"Uhm, I think you're missing something that's, well, rather obvious: When is the last time you bought a new phone that didn't come with a charger?"
A significant amount of people buy a second charger, for the car or for the office. If you want to be able to recharge the device in your car, that would require duplicate charging mechanisms within the phone. Therefore, redesigning the phone.
I would agree insofar as we're talking about small establishments. But as large establishments continue to drive small businesses out, I think it will be different. Walmart spends a ton of money on cash pickups and deliveries, as does any major retailer. Plus there is the risk of theft (especially for pharmacy chains, but applicable to others as well) and embezzlement. The cost of credit card transactions (per transaction) is dropping for retailers -- it's the volume that is driving profits in the industry. Banks are beginning to lower merchant fees because of competition for those same fees -- yes, it's a reduction in profit from current levels -- but the alternative is a reduction in sales, also resulting in lower profits.
As CC volume goes up, it will become cheaper per transaction than cash, for high-volume companies.
It's a pretty steep capital layout, though. And clip-on adaptors will be annoying to a ton of consumers, possibly too annoying to make it worthwhile. Takes away from the "just works" part of the product.
Niche market -- frequent business travelers & those with tons of portable devices. Market exists, but that's a steep price point.
I would love universal chargers, but I don't see it happening. Another thought -- why would device retailers (particularly for cell phones) ever want to offer a universal charger? They make a ton of money on chargers -- ever notice that the charger structure changes with every new product line? This ties in with their "free phone with 2-yr contract" model, since they make a killing off the accessories. I don't think they'd be cool with killing a major revenue stream.
The problem is getting the device manufacturers to comply, since it would require capital investment for them, and would likely reduce their profits. Cell phone companies make a bundle on the chargers they sell, and most people don't bother finding a third-party vendor for accessories. New phone every 1-2 years? Don't need to get a new charger? Not good for the service carrier, and therefore not good for their phone supplier.
In your example, they'd need to pay for the other half of the deal. At $250 a pop, few consumers would spring for the charger -- unless the coil were imbedded in most of their devices. So multiply that figure by 3 or 4, to add the coil to other devices.
The flip side would be to pay for the chargers in public/common areas like hotel rooms and cafes, and possibly discount the coils to the mfgr as above. Still a huge capital outlay.
The problem that really sticks for me, is that the device mfgrs would need to redesign their products, and offer redundant charging mechanisms.
Revenue stream is questionable, it depends on how many people buy the chargers, and at what price... I don't think people would shell out more than the devices themselves cost. What's the unit cost of the chargers? Could the company afford to sell at a loss until demand & economies of scale bring unit cost below wholesale price, or wholesale price above unit cost? Would the margin be greater than the OC of $15 mil or more?
I see this as a niche product for people who have a half-dozen devices. The typical consumer doesn't derive a big advantage from this.
At the current price point, it isn't going to happen. If they can get a big player in peripherals and handhelds to sign on, they've got a chance -- as long as their unit price drops dramatically, which they allude to in the press release / article.
This idea has been worked over tons of times, and discarded as unprofitable. The difference here is the ability to charge multiple devices at once. Is it enough? Remains to be seen.
A big problem is that device manufacturers will need to incorporate two separate charging mechanisms until the charging pad unit price drops by an order of magnitude. This is a really inefficient redundancy, leading to higher mfg costs, bulkier & heavier devices, and re-design of entire product lines. Expensive.
Yes, there are positive aspects of RFID that can be utilized to increase quality-of-life. But do you think the downside can be controlled? Rather, do you think that there is enough public will for the downside to be controlled once it is in place?
Look at all the inroads against privacy made by the federal government in the last decade, that deal with emergent technology. Warrantless searches with no disclosure, etc., that just as easily apply to RFID tracking. Let's think for a minute... your purchases, tracked by the government, accessible to them without a warrant, and repercussions against the tracking companies if they disclose to you that your info has been disclosed to the government.
