The web is a delivery mechanism, and the TV is a display mechanism... One can not replace the other... What will [and is] happening is that the CONTENT CREATORS have been pushed down to a level playing field with anyone with a video camera and a cable modem... Ultimately the TV is just a big PC screen, so when you add a Tivo, a Microsoft Media Center PC, a MythTV box, or whatever, you've got a nice network aware media player that will give you the CONTENT that you want on the display device that you want.
It's going to force the major networks of the world to put out some decent content, or they'll go the way of the AM radio....
Maybe they should just call it "Full High Speed" to add to the confusion, and imply that perhaps with this version you may get the "full" advertised speed..;-)
AT&T [or ANY ISP] should NOT be in the policing business. ISPs are transport providers, and this is not their responsibility any more than it is the job of a bus or taxi driver to do a background check on a passenger before transporting them, or perhaps to search each passenger for illegal substances (or containers that MAY CONTAIN an illegal substance)...
It is also not up to the ISP to decide what is right or wrong, so putting them in the middle is wrong.
We pay our ISPs to get us to the Internet, and we want to get to the WHOLE Internet, and we want to be there FAST. Anything else is a law enforcement matter and should require a wsrrant to search, just as it would if you were at home.
We're giving up our freedoms here people.. Once the infrastructure is in place, they could search for ANYTHING..
There are two issues here - One is whether or not the customer owns the drive, and the other is what happens to the data which was on the drive.
In regards to hardware ownership, presumably Apple can refurbish this drive, and in doing so, is keeping the upgrade/replacement cost lower than it would be to buy a drive outright and have it installed. One test for this would be to send Apple a device without a drive in it at all, and see if Apple would install the new drive for the same price - I doubt it, as I bet Apple considers the bad drive as having some kind of "core" value.
As for the sensitive data, this is irrelevant, since as soon as the device left the hands of the data owner, anyone from the mailman to the dock worker at apple who signed for the device from UPS could have spent a couple minutes getting at your data. If this is not an acceptable risk, do what the government does, and write off the dead drive as not salvagable, and destroy it rather than let it get out of your hands. You may pay a bit more for replacement parts (see above: core value) but your data is safe, and apparently this is important to you...
The bottom line is that when you return your item, there is some implied contract (which you probably accpted through a EULA or in the process of obtaining the RMA), so complaining about the terms of that contract AFTER the fact doesn't make a lot of sense, and I dont have a lot of sympathy.. Learn how to replace your own hard drives, and then find a fun and creative way to destroy the old ones.
Well, also, since the speed of sound depends on the density of the medium the sound is traveling through, what exactly is the speed of sound in the perfect vacuum of space? If they're just using sea-level speed of sound as an arbitrary measure to convey it to the common "non scientist consumer" then what's the point? What meaning could the speed of sound possibly have in a place where sound does not exist?
Your example of "Extending to an ultimate" assumes that everything else in the world is static, which it is not. Other people and organizations react and adapt to changing environments.
Go back 25 years, and ask IBM if they were scared of Microsoft... No chance..
Go back 10 years, and ask Microsoft if they were scared of Linux, or 5 years ago "Google"... No way..
Things change, and the nice thing about the open market is that it generates financial incentives to get people who you classify as "greedy" to do good things to earn your money...
Trust me, Microsoft is not going to become MORE competitive with only one US employee and 100k of foriegn sweatshop programmers as you imply - All they're doing is exercising a little political muscle to either encourage Canada to do something they want Canada to do (standardize on some MS platform) or show some other country that "we dont need you and we'll move elsewhere" because they didn't do the same.
All of this, of course, assumes that there isn't massive corruption going on to potentially stop or slow competition. I'm not saying that there is, or isn't, but I'd be much more inclined to believe there is a corruption influence in your drug company example than in the MS case. Microsoft certainly hasn't been spared any legal trouble with monopolies, and in my opinion they've been much on the "cautious" side in regards to taking political advantages lately..
Agreed.. Can't argue this both ways. Bottom line is that it is a financial decision. Whether the financial motive comes from tax incentives, cheaper labor, or legal protection from bogus lawsuits, the bottom line is that Microsoft has a financial duty to itself and it's shareholders to find the best "bang for the buck".
You could potentially argue whether their policy or actions achieve this "best bang" effectively, but I dont think there's enough real facts in the story to allow us to do that, so the bottom line is that this is just a draw for Microsoft bashers with the added benefit that you could use this to argue our nations imigration policies are either to lax or strict, depending on your goals..
Sorry.. I think it's really a non-story. Microsoft does business all over the world, and it makes sense that they'd have offices all over the world too.
