Through piracy, just about everything digital is free. If I can afford to buy one DVD, I can afford to pirate 100 DVDs. Or 1000. There is no "cost justification" becaue free trumps everything.
All it takes is one person motivated enough to overcome whatever protection there is. Once that happens there is no longer any need to buy it - assuming the cracker shares. Zero revenue to the creator, whatever the medium is. That seems to be the pirate goal - remove all revenue from everything digital.
I'd say there is no price point. Someone with time on their hands will always crack stuff no matter how difficult it might be. Or they will buy it with a stolen credit card (which hurts only the seller) and post it for free. The result is it is always better to pirate, no matter what the cost is. Unless it is zero.
No, I am pretty sure I don't agree with the philosophy, but it is tough to beat. Everything for free, nobody ever goes without. Attractive, but doomed in the end. I suspect 10 years from now we will still find P2P filled with nothing but music from earlier times and YouTube with Magibon and TV shows from the 1990's. It won't feel like we're missing anything because everything that is there today will still be there. But anyone capable of creating something new will find something else to do, something that pays.
Tax crap out of imported Items, including software, call center/customer care services.
Sorry, can't do that. WTO says we can't. Unless someone were to decide that we no longer need foreign trade (pretty much at all), we are stuck with the WTO now. I belive Clinton signed us onto this deal. Raise a tariff on anything imported and the WTO will step in and authorize punative tariffs on all exports.
This is why all "tax imports" or "tax offshoring of jobs" ideas can't happen today.
If the US had "proper" laws controlling the press, this might not be a problem. If TV News had a shred of ethics, this might not be a problem. Neither is the case, so we are faced with a very difficult situation.
The TV News is going to announce a winner before everyone goes to bed. In the case of national elections, this pretty much means midnight Eastern time. They have to do this or they lose relevence and people won't bother watching their election coverage. This then directly affects ratings and they lose money. Big money, on the order of millions of dollars. It is also the case in the US that if Station A doesn't announce a winner then Station B will. No getting away from it.
So we can either have made-up results that are based on exit polls, surveys and trends or we can have official results. One way or the other, there will be results. In 2000 Al Gore was announced the winner a few minutes before midnight by CBS. Nobody else went along with it. However, everyone watching CBS who went to be before the 2:00 AM retraction was convinced the next morning that Bush stole the election right out from under Gore.
Can you imagine if CBS had announced McCain the winner at midnight only to retract it later? What about in 2012? Can we have TV News announcing unofficial winners of national elections? Why is it in the US we are doing this when other countries can take a couple of weeks to announce a winner? No, I don't think the US is going to change and I do not think we are going to get laws passed to prevent news organizations from announcing unofficial results. And there is no way the TV News people are just going to wake up and decide that it might be unethical to announce a winner prematurely.
So we better have quick official results. Official. Binding. Maybe not 100% accurate, but quick. This is one of those cases where there needs to be an answer, a final answer, right away. Doesn't have to be the perfect answer, but it does have to be final.
Before there was copyright the primary way an artist was "successful" was to have a wealthy patron. Often a king or other noble. The problem was, as Mozart found out, if you do not deliver what your patron wants you stave pennyless and die a tragic, early death. Clearly, art was the domain of the nobel class and no others.
Sure, there were various minstrels and the odd performing troupe here and there, but I wouldn't call them successful unless you count "not starving to death" as being a success. I'm sure there were plenty that did starve to death, but you will note that as few as a couple hundred years later nobody knows about them. The only artists that are known are those that had wealthy and powerful patrons. And no, I don't think we are looking at the absolute top 1% of the talent that existed. We are looking at the ones that were (a) adequate and (b) had a patron.
Everyone else, talented or not, is forgotten.
I'd say the "new business model" that keeps getting touted is exactly where we were 400 years ago.
It needs to be clearly understood that the whole concept of "law enforcement" on the Internet - or anything pertaining to the Internet - is pretty much useless unless there is global uniformity. If child porn is legal in Thailand, how exactly do you prosecute someone distributing child porn from Thailand? Simple answer, you don't. Pick any crime and it is legal somewhere in the world today. Yes, this includes murder - if you kill a Jew in Saudi Arabia or Indonesia exactly how hard do you think local law enforcement is going to work at solving the crime? Same with credit card fraud in Moldavia.
