starting a nuclear war, which some would do. Regardless of the fact of a first strike by another.
I don't see Israel starting a nuclear war, but certainly they would finish one to the best of their ability.
As someone else noted, badly-run code reviews aren't worth much, if anything.
There was a lot written about code reviewing in the late 80's and early 90's that makes sense. If a review is conducted as a lesson in coding to others, nobody is going to get much out of it. If it is done as a last-ditch design review, that probably isn't going to work out well either.
If the staff is all people with lots of experience, it may not be that valuable. Alternatively, I see it as an extremely powerful tool for a staff that works mostly independently to come back together periodically and make sure everyone is on the same page. Especially when some team members have less experience.
Trying to bog it down with formality is pointless. But the early guidelines about "egoless" are right on target.
Why can't you return purchased software? You were when software sales to consumers started out, in line 1978 for CP/M. But it is really, really easy to install a product and then return the packaging to the store saying you don't like it. You win, you got the software. The store loses, they have a "return" or an "open box" item to either return to the publisher or sell at a discount.
The publisher loses, loses, loses because it is now obvious that you don't have to pay to use their software.
Returns were dropped from just about everywhere except the geekier tech-favoring computer stores. Then when people figured out they could return software there, that got abused also.
If people didn't believe piracy was their right, or at least it was their right to have stuff for free you could return software like you can return any other item. But everyone wants stuff for free, so you might as well just download it. You do know trying to buy software makes you somewhat of an oddball, right?
Unfortunately, IP TV doesn't care how it is charged for. Everyone streaming their own private streams takes a huge amount of bandwidth. Far, far more than broadcasting does.
I think the IP TV idea is pretty much doomed because of the bandwidth requirements. It works fine when a couple of homes on a 1000 home network node are doing it. It stops working so nicely when 100 of them are. It brings the node down when 500 try it.
The question is a wakeup call for whom?
If BT doesn't have the infrastructure to provide the kind of service others want to make use of, it might be kinda tough. One of the huge problems with this sort of thing is that for the first few people it works fine. Then, if a huge bandwidth consumer is popular, it becomes unusable quickly because the end-to-end pathway doesn't exist at a high enough bandwidth level.
Home Internet connections today exist with relatively high bandwidths because all of this bandwidth is shared among hundreds of homes. You want 20MB/sec connections? Fine - you get it as long as the aggregate bandwidth being used on your node doesn't swamp the link to the head end. Once that link is swamped, your service drops. Today, we have the capability for hundreds of homes to each consume 10MB/sec or more. The result of this would seem to be that the link to the head end from the neighborhood node needs to accomodate the number of homes served times 10MB/sec. Ha, as if that sort of bandwidth exists today.
Will Internet service providers move away from a neighborhood node to individual fiber optic links to each and every home? Doubtful. Very doubtful because of the cost of doing so - it might take them 10 or 20 years to recoup that expenditure, maybe more. Most neighborhood nodes were wired with privately run fiber links, so they already spent plenty on setting up the infrastructure this way.
I suspect the idea of dedicated bandwidth to each home is going to go by the wayside pretty soon. When your neighbors start consuming more and more of the node bandwidth, the end result will not be that the cable and DSL links will be built up - there are finite limits to how far the node concept can go. Without independent links to every home the bandwidth just isn't going to be available for everyone on a 1000 home neighborhood node to be watching their own privately streamed HD TV show.
Wireless? Not an answer. More shared bandwidth, with even less to go around.
How about optical links? You put up a tower somewhere and point a laser at each house you want to serve. Something in the 100W range should be good enough to punch through fog and rain. So for a 1000 homes you would only need 100KW of laser power radiating out. Solar power would be good for this, I guess. Might suck to be a bird in that area but it wouldn't require digging everything up.
Only people over 30 (and mostly over 50) are spending money on music. The people that can't figure out how to use BitTorrent or othre P2P tools to fill up their iPod. iTunes has maybe 2% of the download market today, but they are getting millions of dollars from it - fortunately for these folks it is just about enough to continue operating. Can't sell an iPod without a way to fill it up for these folks.
The rest of the people, oh maybe 10 times as many, know how to get music for free. When was the last time you bought a CD at WalMart? Ever wonder why they even sell CDs there? Because some people - older people, mostly, are still buying them there. Will you ever buy a CD at WalMart? No? Well, when the older folks that are still buying CDs die off, then CDs will die off as well.