OK, granted, the article wasn't specific on what the patent was based on, but it seems to me that if you've got a website that intends to SELL something, that somewhere on that page, there should be a button to allow a potential customer to BUY the item. I am going to assume for a moment that the act of BUYING an item is not a patentable concept (I hope this assumption is correct).. If so, what is patented? The color of the button? The exact wording? What the heck? The Patent office is truly out of control.
Bravo..
FWIW, I used to be a [non-union] Verizon employee, and I can tell you FIRST HAND that the unions there have created a culture in which because there is no such thing as getting better pay for better work, the only way to increase your pay to work ratio is to work less than anyone else while getting paid the same.
In many cases, this literally means doing NO WORK during regular work hours, to justify overtime to get the work done.
Dont get me wrong - The management is NOT without blame - Rather than FIXING the problem through working with the unions, management has "wimped out" and used it as an excuse to do whatever they can to get rid of them, while accepting the interm losses in productivity. Nobody acts like they're working for the same company. It's amazing sometimes, because it gives the affect that there are three motives: That of the union worker, that of the manager, and that of the contractor. The contractors do the work that the union wont [or cant] and the management moves the contractors around like pawns to piss off the union.
Now, specifically on this topic, Verizon is 100% banking on FiOS and couldnt give a crap about the condition of the copper plant that it paid for, and is now having to share with any fly by night CLEC at cut rate prices.. If they could sell off the cable plant and still have access to it, they would. VZ tried to get the unions to learn how to deal with fiber, but most of the techs said "That's not my job, and I dont want to learn" so because they can't be fired, they do nothing while contractors do the fiber, then the union bitches that they have no opportunity for growth in their job skills... Total BS.
The shame of it all is that if FIOS wins, VZ will then be forced to share the transport with it's competition, even though VZ is the one who risked the $$ to get it installed. We should see more competition in different localities, but unfortunately, that isn't realistically scalable, and would create chaos. There is no easy answer.
Simple.. The author didn't understand inductance, so he called it resonance. I had an electric toothbrush in the '70s that charged this way, but you can bet this will get a patent, because everyone will ignore that it already exists.
Or worse yet, what I'm doing - Passing my calls off to my Cisco router, which then goes to Vonage! Ha!
Anyone know a good way to get a cellular [non-Verizon, in the interest of NOT supporting them] line into a Voip system (By FXO or direct)... I'd love to have a reliable non-VoIP, non-VZ way to get calls into my Asterisk or call manager system at home, so I could do away with Verizon completely!... By the way, I'm a VZ shareholder, and ex-employee...:-)
Someone above hit the nail right on the head - Suing is now more profitable than selling service..
As an interesting exercise, some creative Wall-street type should try to investigate what percentage of last year's "profits" came from the sales of Verizon-owned real estate... I think you'll find that since you can't sell real estate twice, that the new business model is to sue your competition to replace that income so the profits dont go down... Anyone heard of a company called Enron??
Well said..
Another thing, not good/bad/whatever, is that every time the product is delayed, and/or takes longer to get out, the higher the expectation of "perfection" will be, and the harder the fall will be when the inevitable "SP1" is required..
I'm worried that they're being abused by "requirements creep", in otherwords, every time ANYONE brings out a new feature in any operating system, the bosses are saying "Yeah, we need that included too!!"
I guess that's one danger of having an "everything and the kitchen sink" O/S...
I've had Vonage for nearly two years, and have used it EXCLUSIVELY for those two years, and have ZERO complaints. My ISP is Adelphia cable. Based on my experience however, I bought it for my business, and tried THREE separate DSL providers, and NEVER got it to work reliably, so we cancelled. I have not had any trouble with cancelling service either - I had a softphone line for a while, but when I was too lazy to get it to work for outbound calls from my Asterisk system, I cancelled it. Again - Absolutely no problem... I did it from my car on my way to work, in 10 minutes, without even knowing my account number.. I realize the YMMV, but in my opinion, Vonage is the best commodity Voip service out there. It just works, and it's easy enough for Grandma to understand how to hook it up.
Uhh.. I think you're reading the wrong thread... See, it's about NASA, not "State your political views on the war"... Sorry, but not EVERYTHING can be blamed on "the war"... Of course, the fact that we have this forum to discuss this CAN be related to the fact that brave men and women have defended YOUR right to spew whatever you want for so many years...
Thanks to all the military - Be safe!