You may consider it FUD, but it is a very real threat. Proceed with caution. You may feel there is no problem with this; maybe you trust the government, or have some other reason why you feel this is not a direct threat.
Bleeding to death from a thousand papercuts has the same end result as bleeding to death from a severed artery. But in this case, we're providing a bigger knife.
So, they have created a device that recharges devices wirelessly, if you place the device on top of the pad.
My cell phone, my beard trimmer, and my toothbrush already recharge wirelessly... sure, I have to place them in their cradles and line up the contacts, but it's still approximately the same.
What is being offered here is a universal charger system. The rest of it is bells and whistles. What Splashpower needs to do is get the device producers to incorporate the hardware necessary for this, and to get hotels etc. to install the pads.
This is problematic, as stated in the article. Device-makers won't install the charging coil unless the infrastructure for charging is in place; establishments won't purchase the charging pads unless a sufficient amount of devices have the coil installed. There's just no ROI for a hotel chain to install these in their rooms and suites, and no reason for an end-user to purchase an enabled device if chargers aren't available.
Healthcare costs are a huge expense for employers, and this is good news for tons of workers -- genetic markers that indicate higher risk for disease, and therefore higher healthcare expenses for employers, will not be a factor in hiring/promotion practices.
However, this doesn't give someone with bad genetics a free ride. If your genetics are expressed in a negative way that could be detrimental to your performance, then you can be discriminated against. It's only the alleles, not the expression, that won't be discriminated against.
""Cinergy Corp. CEO James E. Rogers, who at 11 one evening was reading email from employees at home while nursing a vodka, is the norm, not the exception at major U.S. companies, the Wall Street Journal reports."
Well, first, it's about time someone makes a big stink about all the long hours that justify the ever-growing disparity between executives' and workers' salaries. I was beginning to feel like the Joe Sixpacks at the plant were beginning to resent my Rolls Royce. Thanks for sticking up for us, Rogers!
OTOH, why is Rogers allowed to drink while managing employee relations? Last time I tried that, I got slapped with a lawsuit for breach of due diligence, among other things. I mean, sure, I wasn't exactly nursing the vodka so much as slamming it, and the employee relations were more in the nature of physical contact, not email, but really... Some shareholder should call his lawyer.
"He was particularly disdainful of acquiring other distributions for the sake of protecting or expanding market share. "We have zero ambition to do that," he said. 'I think when people approach the problem with an eye on consolidation it destroys the idea of natural selection.'""
Very good point he makes, but it only works with OSS. If he needed to acquire functional IP through business acquisitions, then the Red Hat development plan would begin looking like the MS development plan of the early 90s.
The problem with applying natural selection to Liux distros is that the distros will evolve to fill niches. If mass adoption of Linux to compete with Windows is the goal, then the natural selection model fails... people will choose what works best for them, not what is best for everyone in the long run.
In addition, natural selection does not necessarily lead to what is best for the consumer in general. It sounds nice in theory, but a species on top will do its best to hold down the up-and-comers, thus inhibiting the "natural" part of the selection process.
"Nature is merciful in providing one linear equation that enables us by superposition to model disks of variable density distributions."
OTOH, Nature is vengeful by causing storms and earthquakes to punish those who have displeased Her.
This is a value judgement that the authors of the paper do not support with any evidence. I am outraged (OUTRAGED!) that this could get through review, pretty soon they'll be saying that Death is impartial, that War is terrible, or that the FSM is benevolent.
"And cash won't help, because RFID chips will be in that too."
Cash may or may not be RFID-tagged (I suspect it will, for large denominations). But, a lot of retailers will begin charging a premium for cash transactions. Cash is messy, awkward, risky, and labor-intensive. You pay more to use a credit card at the pump today... but the opposite will be true in 10 or 20 years.
So, go ahead and use cash... but be prepared to pay extra for the privilege of privacy (it's not considered a Right anymore).