Until then, you can expect to see music sales continue.
Movies? When they are as easy to download as music is today, you can assume the DVD rentals will pretty much end. Theater tickets? I don't see movie theaters lasting much beyond the point where they release the DVD the same day tickets go on sale. That will probably be the nail in the coffin for them. This will mean the free download (pirated) will be available a couple of days after that.
The "movie industry" and the "music industry" are pretty much over. Nobody is going to pay when they do not have to and just about everyone under 30 knows they don't have to. When the older folks give up on it or are locked away in their nursing homes you won't see any more sales and the "industry" will be over and done with.
Further P2P will be trading everything that has been done 1970-2015 since little of value will be around after that. Oh there will be plenty of amature movies and music will be around and some of it will stand out. Most of it will be utter crap and bury anything that is good.
Consumer software can easily fall prey to this. Small software companies really can't afford it when their sales pretty much drop to zero unless they have other products.
Piracy? Well, lets just call it agressive marketing via warez web sites offering the same or substantially similar products (from the same original publiser) at zero cost.
The end result of a fairly massive warez-posting campaign where the distributors were using stolen credit cards to purchase products and then posting them for all to freely download was a virtual abandonment of the consumer space. There is no point in trying to market a product when it is being given away.
Can you compete on support? Well, if it needs that much support nobody is going to use it anyway.
Competing on doodads in the package? Well, if the whole idea is a downloaded product in the first place it is difficult to differentiate in this way.
Making the product difficult to redistribute just makes it harder for those that are still paying, however few that might be.
End result is the pirates win - they have a product they can give away, thus destroying any revenue that might be associated with it. No further development occurs on the product because nobody is going to pay the programmers to work on it. And if the "consumer product" programmers can't fit in to the other products they are out of a job. Sure, people lose their jobs because of piracy. But the pirates are winning the battle for zero-revenue (not necessarily free) software.
but imagine the RIAA buying themselves some laws requiring techs to report file sharing software and MP3's...
Why would they need to do that? Every computer has unlicensed MP3s on it, almost by definition. If the computer's owner is under 30 or the computer can be accessed by someone under 30, there is certainly illegally downloaded music on it.
Problem is, RIAA doesn't care about downloading. All they care about is distribution, proven over and over again. So get your music from offshore distributors and you are fine. Oh, and don't distribute. Nothing the RIAA can do about that.
What I want to see is legal (or at least allowed bank transfers) for casino games like slots, blackjack and maybe roulette. These are all extremely easy to rig, will draw millions of US citizens in with the hopes of a quick buck and make the operators very, very rich.
This can all be operated overseas without any possibility of government interference or regulation, just as soon as the credit cards companies will allow transfers to such businesses. Poker is a drop in the bucket, and certain is meaningless in terms of getting huge returns on gaming. The real thing happens when they legalize transfers for gaming, period.
I believe this first started to be recognized as a significant hazard after WW II on Pacific island air bases. Gooney birds would nest near runways and impact aircraft. An impact with a B-29 wasn't that big a deal and did not affect the engines. Impact with a much faster jet aircraft was a problem and with fighter planes could easily bring down the aircraft.
I recall reading about this a long, long time ago. They tried everything they could to discourage the birds from nesting by the runways. Loudspeakers playing music or other noises didn't work. Shotguns or "bird scarers" didn't work. Egg relocation - physially moving the nest and eggs didn't work. Killing the birds worked, but only so far as they carried out extermination. The problem was there are a lot of birds out there and unless you are actually prepared to kill all of them, it doesn't solve the problem - or, as was found out, even lessen the hazard all that much.
Modern folks need to have studied up on what was done previously so they can skip over all that stuff that didn't work very well. Concentrate on new stuff. And no, I seriously doubt any "electromagnetics" are going to have that much of an effect considering what else has been tried before.
Sitting the kids down at the controls was stupid. But the reason the plane was lost seems to be the pilot's unfamiliarity with the type and how much the plane did by itself. The pilots did not understand what was happening to them until it was too late.
Training in type (or lack thereof) played a huge role in the crash, as did overall complexity of the aircraft. It might have made more sense to have the autopilot simply be either on or off instead of controlling some parts and not others. With a big light that says it is on.