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The web is a delivery mechanism, and the TV is a display mechanism... One can not replace the other... What will [and is] happening is that the CONTENT CREATORS have been pushed down to a level playing field with anyone with a video camera and a cable modem... Ultimately the TV is just a big PC screen, so when you add a Tivo, a Microsoft Media Center PC, a MythTV box, or whatever, you've got a nice network aware media player that will give you the CONTENT that you want on the display device that you want.
It's going to force the major networks of the world to put out some decent content, or they'll go the way of the AM radio....
Maybe they should just call it "Full High Speed" to add to the confusion, and imply that perhaps with this version you may get the "full" advertised speed.. ;-)
AT&T [or ANY ISP] should NOT be in the policing business. ISPs are transport providers, and this is not their responsibility any more than it is the job of a bus or taxi driver to do a background check on a passenger before transporting them, or perhaps to search each passenger for illegal substances (or containers that MAY CONTAIN an illegal substance)... It is also not up to the ISP to decide what is right or wrong, so putting them in the middle is wrong. We pay our ISPs to get us to the Internet, and we want to get to the WHOLE Internet, and we want to be there FAST. Anything else is a law enforcement matter and should require a wsrrant to search, just as it would if you were at home. We're giving up our freedoms here people.. Once the infrastructure is in place, they could search for ANYTHING..
There are two issues here - One is whether or not the customer owns the drive, and the other is what happens to the data which was on the drive. In regards to hardware ownership, presumably Apple can refurbish this drive, and in doing so, is keeping the upgrade/replacement cost lower than it would be to buy a drive outright and have it installed. One test for this would be to send Apple a device without a drive in it at all, and see if Apple would install the new drive for the same price - I doubt it, as I bet Apple considers the bad drive as having some kind of "core" value. As for the sensitive data, this is irrelevant, since as soon as the device left the hands of the data owner, anyone from the mailman to the dock worker at apple who signed for the device from UPS could have spent a couple minutes getting at your data. If this is not an acceptable risk, do what the government does, and write off the dead drive as not salvagable, and destroy it rather than let it get out of your hands. You may pay a bit more for replacement parts (see above: core value) but your data is safe, and apparently this is important to you... The bottom line is that when you return your item, there is some implied contract (which you probably accpted through a EULA or in the process of obtaining the RMA), so complaining about the terms of that contract AFTER the fact doesn't make a lot of sense, and I dont have a lot of sympathy.. Learn how to replace your own hard drives, and then find a fun and creative way to destroy the old ones.
Well, also, since the speed of sound depends on the density of the medium the sound is traveling through, what exactly is the speed of sound in the perfect vacuum of space? If they're just using sea-level speed of sound as an arbitrary measure to convey it to the common "non scientist consumer" then what's the point? What meaning could the speed of sound possibly have in a place where sound does not exist?
Yes, but they're only concerned about "high traffic" websites.. Knowing that their own website is irrelevant, they are exempt. :-)
Your example of "Extending to an ultimate" assumes that everything else in the world is static, which it is not. Other people and organizations react and adapt to changing environments.
Go back 25 years, and ask IBM if they were scared of Microsoft... No chance.. Go back 10 years, and ask Microsoft if they were scared of Linux, or 5 years ago "Google"... No way.. Things change, and the nice thing about the open market is that it generates financial incentives to get people who you classify as "greedy" to do good things to earn your money...
Trust me, Microsoft is not going to become MORE competitive with only one US employee and 100k of foriegn sweatshop programmers as you imply - All they're doing is exercising a little political muscle to either encourage Canada to do something they want Canada to do (standardize on some MS platform) or show some other country that "we dont need you and we'll move elsewhere" because they didn't do the same.
All of this, of course, assumes that there isn't massive corruption going on to potentially stop or slow competition. I'm not saying that there is, or isn't, but I'd be much more inclined to believe there is a corruption influence in your drug company example than in the MS case. Microsoft certainly hasn't been spared any legal trouble with monopolies, and in my opinion they've been much on the "cautious" side in regards to taking political advantages lately..
Agreed.. Can't argue this both ways. Bottom line is that it is a financial decision. Whether the financial motive comes from tax incentives, cheaper labor, or legal protection from bogus lawsuits, the bottom line is that Microsoft has a financial duty to itself and it's shareholders to find the best "bang for the buck".
You could potentially argue whether their policy or actions achieve this "best bang" effectively, but I dont think there's enough real facts in the story to allow us to do that, so the bottom line is that this is just a draw for Microsoft bashers with the added benefit that you could use this to argue our nations imigration policies are either to lax or strict, depending on your goals..
Sorry.. I think it's really a non-story. Microsoft does business all over the world, and it makes sense that they'd have offices all over the world too.