"Books and DVD's could be quickly added to my delicious library (currently I scan the barcode), I could manage the inventory in my kitchen much better (which would integrate well with recipe software) and it would be great if I could just put my wine on the racks in my cellar and not have to track it manually.
Take off your tinfoil hat and put on your thinking cap. Let's figure out how to take advantage of a great technology and figure out how to make it safe.
I wear my thinking cap under my tinfoil hat... how else would I keep them from controlling my best thoughts?
Seriously, though...
Once again, we are prepared to sell our liberty for a little bit of convenience. You can already track your wine inventory automagically, get a cheap barcode scanner. Is it too difficult to scan a bottle at the door of your cellar? Is that really worth not worrying about potential government misuse of tech?
At what point are we going to look back and say, "If only we hadn't allowed THAT, we wouldn't be living in a Big-Brother type dystopia?"
Every year, we get a little closer. As the need for dissent grows, the ability to control dissent grows also. Do you think there is any correlation?
Thanks for the info. On the plus side, the amount of music out there will keep your analysts busy for quite some time if the revenue stream is strong enough and the shareholder(s) are willing to carry the expense. Good for you, good for the musicians, good for the customers.
Sorry to use the word 'tag' when I meant something else, and thanks for the info. I really meant scalable criteria.
I work in pop-vulture (hey, an unintentional typo that I think I'm now going to co-opt for everyday use!) media, we get tons of promo pre-release CDs from the industry... do you review these albums, or only the after-market version?
I should have read more of the article, somehow I missed your revenue streams. Do you anticipate the referral commissions to supplant more of the subscription fees at any point? Or are the referral commissions just gravy?
OK, so they're assigning tags to songs, weighting the importance of those tags, and recommending songs that we may like due to characteristics that may normally be ignored.
Cool.
A problem -- there is no way they will be hiring enough professionals to grade every song out there that I might be interested in. If they get a sufficient following, I see labels paying to have their songs indexed... good luck to the independent musicians out there.
I would hope that they allow people to assign their own weights to different criteria. This is a major problem with most of the automated referral systems. The "people who have bought this also bought X" model doesn't work for me, because my tastes are different from most people... or so I'd like to believe.
What I'd like to see is a cross-genre analysis of the music that is reviewed. I don't like Pop Country -- so how do I find the Bluegrass I want without weeding through what I consider to be junk?
1) I believe, no. There is no reason to disregard legitimate defenses.
2) The law dates to 1990. I don't think that MPs understood then the repercussions of the law they passed. At the time, "hacking" was a big fear of the public, and the law helped assuage those fears and encourage adoption of the web as a place for commerce.
Of course, some of it was probably just politicians trying to score points with the public.
I'm glad that attention is being brough to this, and either a change in the law, or different enforcement of the law, is forthcoming (that's the Its-Friday-glass-half-full effect in action).
The law is broken as written.
The other thing that bothers me about this conviction is that the judge admitted that ill intent was not present... the guy is getting punished for making a false statement, which I'm sure is covered by another law that they should have prosecuted him under.
FTA: "Judge Purdy accepted that Cuthbert had not intended to cause any damage, and also pointed out there was almost no case law in this area."
Also, there won't be a jail term, just a fine plus court costs (total of GBP 1,000).
My comment was that intent and prior actions need to be considered (which you are also intimating), which is beginning to happen in the UK with this law. I didn't say the ruling was just, only that those factors should be considered.
Slashdot Mirror
"Once its rated, selling to minors is illegal already.""
Umm, no. The ESRB system is completely voluntary, and does not have the backing of law. Retailers can choose it ignore it without legal repercussions.
Almost everyone I know has bought an extra charger for their office or for their car. Spare chargers normally cost $25-30 from the phone mfgr.
I'll have to look into getting a Nokia, because I end up purchasing a new spare charger every time I upgrade my phone.
"Uhm, I think you're missing something that's, well, rather obvious: When is the last time you bought a new phone that didn't come with a charger?"