That is the situation we have created and what we have to come to terms with. You can bleat all you want about crime on the Internet, but it is pretty much pointless. Without the ability to actually pursue criminals on a world-wide network, you can pretty much get away with anything.
So what possible good is collecting a tax for combating crime on the Internet? Are they going to use the money to compensate victims of Ebay fraud? How about Nigerian 419 scams? Merchants that ship goods without first checking out a credit card? I'd say most Internet crime happens with the victim's cooperation.
The for small, local elections it may not matter that much other than standardization.
The real problem is speedy results. People in the US think of elections as a some kind of a race. A race with a winner and a loser where the results are available at the end of the race. In the case where results aren't available immediately, the TV News people are going to make up results based on exit polls and other information. This was done when Gore was announced around midnight in 2000. Of course, these were not official results, but that didn't matter all that much to people because they went to bed.
Without speedy results, we are turning over the elections to the TV News folks.
The US military is pretty much incapable of fighting a guerrilla war where the combatents are intermixed with civilians and civilian casualties are forbidden. It made Vietnam very difficult and it has made Iraq difficult as well.
What we have is a guerrilla war against hackers where they are effectiely shielded in most cases by the ISP and their own country's law enforcement. The end result is almost an unwinnable war.
We are winning in Iraq by ending the use of civilians as shields. We won in Vietnam by separating the combatants from the civilians. It is going to take that sort of effort to win against hackers, crackers and identity thieves. Unfortunately, right now the effort required to do this is intense enough that it is many, many times the losses so far. So I don't think they are going to do anything until the losses mount up a lot more.
What makes this worse is in order to effectively combat these people it is going to take either the cooperation of foreign law enforcement or just going around them. Neither one is going to make these other countries want to be our friends, but they seem to be happy with the hackers running around doing whatever.
Piracy is the art of taking something that was worth something and making it worth nothing. Once it is free, the cost is zero and the value for many people is also zero.
Better yet, it is a way to rebrand web sites. Your content with my brand. Now, if only I can get other people's browsers to view it that way it means I own the Internet.
If as part of the ISP "connection package" Cox can deliver this it means that Cox owns all the web content there is and can use it however they see fit. I'll bet Cox thinks this is a wonderful idea. And Time-Warner, and Comcast. And anyone else in the big-ISP business.
How come so much stuff gets figured out for the Internet without ever considering how it might be exploited? Either by hackers or for commercial gain.
It would seem that if I want to reformat, rebrand and (obviously) republish content found on the web, I should be able to do so, right?
I guess a further step is putting out a plug-in for any user's browser that automatically reformats and rebrands content found on the web as mine. That way no matter if they go to my site or CNN, they are always seeing content as if I published it, right?
Now, if I can make this happen to users automatically once they visit my pages once, all the better.
Maybe it is just a matter of putting a little box on each and every page the user visits that says "Hank says..." with a link. Or, "Hank's view on this is..."
Far fetched? Wouldn't Google, CNN or Sony really, really like to be able to do this? Well, so would I.
This "value" is non-existant to 99% of the "users" in the world and I seriously wish it would stop being touted as some advantage to open source.
Fact is, for anything "open source" to escape the dungen of nerddom, it has to be being used by a lot of people that do not read code, are not programmers and have no hope of ever looking at the source. And, more importantly, no desire to ever do so. They want something that "just works". Period.
Paying someone to look at the source for you isn't really a viable option. If they are familar with the project then maybe they can be useful to both the project and to someone paying them to look at it. However, give someone not familiar with the project anything larger than the source for cat and they are likely to spend a lot of time learning about it. And someone is going to be paying for that time. Or do you think someone should just spend hundreds of hours of their time learning something like gawk or Apache for the fun of it? I suppose they should in the open source universe where nobody has to pay rent or grocery bills.
Software today has grown quite a bit past the point where you can pull some contractor off the street, sit them down at an unfamiliar code base and have them be productive. Some commercial software development has this as a goal, a future objective. Yet to be achieved. I've never seen an open source project that has even attempted the level of self-documentation required for that. Heck, I see lots of K&R style C code without any function prototypes and I would put function prototypes at the beginning of a long list of requirements for self-documenting code. And all of this ignores the real user need.