Obviously you have no idea how many such textbooks are available today. Sure, they can today choose from literally thousands of math textbooks. Most of these are written by people focused on new and "improved" ways to illustrate math concepts, both at an elementary and higher education levels. While the basic concepts of mathematics haven't changed in a while, every year someone comes up with what they think will be the new and improved way to teach people math.
So how exactly does a school district decide on a textbook? It is very difficult in many cases, so difficult that a lot of districts let someone else do it. They simply take the selection of some other district or state level body. The states will oten simply adopt what some other state has already done or (worse, in my opinion) take the advice of some local university that spent a few months studying a new and trendy textbook.
The end result is there are plenty to choose from out there. But selecting one from the volume of what is available is extremely difficult. Getting some unknown graduate student to write a new textbook would be extremely risky, in an environment that is rather adverse to risk. After all, if you select a textbook for third grade math that is incomprehensible to the students, they lose a year of education. Parents aren't all that happy about it and in some locations can sue the Board of Education, the principal and the teacher for damaging their child.
My sister was the victim of such an experiment. She got a new "phonetic" book for first grade reading. The result was that she did not learn to read, and neither did much of the rest of the first grade class using the new book. She repeated first grade at a different school. This was in a far less litigious time when suing the school simply wouldn't have occured to most people. Alas, she lost a year of her life to a failed textbook.
So let's think about what might actually be involved in creating and selecting a textbook.
They would likely have more people downloading if they charged. iTunes is proof you can charge for something that is free to most people. People value things they pay for more than stuff given away.
The audience such a store would attract would be those that need lots and lots of help. They would need to (expensively) repackage things with all of their required co-requisites and dependencies. This would make Linux a lot more friendly for people that cannot spend the time to locate the 37 different packages at different version levels required to install the application they really want.
In short, not charging is a mistake. $1 or even $5 would go a long way towards making their store much more usable by the average Joe.
You miss the point. Near-Earth orbit is a stepping stone to further goals. A base on the Moon might is equally but a stepping stone.
The point is acquisition of resources and raw materials from off-planet sources. Whether it is Helium-3 from the surface of the Moon, hydrocarbons from Jupiter, or metals from asteroids the key is that we need stuff. Stuff to make other things with.
There are alternatives. None of them particularly nice. If we force a much smaller population to consume less we will not need as much and can probably get by with what natural processes will make available. Wood is essentially an eternal resource, as long as you like stuff made from wood. Wood is particularly unsuited to a number of containers, enclosures and cases in common use today. Wooden cars are unlikely to be very popular, as would wooden cell phones.
Similarly, while it is possible to recycle metals, it is neither economically feasible nor practical to recycle all metals - most metal products today end up in a landfill somewhere. In 10,000 years or so we can expect to mine rich ore veins where there were landfills. Until then, we are either going to need other sources of raw materials or just plan on a smaller population making do without.
How much smaller a population? And, more importantly, how do we get to a smaller population today? War? Pestilence? Herding people into gas chambers? I really want to hear someone on the environmental side come out with some plans for how we are going to get to a smaller, Earth-constrained population that will be able to make do with fewer natural resources.
Yes, but take it from someone that has many, many "unuthorized access attempts" made every day and a few that have been successful. Law enforcement begins when you can prove $25,000 (or more) in damages. No proof = no action.
Similarly, unless you know where it is coming from they aren't much interested. Even the FBI is pretty much powerless to stop a Romainian hacker until there are really major damages in the millions of dollars. And most foreign law enforcement just laughs at US companies. Sucks to be you, ha ha ha.
Yes, it Vodafone is wrong and Deutsche Telekom is correct.
You are right to be concerned. The key will be something like an article in WSJ or similar business-oriented publications. No story probably means either a hoax or just some script kiddies with no real agenda.
The problem is that the average secretary or even call center worker might have enough access to pass along just enough to allow a breakin like this.
Sure, the IT people can really hurt a company if they so choose. Which means background checks, credit reports and monitoring are all things that company are going to have to think about. They can decide to do them and piss off employees but be safer, or they can reject this and take their chances. One thing I have learned is that clearly once employees think things aren't perfect for them stuff is going to start walking out the door. Computers. Records. Lamps. Chairs. Just about anything that isn't nailed down.