A significant amount of people buy a second charger, for the car or for the office. If you want to be able to recharge the device in your car, that would require duplicate charging mechanisms within the phone. Therefore, redesigning the phone.
I would agree insofar as we're talking about small establishments. But as large establishments continue to drive small businesses out, I think it will be different. Walmart spends a ton of money on cash pickups and deliveries, as does any major retailer. Plus there is the risk of theft (especially for pharmacy chains, but applicable to others as well) and embezzlement. The cost of credit card transactions (per transaction) is dropping for retailers -- it's the volume that is driving profits in the industry. Banks are beginning to lower merchant fees because of competition for those same fees -- yes, it's a reduction in profit from current levels -- but the alternative is a reduction in sales, also resulting in lower profits.
As CC volume goes up, it will become cheaper per transaction than cash, for high-volume companies.
It's a pretty steep capital layout, though. And clip-on adaptors will be annoying to a ton of consumers, possibly too annoying to make it worthwhile. Takes away from the "just works" part of the product.
Niche market -- frequent business travelers & those with tons of portable devices. Market exists, but that's a steep price point.
I would love universal chargers, but I don't see it happening. Another thought -- why would device retailers (particularly for cell phones) ever want to offer a universal charger? They make a ton of money on chargers -- ever notice that the charger structure changes with every new product line? This ties in with their "free phone with 2-yr contract" model, since they make a killing off the accessories. I don't think they'd be cool with killing a major revenue stream.
I totally agree.
The problem is getting the device manufacturers to comply, since it would require capital investment for them, and would likely reduce their profits. Cell phone companies make a bundle on the chargers they sell, and most people don't bother finding a third-party vendor for accessories. New phone every 1-2 years? Don't need to get a new charger? Not good for the service carrier, and therefore not good for their phone supplier.
In your example, they'd need to pay for the other half of the deal. At $250 a pop, few consumers would spring for the charger -- unless the coil were imbedded in most of their devices. So multiply that figure by 3 or 4, to add the coil to other devices.
The flip side would be to pay for the chargers in public/common areas like hotel rooms and cafes, and possibly discount the coils to the mfgr as above. Still a huge capital outlay.
The problem that really sticks for me, is that the device mfgrs would need to redesign their products, and offer redundant charging mechanisms.
Revenue stream is questionable, it depends on how many people buy the chargers, and at what price... I don't think people would shell out more than the devices themselves cost. What's the unit cost of the chargers? Could the company afford to sell at a loss until demand & economies of scale bring unit cost below wholesale price, or wholesale price above unit cost? Would the margin be greater than the OC of $15 mil or more?
I see this as a niche product for people who have a half-dozen devices. The typical consumer doesn't derive a big advantage from this.
At the current price point, it isn't going to happen. If they can get a big player in peripherals and handhelds to sign on, they've got a chance -- as long as their unit price drops dramatically, which they allude to in the press release / article.
This idea has been worked over tons of times, and discarded as unprofitable. The difference here is the ability to charge multiple devices at once. Is it enough? Remains to be seen.
A big problem is that device manufacturers will need to incorporate two separate charging mechanisms until the charging pad unit price drops by an order of magnitude. This is a really inefficient redundancy, leading to higher mfg costs, bulkier & heavier devices, and re-design of entire product lines. Expensive.
Yes, there are positive aspects of RFID that can be utilized to increase quality-of-life. But do you think the downside can be controlled? Rather, do you think that there is enough public will for the downside to be controlled once it is in place?
Look at all the inroads against privacy made by the federal government in the last decade, that deal with emergent technology. Warrantless searches with no disclosure, etc., that just as easily apply to RFID tracking. Let's think for a minute... your purchases, tracked by the government, accessible to them without a warrant, and repercussions against the tracking companies if they disclose to you that your info has been disclosed to the government.
You may consider it FUD, but it is a very real threat. Proceed with caution. You may feel there is no problem with this; maybe you trust the government, or have some other reason why you feel this is not a direct threat.