What users need is for stuff to work. They put in a CD and install Ubuntu and it works. Period. If they need something else, they can install it in a few minutes without digging around for prerequisite libraries. We're not there yet with Linux, but it is closer than it was. Windows is pretty much there in terms of overall usability and OSX has been there for a while.
Bugs? Of course there are known but not disclosed bugs. Often these are things that were discovered by developers that stand zero chance of ever being encountered by a user. Politically, you aren't going to get these disclosed because (a) they aren't important to users and (b) it feeds the idea that there are endless bugs in software. Of course there are endless bugs when you have a code base of millions of lines of code. But nobody wants to advertise it, especially those bugs that have an extremely low chance (or zero chance) of being encoutered.
Let's get something straight. Online gaming is going to mean slots, blackjack, roulette, craps and the like.
Go into any Indian casino or visit Las Vegas. Where are all the people? In the poker room? Nope, they are at the slot machines. Maybe 1% of the number on slots are playing blackjack. And out oif a casino full of people there are 10 playing poker. Do you believe this is lost on anyone running an "online casino?"
Should the credit card floodgates open, you will see sites offering slots, blackjack, roulette and craps.
Why? I am all in favor of offshore casinos not being held to any higher standards than your ordinary Ebay seller. Mostly, I want to operate a online casino with slots and roulette. Just as soon as it is legal to do so and not get hassled by credit card companies.
I figure this should be worth millions and anyone with half a brain can see that. Look, Las Vegas pays out aroun 98% on slots and they are raking in the dough. I figure you pay out at 80% and make a big deal out of each and every winner. Send them lots of really nice email congratulating them with some pretty graphics that they just have to share with their friends.
The key here is that it needs to be well outside of US jurisdiction, taxes and regulations. That would just spoil it. But when credit card companies can legally transfer money for online gaming once again the floodgates can open and I want to be somewhere in that first group. First with a casino, first to make millions, and first to quietly retire when the heat comes back on.
Of course this has a lifespan of maybe nine months. Maybe. When enough Average Joes lose their entire credit limit on a couple of cards. How many people are that stupid? Well, did you ever play Keno? See how many lottery tickets get sold? The answer is plenty of people are that stupid and quite a few smart folks are going to get rich off this.
The secret is not to be the last one holding the bag, because all those losers are going to want blood. Last guy in the game is going to get to testify in some hearings.
If I can set up my own "casino" online, then I am all for it. If it is restricted to some type of licensed (and heavily taxed) entities as gaming is now, I am not interested at all.
The potential for legal "private" gaming sites is enourmous, especially if these are allowed to operate without oversight. Even if there are reporting requirements, as long as they aren't too onerous, it would be a great thing to get into.
Allowing Harrah's to run an online site is pointless. Running it the same way Indian Gaming is conducted is equally silly. Opening it up to anyone clever enough to have a web site means everyone can be rich, almost overnight.
You do understand that if you have more than a couple of brain cells to rub together that this would be only slightly more corrupt than a chain letter? That it would be something for imbecile suckers to lose money at while offering the "early adopters" a chance to get rich quick. Of course it will be shut down, restricted and taxed heavily just as soon as (a) some select folks get rich and (b) lots of Average Joes lose enough money to cry about it.
I seriously doubt any degree of product development or marketing is going to make any difference at all. People want free stuff and will spend inordinate amounts of time to get free stuff. When they have to pay, even trivial amounts of money the appeal is immediately lost.
The Internet is all about price. As you point out, quality is meaningless. If it isn't free, it is going to garner only a fraction of the interest.
Until someone figures out a way for creative media people and working actors and crew to get paid while not charging people anything there is only one possible direction - down. Today we have "clever hackers" getting their content for free and "noobs" paying the fare for everyone. Some folks don't like this situation. Unfortunately, I don't see a good way out. I think the bad way out is simple - movies are released in theaters and never, ever in any digital format. Tes, they can keep the cameras out of theaters.
The other alternative is to make movies free and nobody pays. Right now it is terribly unfair to make the noobs pay while nobody else does.
Anyone pointing at Apple clearly doesn't understand. Apple is making their money off the noobs while everyone else is downloading for free. Last statistic I saw was iTunes was maybe 1% of the download market with the rest being free. So music is now free for most of the world and iTunes is a handy way to fill up iPods for the noobs that do not know how to download for free. I don't see this working for movies, books, software or really anything else in digital form.