Problem is, this isn't confined to IT people. Anyone that has access to do their job is a potential threat. How does a company mitigate that threat? Or do they just hope that everyone has the company's best interest at heart?
I think we are entering an age where everyone knows the employee's loyality goes just as far as the permanence of their job, and no job is permanent anymore. So everyone is out for themselves, and if they see a chance to grab some kind of a big payoff they are going to take it. Or toss a wrench into the works just to see what happens.
My mistake. I knew they were offshore and from Germany.
Yup, I am on T-Mobile, until the hackers shut them down, if they do. I'd really like to see a demonstration of "hacker power" It might get people to wake up. But we are far more likely to see nothing come from this at all. Which means that everyone gets to bear the brunt of folks like this. And law enforcement yawns and ignores everything until something really, really bad happens.
Well, I think DVD's cost too much. Shouldn't the government step in there as well? How about cars? They cost too much, don't you think?
While the government is at it, shouldn't all prices have to be approved, regulated and reviewed periodically by the government? I mean if one grocery store in LA is charging $0.15 for an apple and one in Seattle is charging $0.30 isn't there some gouging going on here? Shouldn't we just have the goverment set all prices for all goods and services? Wouldn't that be more fair?
Short answer: no.
I don't think there can be much in the way of law enforcement action. No damages, yet. No idea where they might be operating from, so jurisdiction is an open question.
I think if T-Mobile isn't going to pay ransom, the hackers should just make this public and make it clear what they can do with the data they have and the access they have. To all the media. So the TV News and newspapers run with stories about how your billing records are now public information and how to look up anyone's phone records. Then add on how data can be changed by these folks with their access. Maybe you get a $10,000 bill next month if you have T-Mobile service just because. Or you get a credit. Make it random, just to confuse people.
Maybe the general public would understand that these folks pose a real risk.
Of course, what is likely to happen is ... nothing. Nothing at all.
So what? Are you just complaining because the price is high, or are you prevented from using SMS services because of the pricing?
What possible relationship should the price to the consumer have to what is really costs? Do you believe there is any relationship between consumer products and the price charged? If you do, you are sadly mistaken. The prices to the consumer have nothing to do with "costs", especially material costs. It has to do with what the market will pay. If they charge $1 a message and people will pay it, that is the price.
And why would you want the government to get involved? Do you think the government should regulate all prices? Did you think the price of a car is closely tied to the cost of the materials? How about books? Do you think a 100 page book absolutely has to cost less than a 200 page book? Aren't you confused when you go to the store and the prices do not reflect this? Should the government fix this problem?
No, the government shouldn't have anything to do with this. A bit of education will teach you that prices have nothing whatsoever to do with costs - lots of stuff is sold for less than it costs to make it. Plenty more stuff is sold for way, way more than it costs to make it.
If you are, you better start thinking about where to go next. Their service is now wide open. Anything transferred through their network is now questionable.
Can you afford to send an email from a smartphone and have a couple of bytes changed, say from "no" to "yes"? Or from $100 to $10,000?
Can you afford to have your phone records available to everyone on the Internet? How far back could T-Mobile's records go? Two years? Five years?
I'd say if this was played right to the media it could shut T-Mobile down in about two weeks. After all, wouldn't that be a great goal? Their inability to keep hackers out equals no reason to be in business.
Of course this was almost certainly an inside-assisted job. But then you better watch who your employees are. If you're employing people that have access to potentially sensitive data, how do you know they aren't in a financial bind and will do anything to make next month's mortgage payment? Or have some gambling debts that they have to pay or their wife will work off?
I won't be happy to see T-Mobile (really Vodaphone from Germany) go under, but if these hackers have half a brain they will take the company down. If they are just your average script kiddies this will not make to the nightly news and will have no effect on the company.
Stores used to have boxes of apples out in front of the store. If some unruly child came by and took one without paying, passersby would stop the child and make them put it back. Other shopkeepers would do the same.
Today, stores have to employ security guards to keep their own employees from stealing as much as they can. They check receipts against bag contents for people leaving the store. If someone sees a shoplifter in action they think "Good job, keep it up!"
Piracy is just part of the general trend.
Do you really think the scarcity of good work isn't real?