Bleeding to death from a thousand papercuts has the same end result as bleeding to death from a severed artery. But in this case, we're providing a bigger knife.
So, they have created a device that recharges devices wirelessly, if you place the device on top of the pad.
My cell phone, my beard trimmer, and my toothbrush already recharge wirelessly... sure, I have to place them in their cradles and line up the contacts, but it's still approximately the same.
What is being offered here is a universal charger system. The rest of it is bells and whistles. What Splashpower needs to do is get the device producers to incorporate the hardware necessary for this, and to get hotels etc. to install the pads.
This is problematic, as stated in the article. Device-makers won't install the charging coil unless the infrastructure for charging is in place; establishments won't purchase the charging pads unless a sufficient amount of devices have the coil installed. There's just no ROI for a hotel chain to install these in their rooms and suites, and no reason for an end-user to purchase an enabled device if chargers aren't available.
Nice idea, but don't buy stock.
Healthcare costs are a huge expense for employers, and this is good news for tons of workers -- genetic markers that indicate higher risk for disease, and therefore higher healthcare expenses for employers, will not be a factor in hiring/promotion practices.
However, this doesn't give someone with bad genetics a free ride. If your genetics are expressed in a negative way that could be detrimental to your performance, then you can be discriminated against. It's only the alleles, not the expression, that won't be discriminated against.
Dude, satire. Sarcasm. Sorry I forgot to enclose it within tags so that any moron or AC could grok it.
""Cinergy Corp. CEO James E. Rogers, who at 11 one evening was reading email from employees at home while nursing a vodka, is the norm, not the exception at major U.S. companies, the Wall Street Journal reports."
Well, first, it's about time someone makes a big stink about all the long hours that justify the ever-growing disparity between executives' and workers' salaries. I was beginning to feel like the Joe Sixpacks at the plant were beginning to resent my Rolls Royce. Thanks for sticking up for us, Rogers!
OTOH, why is Rogers allowed to drink while managing employee relations? Last time I tried that, I got slapped with a lawsuit for breach of due diligence, among other things. I mean, sure, I wasn't exactly nursing the vodka so much as slamming it, and the employee relations were more in the nature of physical contact, not email, but really... Some shareholder should call his lawyer.
"He was particularly disdainful of acquiring other distributions for the sake of protecting or expanding market share. "We have zero ambition to do that," he said. 'I think when people approach the problem with an eye on consolidation it destroys the idea of natural selection.'""
Very good point he makes, but it only works with OSS. If he needed to acquire functional IP through business acquisitions, then the Red Hat development plan would begin looking like the MS development plan of the early 90s.
The problem with applying natural selection to Liux distros is that the distros will evolve to fill niches. If mass adoption of Linux to compete with Windows is the goal, then the natural selection model fails... people will choose what works best for them, not what is best for everyone in the long run.
In addition, natural selection does not necessarily lead to what is best for the consumer in general. It sounds nice in theory, but a species on top will do its best to hold down the up-and-comers, thus inhibiting the "natural" part of the selection process.
From the paper:
"Nature is merciful in providing one linear equation that enables us by superposition to model disks of variable density distributions."
OTOH, Nature is vengeful by causing storms and earthquakes to punish those who have displeased Her.
This is a value judgement that the authors of the paper do not support with any evidence. I am outraged (OUTRAGED!) that this could get through review, pretty soon they'll be saying that Death is impartial, that War is terrible, or that the FSM is benevolent.
Even if he did not know ahead of time that he was not allowed access, note that the article stated that he attempted twice to access the system.
Denied the first time... he knows. Attempted to access again, he broke the law.
"And cash won't help, because RFID chips will be in that too."
Cash may or may not be RFID-tagged (I suspect it will, for large denominations). But, a lot of retailers will begin charging a premium for cash transactions. Cash is messy, awkward, risky, and labor-intensive. You pay more to use a credit card at the pump today... but the opposite will be true in 10 or 20 years.