I can believe some computer supplier got the contract to use Microsoft software. I would find it very difficult to believe that Microsoft got a contract for workstations (hardware) when that is clearly outside their business.
And I bet they do not have anyone that installs computers in Switzerland. Further, Microsoft partners in Switzerland would probably be rather concerned about being in competition with Microsoft for business.
Could there be any less accuracy in this summary? I didn't read the article, but if it says Microsoft as well, I'd say it is completely wrong. Microsoft doesn't sell computers and they don't install computers or service them either.
All things are corrected by using the proper network. As long as you confine yourself to the University Ethernet wired network you will not have these difficulties.
What? Oh, you aren't living and working at a University? Well, that's part of the problem. Much of this was designed and developed for use in a rather rarified atmosphere and trying to use it outside of that can be a real challenge. Ofen requiring the source code and a compiler. Sometimes debugger as well.
Yes, I have a production Linux server that is critical to my business. But I am familiar with the limitations.
Today when you register a corporation you are required to post this fact in one or more newspapers or other similar publications. Often these notices are rather expensive to post as they are not simply standard classified ads.
Similarly, there are requirements for stock offerings and such. As well as government contract opportunities.
Sure, nobody reads newspapers anymore but at least they are saved in the public library for just about all time. You want to find something? There is a place to look. And, for the most part, this historical record is a trustworthy one.
Who, exactly, is archiving government web site content like this? Nobody, that's who. We are hell-bent on destroying any possibility of records for the future, and I have no idea why we are so firmly set on this as a goal. Easier? Sure it is. More relevent? Maybe. But there is no way that most of the digital information today is being archived in a meaningful manner, and what there is that is being archived has a very, very low signal to noise ratio, or perhaps more accurately for the Internet, a rather high noise to signal ratio.
Certainly the US is so firmly focused on entertainment today that newspapers and meaningful news doesn't stand a chance. It isn't entertaining and attempts to make news entertaining are usually grotesque paradies of reality.
The problem with this idea is that it might get things done. The point of the US government, and I would say most governments today, is everything is supposed to be debated endlessly by multiple bodies. Often as not, the result is a lack of agreement and it turns out that nothing is done.
That is the whole point. You don't want to make government "efficient". The structure of the system is designed to place as many roadblocks as possible in the way of accomplishing anything. The point is that if it is extremely difficult to get anything done, then only the very most important things that almost everyone can agree on will get done.
If it wasn't this way, if we had "efficient" government, we would have government involvement in every aspect of life and commerce. I don't care where you live - if there is more than single deliberative body that is involved in lawmaking it is a system that is designed to do as little as possible. And for the most part, it is working just fine.
We neither need or want lots of new laws, regulations and government guidance.
The people are being led by some ruthless manics. It really doesn't matter what the people think - nobody is going to ask their opinion.
Should Iran manage to get nuclear weapons, they will likely use them. Probably on Israel, possibly somewhere else. If it was made abundantly clear to them that the result of this would be utter destruction of their cities and killing of most of the civilian population, their leaders would likely reply with "So?" from their bunkers where they would be safe.
Do not ascribe Western morality to Islamic cultures. It doesn't fit. The leaders can, and have in the past, offered their people the opportunity to be martyrs. In the 1980's the people went without much complaint, albeit at gunpoint.
I would say there is one thing that both Iran and North Korea have in common. And that is the utter irrelvance of what the civilian population thinks. Neither country is "representing the wishes of their people." With North Korea if the leaders believed it would benefit them to nuke South Korea or Japan the likelyhood of retalitation destroying the civilian population wouldn't bother them at all.
I suspect the leadership in Iran feels pretty much the same way. There is no deterrance when the leadership feels this way. That pretty much means that should Iran have a bomb the threat of retaliation will not keep them from using it. About the only thing that would hold them back would be not having enough weapons to take out all of Israel in one shot.
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Through piracy, just about everything digital is free. If I can afford to buy one DVD, I can afford to pirate 100 DVDs. Or 1000. There is no "cost justification" becaue free trumps everything.
All it takes is one person motivated enough to overcome whatever protection there is. Once that happens there is no longer any need to buy it - assuming the cracker shares. Zero revenue to the creator, whatever the medium is. That seems to be the pirate goal - remove all revenue from everything digital.