OK, granted, the article wasn't specific on what the patent was based on, but it seems to me that if you've got a website that intends to SELL something, that somewhere on that page, there should be a button to allow a potential customer to BUY the item. I am going to assume for a moment that the act of BUYING an item is not a patentable concept (I hope this assumption is correct).. If so, what is patented? The color of the button? The exact wording? What the heck? The Patent office is truly out of control.
Bravo.. FWIW, I used to be a [non-union] Verizon employee, and I can tell you FIRST HAND that the unions there have created a culture in which because there is no such thing as getting better pay for better work, the only way to increase your pay to work ratio is to work less than anyone else while getting paid the same. In many cases, this literally means doing NO WORK during regular work hours, to justify overtime to get the work done. Dont get me wrong - The management is NOT without blame - Rather than FIXING the problem through working with the unions, management has "wimped out" and used it as an excuse to do whatever they can to get rid of them, while accepting the interm losses in productivity. Nobody acts like they're working for the same company. It's amazing sometimes, because it gives the affect that there are three motives: That of the union worker, that of the manager, and that of the contractor. The contractors do the work that the union wont [or cant] and the management moves the contractors around like pawns to piss off the union. Now, specifically on this topic, Verizon is 100% banking on FiOS and couldnt give a crap about the condition of the copper plant that it paid for, and is now having to share with any fly by night CLEC at cut rate prices.. If they could sell off the cable plant and still have access to it, they would. VZ tried to get the unions to learn how to deal with fiber, but most of the techs said "That's not my job, and I dont want to learn" so because they can't be fired, they do nothing while contractors do the fiber, then the union bitches that they have no opportunity for growth in their job skills... Total BS. The shame of it all is that if FIOS wins, VZ will then be forced to share the transport with it's competition, even though VZ is the one who risked the $$ to get it installed. We should see more competition in different localities, but unfortunately, that isn't realistically scalable, and would create chaos. There is no easy answer.
Simple.. The author didn't understand inductance, so he called it resonance. I had an electric toothbrush in the '70s that charged this way, but you can bet this will get a patent, because everyone will ignore that it already exists.
What you're Wondering??
Of course, you sue where the money is, right?? Why do the work yourself, when you can sue and have someone else do it, while you collect from them!
That's not a problem - The cable company has FIOS for their uplink.. :-)
Or worse yet, what I'm doing - Passing my calls off to my Cisco router, which then goes to Vonage! Ha! Anyone know a good way to get a cellular [non-Verizon, in the interest of NOT supporting them] line into a Voip system (By FXO or direct)... I'd love to have a reliable non-VoIP, non-VZ way to get calls into my Asterisk or call manager system at home, so I could do away with Verizon completely!... By the way, I'm a VZ shareholder, and ex-employee... :-)
Someone above hit the nail right on the head - Suing is now more profitable than selling service..
As an interesting exercise, some creative Wall-street type should try to investigate what percentage of last year's "profits" came from the sales of Verizon-owned real estate... I think you'll find that since you can't sell real estate twice, that the new business model is to sue your competition to replace that income so the profits dont go down... Anyone heard of a company called Enron??
Well said.. Another thing, not good/bad/whatever, is that every time the product is delayed, and/or takes longer to get out, the higher the expectation of "perfection" will be, and the harder the fall will be when the inevitable "SP1" is required.. I'm worried that they're being abused by "requirements creep", in otherwords, every time ANYONE brings out a new feature in any operating system, the bosses are saying "Yeah, we need that included too!!" I guess that's one danger of having an "everything and the kitchen sink" O/S...
I've had Vonage for nearly two years, and have used it EXCLUSIVELY for those two years, and have ZERO complaints. My ISP is Adelphia cable. Based on my experience however, I bought it for my business, and tried THREE separate DSL providers, and NEVER got it to work reliably, so we cancelled. I have not had any trouble with cancelling service either - I had a softphone line for a while, but when I was too lazy to get it to work for outbound calls from my Asterisk system, I cancelled it. Again - Absolutely no problem... I did it from my car on my way to work, in 10 minutes, without even knowing my account number.. I realize the YMMV, but in my opinion, Vonage is the best commodity Voip service out there. It just works, and it's easy enough for Grandma to understand how to hook it up.
Uhh.. I think you're reading the wrong thread... See, it's about NASA, not "State your political views on the war"... Sorry, but not EVERYTHING can be blamed on "the war"... Of course, the fact that we have this forum to discuss this CAN be related to the fact that brave men and women have defended YOUR right to spew whatever you want for so many years... Thanks to all the military - Be safe!