So, go ahead and use cash... but be prepared to pay extra for the privilege of privacy (it's not considered a Right anymore).
"Books and DVD's could be quickly added to my delicious library (currently I scan the barcode), I could manage the inventory in my kitchen much better (which would integrate well with recipe software) and it would be great if I could just put my wine on the racks in my cellar and not have to track it manually.
Take off your tinfoil hat and put on your thinking cap. Let's figure out how to take advantage of a great technology and figure out how to make it safe.
I wear my thinking cap under my tinfoil hat... how else would I keep them from controlling my best thoughts?
Seriously, though...
Once again, we are prepared to sell our liberty for a little bit of convenience. You can already track your wine inventory automagically, get a cheap barcode scanner. Is it too difficult to scan a bottle at the door of your cellar? Is that really worth not worrying about potential government misuse of tech?
At what point are we going to look back and say, "If only we hadn't allowed THAT, we wouldn't be living in a Big-Brother type dystopia?"
Every year, we get a little closer. As the need for dissent grows, the ability to control dissent grows also. Do you think there is any correlation?
I got a few responses from people at Pandora, and they pointed out some useful stuff.
You may want to check out their responses to my OP, they address this.
Thanks for the info. On the plus side, the amount of music out there will keep your analysts busy for quite some time if the revenue stream is strong enough and the shareholder(s) are willing to carry the expense. Good for you, good for the musicians, good for the customers.
Sorry to use the word 'tag' when I meant something else, and thanks for the info. I really meant scalable criteria.
I work in pop-vulture (hey, an unintentional typo that I think I'm now going to co-opt for everyday use!) media, we get tons of promo pre-release CDs from the industry... do you review these albums, or only the after-market version?
I should have read more of the article, somehow I missed your revenue streams. Do you anticipate the referral commissions to supplant more of the subscription fees at any point? Or are the referral commissions just gravy?
Thanks!
OK, so they're assigning tags to songs, weighting the importance of those tags, and recommending songs that we may like due to characteristics that may normally be ignored.
Cool.
A problem -- there is no way they will be hiring enough professionals to grade every song out there that I might be interested in. If they get a sufficient following, I see labels paying to have their songs indexed... good luck to the independent musicians out there.
I would hope that they allow people to assign their own weights to different criteria. This is a major problem with most of the automated referral systems. The "people who have bought this also bought X" model doesn't work for me, because my tastes are different from most people... or so I'd like to believe.
What I'd like to see is a cross-genre analysis of the music that is reviewed. I don't like Pop Country -- so how do I find the Bluegrass I want without weeding through what I consider to be junk?
Well, to answer your questions:
1) I believe, no. There is no reason to disregard legitimate defenses.
2) The law dates to 1990. I don't think that MPs understood then the repercussions of the law they passed. At the time, "hacking" was a big fear of the public, and the law helped assuage those fears and encourage adoption of the web as a place for commerce.
Of course, some of it was probably just politicians trying to score points with the public.
I'm glad that attention is being brough to this, and either a change in the law, or different enforcement of the law, is forthcoming (that's the Its-Friday-glass-half-full effect in action).
The law is broken as written.
The other thing that bothers me about this conviction is that the judge admitted that ill intent was not present... the guy is getting punished for making a false statement, which I'm sure is covered by another law that they should have prosecuted him under.
"BOOM! You're hit with a 403 Access Forbidden. In England under these conditions you just broke the law."
Not true, you were not aware that you were not authorized. If you were to try again, knowing so, then you broke the law.
I am not saying that the law is just. I am not saying that I think this conviction is fair.
I am just saying that the headline does not describe what actually happened.
FTA: "Judge Purdy accepted that Cuthbert had not intended to cause any damage, and also pointed out there was almost no case law in this area."
Also, there won't be a jail term, just a fine plus court costs (total of GBP 1,000).
My comment was that intent and prior actions need to be considered (which you are also intimating), which is beginning to happen in the UK with this law. I didn't say the ruling was just, only that those factors should be considered.