I'd say there is no price point. Someone with time on their hands will always crack stuff no matter how difficult it might be. Or they will buy it with a stolen credit card (which hurts only the seller) and post it for free. The result is it is always better to pirate, no matter what the cost is. Unless it is zero.
No, I am pretty sure I don't agree with the philosophy, but it is tough to beat. Everything for free, nobody ever goes without. Attractive, but doomed in the end. I suspect 10 years from now we will still find P2P filled with nothing but music from earlier times and YouTube with Magibon and TV shows from the 1990's. It won't feel like we're missing anything because everything that is there today will still be there. But anyone capable of creating something new will find something else to do, something that pays.
Tax crap out of imported Items, including software, call center/customer care services.
Sorry, can't do that. WTO says we can't. Unless someone were to decide that we no longer need foreign trade (pretty much at all), we are stuck with the WTO now. I belive Clinton signed us onto this deal. Raise a tariff on anything imported and the WTO will step in and authorize punative tariffs on all exports.
This is why all "tax imports" or "tax offshoring of jobs" ideas can't happen today.
If the US had "proper" laws controlling the press, this might not be a problem. If TV News had a shred of ethics, this might not be a problem. Neither is the case, so we are faced with a very difficult situation.
The TV News is going to announce a winner before everyone goes to bed. In the case of national elections, this pretty much means midnight Eastern time. They have to do this or they lose relevence and people won't bother watching their election coverage. This then directly affects ratings and they lose money. Big money, on the order of millions of dollars. It is also the case in the US that if Station A doesn't announce a winner then Station B will. No getting away from it.
So we can either have made-up results that are based on exit polls, surveys and trends or we can have official results. One way or the other, there will be results. In 2000 Al Gore was announced the winner a few minutes before midnight by CBS. Nobody else went along with it. However, everyone watching CBS who went to be before the 2:00 AM retraction was convinced the next morning that Bush stole the election right out from under Gore.
Can you imagine if CBS had announced McCain the winner at midnight only to retract it later? What about in 2012? Can we have TV News announcing unofficial winners of national elections? Why is it in the US we are doing this when other countries can take a couple of weeks to announce a winner? No, I don't think the US is going to change and I do not think we are going to get laws passed to prevent news organizations from announcing unofficial results. And there is no way the TV News people are just going to wake up and decide that it might be unethical to announce a winner prematurely.
So we better have quick official results. Official. Binding. Maybe not 100% accurate, but quick. This is one of those cases where there needs to be an answer, a final answer, right away. Doesn't have to be the perfect answer, but it does have to be final.
Before there was copyright the primary way an artist was "successful" was to have a wealthy patron. Often a king or other noble. The problem was, as Mozart found out, if you do not deliver what your patron wants you stave pennyless and die a tragic, early death. Clearly, art was the domain of the nobel class and no others.
Sure, there were various minstrels and the odd performing troupe here and there, but I wouldn't call them successful unless you count "not starving to death" as being a success. I'm sure there were plenty that did starve to death, but you will note that as few as a couple hundred years later nobody knows about them. The only artists that are known are those that had wealthy and powerful patrons. And no, I don't think we are looking at the absolute top 1% of the talent that existed. We are looking at the ones that were (a) adequate and (b) had a patron.
Everyone else, talented or not, is forgotten.
I'd say the "new business model" that keeps getting touted is exactly where we were 400 years ago.
It needs to be clearly understood that the whole concept of "law enforcement" on the Internet - or anything pertaining to the Internet - is pretty much useless unless there is global uniformity. If child porn is legal in Thailand, how exactly do you prosecute someone distributing child porn from Thailand? Simple answer, you don't. Pick any crime and it is legal somewhere in the world today. Yes, this includes murder - if you kill a Jew in Saudi Arabia or Indonesia exactly how hard do you think local law enforcement is going to work at solving the crime? Same with credit card fraud in Moldavia.
That is the situation we have created and what we have to come to terms with. You can bleat all you want about crime on the Internet, but it is pretty much pointless. Without the ability to actually pursue criminals on a world-wide network, you can pretty much get away with anything.
So what possible good is collecting a tax for combating crime on the Internet? Are they going to use the money to compensate victims of Ebay fraud? How about Nigerian 419 scams? Merchants that ship goods without first checking out a credit card? I'd say most Internet crime happens with the victim's cooperation.
The for small, local elections it may not matter that much other than standardization.
The real problem is speedy results. People in the US think of elections as a some kind of a race. A race with a winner and a loser where the results are available at the end of the race. In the case where results aren't available immediately, the TV News people are going to make up results based on exit polls and other information. This was done when Gore was announced around midnight in 2000. Of course, these were not official results, but that didn't matter all that much to people because they went to bed.
Without speedy results, we are turning over the elections to the TV News folks.
The US military is pretty much incapable of fighting a guerrilla war where the combatents are intermixed with civilians and civilian casualties are forbidden. It made Vietnam very difficult and it has made Iraq difficult as well.
What we have is a guerrilla war against hackers where they are effectiely shielded in most cases by the ISP and their own country's law enforcement. The end result is almost an unwinnable war.
We are winning in Iraq by ending the use of civilians as shields. We won in Vietnam by separating the combatants from the civilians. It is going to take that sort of effort to win against hackers, crackers and identity thieves. Unfortunately, right now the effort required to do this is intense enough that it is many, many times the losses so far. So I don't think they are going to do anything until the losses mount up a lot more.
What makes this worse is in order to effectively combat these people it is going to take either the cooperation of foreign law enforcement or just going around them. Neither one is going to make these other countries want to be our friends, but they seem to be happy with the hackers running around doing whatever.
Piracy is the art of taking something that was worth something and making it worth nothing. Once it is free, the cost is zero and the value for many people is also zero.
Universal literacy killed that business model.
I think we're about to fix that.
Better yet, it is a way to rebrand web sites. Your content with my brand. Now, if only I can get other people's browsers to view it that way it means I own the Internet.
If as part of the ISP "connection package" Cox can deliver this it means that Cox owns all the web content there is and can use it however they see fit. I'll bet Cox thinks this is a wonderful idea. And Time-Warner, and Comcast. And anyone else in the big-ISP business.
How come so much stuff gets figured out for the Internet without ever considering how it might be exploited? Either by hackers or for commercial gain.
It would seem that if I want to reformat, rebrand and (obviously) republish content found on the web, I should be able to do so, right?
I guess a further step is putting out a plug-in for any user's browser that automatically reformats and rebrands content found on the web as mine. That way no matter if they go to my site or CNN, they are always seeing content as if I published it, right?
Now, if I can make this happen to users automatically once they visit my pages once, all the better.
Maybe it is just a matter of putting a little box on each and every page the user visits that says "Hank says..." with a link. Or, "Hank's view on this is ..."
Far fetched? Wouldn't Google, CNN or Sony really, really like to be able to do this? Well, so would I.
This "value" is non-existant to 99% of the "users" in the world and I seriously wish it would stop being touted as some advantage to open source.
Fact is, for anything "open source" to escape the dungen of nerddom, it has to be being used by a lot of people that do not read code, are not programmers and have no hope of ever looking at the source. And, more importantly, no desire to ever do so. They want something that "just works". Period.
Paying someone to look at the source for you isn't really a viable option. If they are familar with the project then maybe they can be useful to both the project and to someone paying them to look at it. However, give someone not familiar with the project anything larger than the source for cat and they are likely to spend a lot of time learning about it. And someone is going to be paying for that time. Or do you think someone should just spend hundreds of hours of their time learning something like gawk or Apache for the fun of it? I suppose they should in the open source universe where nobody has to pay rent or grocery bills.
Software today has grown quite a bit past the point where you can pull some contractor off the street, sit them down at an unfamiliar code base and have them be productive. Some commercial software development has this as a goal, a future objective. Yet to be achieved. I've never seen an open source project that has even attempted the level of self-documentation required for that. Heck, I see lots of K&R style C code without any function prototypes and I would put function prototypes at the beginning of a long list of requirements for self-documenting code. And all of this ignores the real user need.
What users need is for stuff to work. They put in a CD and install Ubuntu and it works. Period. If they need something else, they can install it in a few minutes without digging around for prerequisite libraries. We're not there yet with Linux, but it is closer than it was. Windows is pretty much there in terms of overall usability and OSX has been there for a while.
Bugs? Of course there are known but not disclosed bugs. Often these are things that were discovered by developers that stand zero chance of ever being encountered by a user. Politically, you aren't going to get these disclosed because (a) they aren't important to users and (b) it feeds the idea that there are endless bugs in software. Of course there are endless bugs when you have a code base of millions of lines of code. But nobody wants to advertise it, especially those bugs that have an extremely low chance (or zero chance) of being encoutered.
Let's get something straight. Online gaming is going to mean slots, blackjack, roulette, craps and the like.
Go into any Indian casino or visit Las Vegas. Where are all the people? In the poker room? Nope, they are at the slot machines. Maybe 1% of the number on slots are playing blackjack. And out oif a casino full of people there are 10 playing poker. Do you believe this is lost on anyone running an "online casino?"
Should the credit card floodgates open, you will see sites offering slots, blackjack, roulette and craps.
Yes, but it requires far less skill to press the button on a slot machine than to play poker intelligently.
This is why the slot machines are crowded and the poker room has 15 people in it.
Why? I am all in favor of offshore casinos not being held to any higher standards than your ordinary Ebay seller. Mostly, I want to operate a online casino with slots and roulette. Just as soon as it is legal to do so and not get hassled by credit card companies.
I figure this should be worth millions and anyone with half a brain can see that. Look, Las Vegas pays out aroun 98% on slots and they are raking in the dough. I figure you pay out at 80% and make a big deal out of each and every winner. Send them lots of really nice email congratulating them with some pretty graphics that they just have to share with their friends.
The key here is that it needs to be well outside of US jurisdiction, taxes and regulations. That would just spoil it. But when credit card companies can legally transfer money for online gaming once again the floodgates can open and I want to be somewhere in that first group. First with a casino, first to make millions, and first to quietly retire when the heat comes back on.
Of course this has a lifespan of maybe nine months. Maybe. When enough Average Joes lose their entire credit limit on a couple of cards. How many people are that stupid? Well, did you ever play Keno? See how many lottery tickets get sold? The answer is plenty of people are that stupid and quite a few smart folks are going to get rich off this.
The secret is not to be the last one holding the bag, because all those losers are going to want blood. Last guy in the game is going to get to testify in some hearings.
I want to set up my own roulette and slot machine "casino" online. I figure I can pay out 80% of the take and keep lots of people happy.
Just as soon as it is legal to have online gaming in the US. Why wouldn't it be legal for me to have my own casino like that?
If I can set up my own "casino" online, then I am all for it. If it is restricted to some type of licensed (and heavily taxed) entities as gaming is now, I am not interested at all.
The potential for legal "private" gaming sites is enourmous, especially if these are allowed to operate without oversight. Even if there are reporting requirements, as long as they aren't too onerous, it would be a great thing to get into.
Allowing Harrah's to run an online site is pointless. Running it the same way Indian Gaming is conducted is equally silly. Opening it up to anyone clever enough to have a web site means everyone can be rich, almost overnight.
You do understand that if you have more than a couple of brain cells to rub together that this would be only slightly more corrupt than a chain letter? That it would be something for imbecile suckers to lose money at while offering the "early adopters" a chance to get rich quick. Of course it will be shut down, restricted and taxed heavily just as soon as (a) some select folks get rich and (b) lots of Average Joes lose enough money to cry about it.
They specifically do not want you to know because then you cannot choose to avoid it.
Also, it isn't up to the gas station. Not sure if it is up to the distributor or just the refinery.
I seriously doubt any degree of product development or marketing is going to make any difference at all. People want free stuff and will spend inordinate amounts of time to get free stuff. When they have to pay, even trivial amounts of money the appeal is immediately lost.
The Internet is all about price. As you point out, quality is meaningless. If it isn't free, it is going to garner only a fraction of the interest.
Until someone figures out a way for creative media people and working actors and crew to get paid while not charging people anything there is only one possible direction - down. Today we have "clever hackers" getting their content for free and "noobs" paying the fare for everyone. Some folks don't like this situation. Unfortunately, I don't see a good way out. I think the bad way out is simple - movies are released in theaters and never, ever in any digital format. Tes, they can keep the cameras out of theaters.
The other alternative is to make movies free and nobody pays. Right now it is terribly unfair to make the noobs pay while nobody else does.
Anyone pointing at Apple clearly doesn't understand. Apple is making their money off the noobs while everyone else is downloading for free. Last statistic I saw was iTunes was maybe 1% of the download market with the rest being free. So music is now free for most of the world and iTunes is a handy way to fill up iPods for the noobs that do not know how to download for free. I don't see this working for movies, books, software or really anything else in digital form.
As much as we might like it.
I can believe some computer supplier got the contract to use Microsoft software. I would find it very difficult to believe that Microsoft got a contract for workstations (hardware) when that is clearly outside their business.
And I bet they do not have anyone that installs computers in Switzerland. Further, Microsoft partners in Switzerland would probably be rather concerned about being in competition with Microsoft for business.
Could there be any less accuracy in this summary? I didn't read the article, but if it says Microsoft as well, I'd say it is completely wrong. Microsoft doesn't sell computers and they don't install computers or service them either.
All things are corrected by using the proper network. As long as you confine yourself to the University Ethernet wired network you will not have these difficulties.
What? Oh, you aren't living and working at a University? Well, that's part of the problem. Much of this was designed and developed for use in a rather rarified atmosphere and trying to use it outside of that can be a real challenge. Ofen requiring the source code and a compiler. Sometimes debugger as well.
Yes, I have a production Linux server that is critical to my business. But I am familiar with the limitations.
Today when you register a corporation you are required to post this fact in one or more newspapers or other similar publications. Often these notices are rather expensive to post as they are not simply standard classified ads.
Similarly, there are requirements for stock offerings and such. As well as government contract opportunities.
Sure, nobody reads newspapers anymore but at least they are saved in the public library for just about all time. You want to find something? There is a place to look. And, for the most part, this historical record is a trustworthy one.
Who, exactly, is archiving government web site content like this? Nobody, that's who. We are hell-bent on destroying any possibility of records for the future, and I have no idea why we are so firmly set on this as a goal. Easier? Sure it is. More relevent? Maybe. But there is no way that most of the digital information today is being archived in a meaningful manner, and what there is that is being archived has a very, very low signal to noise ratio, or perhaps more accurately for the Internet, a rather high noise to signal ratio.
Certainly the US is so firmly focused on entertainment today that newspapers and meaningful news doesn't stand a chance. It isn't entertaining and attempts to make news entertaining are usually grotesque paradies of reality.
The problem with this idea is that it might get things done. The point of the US government, and I would say most governments today, is everything is supposed to be debated endlessly by multiple bodies. Often as not, the result is a lack of agreement and it turns out that nothing is done.
That is the whole point. You don't want to make government "efficient". The structure of the system is designed to place as many roadblocks as possible in the way of accomplishing anything. The point is that if it is extremely difficult to get anything done, then only the very most important things that almost everyone can agree on will get done.
If it wasn't this way, if we had "efficient" government, we would have government involvement in every aspect of life and commerce. I don't care where you live - if there is more than single deliberative body that is involved in lawmaking it is a system that is designed to do as little as possible. And for the most part, it is working just fine.
We neither need or want lots of new laws, regulations and government guidance.
The people are being led by some ruthless manics. It really doesn't matter what the people think - nobody is going to ask their opinion.
Should Iran manage to get nuclear weapons, they will likely use them. Probably on Israel, possibly somewhere else. If it was made abundantly clear to them that the result of this would be utter destruction of their cities and killing of most of the civilian population, their leaders would likely reply with "So?" from their bunkers where they would be safe.
Do not ascribe Western morality to Islamic cultures. It doesn't fit. The leaders can, and have in the past, offered their people the opportunity to be martyrs. In the 1980's the people went without much complaint, albeit at gunpoint.
I would say there is one thing that both Iran and North Korea have in common. And that is the utter irrelvance of what the civilian population thinks. Neither country is "representing the wishes of their people." With North Korea if the leaders believed it would benefit them to nuke South Korea or Japan the likelyhood of retalitation destroying the civilian population wouldn't bother them at all.
I suspect the leadership in Iran feels pretty much the same way. There is no deterrance when the leadership feels this way. That pretty much means that should Iran have a bomb the threat of retaliation will not keep them from using it. About the only thing that would hold them back would be not having enough weapons to take out all of Israel in one shot.